Town Council - Regular Meeting

Like to welcome everybody out to the August 3rd regular town council meeting. We're looking to go in and close session pursuant to 143.318.11.A.3 to consult with the attorney employed or retained by the public body in order to preserve the attorney-client privilege between the attorney and the public body, which privilege is hereby acknowledged, and pursuant to 143.318.11.A.6 to consider qualifications, competence, performance, character, fitness condition of appointment and condition of initial employment of an individual public officer or employee or prospective public officer or employee or to hear or investigate a complaint, charge, or grievance by or against an individual public officer or employee. Do I have a motion to go into closed session?

I'll make a motion to go into closed session.

Do I have a second? I'll second it. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. As we come out of closed session, do I have a motion to end the closed session?

I make a motion we come out of closed session.

Do I have a second?

I'll second it.

Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

I'd like to welcome everybody out to the August 3rd, 2026 town council 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. If you will remain standing, Pastor Keith Whitley is here tonight and he's going to lead us in our prayer. Thanks, sir.

I invite you to join me in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for the opportunity to be present today. You supplied the air in our lungs and the ability to speak and I am thankful. The community and community in which we live is a special place and at times decisions are needed to protect the values and qualities of our community to remain unique. I ask a special protection over this town council as they lead with decisions that have an impact on the future of this town. Provide wisdom, clarity, and clear vision on what needs to be accomplished during this fiscal year. For the citizens and visitors of this town, as the vacation season winds down, provide protection as the beaches and roads become busy at times with excitement and at times with anxiety and frustration. And for the public safety team and the community, thank you for their service and provide the timing, the tools, and the training needed to take on whatever challenges they may face on the horizon. I lift up prayers for the family of those lost yesterday at Holden Beach. Grant them peace and comfort during this difficult time. Scripture reads in 2 Corinthians 12, 9, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. May we all seek grace and humbleness to serve others who are in need and help our fellow neighbors with actions that glorify you and not ourselves. Bless our county, state, and nation through these challenging times and continue to provide confidence in your presence. And I ask these things in your holy name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you so much, Pastor. Again, welcome you all out today to our record scheduled meeting for the month of August. There's no action coming out of closed session. Does any member of council have a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest in regards to any item on the agenda? So please state at this time.

I do not.

Ma'am?

No. No.

Nothing.

No.

All right. Thank you. General counsel discussion. Oh, wait a minute. Excuse me. I'm jumping ahead of myself. Approval of the draft agenda. Does any member of council have anything that needs to be added or deleted from the draft agenda? If so, please state at this time.

mr mayor i'd like to ask council to consider removing due to edits the following the regular council meetings from may the 4th the regular council meetings for july the 13th and then we need to add the closed session minutes for july 24. okay

I have one modification to that. The 5-4 was the budget workshop draft. I think we've already approved the council meetings from that day.

Okay. I'll accept that correction.

All right. Anything else?

Any member of council got anything else?

All right. If not, do I have a motion to approve tonight's budget? I mean, budget. Hopefully we already have that. I apologize. Approve the draft agenda for tonight.

Mr. Mayor, I'll make the motion with the modifications that Ms. Batchelor and I made that the draft agenda be approved as presented.

Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Next up will be general council discussions. Does any member of council have anything they'd like to comment or say? So the floor is yours if you'll tell me who you want to do.

Anybody here? You good?

You good? You good?

You good? You good?

I got something I'd like to say. Most of you know by now we put out the newsletter this week. We are in an active search for a town administrator. We have had a lot of applications. We have some excellent choices. And I challenge this council to make the best choice for the leader of this future. In the past three terms that I've been here, unfortunately, we went through three administrators. I think it's very important at this time that as pivotal as things are going in our area, especially, that we bring in the right person that is a true leader and that this council give them all the tools necessary and the support necessary to carry forward with a positive future for our town. We're looking for a true leader to drive this important ship into our future. We've been through a lot, but we deserve a lot better. And I think that we actually have a lot of very good qualified candidates. And I hope and pray that each one of you take into consideration, let's get the right person, put them in here, let them see what a great staff we have, because I think we do have some excellent staff here. and I think we need to get behind that person and let them be the leader. I hope we don't have to do a lot of micromanagement. I don't want to see that. That's not what it's about. If we put the right person in, they'll know what to do. Somebody that's qualified and knows what to do, that puts their foot down here, wants to make Sunset Beach the best that I feel like it is already, but we can do better, and I expect it to do better. That's all I can hope for is that each one of y'all Sit down, really realize, think about these people, research them, and let's take this town forward. That's what these people deserve here. So that's my challenge to you. Thank y'all. Thank you. Anyone else? All right. If not, then let's move on to the public hearing. Do I have a motion to open the public hearing?

I make a motion we open the public hearing.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor? Aye. Mr. Ron, if you'll come up and please discuss that, and then we'll open the floor up for anyone that would like to participate.

I made the motion. Sure. Pull that up a little bit. Is that better?

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council. I'm just here tonight to just give a brief summary of the public hearing items we have before you tonight. This is an amendment to three sections of our code. One is to incorporate the definition of downzoning that was changed in the 2024 by the General Assembly as part of a Helene Recovery Act. It was kind of attached at the end of that bill. I didn't do anything last year with it, could have, but I was waiting to see what the state did. I didn't want to make a change to our code and have to change it back if the state decided to change anything. The proposal you have for that one tonight is just to refer to that definition of downzoning. Excuse me. And the big change there was that now the town cannot initiate a down zoning without all the property owners that are impacted by that down zoning agreeing to that down zoning. That was one of the genesis, if you will, big items of that bill. The other one is regarding waiting periods for applications that have been denied, say a rezoning application by town council or a text amendment, a site plan denied by staff. There used to be a waiting period of 12 months in our code. General Assembly changed that and said there is no waiting period any longer. So we can't have that waiting period in our code any longer. So the request is to remove that waiting period from your ordinance. And then the third item is a reference to the street standards to make sure that our street standards are consistent with the Department of Transportation. We can no longer have street standards that are more stringent than, or when I say street standards, meaning the paving pavement design, paving design standards cannot be any more stringent than what the State Department of Transportation has set aside. And again, that was part of the legislation that was approved in 2025. So this is what this amendment before you does planning board has made a recommendation for approval and I'm available answer any questions that you may have Thanks, sir Thank you floor is open if anybody would like to make a comment on this public hearing now is the time Would anybody like to come up?

All right doesn't seem there is if not I'll entertain a motion to close this public hearing Make a motion to close this public hearing Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. All right. If the council is good with this, it seems like everybody has had a chance to speak. I will entertain a chance to make this motion to carry this. The consistency statement would have to be read. So it's up to you, council. What would you like to do? Either accept or not accept.

I'll make the motion to... approve the proposed amendments to the unified development ordinance and find that it's a neither consistent nor inconsistent with the town's comprehensive plan as there are no specific policies pertaining to these amendments but the proposed amendments are needed to bring the town's udo in compliance with north carolina general statute and b that it is in the public interest do i have a second second any discussion all in favor all right

Thank you. Public comments on agenda items. When we'll be open, please come up, state your name, address, courtesy three minutes. If it's a little bit more, I'll give you a chance to finish up. Thank you, sir.

Kevin Armstrong, 806 Riverside Drive. I want to talk about that 6th Street traffic thing. Appreciate all the effort people have gone to to try and keep 6th Street and those streets safe. I feel like putting barricades up there in one way may not be the answer. I feel like the Three-way stop on Riverside Drive is probably the best idea. I did, however, think that if you could theoretically stop all traffic on Canal, have it divert to 7th Street, maybe 7th could be an egress and 8th, you could pave it and have people go to Main Street and go to Main Street to access the bridge. And theoretically, from 6th to 7th, there's nobody, there's not much use of that street. You could actually take that street, make parking out of it or tear up the concrete and put grass in there and have people use it as a park for people to sit around and chat, you know. um anyway i think it uh that would at least convert divert people to main street and they would see one stop sign at the big intersection versus two coming down sixth street and going it might keep people from doing that and it and it uh certainly be a different i just wanted to put that out there as an idea thank you thank you sir mr armstrong floor's open anybody on agenda items yes sir

I live on 6th street. The only I'm open to all ideas that the comment I want to make about this gentleman's comment is that still allows 6th street to be straight through to main street. And right now there's a sign up saying no through traffic to trucks. But they're still going through so that doesn't address that problem. It also doesn't address my perception of what the speed is and what the volume of traffic is going up and down 6th Street. The proposals that you have for a one-way street will cut the volume. It still won't stop people from running the stop sign, which seems to be worse now that we have the three-way stop sign than when we just had the one. I've almost been hit a couple times walking my dog with people blowing through the stop signs. And the idea of blocking it off down at North Shore would solve a lot of those problems. But two things about that. One is all the residents of Sixth Street would have to go around and then that'd be extra load on the intersection of Sunset Boulevard. and on Main Street, they'd have to all go through there. And two is I fear that if you do block it off there, that people will cut through those open lots that are available in that corner. And that would lead the burden to the homeowner to have to put a barricades, which I don't think they should have to do. If you block it off at six and canal, we already have experience with that. It was blocked off for several weeks during the drainage issue. And we seem to As far as 6th Street goes, that was the answer, in my opinion. The police didn't have to do enforcement on it, which I've always been asking for, but the resources are limited. So we're going to keep having problems. I ask you to give the chief more resources to be able to deal with issues like this, not just on 6th Street, but other places in the whole town, because I know there's other places that need that. So my vote is for blocking 6th Street at Canal. Thanks, sir.

Tony Marino, 802 Riverside Drive. I know you guys have a big job ahead trying to figure out 6th Street, but you also have to be cognizant of maybe of a domino effect if you're making 6th Street one way, how you do it because you're going to divert traffic to unpaved streets. which creates a lot of dust, more dust into the community, will ultimately settles into our storm drain system, et cetera. And also impacts the health and wellbeing of those residents that live on those streets. If you're increasing the number of vehicles on unpaved streets, which first through fifth are unpaved. So if that is not brought into consideration, you're diverting problems. trying to eliminate problems on one street and shifting it to other streets and the possible environmental and health impacts to those residents. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Yes, sir.

John Corbett, 1313 Canal Drive. Since we're on 6th Street, I have a couple points to make, but since we're on 6th Street, the traffic survey showed that it may not just be a speed problem on 6th Street. My view is one of the big problems is a lot of the walkers and bikes that are also on that road. So it's a complex problem that you have. I think before you make any drastic changes, roadblocks, barricades, one-ways, you also consult with the people who live on the east end of the island that this would affect not just 6th Street, but you've got Fish Street, you've got North Shore East. And you've got Canal Drive that gets affected there. And I think all those people would appreciate at least having a voice in the process. Second item I have is on combination tax collection. It's a good idea. I just remind you that the previous council tried several times to do that. Neither of those contracts worked. It's really difficult to go out and get into everybody's knickers to find out who's renting their property, who's not renting their property, and how do you collect on it. And then just one last comment. After watching last Wednesday's meeting on the agenda, I would just kind of say, if you want support and respect from the town staff, you should treat the town staff with support and respect. It's the two-way street that goes through there. courtesy, proper etiquette, and a good, calm, quiet approach to resolving issues or even making criticisms or suggestions on what needs to be done. So anyway, thank you very much.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Good afternoon. Mickey Smith, 123 Forest Walk, Sunset Beach. I live in C-Trail. I think you all heard my speech about 70,000 times and probably tired of it. But I want to push again for Old Point Road and Clubhouse Road being paid. Again, since December of 2024, it was brought up in a town council meeting that once the Calabash Bridge was done, that we should look at paving Clubhouse Road. Mr. Posdell there, he brought up that maybe if some work wasn't done in the park, we could save around $300,000, and that could go to the paving of Clubhouse, which the mayor also agreed with. um it's just all i've heard is promises promises promises we'll look at it next year well i'm a diehard boston redsox fan and they didn't win a world series to 2004 and they had won one since 1919. they got pretty tired of looking at it too you know so um what i'm asking you for you've got 980 000 or up to a million dollars approved for roads uh we need this this done and uh please please pave clubhouse road and old point road thank you thank you sir anyone else on agenda items only

All right, I think everybody's got to say they want to speak. So we'll move on now to our presentation. Thank you all for speaking. Presentations, code enforcement updates. Ms. McVey, you have the floor, ma'am.

Good evening. Good evening. I gave everybody some pictures earlier that were taken today of Mr. Booth's property. and I am happy to report that it is looking better. He is working on getting the trucks and equipment removed except for the equipment and stuff that he's going to use to finish the building so um that is looking a little bit better i'm not sure when the boat will be disappearing um the boat keeps moving it seems yes ma'am But like I said, it's a little bit better than what it was. So I feel like that we're getting a little bit closer. He has renewed his permit. So hopefully we can start looking for an end in sight.

Could you describe what an end in sight would look like? Because our public, I put this on the deposition of directors and I've talked with you several times and thank you so much for everything you've done. I know that it's a moving target and yes, the boats moved and some other things have moved, but our public has looked at that for so long. Do you mind sharing with the public what your goal is and some of the, I guess, the obstacles that you've had. And I don't mean that you've had them, but the law has provided certain obstacles. And I think the public would appreciate hearing from you, our code enforcement officer, on what is really the truth.

Okay, so my ending would be that the windows be replaced. The windows are in there. They just need to frame in where the door is supposed to go. The building have the siding put on so that it does look presentable. The boat removed. I'm not sure if Mr. Booth is going to reopen something else here. It seems to change from time to time. Um, getting a lot of the stuff off of the property that does not belong there. Um, I mean, I have spoken to Mr booth in the past and explain to him. This is a restaurant. When people come here to eat, they don't want to see. Your tractors and, you know, a bunch of junk around because that's not very inviting. So that's what it would look like to me, an end, is seeing the business either reopened and everything maintained like it's supposed to be.

And we have no control over a business being there or not. It could sit, as long as it looks nice and in code, it could sit there vacant.

Yes.

Forever. As long as it's in code. I think our public needs to know that.

Yes.

But it does need to look.

as good as it could and that's what you're working on yes because that's the main complaint is this place is an eyesore so if we can clean it up and use it for what it's being is supposed to be used for not only would it benefit mr booth but it would also benefit sunset beach

I know Ms. McVey in the detailed information that you provided and appreciate all your work on this as well as Mr. White's. It's a lot y'all have done and followed through on this. And it looks like starting on June the 9th, they were given a civil citation for $3,200 July 1st. It went to $8,800. And more recently, we're up to, what, $18,000? $16,000. Or $16,000 in civil citations. So this is being definitely followed through on, and it is a process. So thank you for your diligence on this and trying to get this resolved for the community.

How much have we collected? How much of a fine have we collected? Because there's a lot of monetary amounts here. Have we collected anything?

Nothing.

Do we have any recourse when a property owner doesn't pay a fine?

Lien the property.

So our attorneys would need to do that?

Yes, ma'am. And it can either be a lien on the property or it could be a tax lien. It depends on what Sunset Beach does, however they do it. But my biggest concern with the property is that for the past month, I go that way to go home and come to work. So I'm seeing it four to six times a day. There's nobody been there working. So that doesn't show me that you're doing your due diligence if you're not there working. And I understand he has a job. He has other things that he has to do. But you hire somebody to get the job done.

Yes, sir. Maybe this question I have is for you. We keep getting extensions. And what does the state require regarding extension after extension?

The state allows a homeowner property owner rights to renew expired permits. Once the, just to kind of give you just a little rundown here, so basically once a permit is issued, from the time it's issued, you have six months to perform and request an inspection, and it's perform an inspection, or the permit will expire with the owner having the right to renew the permit or general contractor. Once an inspection has been conducted, then it actually goes another 12 months before it expires again. So as long as there's inspections that are part of our inspection schedule on there to do it, then it can roll on and roll on and roll on. The value of the building does not, the 50% rule for that would not, it would come under the unsafe building code is what we have now. So he's at a With the improvements, obviously, it's increasing the tax value of the property as that goes on. But like I say, he has the right to renew them. It's just you have to just pay the fees back over again, whether it's $500 or $5,000. And then, therefore, he can carry on with the condition of the building that building is in right now. And Mr. Booth, as this update was July the 7th, which the last update, let me make sure I got this right, or maybe it's on mine. Whatever the last.

Maybe the 13th on the report. And then Kathy this morning provided us with more of an update.

Yeah, yeah, and we put that together pretty quick there, she did. But anyway, the permit has been renewed, and it was renewed today because it just so happened there's guys up there working today. And so when Kathy came back, I'm like, who's that in the picture? And so the guy was working. So Mr. Booth came by this afternoon, has renewed his permit. I spoke with the contractor who's actually making those, closing up those fronts and the rear. And he's going to continue to work, is my understanding, now that the permit's been renewed.

And hopefully, is the permit to also put the siding on?

The permit includes the siding. It includes the scopes of work that was last year, which is the front and the back. And that's to get the windows placed in the front and get the door up in the front. And then also run hardy siding, is my understanding from the contractor as of today. Hardy siding will be put on the front of the building. And I'm assuming the rear as well. Okay.

The little building that's closest to the road, the intersection closer to Dave's, what is the use of that building? What does code allow that building to be used for?

Zoning code?

Yeah.

Well, I'm not too familiar with the building. I don't think I've ever even been in it. It's pretty small. It's pretty small. Like I say, that particular zone there, I mean, if you choose to put in an ice cream shop, I mean, I'm certain that he would probably be okay with something of that nature. There's actually four parcels of land, I think is what we determined, and that is on an individual parcel of land.

What about the, what was the putt-putt? Is that gonna, is that just making them try to clean it up? It looks like it's been cleaned up a little bit. Or is there anything else they need to do to that property?

I think we determined this, the putt-putt is actually, has satisfied the noose and ordinance.

Yes, the only thing they need to do with that property is just make sure that it is,

stays in compliance mode like mode so uh my understanding is everything has been uh clean from that piece of property it all kind of looks like it all goes together but you know actually we're trying to separate it out you know the best we can uh and it looks like that uh that property has it is in uh There's no violations other than what would be overgrown, you know, unless other things showed up on the property, moved around as of today.

In the Mavericks property, what is there? The boat's there now, it looks like, by this picture. Yes, ma'am.

Mavericks property that has the boat, and then there's around the – dumpster area there's some just some junk that needs to be hauled away yeah um but other than that i mean there's less violations on the property than than we started out with oh definitely so we're down to like i think five six violations for all four parcels now the property over by the fence They have a trailer that's full of garbage or junk or something, and then they have a skid steer setting there. So that's all that's left to be removed from that property.

In fact, some of the equipment in the boat's being moved back and forth. Are you having to refile it based on where it moves to or? I didn't know if that was the tactic they were playing by moving it around.

It was originally on 301's property, so that's what he got the violation for on that one, and now it's on Maverick's property, so I'm just moving it with whatever moves.

Is there anything that we can do to help support you? Is there anything a council can do to help? I mean, now's the time to tell us. I think we're all open to suggestions and we want to support. So what can we do?

Well, at this time, the last citation that he was given, which was the 16,000 on the last citation, that one has been received by the owner. So from 10 days from that, is is the time that he's allowed to file an appeal uh 15 days from service is when he has to pay the fine um anytime between then and now if he wants to or now and then if he wants to go ahead and get the property in compliance then we'll be done does he still have to pay the penalty that would be up to the town administrator Most times it's not the fine that we're after, it's the compliance. So if they comply, I'm willing to work with anybody. But when you're not working for a month, you're not working with me. So that would be up to the town administrator and council if he was still going to be held responsible for that fine.

we sure don't want to have a law or a rule or a code and not follow the code that weakens you all's ability um to have any um saying anything and i don't think we want to be in that position where you all are issuing penalties and then we're just saying oh let's just forgive that at the same time i understand we don't want to hurt somebody but we do want the area to be cleaned um mr claimer i think it's important for our council to see exactly how much the liens, not the liens, but the amount, because this is taking you a lot of time. I mean, you don't work for free. And that's costing taxpayers to try to abate this nuisance. I think our council should know what the rolling amount is. And then maybe for you to give us a suggestion on what we should do. Are you okay with that?

I am. Absolutely. Let me ask a clarifying question. So the initial fine was $3,000-ish. Is that correct?

Yes, $3,200.

And the subsequent fines are? Late fees, they're not additional penalties for other violations, are they?

It's additional penalties. It's $50 a day per violation. So it's mainly late fees. So it's just building.

So just without giving a whole lot of thought, my initial thought would be is if we come into compliance, we hold him to the initial fine, not the late fees.

So that would be $32,000.

Which takes us to $16,000, right?

Yes, and then the $8,800, that's for the late fees.

I think the second citation was $8,800. Yeah, $8,800.

And that, again, was for noncompliance, too, because the ordinance states it's $50 a day per day per violation. So if it's not paid, then I have to count up how many days.

Sure.

And then go back and add all that together. And that's why it ended up being $16,000. I understand.

That's without knowing our costs, but that was just my quick thinking here. Whatever the direction of the council is, we'll follow that through. Also, if you want to give direction to me to reach out to the attorney to talk about putting a lien on the property, I'm happy to do that as well.

Yeah, I mean, to me, this has been going on. They've been given violations from 24 that some at that point we didn't have follow through since you have been here. It has been extremely followed through on and documented and violations given and opportunities given. And I mean, the 1st, I mean, back from. 1st, part of May, it's been pretty much nonstop follow up and I feel like not until we started doing the civil citation. Did anyone care? It seems that. And even then wanted it removed. It seemed. Is that a true statement of what we've been going and even now it's like, um. it's concerning or to me is it just going to go the stuff reappear back like it seems to after you have to start all over again i don't know no but i think the community is very tired of the eyesore that's there and not to put down a property owner but i think there's been opportunities and opportunities to resolve this and for whatever reason it's not been resolved council are you all okay with mr claymore working with our legal team to find out what is the best resolve on this

and then you manage this. Are we okay with that?

Yeah. With all the complaints we get about Maverick and how everybody's complaining, it's been two or three years, if everybody who complains about it would stop going there and into their restaurant, maybe the financial hit from that will get them to do something. But people who complain are walking out of the restaurant. Come on. I mean, we're spinning our wheels and spending pound money to get it cleaned up and we're killing ourselves.

Mr. Claymore, it says here on July 13th, 2026, Ms. Booth emailed to request an appeal. She was advised that any appeal must be submitted right into the town administrator within 10 days. Did you ever get that?

I have not received anything from Mrs. Booth.

So he voided any right of appeal by not complying with that date.

On that citation, yes. They still have a chance with this last one to appeal.

But they didn't appeal the $8,800 one. No, ma'am. Does that mean that one can stand on its own? Yes. And then the new $16,000 one, they've got another opportunity to, yeah. to either comply or appeal and you can't just email me and tell me that you want to appeal that has to go to the town administrator you documented that very you know that's in the letters yeah yes yeah um i mean i'm for us following the rules of what should have been done and supporting y'all so that hopefully this will stay resolved and move forward and

Mr. Mayor, do you need a motion or is enough for us?

I think consensus will be enough to let the chief or the interim administrator go through with everything. And I think we have that there pretty much unanimous from what I've heard from the council. Thank you both. Please take that on. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. McVeigh.

Thank you.

All right, moving on next, we'll have our paving forecast.

May I address the council, please?

It'll be at the end when we have the comment period. It'll have to be then because of the way things set up. There is an opportunity at the end. Okay, there'll be an opportunity at the end for public comments, and you're more than welcome to come up then, sir. Thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. Matt, our next one up is a paving forecast. Matt Sarles, our public works director. This is yours, sir. All righty. Go ahead. Thank you.

We're getting there. Good. It's coming. All right, there we go.

All right, so I have an opportunity to talk about the paving forecast. So we put together a little presentation. Obviously the first slide is why now. As many of you know, residents lived here for a while, town council, you've seen the conditions of the roads, you've seen that they've been repaired sporadically throughout the years, maybe patched a little bit, maybe a little bit's been milled and filled, but not on a consistent basis. So we've kind of compiled information and everything based off of these reports, these surveys, to try to get us in a better spot moving forward with our roads. So one thing to look for as we move forward is coring. So we've already actually got a few of the roads that we proposed for budget this year, which was Old Point, part of Clubhouse Road from the North Rice Mill to Old Georgetown, and 27th Street cord. Surprisingly to me, all the asphalt, there's plenty of asphalt everywhere. I was worried that there was gonna be subsurface showing each road that we've cored has plenty of asphalt, which is great. So I mean, even to the point of on old point, there's five and a half inches of acid in certain spaces, certain spots. So that's something that we want to do moving forward, no matter which roads we propose throughout the budget season in the future. So that's something to help us kind of keep our roads up to date know what we have as far as data and keep us moving in the right direction. This is just a slide to tell you how many paved roads we have, miles of roads, roads altogether. 153 roads that the town has, 40.87 miles of roadway. And then the next one is what to look for as far as these reports go. We have oxidation, of course. We have rutting, patches, alligator cracking that we all know about. So these next slides kind of go through what each one is. If you want me to go through those, I can, or we can kind of skip through a little bit and get to the meat and potatoes of the presentation. It's up to you all, but I'll go through each slide kind of slowly. Alligator cracking is load associated failure and can be associated with pavement structure or subsurface below. transverse cracking, cracking that divides the pavement into block sections. Of course, we have rutting, which is just that. It's in the wheelbase of the roads and everything, just like you would be pulling out of a dirt road or a soft spot. It's going to make a rut, so that's what rutting is with asphalt. Different than the depressions. I know that we had a citizen last week talk about it. The depressions are birdbaths, so to speak, potholes. The difference of that and rutting. The raveling, which is wearing away of the pavement over time. And then oxidation is the top surface. It's just getting loose. It's starting to become brittle and break apart. And then bleeding, we don't have a lot of bleeding through here. You see a lot of that on interstates and things of that nature. Thankfully, we don't have that big of an issue around here. And then, of course, everyone's seen patching. And the ride quality is just based off of how you're going on a road. I mean, is it pretty bumpy? Are there big dips in the road? Am I kind of being pulled to one side or the other, depending on the roading? So, with that said, we get into the roads that we proposed for this year. I wanna go ahead and try to clarify something. When I was talking during budget, I never proposed the entirety of Clubhouse Road to be paved. When I brought it up, actually, when we first brought everything up, I had recommended not to do Clubhouse Road. And then we had feedback from citizens and everything. And rightfully so, there should be sections of it absolutely looked at and taken care of. So we put that on the list. We put that we thought was the worst section of Clubhouse Road from the north entrance of Rice Mill to Old Georgetown. Now with that, for you all as well, there's an email that I had sent out and I had talked about the pricing and cutting it in half. What I meant by in half was what I proposed from the north entrance of Rice Mill to Old Georgetown would be cut in half so it'd be from north entrance of Rice Mill to the Crooked Gully intersection Cricker Gully intersection, Old Georgetown. So I apologize if that was misinterpreted. That's on me. But it was not the entirety of Clubhouse Road. So the budget that we got approved was for the section of Clubhouse Road, 27th Street, and Old Point Lane. Now, with this, any extra... money we may have, we looked at 40th Street, Bay, and Inlet since they're all in one little section together, which would be crack sealing and then seal coating over top of that due to the The nature of the road, how it valleys into the center, water's gonna get into those cracks and everything, and it's eventually gonna disturb the subsurface. As of right now, everything looks good. We've had a contractor come out a couple weeks ago and looked at the sections of the subsurface and the roadway, and it looks just fine. But those are on the list. So we had a little, based off of the information that we got from McGill with the road survey, we had comprised these zero to three years. So it's essentially like a 15-year road maintenance schedule. There are roads from Lakeshore Drive to Fairway Drive East. Those roads are all in a timeframe, obviously based off of oxidation, depressions, patches, things of that nature. to six years see some bird bass and things like that on this road on circle drive right there so so on and so forth these roads they're not as bad up on the list um we just rode them again and i know i understand this looks a little rough with the pictures and cracks and everything but that's also a very low traveled road low volume road um And then, like I said, so on and so forth, 10 to 12 years, and then 13 to 15 years. And that's about what our best road looks like now. Not much going on there, but maybe in 15 years or so, it could start to see some degradation. And then I also have on here the unpaid roads. We had... gotten a report and the unpaved roads weren't ranked with the actual asphalt roads now i want to address this briefly is that the unpaved roads we grade with a box blade bi-weekly unless there's torrential downpours and there's and there's running or not running but depressions and washouts things of that nature so we try to get out there as much as we can but usually it's bi-weekly now if we were to put all these on a list compared to the paid roads, they're going to top the list because they're unpaved. Again, they're all town roads, and we do have a petition process for that. I know not many people like that, but there is a petition process right now through the town to maintain these roads. And I know it's a big talking point amongst you all, but that's what we have in place right now. Now, we have been looking into dust suppression, as a gentleman mentioned earlier, going on to any of the first through fifth streets, especially rerouting traffic and everything and the drought we've had. So we're looking into some kind of... The mechanism, so to speak, to kind of keep the dust down, especially off of these drought days. Right now, normally, if we weren't on a water restriction, we water the roads and then grade them. It kind of keeps the dust down for a little bit, but this is a potential to kind of slow the dust down and really keep it at a minimum. And then, of course, to finish the slideshow up is, you know, these are subject to change. There could be issues that arise on these roads, more traffic, more construction, whatever the case may be, that can move a road higher up on the list. Or if we're doing a certain road and there's two or three little roads beside it that we can attack at the same time, they may be moved up the list economically for economic reasons. Now, I'll go ahead and say this too. So there on your agendas, there is the presentation, and then there is a priority listing, and then there's a pavement. I think it says survey or assessment. I can't remember what exactly it says. Survey? No, no, no. Like actually on the agenda itself. Anywho. So the priority listing is something that I did because it was based off of, I actually did it based off of complaints that we got. I am not the expert, but I did ride the roads and I looked at different roads that were on the list compared to the engineer. That was probably not the best idea for me because I'm getting calls now every single day and emails every single day saying, hey, my road's this, my road's that. It's not really, but I kind of allowed that to happen. So I want to apologize. So what we would like to do is revert back to the engineer They actually have the expertise in this topic. I do not. So one thing that we could do, and this kind of goes into the RFP so I can wait until we talk about that later or we can talk about it now. It's up to you all. But it's about the listing of the roads and how we can maybe even get a bigger section of Clubhouse Road done or how we want to do that. It's up to you all. In different ways.

I'm finally here. Go ahead. Go ahead. While you're here, let's go ahead. We can't even think about it before the next.

All right. So essentially what we were thinking was taking the top 10 roads based off of the engineering survey. And that's from Old Point Clubhouse, all of Clubhouse, North Shore Drive West, 27th, 36th, Shoreline Drive East, Crooked Gully Circle, North Shore Drive East, Seat Trail Drive East, and 40th Street. That's the top 10 in that order. based off of the engineering survey. So one thing we can do as we come into the RFP, when you guys are going to look at it a little bit, is we can actually try to get some more numbers based off those roads to kind of bring to you all and see, okay, can we work this side in? Can we work this side in? And it's almost like pick and choose, I'm not saying that we're gonna go away from Old Point by any means, or 27th Street, or even Clubhouse, whatever the case is, we're not gonna necessarily go away from those streets that we've already budgeted, but we could add to certain streets, especially if we have some good hard numbers, what we could do. So that's kind of what I was thinking was we can get handful of roads out there for you guys to think about and see what we can do with the money.

I have one question. We don't have $10 million for road paving. We know that. For example, Clubhouse Road from Georgetown to Shoreline Drive West, the estimate to do that is $3.8 million. That's like Three times what we really have.

It's like four years of budget. Yeah, absolutely it is. Now, these numbers, when they brought them to us, were on the high end, of course, just for essentially budget purposes. Things can come down. Actually, some of the roads that are on here, we've already gotten less prices for. For example, Old Point's gone down almost $300,000 compared to what this is. So, we do have room with hard numbers from contractors as opposed to the engineering numbers. So, there could be some wiggle room in there where we can get some more roads completed. Good.

Are you proposing like a menu of roads? Essentially. You're going to, in the RFP, list different roads based on the priority from the engineer study? List those, and then when the RFP is satisfied with quotes, then we as a council look at that to see what is our biggest bang for the buck. Right. That's what you're suggesting?

Okay. Yeah.

So when you say some of these roads... Have you identified those? And those were the first 10 that you offered to us. I mean, you were rattling them off so fast. I know. I'm sorry. But that's the 10 that you were talking about, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay.

Yeah, absolutely.

I like the idea of us having some actual dollars of what these roads is. To be honest, as you know, from the engineer's report to things you and Vicki have given us on some roads, they're all over the place. They are. And I know with the fuel and everything, I mean, it, it, But to me, to have a true contract back from a vendor saying we can do it for X amount of money would give us some data to truly look at and decide what makes sense.

So essentially what I can do is when we do the RFP and if we tweak the dates or whatever the case may be, we put these roads on there, 1 through 10, we'll get the bids back and we can go from there. Those will be the hardest numbers that we have. We can lock them in.

And I do think what you referenced on the email after our May 4th meeting, I think that email that was sent out, as I shared with you personally too, I think those numbers that were in that, that part of it we thought were for all of the clubs, because where I'm like, oh my gosh, we got, you know, great numbers.

Right.

Because a lot of the numbers are coming back way better that you and Vicki had gotten for us. But that one was a lot, you know, but... Neither here or there, but that is how we kind of came up with budgeting the close to a million dollars to do roads. So I think we're in a little bit of a quandary here to figure out. So I think that option would be good to give us true data to see what we're looking at.

Gotcha. Yes, ma'am.

And a lot of the roads are continuous to each other. Correct. So that's good. Like you mentioned, old point that can come all around the maples and maybe connect. Yeah, we can break them into sections. And we can get a larger amount of pavement done.

Yes, ma'am.

Because the contractor's going to be in one location. And it costs them money to go take it somewhere else to make the recipe of the asphalt, get it hot, and get it all rolled out. So, excuse me, I think that's... But we do want to make sure that promises that previous councils have shared, because it was a promise to the community, that that is honored the best that we can. And the data here, this report, shows that those streets, they're on here. They're listed. So thank you very much.

Yes, ma'am. I'll take the heat for that. I'm sorry.

Matt, you said when you gave those list of streets, one of them was C-Trail Drive East.

And didn't we say back in the early... C-Trail Drive West was the one that we really talked about. C-Trail Drive East, it's got some depressions in it. There's one really bad section that some stormwater work needs to be done to. Mm-hmm. um which i'd rather do the stormwater work first yeah um but again i mean that could be that could be switched with one of the other streets it's a little bit higher up on the list but i mean it could be 33rd street or lakeshore drive something like that okay and then um in your picture you showed alligator cracking yes and you don't have to go back to it but um you showed alligator cracking but you also in your presentation you mentioned cracked ceiling yes now

Would you explain the difference between crack sealing and alligator cracking? Because I believe the presentation we saw, we recommend don't seal alligator cracking.

Correct, yes. That would look like a, it would look rough. They definitely don't recommend that at all. So crack sealing is essentially, For example, 40th Street is a prime example of this. There's a crack pretty much all the way down the center of that. You have one line, maybe a couple here and there, but not spaghetti, like you'd say. You're sealing the crack, whereas if you're doing that, you're really taking a chance of allowing, maybe not getting a crack, for example, or allowing the water to infiltrate underneath the asphalt as well. It's better to just either cut that section out and patch it or take it out completely, mill it, and then fill back over.

And in your survey of, for instance, Clubhouse Road, and particularly in the area of the two rice mills, did they tell you or identify how deep you need to mill or remove in areas that it's really broken up Did the report tell you that by any chance?

They had just reported how deep the asphalt was to the subsurface. So in sections over there, that was three and a half inches. So what they had recommended was milling it down two inches and then obviously repaving in two inches.

All right. And what's going to be the plan when they mill two inches and then it's worse? Underneath is still bad. There's nothing solid there yet. So what would be the plan then?

I guess the plan would be, uh, to be honest, to patch it out, to go, yeah, to go before it, to actually do the work and everything. I would like to get a, um, a better sense of what to expect maybe underneath. Um, you know, is, is the base good at all? I mean, they're, yeah, they're coring the asphalt, but what exactly is underneath? How, um, how brittle is it? How soft is it? Right. You know, is there, obviously there's tons of trees around here that have been ripped out over the years. There's depressions everywhere. So we can't tell if there's a tree that's been rotted or not, but, um, You know, those kind of things need to come into play. A little bit more talking with the contractor that's experienced in that would work. But, yeah, I would say that over time, if there's an area that starts to show failure, it would have to be patched.

Okay. So we'll mill, and it's bad underneath of it. We'll have to patch that out and bring it up to some standard so that they can pay for it. Absolutely. Okay. Yes, sir. Cool. And let me just... I'm sorry. So with paving roads, there's two things that definitely go along with paving roads. One, it's going to be dust until they get to new asphalt down. They'll grind the road up, traffic will drive on it, and it's going to create dust. The other thing is, once the road's paved, the speeds will increase on it. And the police department knows that does happen, and they're aware of it, and I'm sure Mr. Claymore and his staff If they're in the area, they will be on the lookout for it once it's all said and done. But one follows the other for sure. Correct. Yes, sir.

Any other questions for right now? I'll be back up in a little bit.

Thank you, Vicki, for all your work on that. It's been a lot. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you, sir. All right, moving on to our consent agenda, the regular meeting minutes. Remember, we had took a couple of these out, but the July the 24th and the July the 10th ones are on that.

Consent agenda.

yeah oh the 20 26 7 24 closed meeting minutes mr mayor yes there's one thing been left off mr claymore go ahead the town administrative report was left off the agenda is this appropriate yes i don't have an issue would you go ahead with it i see now we need to amend the agenda in order to do that we have to have two-thirds vote i don't think it'll be a problem for

But we do need to have a motion to amend the agenda.

I see it's not in here.

I'll make the motion that we amend the agenda that was approved to include the administrator's report.

Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor?

All right.

Go ahead, sir. You want to do that now or continue with the consent? Go ahead and do it now, then we'll come back to consent. Go ahead. Let me write these minutes down here real quick. Okay, I attended a GSAT meeting last week in Carolina Shores with other towns, and one of the things that we talked about in this meeting was the multimodal path that Sunset Beach received a grant for. And just to bring the public up to speed on that, this path is set to extend from our town park down Shoreline Drive around to Beach Drive, where it will connect into Carolina Shores project. And that project will then connect into a Calabash project. So we should have connectivity between Sunset Beach and Calabash. It's likely that that project is going to piggyback off of a DOT resurfacing project, which may not be till around 2029. Our share for that is $770,000, give or take. So this is something that the council will need to consider. We'll need to bring that in a couple of future budgets so that money can start being set aside for that project, which I think is a great project. And our share is the biggest because we have the longest stretch to go, but definitely worthy. Some of the things that I have are updates from... The last meeting and updates from the Wednesday public comment session. One of the things that was asked in the last meeting was the number of parking citations that the police department writes when AutoConnect is not writing tickets, as there was a perception by some members of the community that perhaps we're not writing tickets. Just a quick update to give you. In May, the police department wrote a total of 18 citations. In June, it was 17. July was 62. And year to date, it's been 187. There was a question about how does the Council Connect, who shares the Council Connect messages that come through with staff to ensure that staff is responding timely? which led into another conversation is the Council Connect being used as it should be. And quite frankly, it wasn't. Council Connect was a way for the community to communicate with all of you. And it was being used to tell us everything from code enforcement violations to you name it, conditions of the road. And while Council has interest in those things, it was not being used for what it was set up to be used for. My suggestion is that we go back to the email method that we had once before. We're on the town website where the pictures of your town council is and their individual emails are. There will be an email that says towncouncil at sunsetbeachnc.gov. You click that link and it will send an email to every member of council at one time. This allows for a more direct communication with council. If there's an individual council member that you want to email, you can also do that there. I've given to you a pretty infographic that was put together by Sydney Willis. I can't take credit for this, which is a way that we would communicate this with the town. One of the ways to let people know that we're making it easier for you to connect with our town council. And if this is something that the council approves or has a consensus to use, then we will push this information out. The council connect will be no longer, and the town email at towncouncil at sunsetbeachnc.gov would be the way forward. So I'm open to take your thoughts on that before I move on.

Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a good idea to me. Go back to the way it was, right?

Well, it wasn't like that ever since we've been in.

Oh, it wasn't.

No, I think we discussed setting this up. So that'd be a way if a resident sends something, it'll go directly. Everybody's email that away because we pretty much to to view it. We have to look from a laptop or a workstation because we can't open it to view it on the phone. So this the way we'll receive the emails on our phone. I mean, because, you know. We can see it on the laptop, too, of course, but but. That away a little easier response, because it seemed not everybody was able to access the spreadsheets or do that. So, and. Um, the 1 thing I would recommend since we had a meeting to kind of discuss this, um, chief would be almost feel like our town administrator should also probably receive it in this batch that it goes to just so they're aware of. The communications, because we like to typically keep the administrator involved in that away if there's anything on there. Because I think when we were discussing this, we were just talking of the governing body, but I think it would be good for our administrator to also be on there.

So this will change the portal, which is really still a portal because they just go click on this. It sends a broadcast email to all of us. We could still hear from our public. We can choose to respond or not to respond. Because I know some of us do respond to everybody as much as we can. My only concern is when they send us something Billy responds, Mike responds, then we're chasing each other. How do we know like what we should respond to versus what a staff member should respond to? Because, you know, the way we do it now by way of copy and Mr. Klamer, we'd like for you to address this concern. How are we going to do that now? We're still chasing each other.

Two parts to your question. So yes, the delivery method is what's going to change. It's still the same. They still have the ability, similar to what they did with Council Connect, when they send a message that all the council sees it. That's what we're trying to accomplish. Part two of that, so that you're not sending four different responses to one question, I still feel like if it's appropriate for staff to respond, then you respond to the member that, and copy me, or the town administrator, whoever that may be, that they will direct the appropriate staff member to respond.

Okay, so you're going to get it, and then you're going to direct it to a staff member.

That's correct.

And take us out of the mix, and then we'll kind of be along to see what the resolve is.

That's correct. And if the town administrator is copied on this town council at sunsetbeachnc.gov, then he or she could immediately respond. To all, and then you'll see that the town administrator has done that and you don't, there's no need for you to respond at that point.

I think that, and that's why I think it should be added on there because many things you are responding and we're, we're seeing, you know, we're hearing it and reading it, but that a way we can also. Email or respond or contact them.

I'm sure our IT can set that up for us.

Yeah, yeah. It'll be as simple, I think, as, yeah.

Thank you.

I think it sounds good.

Thank you so much for doing this.

I feel like that's it. Okay. Thank you.

Go ahead, sir.

Anything else? I have a few more things. Yeah, go ahead, sir. There was a question about meeting code. Where are we at with meeting code? An update was sent to meeting code for the last two years worth of updates. They're currently in the process of reviewing that and updating it once it is complete. That will go live. We'll make sure that everybody knows when that is ready, when that is ready. Surfcast revenue, I just want to give a little update on that. Collections in July, total collections were $107,106. The net to Sunset Beach was $74,974. Year-to-date collections for Surfcast have been $511,746 gross. Payment to Sunset Beach, $358,822. At the Wednesday Council meeting or i'm sorry the Wednesday public comment meeting there were several questions that were proposed to the Council from Tracy Jones during the July 29th 2026 public comment meeting and I have responses to all of those if you'll bear with me to go through these. The question of allocator cracks were raised and how were there more of these cracks on 29th versus North Shore, yet North Shore ranks higher on our list. How do you apply the number for that rating? The answer to that is the report originally complied by an engineering firm with backgrounds in asphalt assessment and management. They rank the roads not only based off appearance, but also the volume of traffic it receives each day. The next question by Ms. Jones, the top four streets on the list change, talking about the street paving, which Director Sorrell's kind of touched on this. How did 40th move from 10th place to fourth place? How did the rankings change? Old Point and Clubhouse Road from Rice Mill Circle to Old Georgetown Road have been on the top of the list since we received our road survey from McGill. 27th Street move up to third because of the protruding bumps in the road and unevenness. 40th Street was moved up due to cracks in the valley, which is the center of the road, which allow water to infiltrate and dislodge subsurface. The next question by Ms. Jones was, there is a mention of depressions in the report, and Ms. Jones claims there are ruts and states this should be changed. Rudding is just that, a depression. It is where the asphalt starts to depress in the wheel path of the road. Depressions are bird baths, so to speak, potholes. That was discussed earlier with Mr. Sorrells. Ms. Jones asked about the RFP for resurfacing and talked about some typographical errors, but asked about the award to the lowest bidder and asked if this should be firm fixed or cost plus. The RFP states that the contract will be awarded to the lowest responsible responsive bidder, not just the lowest bidder. Firm fixed is a fixed price and the contractor takes the risk if prices increase or if the job takes longer than expected. Cost plus is that the owner or the town takes responsibility if prices change. Basically contracts that would be three to five years from where prices can fluctuate. This will be a firm fixed project. Ms. Jones asked about the RFP where it shows that only a portion of Clubhouse Road is being resurfaced. Her question was, why not all of Clubhouse Road? Some members of council stated that they believed it was all of Clubhouse Road as well. It is only a section of Clubhouse Road from Rice Mill near the Jonesburg Clubhouse out to Old Georgetown. Director Sorrells talked about the email and the wording of the email, and that was addressed tonight. Ms. Jones talks about the word me in the RFP when talking about an email for Director Sorrell's exchange to show Director Sorrell's. As Jones asked on page six, the dates for the start and end were questioned. Two months should be plenty of time to complete the work. The page also showed $300 per day fee if not completed, while other pages show 600. This was a typographical error and was fixed. Ms. Jones asked about page 9, where it shows it would be completed by June 10th date, which is different from the June 11th date on page 6. This was corrected for a June 11, 2027 completion date. Ms. Jones pointed out on page 12 that paving shows from Rice Mill to Old Georgetown, but does not say it's on Clubhouse Road. This was corrected in the RFP. Ms. Jones asked about the Fire Department monthly report that shows an inspection at Sunset Village with a date of 12-23-24. Fire Chief Childress advised that the inspection was completed, and this inspection was completed in June of 2026, and for some reason I work filled in the wrong date. This has been corrected. Ms. Jones had a question about the accommodation tax RFP, which asked about a three-year contract in Section 12, along with termination and responsible performance. In Section 13, under termination, it states termination for convenience with 90 days written notice, termination for cause for non-performance, breach, misrepresentation, data security failures, or failure to achieve reasonable contractual performance objectives. mandatory transition assistant required. The proposer shall provide detailed procedures, staffing commitments, measurable outcomes, timelines, and documentation supporting its ability to successfully perform these services for the town of Sunset Beach. The town reserves the right to verify all submitted information and negotiate final contract terms in its best interest. finally miss jones asked about agenda item fifteen six amending the parking prohibition on certain streets section three designates enforcement of this chapter to the police department miss jones stated that this was wrong and it should say auto connect as they enforce parking on the island General statute requires that only a law enforcement officer or person expressly authorized by statute may issue a citation requiring an individual to answer a misdemeanor charge or infraction. The difference here is that these are civil penalties and the authority to issue civil citations for ordinance violations may be delegated to personnel who are not law enforcement officers. That's all I have.

Thank you. I didn't remember to ask about any questions.

No, but I want to commend you for your thorough analysis of that, listening to and getting all the answers so that our public knows, because she did ask some very good questions and you did a very good job of going through all that. Thank you.

And I would like to add one other piece on that, that the referencing the street resurfacing that Matt and Vicki had been working on this and there's been several iterations of this that we've received. So I think what was out there was not the final, because the thing to keep in mind is all the information that's out there in our agenda, some of those are still work in progress as well as they are in draft form and they can still be modified up until, we often receive things, we receive some right before walking in here. So, and some things can change when, they're speaking or telling us stuff. So that is something to keep in mind, but it's to give us all a baseline of what we're talking about and looking at. Very good.

Okay. I'm going to go ahead, sir.

We're gonna move on to the consent agenda. Again, we had removed a couple because they were inadequate and didn't have the correct information, so we'll address them later. But the regular meeting minutes from the 7-24 and the regular meeting minutes from the 7-10. The special call closed session minutes for 7-24. Closed meeting minutes from 7-13 and closed meeting minutes from 7-10. The 5-4 budget workshop draft minutes. That one was already taken out, too. It should have been. Then we've got the closed session meeting minutes, which I already have those listed again. The monthly reports, the building inspection, code enforcement, finance, fire, police, and public works. If any member of council has a question of any of these, we can do that now. Before we do that, if I could, Fire Chief, if you could come up. Our Fire Chief has been at the county meeting tonight. There was a thing coming up about fire fees or fire code things. If there's any update while we're into this, I think this would be an appropriate time to bring it up for us and let the council and the public know.

I don't mind. I'm going to use my computer. I'd rather keep a couple of notes. I can give you a couple of updates tonight.

That'd be good.

But the commissioners approved the fire fee increases tonight, a vote to three to one. So that will be in effect very soon. They didn't give any details about when that's going to hit or anything like that. But they did approve the increases from the state legislator who approved that in the education budget that was approved last month.

And when is that going to go into effect?

I don't know. They didn't talk anything like that. I'm hoping to get an update this week, later on this week.

You were at the meeting, so you said four people voted?

Correct, three to one.

Who was the dissenting vote that did not want the fire fee?

Commissioner Sykes.

Then there was one person that was absent. Was there an accuser?

No, I'm not including... the chair i'm not including mr forte i'm i'm assuming he voted for it yes okay so it was a four to one vote with commissioner sykes voting against the increase correct for the firefight correct okay mr mayor i've got something else for you um if you don't mind um commissioner thompson did um Add this to the agenda about a discussion about considering adopting and ban on burning within Brunswick County. So they're going to there was quite a bit of back and forth on that, but they're going to hit that in their September meeting and. get with their attorney to see if that's a legal and move forward with something like that if possible. Because the state refused to direct.

Because the forestry service refused to pull the permits for the ban.

Correct. They requested North Carolina Forestry to do a ban In Brunswick County, they did not approve that. So they're going to look to do that more of a permanent. Permanent item, if again, a lot of legalities with that, but. Maybe they'll see if they can do this.

It'd be nice if we get without the burning.

Correct. While the chief is here. Does anybody have any comments on anything? It's in the.

um the fire if you have anything that would be the time i had just um a couple comments um thanks for all the information um i didn't know if it would be possible for with our and i know some of these are automatically generated but where it would show like i love now how you're showing like what's in town limits outside and mutual aid because especially with these fire fees, all of this is relevant, I feel like. But also on the summary of all the, where y'all have the incident numbers and incident date, time, I didn't know if it would be a way with that report for y'all to summarize, like, for this 1, just going through it. It was like 2 fire calls in the town limits for outside the town limits. 3 that were mutual aid type of things to show a total of 9. Where it's fire, and then maybe summarize the, because as we know, we have a lot of, and then the alarm calls, I feel like almost those 3 seem to be big buckets of.

We're working on some graphs for you. Perfect.

Perfect. I knew it was a work, but just going through it, it's a lot.

Work in progress.

It's a lot of pages in here. It is. If even we could narrow it down.

Yeah.

Yeah. And the fire inspection pages, I mean, that's a lot of pages. It almost could just be put on one sheet.

Yeah.

Because I don't think we need to, you know, you know what I'm saying. We're trying to make it.

We tried to make it larger. Our focus this month was making it larger for their mobile phone users. So hopefully I'll have some graphs to you within the next few months. Yeah, just some observations.

All the data is just, you know what I mean.

You got it.

Thank you. You're moving to a different system, aren't you? Or have you already moved?

This is a new system. It's just, it's a work in progress.

That's why I didn't know what you could even pull from it. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Anything else for any of the other departments?

Um, the, um, hold on a minute. I didn't know Chief Claymore. I didn't know the kind of the same thing with police. I didn't know within y'all stuff. If you're able to pull it where it summarizes by some of the hot hitters or not. Like, y'all have lots of medical alarms, lift assist as well type of things. just kind of to make the data more useful where it's summarizing it versus every little, because y'all have like 1,728 total. Just didn't know if there was a way to summarize more things. And then in finance, I didn't know if you- If I may real quick.

Oh, sure. Help me understand what you want to summarize because you want more detail than what's in here with just the numbers?

Hold a minute. Let me get to your sheet. Okay. like the like the first page is very 76 i'll go page numbers that might be easier do you have the same page numbers on the bottom okay like page 77 starts the monthly case report where it lists everything where like some are like lost and found properties like almost if it could even be i didn't know if there's a way with your reporting if you can summarize it by code Where it says, for example, it may say 11 lost and found properties versus having to list out 11 different times. Does that make sense?

Right. So instead of seeing two pages worth of detail, try to summarize it down so that...

It might be half a page or so. I mean, I didn't know if there's a way in your reporting system.

We'd have to try to build a custom report to do that. Okay.

Well, then in the monthly CFS report, the three pages of that, that list... Literally every, you know, it's a lot of codes, like, like, about a page of just medical codes, lots of medical, lots of alarms left to see us seeing, you know. Didn't know, like, I didn't know the capability of the systems what you can pull or not.

Are we looking for a roll-up or are we looking for a chronological day-to-day? Because right now it's a day-to-day.

Are you looking for a roll-up to summarize it? Because it is a lot of pages that we're printing out for all these packets that I don't know that we – I don't know if the rest of you want that level of detail, but if we need it or not, I don't know.

I don't need that level of detail. I think it's good to show a roll-up as your suggestion that shows that we had, I don't know, 15 medical illness alert mental status. We had, I don't want to jinx anybody here. Let me pick something good. There's nothing good here to pick. I can't pick heart problems. Accidental alarm. Accidental alarm. How many accidental alarms did we have? How many allergies did we have? As opposed to all this paper for us to read through, because all we're doing is looking at different codes. And I think that's what she's suggesting is to see. If there's a way. If there's a way.

I'll try. If it doesn't, that's okay too.

I like that suggestion. Any other departments?

The other one I wanted to see if the chief could touch on was the budget finance piece. There's been some questions about the budget amendments that were showing up on the June physical year 25-26 on there. Just to answer the public's questions on that.

Do you want to talk specifically about budget amendments that were done?

What four of them it looks like, yeah. Okay. If you don't mind, just hit me up.

Yeah, so I have some detail on that. There was a budget amendment on 8-4-2025 for $417,000, which was done to appropriate general fund balance for the Ketchum 7 drainage project. There's one also on 8-4 for $535,000. And this was fund balance assigned for the parking program and the Main Street Right-of-Way Parking Construction Project. On 9-8-25, $12,100 was moved from fund balance for a price adjustment on the quote for the load impact. On 3-2 of 26, $63,200 was just to recognize additional revenues from grants, donations, sale of surplus, miscellaneous, and disaster recovery revenues that were then allocated to the governing body, police department, and the fire department.

Does that answer your questions? Yes. You're welcome.

There's more public resident questions than mine, but I just wanted to clarify that while it's being mentioned.

All right, if there's nothing else in the consent agenda, do I have a motion to approve this consent agenda?

I make a motion we approve the consent agenda.

Do I have a second? Second. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any department worker that doesn't have anything left is more than welcome to go home. Moving on now will be our discussion with possible action. The 6th Street Traffic and Pedestrians Safety Set.

So before you in your packets, you have a cover sheet that talks about why we're here. We added a three-way stop at Canal and 6th because of the amount of complaints that we had with traffic, vehicle traffic, pedestrian traffic, bicycles, dog walkers, you name it. So we added a three-way stop and the complaints continue. The complaints are increasing that now people are running through the stop sign, which with anything new, that's going to happen. And until people get used to that, if somebody's been coming to Sunset Beach for 15 years and taking North Shore to Canal and they never stopped at Canal, guess what happens in their 16th year? They're going to go North Shore to Canal and they're going to blow the stop sign and then look behind them and say, did I just? Yes, you did. So it's going to take some time. We realize that. Our enforcement efforts continue, and we're doing our best. So what else can we do? Can we do more? Certainly. We heard from some residents tonight that some of the suggestions that are here before you, such as making 6th Street a one-way street, my suggestion was Main Street to North Shore. In the packet, council could choose to make it North Shore to Main. It would eliminate two-way traffic, and your Canal Street traffic would be forced to North Shore. Guess what? That same 15-year visitor that's been driving 6th Street is gonna go the wrong way. So there are potential concerns. I put in several barricade options. We could barricade at North Shore Drive. We could barricade at 6th Street. People are going to drive to the barricade. Mr. Van Horn brought up something I never thought of tonight. Somebody could cut through the grass, the vacant lot there at the corner, to make it to North Shore. They could. Or they could turn around and they could race in the other direction because, darn it, there's a barricade there that they didn't realize was there. So those are potential concerns. We could add stop signs at 6th Street and North Shore Drive to... I guess try to slow traffic down again. Sixth Street is just over 1,000 feet long, and it's got more stop signs than any street that length. If we had more stop signs, guess what's gonna happen? They're gonna run the stop sign at North Shore and Riverside. I won't go into the 15-year visitor again, but you know where I'm going with this. People could run that stop sign continually. The traffic data, that I included in the packet. And there's a lot of pages. I wanted to give you everything that I had that showed hour, well, not even hour by hour, every 15 minutes, it gives you data. But if you'll jump to page, where is it?

157, the summary.

The summary. The summary page. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Page 157 shows... There were, in the rating, the time that we measured traffic from May 31st to June 16th, over 17 days there were 11,069 vehicles that traversed that street. Average vehicle counts ranging from 500 to over 700 with an average speed of 22.47 miles an hour. I initially put in error that all those speeds were under the speed limit. It is a 20 mile an hour stretch of road, so I digress. All of those speeds are over the 20 mile an hour speed limit. Now these speeds were captured with a radar sign, not with a radar unit in a patrol vehicle. There's a margin of error on a radar sign. Anywhere from 1 to 4 miles per hour. But 22 miles an hour. We don't stop people on Sunset Boulevard for doing 46. We're not going to stop somebody on 6th Street for doing 21. What we want to see is we want to make sure that people are safe. What's the best scenario? Put in a sidewalk. Get your pedestrians out of the road. It's not something we have the budget for. I don't know if we have the right of way for it either. but I think that would be ideal to get people out of the roadway. The options before you, though, are one-ways, barricades, stop signs, or quite frankly, do nothing. We've got an effort in place right now that is going to take some time for people to realize that this is new. We're in the beginning of August, so people that haven't taken their vacations yet are going to come to that stop sign and man, I hope they see it. You know, Mr. Bainhorn has been emailing me since 2017 about Sixth Street. Yes, it probably was. It probably was April of 2017. So I, the numbers are, the volume of traffic is, is a lot. It's a lot of traffic on a short street. Mr. Possible.

Anytime we talk about turning a street into one way, there's only one issue, and that is waste management. When they pick up their refuse, usually have an unmanned, or I should say, a one-man truck who isn't picking up the things and throwing them in there. It means everybody has to push their truck to the other side of the road.

do you talk about complaints sure i mean and and there there are options i mean the count this council could choose to make every side street on the island one way in kind of a back forth back forth if you will um mr Armstrong talked about 7th Street. He's not here. I think he left. Divert canal traffic down 7th Street and keep those cars that are coming off of Canal Street. There's options before you have said that we could try them, see if they work. There are Speeding is probably one of the number one complaints I've had since I've been here. And honestly, it's probably one of the number one complaints I had when I was up north for over 20 years. I met with some residents of 6th Street before we put the first set of stop signs in. And literally that same week, there were three other subdivisions that had asked me for more speed enforcement. Can we put in speed bumps? Can we throw in some additional stop signs? Can we put rumble strips? Speeding is... That's what people do. a resident speed on their own streets.

Could I ask a question? Have we had any accidents reported on the street?

So since I've been here and that I don't know if that's in my report, but and it is, I think so.

And my other question was going to be how many speeding tickets have we given out on that street?

That's an answer I don't have before me. But one of the things I look at and where I was at up north, we had a lot of fatal crashes. We had major injury crashes. We had so many crashes that we had grant money given to us to try to reduce distracted driving and reduce fatal crashes. So I always go to data when I hear from residents six streets unsafe, somebody's going to get hurt, somebody's going to get killed. I go to data. What's the data show for injury crashes? What's the data show for vehicle pedestrian crashes? What's the data for fatalities? We haven't had those. We haven't had an incident where somebody's walking a dog and a dog gets run over by a car. We have not had those. So the data doesn't support a lot of the measures that we're talking about here today. though the traffic volume is very heavy, but it's for just a few months.

And you said the speeding tickets, you don't have that?

I don't have that data in front of me, ma'am, no.

You did write a bunch of stop sign violations, though, didn't you?

They were lighting them up. Yeah.

What's a lot? What's a number?

Well, before the stop signs were there, it was zero. So I don't know the exact number. It was a lot. And again, it was residents' concerns that we weren't doing enough enforcement. So we put a lot of people out there, put a lot of resources on it. It stopped a lot of cars. Good. I don't know.

I was going with that.

I'm sorry.

I just don't know. No worries. I was just wondering, have we given tickets?

We've spent a lot of time on 6th Street, more so than we have on other streets throughout the entire town. We have responsibilities to the mainland and to the island, and it really... bothers me when I hear people say, you don't patrol the island. We spend more time on that island than any subdivision in this town. If somebody from Sandpiper Bay stood at this microphone and said, you don't patrol my street as much as you do the island, I would say you're exactly right. Because we spend so much time on the island. But look at the numbers. Do we have those kind of numbers on Belmore Drive? We don't. So the numbers require it. We want to be sure that people that are there walking around and where their kids are dashing to the beach because they just drove 700 miles to get to it and they're not paying attention. We want to be sure that they're safe.

Do you have an option you like the best of the options that you've provided?

So originally I was in favor of a barricaded North Shore drive until Mr. Armstrong talked about the cut through there. I really think if we're going to do anything at all, as Mr. Van Hoort said, I would agree with him. I think a barricaded canal would be best. You've got 6th Street residents that live to the north of that barricade would have to go to North Shore Drive. 6th Street residents that live to the south, of course, would have to go to Main or take Canal. Canal Street residents would have to go to Main. What's it gonna do to Fifth and Fourth as Mr. Marino mentioned? Is it gonna increase traffic on the dirt road? I'm not driving my freshly washed vehicle on a dirt road. I don't know about the rest of you. But it may increase traffic on those side streets. So are we just pushing a problem to another street and then we're gonna have this similar conversation in a couple of months from a group of Fifth Street residents that see increased traffic, perhaps, I would tell. But I think if anything, out of what's before you today, I think the barricade at Canal Drive would be most appropriate.

So all of the East End would need to come up one of the half streets or come around Canal to Main, to exit off the island or enter back to their homes.

Correct.

Based on that.

And Mr. Corbett, I don't know where he's gone to, but I don't want to neglect other people that talked about 6th Street. He mentioned, do we want to get feedback from the folks on the east end that might be affected? But there was only one representative from the east end here tonight.

I do think the canal option was not one of the options we listed. Locking it there. Are you talking at canal itself?

It's on the third bullet.

Oh, so it is. Okay, sorry. I'm sorry.

The option of barricading.

I was looking at the barricade of the map you gave. Sorry.

there is an alternative in there too that also talks about canal at 7th in that same bullet. Right. So it would force your canal street traffic away from 6th.

I know. I, um, I've had like 52 residents contact me about this, but I will say there's no clear winner in the analysis of their feedback of being residents. Some are for barricades, some are for one-way streets, some that live on six are adamantly against all of it. They won't stop signs at North Shore and Enforcement. The 5th Street, 4th Street, 3rd Street, 2nd Street, and 1st Street are like, we're going to be slammed with people cutting through. The dust is already bad. I heard from some East End folks, you know, it's going to be challenging. I can't go that way, so I've either got to go Main or I've got to go the dirt roads to get to the East End of the island. Yeah. We know how Main Street in the summer can bottleneck there like you're at the gazebo there. So, unfortunately, I feel like. Lots of good options to try to improve things, but improving anything there is going to create can create a problem somewhere else. This is a very hard one to try to figure out. I know, I think we want to try to help the 6th Street residents, but it's like what is very challenging. And I was hopeful for. clarity from homeowners of a path that most preferred but it seems to be all over the place what i've received so i don't know if any of the rest of you have received other the one thing in common was the thoughts that the know through truck signs that are basically when you're coming on the island you make a left on north shore east right before you get to the curve going on sixth street there's one no through truck sign there the problem is that there's an 18-wheeler or a truck there they're going to keep on going six because there's nowhere for them really to well to turn around or anything so i don't know if we can have better signage Somehow the problem is the no through trucks don't start till they're right at that intersection, but they've already made a left. The truck has to go that way. Their only option would be the truck going down 5th street, which is a dirt road. So I don't know that we want to. Recommend 18 wheelers going down 5th street or 4th street or 3rd 2nd or 1st either.

We have a agenda item coming up under. We have an agenda item coming up, but I don't know where it's at.

Right.

But we could add North Shore Drive between Sunset Boulevard to 6th as a no-through truck option.

Yeah.

And that would put the sign at Sunset Boulevard.

Yeah.

And that would probably be more beneficial because now, as you mentioned, an 18-wheeler gets down to 6th and they have nowhere to go.

Yeah. And we all, if you live on the island, we see lots of 18-wheelers coming to these streets. But like I said, I have listened to residents, I have talked to residents, I've spent hours, and there's just no clear, I guess I'm not feeling a real clear, the... to me the easiest fix and i know there's varying opinions here would be this and and there's some more for this the stop signs there at 6th street and north shore east but even that you know there's mixed opinions so i don't know what are y'all's thoughts this is a hard one

It really is. We have so many opinions. If we didn't do anything, would that put the public at any kind of safety risk? That didn't come out right. I guess what I'm thinking is if we do one, it's going to create another issue for somebody else, and then they're going to be unhappy. There is not a clear path to success here. I wished it were, but there's not. If we didn't do anything now and try to educate our public on slowing down and making the stop, would we be wrong in doing that?

That's what we're trying to do now. And as I mentioned, it's new. It's going to take some time. We put a barricade up. It's going to take some time. We make it one way. It's going to take some time.

Whatever.

I'm sure you remember the first time you came to a new roundabout and Yeah, it took some time. I don't think that, and again, if I lean on the data, if I lean on the crash data, it's not there. It doesn't support it. If we put in preventative measures every time we felt that it was a matter of time, quote unquote, then you wouldn't be able to ever get your car up to 50 miles an hour on any street because we could argue crossing the street here, it's a matter of time. So I think the effort that we've done to date Let's give it some time. Let's let it go for the rest of the summer. Let it go for the rest of the year. Let's look at it next year. I'm sure I'm going to get an email from Mr. Van Horn next year, and he's going to say these problems continue. Maybe we look at sidewalks next year. If we get the pedestrians off the road, that traffic volume would not be as much of a concern. There is nowhere to go. I mean, I agree with the folks on 6th Street. I drive it a lot, and I see the people walking four abreast And I'm like, oh, my gosh, get in line. Put the wagon behind you. But there's nowhere for them to go.

We'll get a little better data when the season's over, of course. That's going to cut off because it's going to be the majority of our residents there. They know how unsafe it is. Whereas the traveling people don't, or, you know, it hasn't resonated yet till they get run over, which hopefully they don't. And we haven't had that, but it might be better. I agree with you that maybe we just need to relook at this up down the road when we have a little bit more accurate. Once we see it goes on and go from there.

We'll bring back, if the consensus of the council is to just wait on it, we'll bring back another traffic study, another traffic survey to get the data and the speeds off-season and see what we look like then. Bring another seven-week look of what it looks like off-season so that we know, is this a year-round problem or is it mainly a three-month problem?

I like that because once we do something, it's harder to undo something if we make the wrong decision.

I like that idea. We'll make one group happy, and then the next group is not going to be happy, and then we're going back changing things, and it's just back and forth, it seems like.

There's a couple things I want to point out. I'm agreeing with what Chief is saying. But, you know, I'm looking at this map, and, you know, people who come down Canal, they're looking to get off the island. And if we block it off at 7th Street, block off canal at 7th Street. Okay, if you want to come down 7th, turn on Main Street, then you're going to turn back on 6th Street to avoid the intersection of Main and Sunset Boulevard. So we've just detoured the traffic. In my opinion, they're still going to use it. As far as stop signs, as long as I've lived here and the stop signs that are in my community, I still see people today run the stop signs on Clubhouse Road. I mean, it's sad that it happens, but it just does, unfortunately. But I agree. I think the idea is to let's do this again later on in the season.

All right.

Yeah, I had 1 other question chief is as far as the enforcement. I know we had the machine out there monitoring speeds and everything. Is there anything enforcement wise that can be done with anything for.

As I mentioned earlier, we spend a lot of resources on the island. And we have asks from the community for increased enforcement in other neighborhoods than the island itself. So we're doing the best that we can with what we have. The speed sign, we had one speed sign. We have the two large ones that you see on the island, which we primarily use those to send messages to folks. The one that we used for this data collection, we have one of those. And again, it's on Live Oak right now. It's sought after. Actually, I take that back. It's on Dogwood. There's a pending request for Live Oak.

And how much are those roughly?

$800. No, that's not right. They're over $1,000. Maybe $3,000.

Maybe we need to look if we need a... For some reason I was thinking they were $3,000 to $5,000. Yeah, $800 is way up. It's $800. And I didn't know if there was anything that monitors it that something could be sent. I mean, I know the whole camera. I just didn't know if there was anything without an actual officer being out there warning or...

We can't use that for enforcement. Okay. So any data that we collect is informational from there. Okay. And it doesn't track, you know, so after the fact, you see what it is in the agenda packet that I see. Right. Those numbers and times. So it doesn't apply any sort of identifying information to it. It's not a flock camera in case somebody is listening. Yeah.

Thank you. I know that's been asked a lot of me and I'm like, I don't know.

Let's move on to our old business. First up, adoption of rules and procedure for ERC tree board and planning board. You got anything, Ron, that you need to add? If not, each one member of council had a very thick packet here to read about. So what is the feeling of the council in regards to this?

This was from last council meeting where there were some edits. And we cleaned it up. And I don't think I didn't hear anything from council that they didn't like any of my edits. So if I'm not seeing any nays, I'm going to go ahead and make a motion that we adopt the rules of procedure for the Environmental Resource Committee, the Tree Board, and the Planning Board.

Do I have a second? I'll second that. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Next up will be our ordinance amendment, no through trucks on certain streets. Go ahead, Chief, on that.

This is also from the last meeting, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Ron. This has streets that have signs that say no through trucks but are not in ordinance. So there's suggested ordinance language that you see there in your packet that will – prohibit through trucks on the identified streets, except for those either picking up or delivering items of cargo, providing a service, so on and so forth. And then there was questions about statutory language. And that is in this suggestion to add the definition of a commercial motor vehicle, and also the definition under North Carolina General Statute, which defines, a commercial motor vehicle. And then on page 200 of the packet, which is the second part of this, talks about the applicability that this applies to the commercial vehicles defined above, except for vehicles such as school buses, public transportation, fire trucks, emergency vehicles, utility vehicles, and so on. So before there's a recommendation to adopt this ordinance now, should council choose to add North Shore Drive East from Sunset Boulevard to 6th Street so that we can move that sign to Sunset Boulevard at North Shore? We may want to add that in the motion. That would have to be in the motion.

What's the bill of the council on this one? What would you all like to do? Any questions or questions? If not, if you'd like a motion to approve with the added, or if you'd like a motion without that, or whatever y'all want to do, just tell me.

Chief, can you tell us again what you want to add to that?

Sixth and Canal.

From on North Shore Drive East between Sunset Boulevard and 6th Street.

I feel like that would be helpful there and it sounds like the other streets are streets we just need to clarify and do housekeeping stuff on. What about y'all?

I might like to make a motion.

Go ahead and make a motion.

Okay, I'll make a motion that we adopt this ordinance prohibiting through trucks on certain streets in Sunset Beach.

Adding. We need to add.

Adding in Sunset Boulevard from North Shore Drive East between Sunset Boulevard and 6th Street. So it makes it continuous.

Motion's on the floor. Do I have a second?

I'll second that.

All right. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay. Thank you. All right. We'll move on now to the new business, street resurfacing, RFP. Go ahead, sir.

Mr. Mayor, before you is the RFP that we'd like to put out for street resurfacing, and the way this is worded now contains four streets, Clubhouse Road, Rice Mill to Old Georgetown, the north end of Rice Mill, Old Point Lane, 27th Street, and 40th Street. if you approve it as it's presented to you, that's the streets that we're asking for bids. As previously discussed by Director Sorrells, perhaps we amend this RFP to include the top 10. Top nine, top five, whatever the council directs us to do, we can make that amendment or we can issue it as it is before you.

Can we get clarity? I'm for that. Can I get clarity though on this RFP because I think I have received like three or four versions of it and I want to make sure.

The one in your packet should be the right one. I double checked.

I received a new one today in my box.

It's the same. Yeah, I think you were going when he came and said it was an identical. Yeah, I verified. I have an extra one, too. It's the same.

Okay, well, I haven't had a chance because we're doing meetings to check it.

Yeah, there were some dates that changed. We talked, not we, but Public Works met with some contractors and asked if The dates we had in the RFP, could they deliver? So we did tweak a little bit of some things. Of course, Ms. Jones brought up some typographical errors. Those were amended, but what you had before you is the most current.

And that's what I'm not sure which one it is. They're both.

You should have two copies of the correct version.

Well, like I said, I'm not.

Thank you for changing the dates on this to move it up so that we could go ahead and lock in some pricing. Thank you.

One thing about adding the 10, and I think that's a good idea, to the extent that whoever bids on this, if they think they're gonna get all 10 in one fell swoop, we may be fooled when we cut them back to the number we can afford.

These are just proposals. Okay. So we could ask them to repay the whole town and tell them they get one street. But whatever number the council sees fit.

Okay. So are these bids supposed to be back by September the 28th? I'm still trying to make sure I've got the right version. I'm looking at this because I marked up the other one.

We send it out tonight. It will be that is the date that's on the paperwork.

Well, like I said, the two I have are not the latest one I received today. Because I had one that replaced it and then I had another one. See, that's that, but this is the one I just received today. It's got a different date on it.

Do you have one that says September 28th? That's the one I have, but that wasn't the original one.

The original one had October 26th.

The date of availability, I don't know if that's what you're looking at. It was the date right here. Right, September 28th, 2026.

Okay, so September's the date right here. See, that's the first one I've received that has that date on it, is what I'm saying.

Can I ask a question on the 10 that we're going to put in there? You were talking about the problems of doing all of, for example, doing all of Clubhouse because of the sure volume of dollars. Is there a way of putting within there to take that Clubhouse, which you've got as one of your top 10, and break it down into

various sections between rice mill and georgetown and then there's rice mill and rice mill and there's rice mill to old point road you said yes sir there is um like i said for example the email that i said split in half when we can go from crooked go to old georgetown cricket to rice mill and so on and so forth all the way out the shoreline drive west the entirety of A clubhouse road broken up into 4 or 5 sections along with old point, of course, and the other rows that we have already determined.

Well, I'm sure that everybody or a lot of people believe clubhouse from start to finish. It's probably the worst road around, but so the people in other parts of the town think that the road that they're on is worse. So we've got to be careful and treat everybody. Equal equal.

Yeah, absolutely. And you were referring to, you know, earlier about the bids and, you know, we don't want everyone to think they're going to get all the roads and everything. We did the same thing last. You guys weren't in office at the time, but for catchment seven, there were two projects associated with that. And we were awarded one and denied. So, I mean, it's the same thing with this. We can award however many you guys want to. And then the other ones maybe on for next year. Very good.

I'd like to ask a question about the date. We have the pre-bid conference for the pre-bid on the 24th.

Of August.

Of August, yes, sir. And then I'm looking at our calendar. When is our September council meeting? It's like later. Right, because of Labor Day. That's what I was thinking.

So we're getting them back before that to have them for the next meeting.

What mine says is September 28th. Are we not getting them back that day? When are we getting them back?

That would be the opening of the bids.

On September 28th?

Yes, ma'am.

Is there a way that we could do it before, I mean, the 24th, August 24th, could you do it before we have our council meeting so that we could go ahead and approve everything?

I'd have to look at the formal process.

I do know one version of this, the one I went through, I checked to make sure we would have it back by that, and that version had us getting it back the week before so we could vote on it or discuss it and decide. Gotcha. I do think that would be good if we could.

We need to lock these prices in as soon as we can. So my suggestion would be, you know, if we approve this, we need to change the date so that we can have this whatever date our, I'm sorry, I don't know when our council meeting is.

I think it's the 14th.

September 14th. So could we have them do like that Friday before? Okay, is that as long as the window we have to have to advertise as long as we're under that requirement, I'd like to see that so that we can make a decision in our September council meeting.

I'm going to ask the question, because I don't know the answer from our. Kimberly, our clerk, is out of town right now, right?

So she's the one who puts it to Rapunzel Pekin. Am I correct in that? Yes. So would she be able to do this out of town or not?

She should be. Okay. Just making sure. Okay. Because I didn't want to push it back one other week. Okay. We can put the roads on there and get it sent out.

Thank you.

Thank you. If we're going to go through with this RFP, though, we're still waiting on a motion.

We are.

To go through with this. So we've got to have that before we can do anything, before he can do anything. So let's feel counsel in regards to this.

I make a motion to re-approve the RFP with the amendment to make it for the top ten.

And the date.

And the date.

Do I have a second? Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate you. Next up will be our accommodations tax collection. RFP for that.

As was stated by Mr. Corbett, we have tried multiple times prior town councils to try to get this accommodation collection system rolling. And I think we can try it again. But I think the fact is we must realize that many people will do anything to hide the fact that they're getting taxed out or getting rental on a short-term basis or a long-term. So we should proceed with it.

Yeah, and I think I've witnessed in some searches some companies that are not calculating what they're charging correctly that I would assume would mean what we get is not correct, but that's an assumption. Not true because it could come in and then they still give us the right amount. But I think some of that. There's just been plenty of instances that some things don't seem quite right in that data that I feel like we need to do something and we don't have staffing in house to do it. Um. So, some of the preliminary pricing, you got seem to be worthwhile to look into it to pursue trying to get somebody and I wish Mr puzzle that we had data on what was done before because I've asked and I have. not received anything and I've asked for months and it seems there wasn't good documentation on any of that to know what was happened or didn't happen so we could kind of do a lesson learned of what what did get and then we could share that with the company that we might possibly be looking at going with but firm that we used or the what the contract with for a year

after six three six months and nine months still had not developed the system well enough to provide us anything yeah and that's when we said we're gonna we're not gonna pay them and they can give us a year to find it well it turned out to come shove we just ended up they went away they disappeared I didn't have the data because it was all running. We didn't have any data. They never submitted anything. So my theory being, whatever we get back on these kind of proposals, they have to have... We have to look at what other towns they work with and find out exactly what they get because you can't go out with somebody who says, oh, I've got it all figured out. I agree.

Well, and Katie and I spoke with several companies at City Vision and some of these companies said they do stuff for certain towns and some towns bring it in-house. So I think we'll see what they come back with and we've obviously got to vet them very well. I think in looking at the contract terms on page 218 the termination for convenience it says with 90 days written notice i think i would love to see that say 30 days written notice but i didn't know chief claimer if there's a reason per se that was in there because we know I guess it hasn't worked supposedly twice, but we're optimistic. I mean, there are companies that do it well, supposedly, and get money to towns and our occupancy tax seems to be low based on data that's been compiled. And then I think also we're asking them about a performance bond and on page 21920, it says maybe required or we typically going to require that. And I think it's very important that we also evaluate the measure. We have something to measure. The project goals are in place to make sure and measure that we're getting what we're supposed to. And if we're not, we need somebody on that from the get go to kind of. like you said, if it's not working to stop it.

Usually the real estate companies who do renting are very good at submitting their reports. It's the individuals who have either one or multiple condos and apartments, and they're not notified.

Yeah. And I think there's lots... But I didn't know, like I said, if you're a reason for the 90 days written notice versus 30 days if we're not happy for some reason.

Well, never having written an RFP for accommodations tax collection before, I borrowed this from another municipality. and that language was in that RFP. So if this council chooses to amend that to 30 days, that's what we'll do. Likewise with the performance bond, if this council feels that a performance bond is required instead of May, then we add it.

Yeah, I just feel like if we're, we don't want to tie ourself up if something's not working smoothly. I mean, we want it to work, obviously. So I didn't know y'all's thoughts on that.

I support your recommendation, but I mean, I think the two recommendations are valid and I think they're easy for us and I support the RFC.

Kristi, you said you had some preliminary calls or something like that?

Yes, we shared those with Chief Kramer when we were at City Vision. There were many vendors that were demoing their products there. They had a whole slew of everything, but the accommodations tax was something we knew we needed to look at. So, um, we, we literally met, she gave us a demo of some stuff they do and literally was like, we met with her during one of the breaks and just talked about, um, you know, she, she'd already looked up data on our town and all kind of stuff. And it's like, oh, I can send you information if y'all want to meet. We can, and it's kind of typical at those events that you're networking with the vendors and they're trying to promote. We learned lots of other great things about free grant writing services and all kind of stuff like that while we were there. But that was something we were curious how much because the numbers we had been given before that had been done were a lot more. I want to say that's been a while, like in May, I want to say it was around 13,000. Does that sound about right? Something like that. And I think the other was 40,000. Not saying we would go with them, but just, it was curious to know what we were, that was back in May in budget, we're like, what would it even possibly cost us to look into something? So never did any other father stuff with her, but just, we knew we would see if council wanted to proceed with it.

First consideration of council. Do I have a motion? to do the RFP with the added days? When you make the motion, if you want to change the days, we need to give that direction too.

Yeah. I'll make a motion that we accept this RFP to go out for bid with the change in, changing from 90 days to 30 days. And then in regards to the performance bond, change may to is, or however you'd like to word that.

It'll be. And maybe measures in place.

Do I have a second?

I'll second it.

All right. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Next up, procedure adoption and eligibility determination, law enforcement special separation allowance.

Mr. Mayor, what's before you is several things. There's a copy of General Statute, specifically North Carolina General Statute 143.166.42, Section B1, which defines the eligibility of local law enforcement officers to receive the law enforcement separation allowance. So an officer has met one of two criteria. They've served 30 years of credible service. They're eligible when they retire to receive the law enforcement separation allowance until their 62nd birthday. Option two is with an officer that has had five years of credible service but is at least 55 years of age would be eligible to receive the supplement until age 62. The general statute requires that the governing body make an eligibility determination, simply an eligibility of yes, the officer is eligible, or no, they are not. In the situation before you, we had an officer that retired August 1, and on page 222 of your packet, it shows the eligibility determination points for this employee. The current officer was with SPPD. or 5.41 years. The officer is 55 years of age or older, but has not reached 62 years of age. Apologize for the bullet points out of place there in the upload. It kind of messed it up. The current officer has completed at least five years continuous service as a law enforcement officer immediately preceding retirement with no break in service. And more than 50% of the officer's credible service was as a law enforcement officer. So the recommendation before you is to approve the law enforcement special separation allowance eligibility requirements.

Will we be doing this for every officer? Or is this just a blanket statement?

You will see this each time an officer meets this eligibility and is eligible for separation allowance through the town of Sunset Beach. Yes, ma'am. Each time.

Question and recommendation, counsel? Or if you got a question, go ahead, sir.

No, I don't. I'll make a recommendation. We approve the law enforcement special separation allowance as written.

Do I have a second?

I'll second. Any more discussion?

All in favor? Aye. Moving on next will be the record retention policy adoption.

We follow, again, North Carolina general statute with regard to records retention. This is a policy before you for the town that adopts that as our way of retaining our records.

What is the general policy? number of years of retention for town records it depends okay so it depends what the record is financial

I don't have, it's multiple, this document is multiple, multiple pages. I don't know them off the top of my head. I didn't expect you to. I'm sorry.

That was a setup. You got me. I didn't expect you to.

I'll make a motion that we accept it.

Resolution.

Resolution.

All right. Do I have a second? I'll second it. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Resolution supporting Brunswick County recommendations.

These are recommendations, Mr. Mayor, that are from the Brunswick County commissioners, and this resolution before you is to show our support for those recommendations.

It's a pleasure, Councilman Gordon.

I'll make a motion to adopt the attached resolution. Do I have a second? Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Next up will be our Municipal Code Text Amendment, Chapter 72, parking prohibited on certain streets.

Mr. Mayor, this is more of a housekeeping item. Since parking was removed off of the side streets 7th through 11th, this hereby prohibits parking on those streets.

It's the pleasure of counsel in regards to this.

Do I have a second? I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Next up will be the physical year 26-27 fees.

Schedule amendments. Does any member of council have any questions in regards to this? Not with the pleasure of council in regards to accepting these.

None of the numbers changed. None of the fees changed. It was just to clean up.

That's correct. No numbers changed at all, ma'am.

move that we approve this new fee schedule that's being presented to us.

Physical year 26-27 fee schedule. Do I have a second? I'll second. All right, any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay. Next up will be the ERC appointment. We have an opening on the ERC, vacant seat. What's the pleasure in council?

regards to this you all have a person in mind if you do please say that in your recommendation of your motion it's been a while since we've had these interviews would it be prudent for us to um advertise again so i don't know that the public even knew that we had a vacancy

I think we should because I know me, I didn't even have this information in my notebook. So I didn't bring all the people we had interviewed that notebook. I have all the names to consider, but I think when we initially set it out there, a lot of people, you know, applied, but I think we should post it probably and say people apply for all the boards so that we know, and we can kind of do another interview session and,

Can I get a motion to table this and to put out a notice to our public for people that are interested in interviewing for this? I'm putting out an advertisement for it. Can I have that in a motion for one, please, sir?

I'll make a motion that we... table the Environmental Resource Committee appointment until the September Town Council meeting, which is September 14th.

Do I have a second? I'll second that. All right. Any discussion? All in favor?

One question. Did you say, are we going to advertise? Okay. And then before, that's like three weeks for us, four weeks for us to have interviews. That's quick. That is quick. I don't want to diminish your motion. I just don't know that that's going to be enough time.

It is in mid-September though.

Yes. Like five weeks. So we would have to advertise, then we'd have to get us all together, and y'all know how hard that is.

Advertising, accepting applications.

I withdraw the motion. And I'll make a motion that we advertise and table the review of this until October.

We'll give you that date right here. October will be... October the 5th. Yep.

All right.

Do I have a second in regards to moving this? We're tabling this tonight, and we will be advertising it, and we will be coming back with hopefully a decision to put someone on by October 5th.

Second.

All right. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Next up will be disposition of directors. Does any member of council have anything that they need to put on other than we will put down ARC for tentatively October the 5th? Do we have anything else that needs to be put on at this time?

I think we have the moral roads to look at in September. Wasn't that correct? I'm pretty sure we brought that up before. I don't recall.

Yeah, I think we do.

We can, we can sit, we can say that. And then once we get with Matt and find out, make sure everything, cause there's something we can change if we don't. Yeah. We'll put it all. Yeah.

And that was more to look at the, um, the policy we use for that currently is, are we going to stay with it or not? But maybe discussion and then kind of, it's coming back to me now.

Yeah. I remember talking about anything else.

If not, then we'll go to public comments on anything. The stage is now open for anybody to step up if they would like to. We'll go from there.

George Van Horn again. I wanted to thank the council for, first of all, having the discussion about 6th Street. The chief can tell you how long I've been talking to him about it, but I was talking about it before he showed up. And it's the first time that the council's ever entertained this. The other thing I'd like to say is having one of those speed signs is ridiculous. You need to give him a budget so that he can get more of those. But I also caution you against using that data inappropriately because usually they're placed at the beginning of the acceleration cycle. By the time they get to the end of the street, they're several miles an hour faster. And two is only measuring one way. There's another way, so I hate to make the conclusion that it wasn't 11,000 that it was 22,000, but that's certainly possible unless you have information other than that.

I was actually measure both directions. Um, 6 streets tough and the way the sign mounts is that it has to be on a post that has the holes in it. So, any street in C trail. On C trail roads, we can't use it. Because they have the decorative posts in there, and we don't have a mounting system. So we're limited at where the speed limit signs are. In order to place that, and usually those are when you talk about the.

What the data gives you and 2, I think. You should have 1 on each end and you should have enough those signs. That they can be posted that way. The small town that I came from. Had dozens of those signs, but the numbers I got, I heard being thrown around tonight. giving him the budget to buy more of those signs sounds like a good investment. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Anyone else? Yes, sir. Come on up. I'd just like to say that... Larry Booth, 1703 Canal Drive. Yes, sir. I'd like to say that Kathy is...

been helpful and respectful to me and the issues that she's cited, and that I will take care of those items.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Booth. Thank you.

And Carrie is an excellent building, chief building inspector, very knowledgeable. And I'm glad to have him. I'm glad you all have him. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Booth.

Anyone else?

Last couple. All right. If not, if the council has nothing further, do I have a motion to adjourn this meeting? Motion to adjourn.

Do I have a second?

Second. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you all for coming out.

Yes.