Town Council - Special Meeting

like to welcome everybody out to the town council special call public forum meeting. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Again, thank you all for coming out this morning or this afternoon. Um, does any member of council have a conflict of interest in regards to anything on the agenda or an appearance of conflict of interest? sir is no no no

no. All right, moving on. Public comments on agenda items only. If anyone would like to come up, please feel free to come on up and we'll get this started.

Hello, I'm Stuart Jones, 1410 Canal Drive. Mr. Mr. Jones, will you move here? Yes. Is that that better? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Go ahead.

Thank you for adding a public comment time to this special meeting today. I'm a retired professional engineer and was on the parking committee. I also founded and with my wife ran a civil engineering firm in the Raleigh area for over 30 years. The council issued an RFP to analyze the parking situation on the island. The RFP was a request for a proposal that specifically asked for a price or cost of services. And yet, Bolton and Mink did not include a price for their services. Their proposal is an open-ended hourly contract to provide services that are negotiated with the council. The RFP asked for public hearings and a revised parking plan, but Bolton and Mink is only providing consultation with staff and will only provide written comments about their findings. It doesn't appear that the proposal matches what the council originally advertised for. Typically, a municipal offer for services requires a minimum of three responses, but as far as I know, you only received one. We think this contract should not be awarded due to a lack of response and an inappropriate response to the RFP. The island parking plan was developed by numerous individuals, including several professional engineers. These engineers are bound to a code of ethics to protect the public safety and provide the best solution for the situation. The majority of our island parking is within the rightway of DOT on Main Street and DOT engineers have been intimately involved in the design of the parking spaces on Maine.

To spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to review parking spaces that have been reviewed over and over seems a waste of taxpayer dollars. Remember what our island parking looked like two years ago with no designated parking and cars parked haphazardly everywhere? Now that we have a detailed parking plan, designated parking spaces, and a substantial improvement in pedestrian safety, you're still not satisfied and want to spend maybe $50,000 on this proposal. Enough is enough. Let your public works staff work with DOT and Brunswick County Public Utilities to work on your areas of concern. Please do not award this contract.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Richard. My wife Joy and I live at 406 Dolphin Street. Thank you for providing the opportunity to speak to the council regarding the proposed study of the paid parking plan for Sunset Beach. After reviewing the information provided in the link to the agenda for this special meeting, I have a few comments and concerns. First of all, I want to thank those who have been involved in the original parking coordination implementation of the current parking plan. Given the amount of time, effort, and money that has already gone into the parking project, I do not see a need for a further expenditure of time and resources for what is nearly a completed and implemented parking plan. Any required tweaks or changes could possibly be addressed as needed going forward and would not be cost prohibitive. It would appear that the council is prepared to move forward with an outside firm to further review the parking situation without input from the residents who will be funding this unnecessary expenditure. The RFP to provide an additional study for the SSB parking plan that was sent out by council seems to have been answered by a single firm. In my experience, it is customary to get at least three quotes in most situations involving a substantial cash outlay. I have seen only the single proposal from Bolton and Mink. Then this was attached to the agenda and it may have been updated because I did see this morning that the total cost of the project is estimated not to exceed $45,000 for a 5 to6month proposed timeline estimate. Previously I did not see that in there and I thought it was an open-ended contract with simply rates ranging from 70 to$1350 or so. The attachments to the RFP are evidence of the amount of work that has already occurred and represent a significant expenditure outlay. As a result, the council has stressed judicious use of taxpayer dollars. If we are willing to spend nearly an hour debating decorations for the 4th of

July, but wish to proceed with this costly and unnecessary project without further input and discussion is not consistent with that stated objective. Thank you very much. Thank you. You know what else? Yes, sir. Jersey, but I have two properties on the island. My name is Roger Sang. Okay. Thank you. 1607 East Main Street and I own the lot behind my house as well on Canal.

Okay. And my concern is about safety and the way this is done. And I would encourage any of you to come to where I live, park where the park I was, was first of all I was told on the one side was going to be one parking spot. Sight lines are going to be better by my car rules. There are two. They are right up to the driveway to the next driveway and then on the other side there's another one. If you have an SUV and any any type of vehicle, you are not going to see a 5-year-old kid on a bicycle, a jogger, anyone there. It is my concern is safety. The rocks that are on there, did you ever drive a bicycle and have those rocks get kicked all over the place? You pull out, they're there. You know, the rain washes them into the road. A kid riding a bike, anybody, an adult riding a bike that hits one of those rocks is going to fall into the rope. There is going to be someone is going to get seriously hurt. And a lot of these spots, I look at them and it's I'm not trying to I want safety. All right. I was told if there was one spot, it was in the middle. Okay, maybe I have better sight lines. But when you have cars packed up and you cannot even see coming out of your driveway, it's dangerous. And my concern is that I just want I'm not the money situation. I'm not familiar with that with spending this money. But if it makes it safer on the island, to me, this is all about It seems to me it's about money and and safety is the afterthought. I want safety. I want this, you know, you can't see people coming or going and that was my main reason for uh seeing because I've had people parking, people look also theft. People are looking around. They're I've sat on my porch, watch people look around and they go in somebody else underneath somebody's house and take showers. People are using the showers of people. I've seen it on my porch. Somebody had a bag on his top of his car and I'm on my porch and I'm like, "Hey, you got a bag on your car?" Well, I got the middle finger and told

me all this stuff. So, I said, "All right." He left the bag on his car. I said, "Go ahead, you jerk." So, I tried to help out, but people I've had things stolen from underneath my house. It's that's just my concern. Okay. I'm sorry, but never done this before. You're good. All right. Would you give your name again, please? Rogers. I'll spell my last name. S T E I G I N G A. You'll never be able to say it. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else on agenda items on Sir? Yes. This is all on Monday's

Yes, sir. Anything that's on anything on Monday's agenda is what what this original part was for, too. Yes, sir.

John Corbett, 1313 Canal Drive. I think you heard compelling arguments about uh parking that's been done. Uh what Mr. Roger S said is one of those things that could be a tweak that you go in, you look at it, and you make adjustments as it's needed rather than paying 45,000. But my comment that I want to put on is on the item on the on next Monday's agenda dealing with uh meeting times. Um meeting times been in the evening quite a bit with the idea trying to get people in the community who work to be able to come to the meetings and go to that. If we go to a uh afternoon meeting, I think it's going to have a major impact on people who who are working and it's not going to significantly increase the number of people who could come. Uh the question about saving money, our department heads are the ones that mainly come to this meeting other than m Miss Riggsby who takes the notes. She's an employee that can get overtime. the department heads can get flex time where they get compensated. They take time off uh for being up late. Sometimes their jobs are very demanding and they don't get to use flex time. That kind of goes with the responsibility of the jobs that they have. So uh I don't think the uh idea of making it easier on staff is is a compelling reason because the staff doesn't have to come to these uh come to the uh evening town council meetings. So, with that in mind, I'd say don't change it or if you do change it, may move it down to maybe 6:00, maybe maybe 5:00. There's flexibility in there, but not in the middle of the afternoon. Okay. Thank you. And uh I wish you all well.

Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else? Yes, sir. It wasn't I wasn't planning on speaking, but uh anyway, my name is Steve Streiny. I'm at 7645 High Market Street, and I would I would vote for five or six:00 for a time for a a council meeting. I think that's a good compromise for the employees and for the people that may want to attend. And um I would hope that if you guys do decide to spend 50 grand on a parking study, that wouldn't preclude the possibility of getting a tax rate deduction for the year 2027. Thank you. [laughter] Anyone else? [clears throat] All right, we don't have any more. We'll move on now to the island traffic parking study staff report. I'll start this one.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Yes, sir. Before you and included in the agenda packet is the proposal from Bolton and Mink. And I don't I'm not going to read through this line by line, but as they highlight concerns that they want to touch on are liability, concerns for personal safety and ADA regulations, safe and convenient access or loading zones for vehicles, driveway access and visibility, maintaining access to existing utilities, efforts to maximize potential parking areas rather than right sizing. uh driver behavior is one of the areas that they want to focus on as well. There were a lot of good comments that came from the audience today and I appreciate those. I'm sure the council does as well. Um if I could just touch on a few of those before I give my recommendation or what I think uh I feel we should do. Um this study that was done by the committee previously and and one of the comments was that we could tweak spaces. Excuse [clears throat] me. And we have tweaked spaces. We found some things that uh that we're concerning and we've marked some of those spaces off that they're not going to be used for parking or we're going to determine what they're going to what their use is going to be and perhaps we're going to repurpose those. I don't like the idea of waiting until a problem exists to then say, "Oh, we should fix that." Um we need toident identify that first. uh when this parking study um I wasn't asked much about this parking study. In fact, it wasn't even proposed to me until the day of the council meeting when it was going to be proposed to council. I was not on the committee. No members of the police department were on the committee. The people that are out there every single day seeing the issues that go on with parking on Main Street and all about the island were not included on the committee. I would rather identify the problems first and make a correction

before we open those spaces up to parking. I think that Bolton and Mink through their proposal, through their references that they show, they've shown that they've they've done this for sim for other communities, they've done something similar. Um there's a lot of residents that that are concerned about the parking spaces. I met with Mr. S in the back there, I'm not going to try his name either, with Roger and his wife. I I spent some time at their house and pulled into their driveway and I can see the concern and I asked him I said we're going to wait and see what the council's decision is on this parking study and if this is not approved then we'll make a recommendation of what we're going to do with those spaces. Um I don't know everything. I'm not going to sit up here and tell you that I do. And I'm sure Bolton M will tell you the same thing that they don't know but they're professionals and this is what they do. Um, I think it's a wise use of taxpayer funds. If we're going to put a $45,000 price tag on the life or the safety of one child on a bicycle, then it's a no-brainer. Let's spend the $45,000. My recommendation to the council is that we enter into the contract with Bolton Bank. Council, any questions? I don't have any questions, Mr. Mayor, but I'm agreeing with the chief here. Um, you know, we we need another set of eyes. We need to look at every aspect of this thing, top, bottom, front, back, and it's not not a knock on anything or anybody that's been previously done. It's not about that, but we need to make sure this thing is right, particularly along Main Street with the spaces that we're getting ready to start utilizing. Um, you know, like like the chief just said, Yeah. somebody uh somebody could be walking or jogging or riding a bike and there could be a large vehicle that's blocking somebody's uh sight distance,

you know, we don't want to take that chance and uh it's a big step and it's $45,000, but I think for a piece of mind, we really need to think hard about doing something like [clears throat] excuse me, doing something.

Mr. Arnold, I um agree with you. um want to make sure that everyone knows that the expenses for this will be taken out of the parking plan. So the people that are putting in that are paying to park, they're the ones that are paying for this. A parking study should have been done. Um we found several errors. Um a parking study would have offered the error could have been identified. Um but we know that the current parking plan is erroneous. Um unfortunately the public was misled. Um we were told that the post office authorized moving mailboxes. We all know now it's been published that the post office did not opine at all. They didn't offer an opinion because they knew nothing about our parking plan. So now we have to move those mailboxes. That's an expense that the current excuse me that the past um council had for us. Um the staff person that moved the mailboxes was told by a council member. That council member didn't have the authority to move mailboxes. We have to fix that. Um we were also told many times that um North Carolina DOT gave their blessing and we have since found that North Carolina DOT did not give their blessing. They gave their blessing on a few areas particularly at the intersections. Um you know as leaders we have found this out and it's hard to say this um but it's the truth. Another truth is we have public utilities out there with manhole covers that we've been told now

that Brunswick County has opined that they do not want us to have a parking place over that access. Um, yes, the parking plan did have a committee. Appreciate and I've gone on record numerous times. appreciate those folks, but none was an expert in parking. None was an expert in traffic. Um, I want to make sure that we all $45,000 is nothing in comparison to if someone were to lose a life. Life is precious. Life is priceless. Quality of life is priceless. If someone gets injured and their quality of life is altered, $45,000 that comes from the parking plan is nothing. If someone is injured to the fact that they die, that's priceless. We can never get that back. So, um, Mr. Mr. Clayr and Mr. Arnold, I I agree with you both. This is something that needs to be done. I I regret that this is laid on us to do. Um, but we need to do the right thing and we need to do what is right for the safety of our citizens that come to Sunset Beach. Thank you.

I'm not going as far as what has been said. I mean, uh, I'm going to go a different area and I'm concerned regarding the timeline. They're going to start this in April or actually March. April is the second meeting. May is their third meeting, but we don't get a final report till July. That's halfway through the the parking season. I think they should they should get pushed to move that much closer to Memorial Day than July. I mean, we're already losing two months that way. I I may be able to speak a little bit on that. Uh Miss Bachelor and I just got off the phone um with each other talking about this. Um when we met um to go over what we wanted, we had identified that surveys had already been completed for Main Street um and that they would not have to do that for us. That that was already identified as something that we could bring to the table. So that would move up the time frame because we were concerned as you are and it's a very legitimate concern um to to push them and I pretty sure our interim town administrator could could work with them on um trying to get the timeline to move up.

Absolutely. That's something that can be accomplished. Thank you. I would like one other concern and then I'm looking at their contract. I noted they said that any kind of reports they put out or maps or anything else we have we can get a copy but we can't use it for anything else. Uh we're paying $45,000 for their report that report and all the things we should be able to use for whatever we want. And I think our lawyer should strike that from there saying that we're going to share it's ours as well. I mean, I didn't pay $45,000 to look at pictures. Agree. That may not been the intent. Well,

the intent of what they put in the contract. I agree. The study should be done. Safety comes first. Um, yes. Um, Mike, on the timeline theme you mentioned, um, great point, and we did address that with them when they were here on site a couple weeks ago. um and discuss I believe Ken it was they were going to get us something before Memorial Day. Was that correct? Like high incident area. I don't have those notes in front of me but um they were going to look at getting us stuff sooner. It's in this proposal.

I do recall that that draft memo date is likely where they're talking about. So they'll have a draft to us um and then with the final product expected later.

Right. And we did discuss the maps because I feel like that's something we've been lacking in everything from engineering forward. We need a upto-date maps to do so many projects and we've been missing out on those. Um and we need those from our engineering firm or any project that's done here at town so that we have up-to-date maps. Um uh regarding this study, I would like to um appreciate the parking committee and the work they have done. Um, you know, as many of you know, this has been going on for years discussing parking, and we're still here discussing parking today. Um, I would like to thank everybody that's taken a role in this over the years. Um, we do have lots of data to go off of that has been collected at various points along the way. I know I've personally read every bit of that and, um, we've shared some of that with this possible vendor that we may um, end up working with. Um, I've received hundreds of comments from people from the mainland and the island while campaigning, while in office. Parking is still the hottest discussion topic out there is what what I'm being talked at. Um, we've received 51 portal comments alone on parking. Um, we've had many people come and speak at meetings. We appreciate everyone's feedback on this. Um, we've heard lots of issues regarding 7th and 11th Street, the half side streets where um, roads have been made from um, oneway and um, spots have been added. Lots of concerns there from residents, from safety on forward on sighteline issues been brought up. Pedestrian and bike safety has been brought up. Where do people's mailboxes, trash cans, and recycling bins go? because like Roger S. said, there's nowhere on his property for some of that stuff. Um, since some of these have been

poured, especially on the south side, I know um Mr. Claymer as well as public works have been very busy um talking to residents about their concerns on that. Um I I think I support what's been said so far that the safety issues and li liability issues we we do need to look at this further with um experts in this um area. I know that's not what everybody wants, but from what I've heard, it's definitely more the majority do want that. So um that's my take on it. Mayor, one more thing.

Yes, sir. Go ahead. Uh I heard all the comments made regarding the post office and whether the the mailbox should be on one side or the other and I recall and I can't exact what meeting but there was discussion made with the post office the postmaster general postmaster of Sunset Beach I don't know if one that's here currently or they changed and the assistant that there was a discussion of of moving them to to post uh mailboxes from one side to the other in front of the houses. Now, like I said, I have to I'll have to I'd have to go back to a lot of notes to find it, but I remember that that was a discussion made at one of the town council meetings and it was brought out to everybody. Now, does the post office does the postmaster change in the wind based on what what administration goes to them? I don't know. But I don't think that we I really believe that somebody had spoken with them and I really don't believe that uh that was done on a whim. I think it was done with some advice and consent from the post office and they they may have changed their mind.

They don't have a record of that. Well, so they they post office they make records of things like that. So, even if another person would have assumed that role, um, nobody spoke with them. They don't have a record of it. Well, I'm going to go back to my notes only because I I'm not sure, but I thought I saw that a letter was sent to them and I just wanted to see if the letter was sent to them. Maybe maybe their mail delivery was incorrect and never got one, but I want to make sure. Okay. And if you and if there's a record of that, I'm sure you have that in your notes. I have to go through it. Um, I didn't expect this to bring up so I didn't I didn't No, no worries.

Okay. All right. Anybody else on camera? Not what's pleasure in regard to department study at fee $45,000 not to exceed $45,000. What's the pleasure of council? I make a motion that we accept the offer of $45,000 from Milton and not to exceed $45,000. All right. Do I have a second? I'll second it. All right. Any more discussion? All in favor?

Any opposed? That should be it in the meeting today. A second. There's nothing else. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? Like to make a motion to adjurnn the meeting. Do I have a second? Second. Any more discussion? All in favor? Bye.