Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Stream test for the September 14 work session. Test two streamed for September 14th.

Thank you for joining us today, and I'd like to officially welcome you to our September 14th, 2026 work session. I will officially now call the work session to order. And we have a couple of items on today's agenda for our work session. One being legislative advocacy, recapping 25, 26, and priorities for 27, 28th. And two, the schematic design for a new office park campus. And our third item is the Wake County strategic plan continuation of our retreat discussion. So at this time, we will move to our first item on the agenda. At this time, I'd like to welcome Ben Kennedy, Michael James, and Phillip Isley to the podium.

Good afternoon, commissioners. Good afternoon. So for this discussion, we're going to break it up into three chunks, and you'll hear from both from me, Michael, Philip, and certainly you're going to have your own discussion, and we may get help from the audience and some of our staff who are in the room. But the three chunks for this presentation, first we're gonna talk about the current biennium and trends that we've seen over the last year, two years, year and a half. We wanna take some time to do something we haven't done in a while and that is just walk through the way we've been approaching advocacy now for I think the past two biennial cycles. And then talk a little bit about next year and what your legislative priorities might be and some other considerations for next year. So starting with last year. So this is sort of a graphic we reference sometimes for the two-year cycle. We're starting to wrap up year two. We're in election mode now, which Phillip can share more on. But when they come back, we do expect there's going to be a lot of unfinished business and it could be a lot of activity. Some themes and lots of ways to roll this out, but a lot of questioning the roles of local government and local control and what does that look like in the future. A lot of looks at development regulation and limiting local decision making. and a lot of cost shifting and that's not just at the general assembly but at the u.s congress so i'm not going to walk through every bill that i've listed on your handout this was more to give you a sort of a sampling of some of the major things that we've had philip advocate on either for or against or to ask for modifications but a lot of it has been in the arena of development regulation and the legislature has taken a hard look at this There's still one bill out there that would affect timelines that's pending. Then, of course, in the arena of SNAP benefits, HR1 in Congress pushed a lot of costs down to the state. It also changed a lot of SNAP rules. And then the General Assembly, through the enacted budget, shifted potentially a lot of those costs down to counties. We can talk about that some today. It does represent a significant budget liability. At the October 5th HHS Committee of this board, myself and Tony Pedroza are gonna walk y'all through a deep dive of those SNAP and sales tax impacts and what the legislative changes have done. And then Tony's going to walk you through the operational impacts and what they're doing to do our best to address what we can within our control. A category I called other, you know, there's some other things that have had sort of unintentional consequences or some adverse impacts, unfunded mandates related to public safety, the DEI bill and the pending homeless encampments bill. Of course, we just had a big win with our Wake at Home initiative, closing down a camp and sending over 30 folks into programming. So a wonderful start to that program. And then last theme I'm going to highlight here is property tax. And we're going to talk about this some more today. But a couple of past bills that made things a little difficult for local government. And a couple other pending things. And of course, you know, we'll see what happens with the uh... the ballot on the referendum for the constitutional amendment uh... a few things that are still pending out there that we might want to see pass is a bill that would fix the literature poll Another one that was introduced, I believe, over a year ago with help from the NCACC and a group of, and Mark's going to correct me if I'm wrong, a group of tax administrators, including him. A great example of sort of a combined team effort. This has not been passed yet. And then I know sometimes you all ask, what's going on with repealing the no downzoning law? Not much, and I'll let Philip speak to that. So just to kind of recap here at the end, and we talked about this at your retreat, to me the big three things that are going to affect budgets going forward, not just the 28 budget, but all budgets going forward are the Blue Ridge loophole and will the General Assembly address that and fix it, Property tax limits, if that ballot referendum passes in November, the legislature will have a wide range of options in ways to implement tax limits. And then SNAP policy and sales tax. Will the General Assembly be open to changing how they have implemented that through the budget? All three of those represent pretty, not pretty, they represent significant budget risk. So before we start covering process, just wanted to see if y'all have any comments, and I'll let Phillip share some of his observations about this two-year cycle.

Phillip, this question's for you. The Blue Ridge Low Pole, I got whiplash watching it, so I'm not sure. It was confusing to me why it was not closed. I know there was promises it was going to be closed. It went through the House with almost a unanimous vote, and then it stopped in the Senate. Why was it stopped in the Senate? Is there anything we can do to get it moving? Where are we at with that? Because that's very...

consequential to us well thank you for having me today i always enjoy seeing y'all and i appreciate y'all letting me help you on all of your endeavors down the general assembly uh commissioner adams the The short answer to your question is politics. The House Property Tax Commission hearing started in January, went through either March or April, I believe. They came out with a host of recommendations. This one was one that all the local governments really were behind. And we did think that this had a lot of legs moving forward. Unfortunately, the way the budget process worked out this year and just tensions between the chambers, this became a negotiating tool between the different chambers. I am told that there were some developers in New Hanover County that were especially concerned with the impact on properties and projects that they had just committed to purchasing. There was a pretty decent effort by lobbyists on that side of the issue talking about the loss of affordable housing if you all of a sudden remove this exemption. And that became much noisier at the end of the session. And I am told that Senator Amy Gailey and Senator Michael Lee are going to look at this more robustly. I don't know if it will happen before the end of this year, but certainly the amount of money that is being lost by local governments is important for them to recognize. And I know they recognize it. It just happened to be, like everything that happened this session, most of the big policy issues were sort of put into the budget, and this is one that didn't make it. I hope that answers your question. You're welcome. Sure.

Any other questions or comments? I'm not seeing any. Okay.

The only thing I would say before Ben comes back up, I don't have any prepared remarks to make tonight or today. Of all the local government lobbying I have done over the past many years, this is one where local governments really took it on the chin. And it was remarkable to see that happen. We've been really successful in knocking back some of the ideas that are impactful in a negative way toward local governments. Again, politics got involved in this. It's been disappointing to say the least. You know, some of it we can control in North Carolina, other parts of it we can't control because it's the federal government. I do want y'all to understand and recognize that not only me as your lobbyist and other local government lobbyists, you know, the League of Municipalities and the Association of County Commissioners, everybody is doubling down on trying to make some of these changes less bad, especially within the development regulation world. The laws that changed up the 160 development articles are Confusing to say the least, there are provisions within that 160D, those 160D changes that just are not, they're antithetical to other parts of the language, and so there should be some cleanup in that, but this is one where we've been really successful in battling back sort of the forces of taking away all of our zoning authority, development control, and this year we just, we didn't get it done. so that's that's my one overarching sort of comment for the day there are efforts now to talk with folks at the state level of core offices on some of the more significant impacts and trying to get an audience with them but the thing that I would suggest to you is that you know there are 100 counties in the in the state there's over 580 municipalities and Every county, every municipality has a different interpretation of what their planning department wants to do from time to time. And that's part of sort of the sausage making at the local level that it's been inconsistent on some of the regulations. The thing that is concerning to me as your lobbyist is the rules in place that will allow for individual citizens to have standing to sue on behalf of denied development regulations and rezoning. So that's another unfunded mandate that's not particularly located in this document. But as someone, or someone, as a county, the largest county in the state, this could have an impact on not only you, the county, but also the 13 municipalities within the county. So that's really my one commentary, and I can turn it back over to Ben if he has other thoughts or wants to continue, or I'm happy to sit up here and have y'all rapid-fire questions.

I see Commissioner Stallings has her hand up. Then Commissioner Thomas.

Thank you, Phillip. So just a question about the Senate Bill 349 with the property tax relief. Has there been any meaningful conversation in your view about, because that's real targeted relief for some of our most vulnerable residents, you know, and I didn't know if you could comment on that.

Again, it's the politics of which chamber it comes across. It started out as a House initiative. Some House members were pressing it. At the end of this unusual biennium, where we just got a budget passed two days before July the 4th, it just didn't make the cut. There's a lot of folks that believe strongly in that bill. but it just it didn't make it over the line and i you know unfortunately they don't invite me to the to the meeting where they actually decide on the policy um i do the best i can to try to ascertain what it's going to be before that happens and this is one that just didn't seem like it it was raised to the level that we would want it in particular okay commissioner thomas

Thank you. Hey, Philip, how are you?

Hello, Commissioner Thomas, how are you?

Good. So I'm just wondering, you mentioned the NCACC and then the League of Municipalities, and the NCACC has formed a special property tax committee, so tax administrators, commissioners, county managers, and looking at opportunities to make recommendations to... members of the General Assembly as they move forward trying to do property tax reform, but there's also been some partnership with the Sheriff's Association, the League of Municipalities, and the School Board Association. And so I know you just mentioned that there are 100 counties and that also over 450 municipalities. Do you think that it's going to be advantageous? Do you think that it could potentially make a difference that Those groups are coming together and trying to come up with some solutions that make it less impactful for the groups that they represent. Do you think that the General Assembly is open to hearing any of that, that the House Select Committee or the Senate Committee is open to hearing any of those recommendations?

Marcus, are you on that committee? He is. That's a good thing. That's a very good thing. And look, collaboration by all partners and all peer communities is important. Now, whether people listen to the recommendations is completely different. We're all, as you know, we're having an election this year. So I think a lot of decisions will be made post-election, sort of what the new messaging strategy might be. That'll be interesting to see what happens. I met with the Association of County Commissioners two or three weeks ago to talk just about this particular issue, that issue as well as some of the development regulations that we have at least spotted as needing some assistance. But I think the more voices that are out there that are not just limited to one group in particular, you know, that's represented by red counties and cities and blue counties and cities and the collaboration between those is important moving forward.

Do you think also thinking about other models that the General Assembly or the House Select Committee has mentioned because their meetings were public, like the Utah model or Texas, or do you think that any of those have legs or that it's something that we should think about and consider as we look to manage our budget and our property tax and our reval things coming up in 2017?

Because it was a House select committee, it started out sort of behind the eight ball to get over to the Senate. The Senate didn't have its own. Typically, you can ascertain fairly rapidly whether something's getting ready to be a done deal if both House and Senate have similar bills or similar study committees or task force. And this was not the case this past year. And so I do think that some of the recommendations that the Commission made, some didn't make it all the way either. There were some minor hospitals, maybe a hospital sales tax exemption, they didn't get the full property tax exemption that Representative Howard was asking for. tweaks here and there to some of the where i thought this might be headed but i can't sit here and try to prognosticate whether the utah model or the texas model you know as i've lobbied people i say well the north canada models work pretty well for many many years and when you start knocking away these whether they're sacred cows to us or not it does upset several expectations, especially in, I represent Asheville, so during a storm of Helene, some of these things we're talking about on property tax limitations could have a dramatic impact on a county like that, or an eastern county, or even Wake County, if that happened when Fran hit. The jury's still out on that one, but I have not heard anything where they're looking to head to a different full-scale repeal of what we do here to adopt some other community's model.

Thank you, helpful.

Sure, thank you. Commissioner Adamson.

Yeah, Phillip, the SNAP policy slash sales tax item, I think probably a lot of our audience who are watching this don't understand why that would make the slide with the three top policy changes. So could you explain for the benefit of the public why that made the slide and why is that such a big change in policy from past? Thank you.

Well, it's another shift from what previously was not your entire responsibility to now it is. And so you've got to plan for that moving forward. And I may ask Ben to come up here since he is going to staff your HHS meeting where this gets more into detail, but it is a massive policy shift that the county is going to be responsible for ultimately.

Philip, is this the, my understanding is that this is the first time the state has, with the sales tax, when it's, you know, a merchant collects it, they send it to the state, and then the state sends it to the other parties who should have it. You know, the cities, the counties from there. My understanding is this is the first time the state is taking money out of that for something else before they send it to us. Is that new or is that a new policy or has this been happened before? Because it feels very different than the other things we've gotten.

The only time I remember the state doing something like that was trying to get more for past in the early 2000s when we were, I was on the city council then and I remember it went after, both city remitted taxes, different taxes, some road taxes to the county. I think there's some ABC taxes. So, I mean, the state can do what it wants to do, obviously. And there were many lawsuits filed as a result of that. But I may let Ben follow up with me.

Yeah, I don't know if I would categorize it as, from my knowledge of it, I don't know if I would categorize it as all brand new. There are some, when you dig deep into the statutes, there's little calculation things that make sure that smaller counties benefit more from sales tax distribution than the large ones. That's a form of sort of skimming off our money. uh there are little ways that that sales tax money supports i believe ncd or operations and selected treasurer's office functions but those are piddly so but certainly this is a whole new ball game right this is uh a nine figure amount of money that would be potentially withheld if the state snap error rate doesn't achieve a certain level, which is below 6%, then the way that law is written, all local governments will help with it. And we're going to, staff want to save those specific numbers for a later work session, but it is extreme. It exceeds $10 million, but we are working on a more refined estimate.

So with the percentage of 6%, we could be at 5.5%, and another county in the state could be at 7%, and because they're at 7%, the penalty, there's penalties put in place, and we would have to pay them as well. It's based on the state.

Yeah, we'll go into this in more detail on October 5, but every local government will lose at least some. And then based on the hypotheticals that came from the fiscal research division at the legislature and NCHHS, it would be then a larger, another amount that is based on your own local area.

Thank you for that.

And and since we've kind of gone here, you know, Tony and her team are working hard because one of the few things we do control is we can do the best we can to get our Wake County error rate as low as possible. And she's going to fill you in in about three weeks on what she and her team are doing.

OK, Commission Jackson.

Thank you, Philip, for your advocacy and bringing this conversation, Ben. As I sit here, we've heard about all three of these things individually and standing on their individual selves. It's huge impacts to our budget and potentially our operations. But even just looking at all of these things potentially happening at the same time, it's just reinforcing the magnitude of what we face. I'm just thinking about the real implications of these things and what our options are. I mean, certainly we're gonna go into our advocacy and our continued advocacy, but I know we will in future conversations consider What do we do? What are our options? What are the real impacts? So I just wanna lift that up now. I know we're not here to talk about that, but just acknowledging the magnitude of all three of these things happening within the same year of 2027 would have significant, arguably deleterious impact on the services that are provided and what we offer for the county.

Okay, thank you. Not seeing any other hand, Ben, if you guys want to go ahead and get into your presentation.

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, Commissioners. As Ben mentioned at the beginning, it has been a while since you all got kind of a refresher on how we approach advocacy, so I'm going to spend some time just to set up your next discussion about priority setting by reviewing kind of our approach to advocacy. At the end, Ben's going to talk about some changes at the end, but everything I walk through is really going to be consistent with what I think you all are familiar with over the past several years. Just to start, what does advocacy mean? From our perspective, county staff has really defined it in these ways. So sharing information internally with our county team, sharing with legislators, other stakeholders, partners, leveraging those partnerships, whether it's with statewide associations like the County Commissioners Association we were talking about, peer counties, municipalities, and partners in municipalities, or other professional interest groups, and of course, direct lobbying as well, supported by Phillip, or led by Phillip at the state level, and then by the Ferguson group at the federal level. And just in a little bit more detail, What that looks like from county staff standpoint, but the lobbyist role you can see here. So we have kind of likened this in the past to air traffic control. I know Ben has said it's not dissimilar to the role he kind of plays with the agenda process and supporting you all on that. A lot of what we do is identifying the things that are out there that need attention. That comes from a lot of different sources, so obviously we are trying to stay on top of bills that have been filed and tracking legislation. We have staff that are really active in their own professional associations that hear about things that may be bubbling up. We, I know, I think in the past have heard from you all about things that may be coming forward, and of course we hear all the time from Phillip and our federal lobbyists about things that are out there that need our attention, and a lot of what we spend our time doing is coordinating the staff analysis As we were kind of discussing earlier, a lot of these bills that get filed, especially with tax policy, development regulation, can be really complex, so we spend a lot of time making sure that The staff that we have that are involved in those policy areas are advising us and that we're interpreting legislation that's been filed correctly and applying it correctly so we can support you all and advise you on impacts and share that information with our lobbyists as well. And of course, we also do what we're gonna be doing with you all today in helping facilitate your priority setting. Lobbying side is really the direct advocacy. So Phillip and the Ferguson group really lead those conversations with legislators and their staff. They also identify legislation that needs attention and they advise you all on political and legislative matters and when needed they serve as liaison to the federal and state agencies. So I know you all have seen this, I think at least a few times. On the left here, I think it's always a good reminder, and not a surprise based on the discussion we just had, but on the left here is the political capital and influence that we wish we had. And on the right is the influence that we actually have. And I know this has been slide, I think you may have been generous with the three chips here. but I'm gonna let it slide because I think he's got the ratio right, so.

And jokes aside, what I want to note here is it's not none, right? And when we talk about, this is why we're talking about priorities and having a consistent message across the board so that Philip gets to go down the street and focus on a very limited number of things. I tried to find a new graphic, but I couldn't find one that I thought worked.

I think it works well. As a result of that, I think it's no surprise to you all that when it comes to advocacy, we spend most of our time on defense. We don't get to spend a lot of our time going and advocating, getting things done that we would like. We have to spend most of our time trying to swat down the things that take away your authority or otherwise have negative impacts to Wake County. And I think related to that, and partly just given the relationship between the state government and counties in North Carolina and other municipalities in North Carolina, we spend most of our time on state issues, because that's where we have to play the most defense. We had some conversations with our federal lobbyists about how we might be a little more active at the federal level, but this is certainly the landscape and I think the mix that we're in right now in terms of where we spend our time. So now I'm going to kind of get into our three pronged approach, which should, I think, sound familiar to you all. So we have general guidance. We have the top three list that we're gonna get into and have discussion about today, and then we have the opportunity list. So first, with general guidance, this really is all about that defense. So based on the feedback you all give us, we're kind of assuming that you all are supportive of and pursue legislative advocacy that preserves your authority, your financial resources, and tax base. that maintains and enhances state funding for services, that advances your strategic plan goals, and that facilitate policy improvements that benefit the county and its residents. And so based on the direction you give us in this space, we operate with your permission to advocate in support of this general guidance, and that's applicable to both state and federal level. So with that, we kind of have permission to make these assumptions that we will oppose bills that take away your authority, take away tax base, or present other financial challenges, or impact your ability to regulate growth and development, and that you all would be supportive of things that sustain or increase funding for your partners, for other county services, and that sustain or increase funding for state funding services in these areas like social services, public health, and other departments. So that's general guidance. And then of course the top three list is kind of the second prong of our three prong approach. So we have asked, and we'll be discussing your next list here in a few minutes, for a list of your top three priorities So that's three each, so three at the state level and then three at the federal level. And as Ben was kind of speaking to a moment ago, part of the reason and the importance of why we need to do this is that political influence and ability you all have, so this helps focus your efforts and prioritize those limited chips that you have to play. So it really helps give staff clear direction, it gives our lobbyists clear direction, and it brings focus to all the advocacy efforts. And when we think about top three lists, you all have a lot of really important partners. The county has a lot of important partners that we work with, whether it's the school system, Wake Tech, Smart Start, just in the education space, for example, but a number of other partners. The direction that the board has really taken and what we have kind of recommended is focusing on the core county priorities, what the top three ask. And part of that is we know there are a number of issues, for example, some of the things that I just mentioned, that are really 100 county issues that affect our partners, and they're in a position to lead and sort of spin their chips on those issues. So we have really asked you all to focus on those county priority areas. And then last, we have the opportunity list. So this has kind of been a relief valve for the things that you all are interested in but don't quite make the cut for the top three priorities. So this is kind of a list of issues that give us discretion to act quickly if the opportunity presents itself and some issue bubbles up that gives us an opportunity where we can act quickly, we don't need to come back to you necessarily for a decision, but it gives us that list to go to as things arise. But we're not necessarily, for the opportunity list, we're not proactively going out and advocating for those things, it's more as the opportunity presents itself. And so for these, we're not really asking you to specify the specific outcome that's desired, it's these issues on the opportunity list that you are interested in. That kind of concludes the overview of our model. Again, not proposing that that change, hopefully review for you all, but I'll take a second and see if there's any questions before you get into your discussion. I think Ben's gonna lead on priorities for the next Biden.

Thank you, Michael. Colleagues, are there any comments or questions before we move on to Ben coming back?

not seen any so please continue all right so a couple considerations you know as we as as we talked about this at the executive team level and and got input from philip and the ferguson group and others you know we've talked about the general assembly has a lot of views right now on the role of local government and the role of local control going into the future and i think what we're bringing you is a staff recommendation to that really to me acknowledges that we're gonna have to spend a lot of time in the future on defense and at least for for staff i think it's it's what we're recommending here is that we go ahead and just embrace that and be ready for it um so we recommend these three priorities. One is looking at property tax, focusing on preserving that local control so that you maintain discretion to set rates and levies. focus on asking the legislature to fix the Blue Ridge loophole. What I'm going to call balanced property tax relief expansion, something that to me sort of honors your discussions you all had, I think it's been three or four years now, about sort of carefully offering more relief to the elderly and lower income folks in a way that helps more people but doesn't destroy our tax base. And preserve sound valuation methods. We have a long history, decades of history, in the state of having a market-driven tax valuation methodology. It has served us well. Marcus can tell you much more about that than I can. Then SNAP and sales tax, asking the state to fully fund the benefit cost share in H.R. 1. The benefit cost share is the far bigger budget liability. And ask them to cover the administrative cost share, which we have already absorbed into the budget that you adopted back in June. And then number three, court system resources. There have been some unfunded mandates lately, some unintended operating impacts from recent laws. We would like more funding for our judicial system operations across the gamut. And we would like the state to consistently move state prisoners to state facilities, which would help us out on capacity. So these are our recommended top three for the state. We'll talk about next steps in a minute. But certainly what we'd like you to do is take a month, mull these. If y'all would like to make changes, that's fine. I think if you would, as a group, though, tell us if you want to take one of these off. If you want to add something, which one do you want to take off? And we would just relegate it down to the opportunity list. Speaking of which, we did take a fresh look at the opportunity list instead of just carrying everything over. So if there are things that you want to add, this is where we welcome feedback on that. But currently we have data sharing regulation to help grow our familiar faces pilots. To paraphrase broadly, I think Denise will tell you that we've kind of reached a point with familiar faces to where without some changes in I guess how HIPAA is applied, we can only take that so far.

Okay, Ben, Commissioner Evans had a question before you move on.

Yeah, and this is, I was just trying to get my thoughts together earlier. It's not about this slide. It's probably not about the previous ones, but it's more thinking about the approach where we identify our top three priorities for state and federal, and then we have some other opportunity things. What I wanted to ask, we're asked to submit legislative goals to the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners and then several of us serve on counties and then we come together and look at all of that. Are we not submitting anything outside of those top three topics? In other words, are we not submitting any objectives for the Education Committee or other things that are outside of that list?

Yeah. We didn't buy their deadline. And a couple of things have made this challenging. One is the board's capacity has been taken up by other issues this summer. I mean, that is part of the challenge. The other one is I have found it challenging with the association wanting goals in August, which I understand why they need it that early, but it's hard. You would have to start having conversations and discussions back during budget season. And I'll confess, I've just sort of had a tough time making that work. So no, we didn't get any by the end of August. I think we can still submit some either through committees, take them to the legislative conference in November. Having seen what else is floating out there, I think a big chunk of what you as a board would be interested in is gonna be submitted and considered anyway. But I certainly don't think we're done there. We got two very substantive changes made at the session in 24.

Well, I appreciate all that you've said, but specifically what I'm trying to get at is if we have issues that we still care about, but they didn't make those top three, do we have a vehicle for determining what our advocacy objectives would be? And probably too late for this year, but like taking education, for example, if education if you guys are not going to advocate at all for that because you're focusing on our top priorities, and I'm not criticizing, I'm just saying if, then I think the committees that are in charge of those other areas are gonna have to take a deeper dive and maybe put together their own suggestions in the future. Would that be fair?

I think that's certainly one avenue. I think it's great that y'all are so active in those committees and certainly can, so yeah.

Because I hate to sit on these committees and see that all these other counties have submitted something and know that, in particular for education, that Wake County cares so much about this, and then us have not submitted anything, which has happened before. So I'm just wrestling with that now and just verbalizing it for all of us to think about. Thank you.

If you don't mind. One of the things, I don't think it, it's not gonna surprise anybody to hear that our belief is we need to have more education funding. That's such a given. It's almost like it doesn't need to squeeze anything out. We always advocate for more education funding, no matter what we do down there, as do a host of other groups. whether it's on a list that the association has or not, please do understand we talk about education funding all the time and we're down there and it's easy to do because everybody's talking about it at the same time. So I just would add that context to that.

I appreciate that. But I know that one of the things that we focused on a couple of years ago at the State Association was we know that we know that there's constant conversation about education funding. What can we break down in very specific things that can be advocated for outside of that? or very specific things that are a piece of that rather than just generically continuing to ask for better teacher pay or whatever. And so we tried to zone in on, okay, let's expand the teaching fellows program for instance, things like that. So I'm just saying, I think there is opportunity for us to better develop a few objectives even in the areas that aren't our top three and start submitting those. or at least the NCACC.

Thank you. I appreciate that, Commissioner Evans, and what I would offer to your answer to that, Ben, is that as we move to a board of nine, I remember Dr. West always used to talk about how this board and the growth that's happening in Wake County made this board much more sophisticated than the boards that he had originally served on when he first became a county commissioner. And to that end, I feel like we have to be able to multitask. We have to be able to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. We can't say that, well, we're bogged down with this one topic and so we're not able to consider what legislative goals look like when that is one of the most important things that we have to do. But I would offer that when we talk about committees, we look at not just our NCACC committees, but the committees that we have here, the opportunity to put on the agenda for public education committee, the opportunity to advocate for something or to put together a goal that could be pushed forward to legislative goals, I think could happen depending on the committee chair, but I also know that we've had many conversations about not even having committees. So that's just something to consider. But I think that it's important that we figure out how one topic or one season does not mitigate the fact that we can't do more than one thing at a time.

Thank you. Commissioner Jackson, then Commissioner Waters. Yes.

Yes, I very much agree with you, Commissioner Thomas. Thank you for naming that. I would like to see us take this opportunity more prepare and more formally participate in the legislative goal setting process. It happens every two years. I think our board committees are an excellent way for that to be embedded into our natural flow of things. So that's for the future and I think there, I agree very much. and requesting that we just take this opportunity to more formally plan for the future to integrate our voice into those conversations. But we are here now, and Commissioner Evans next Monday, as a member of the committee, we both, as I chair that committee, the Education Committee, and Commissioner Evans is a part of it, our voices will be involved in the education policies, legislative priority setting for education. We've missed out as a collective board to submit final legislative priorities, but we will be a part of that conversation. And I do know that we just got some over the weekend, so some committees, some counties are still submitting them.

Yes, yes, go ahead.

So I just want to say, although it does seem that we, I mean, technically we've missed the deadline to submit things, but you can still submit things from the floor. There is still an opportunity. And legislative goals for the State Association does happen every two years, but we do this with Phillip and Jennifer annually. And so there is still opportunity. But I believe we can submit things from the floor for any subject matter when we get to the Legislative Goals Conference for the State Association.

Okay. Uh, commission waters.

Um, thank you. Um, commissioner Thomas, I appreciate your sentiments as well. I just wanted to understand Philip from you a little bit more about your process of identifying these horizon issues, because for many of us, the blue Ridge loophole was, uh, but probably not to you. But for many of us, we are still grappling and understanding that process as well as other issues that are coming up. And so as we think about the opportunity list that we have before us today, what is your process for identifying horizon issues that might need some significant attention as they develop very quickly and attention continues to grow? And I think about things like data centers and other issues that are really impacting lots of parts of our state but are not on this list, what does it look like for you to keep your ear to the ground, the process that you're using to identify this list and how can we continue to have the ongoing dialogue as these issues don't follow a regular cycle but could need more attention than we had first or initially anticipated?

Well, I mean, to the Blue Ridge loophole in particular, I think I learned about that here a year or two ago initially. So at least I knew that this was a glaring hole in the budget of what was happening. And then I heard about from the city of Raleigh. I certainly, I mean, I've read the opinion, understand what the fix is, and really thought that that would happen. But until they started having that committee hearings, you didn't really know what was going to be on there. until you got your email the night before that morning as far as other things that are out there i mean all the contract lobbyists who are not working for the association we do a very good job making sure that each of us understand some of the issues that are we're at least hearing rumors about because again you know they're not asking us to be in the same room as they decide what to do and so it really is sort of everybody holding hands irrespective of whether it's a local government, a city local government or a county local government. Many times, with the exception of some of the big funding issues like for schools, they're all sort of some overlap. And so that's, when the session gets cranked up, you don't know what the new biennium group is going to look like either there's going to be an election in november and so some of these things that we're talking about today may have a very different feel depending on how the election turns out in november so you know what the one thing i would caution y'all is even if you decide that you want you pick your three over the next month or so you pick your opportunities list it may be appropriate to revisit that based on what happens in November. And we get a flavor of what the next session looks like, depending on who's in charge. There's going to be a brand new president pro tem in the Senate. We know that for a fact. That hasn't happened in many, many years. The speaker is a first biennium speaker. And so there still could be change there. The process is important for basically making sure that everybody understands what our guardrails are moving forward as the county and not having 16 different opinions being thrown at any logger, whether it's me or the Association of County Commissioners. So I just appreciate this model in particular because it helps me help y'all where I'm not trying to look at the shiny object over here or over there depending on what issue is more important to an elected official or not.

Thank you for that and really appreciate the relationships that you foster to help us stay ahead of these issues and the emphasis on how quickly these issues arise and the need to have the flexibility to put more effort into defense. So thank you.

You're welcome.

Commissioner Stallings.

the priorities. Did Medicaid come up in the impacts of Medicaid from H.R. 1? Because I didn't see that on the priorities or the opportunities list, and I was just curious about conversation about that topic.

Yeah, and it's certainly something we need to keep an eye on. I think in terms of just magnitude of dollar amount, it is not as big a risk to the county as the other three. But it's certainly no. It's not insubstantial.

Commissioner Jackson.

Yes, I look forward to our time over the next 30 days to take this in. Work together and bring back some thoughts One thing that I'm curious about is at the beginning of the slide Five we don't have to go back there, but there were three themes laid out cost shifting Development regulation and local government local government control our role in our control and But then when I look at the three recommended priorities, the first two make sense if you go back one. The first two make sense. They align with those themes, the cost shifting and the local influence over our property taxes. Can you help me understand the court system's resources? That's very specific. It doesn't tie to the themes. And I'm just wondering what... allowed that to be as part of our state recommended priorities?

Yeah. Well, a number of state law changes have created some unintended consequences, namely driving up our jail population at a rate far faster than we predicted. And that's going to create operational and financial challenges. It is creating operational and financial challenges. And I think we in the manager's office just felt like it was important enough to where maybe it's not exactly local control in the purest sense that we do need some help with that.

Okay. Awesome. I deducted that a little bit, but to Commissioner Stallings' question, I would be curious to know what kind of financial impact was measured that caused it to get to this level because we know our foster care system, which is on the next slide, also creates impacts, HR1 creates impacts. So if this kind of third priority is really, or any number, but if the priority is around like the greatest financial impact, I'm just curious what this is compared to some of the other state unfunded mandates that's causing significant impacts as well. Thank you.

Okay, Commissioner Thomas.

Thank you. I wonder if there is an opportunity to look at the recommended state priorities and to Commissioner Stallings' point where it says SNAP and sales tax, which I understand that's important. Is there an opportunity maybe to talk about that being mitigating impacts from H.R. 1? Is that... That way it can be the Medicaid, and it's also the SNAP, right? And I think that Philip is savvy enough to understand, and he has enough conversations and communicates with us to understand what that could mean, as opposed to just saying SNAP. I'd really like to talk about mitigating the impacts from H.R. 1, which would include Medicaid.

Yeah. Yeah, we can look at that and weave that in.

Any other questions? I'm not seeing any. Please continue.

I think I'm trying to think around Medicaid. I'm looking at Tony to correct me if I'm wrong. It was more about more work, checking work requirements and recertifications, which drives more staffing. So certainly, yeah, I think we can weave that in.

I mean, anyone who was eligible through Medicaid expansion will now have to be recertified twice a year as opposed to once a year. We will have to determine who is working 80 hours a month. Each person, we would have to determine that, take data on that. ensure that it's documented in the file so that that person can retain their Medicaid. Not only that, we had many of our residents who were eligible for insurance through ACA. and are now not eligible. So the other HR1 impact, it's not to cost necessarily in Wake County, but there's a cost to the residents in that so many of our residents are either losing insurance through the marketplace or will lose insurance because they are no longer eligible because of HR1 changes.

So, again, Ben, I think I would like to see, and I hope that my colleagues can agree, that I would like to see that not say SNAP and sales tax, but mitigating the impacts from H.R. 1.

Commissioner, is there a general comfort with that?

Yes.

Commissioner Jackson.

And along the same lines, I really appreciate that recommendation because SNAP is a very narrow part of this bigger part, and so is court system resources also a very narrow part of public safety. more broadly, so I would like to see, especially the last bullet here, state prisoners to state facilities. It's costing us a lot of money just for that, and that's more than just the court system, so suggesting that we broaden that priority to be more broadly around public safety.

Okay. Let us think, and do you mean the county's other roles in public safety, like EMS and... Fire or?

I'm talking about, yeah, that it's more than just court system is what I'm saying. That that's one part of the public safety sector. That there's also the jails, which is, and the overfunding. I got you. Yes. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I think I intended it to be the broader, yeah, jails, courts. We'll work on the word.

Okay. All right, thank you. Okay, Ben.

Just one second.

I know we've got you working hard today.

All right, let's see. Recommended federal priorities. We can build this out, but on H.R. 1, we would ask Congress to take it all back. And if y'all want to expand this to take back the Medicaid stuff, too, why not? I mean, there's no harm. To me, it's one of those things where there's no harm in asking. Um, on the housing side, uh, you know, continuing from last year, preserving funding for our local housing and homelessness programs, the big four entitlement programs we talked about in the agenda review today and other things, and adequately fund the programs in the 21st Century Housing Act. And then on grant regulations, this popped up, I think, back in the spring, but OMB has proposed a number of regulatory changes for project grants that are owners, quite owners, and would probably serve as a significant disincentive to take on project grants. And so we have already opposed those in writing and we will continue to do that. On the federal opportunity list, we did not start fresh here. We just kind of carried over everything. So you may see things on here that you asked to add a couple years ago. Certainly we can tweak this list, add some additional things, or take some things off if we feel like the issue's done.

I just wonder, I don't have a suggestion for the list, but I just wanted to make a request that in the future, before we have these conversations, is it... appropriate, I guess, or do we have the opportunity to see the lists from previous years? Can you send us an email with the list of the state priorities and the federal priorities from the previous years so that we can make a comparison about what has happened and what might need to roll over as opposed to just seeing what the list is now being created to look like?

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, I can get that to y'all next day. Can you share a little bit about

or exploration of topics that exist on both the federal and state level, like early childhood education, and how decisions are made to put them in one place versus another, or both? Because I noticed it was missing from the state.

As far as a set of priorities, you know.

The other opportunities, I guess.

Yeah. But if I can start from, I mean, as far as, you know, we had a choice, right? We could bring you a blank slate and have you all populate it. And we can do that in the future if you want to. uh... one thing that we found effective the last time we did this was give you a starting point right we think these are three very important things if y'all want to make changes that's completely fine just give us some guidance take off this add this that is certainly fine and then this again is meant to be sort of that next level right things that maybe aren't top three but if one day we may see a bill that actually would repeal the no-down zoning thing. And if it's on this list, that saves us the trouble. I don't need to make seven phone calls and say, oh, should we have Philip go champion this? If it's on the list, we know, boom, Philip's going to go find the right senator and talk to them and say, yes, thank you for introducing that. Can we please get it through committee? And so... The process of getting on is, I think, simply discuss it here. And I'm looking, not for my interest, not necessarily a hard vote, but some thumbs up that, yes, y'all would all be comfortable putting it on here. For both state and federal.

Okay. So that's clear. I got that. Maybe then, let me try. Can you just share a little bit about, as you all were preparing to give us a starting place, I fully get that, and I get that we're going to give feedback. can you share your thinking about early childhood on federal and not on state? Just that thinking, can you talk a little bit about that as it was presented to us as a starting point?

So I will be honest, we did not think through a whole three dozen policy issues. Just want to be candid about that. At the state level, I think we saw enough new things compared to the old list, and I'll send you the old list. to where we felt like it would be helpful to start fresh. We can absolutely add early childhood development onto this. Whereas with the federal side on the opportunity list, as we have the graphic show, we're spending so much time playing defense at the state level, we don't have a lot of capacity to give it to federal. And we just didn't change it. But left it to you to, if y'all would like to revisit it, we can.

Oh, so to Commissioner Thomas's question, this is the exact same list that was before.

I believe I took everything over. But I'll send you the old one. I may have taken up a couple things that seem to be outdated. Okay.

Thank you, Ben.

Yeah, so that is everything on those. So a few thoughts on new approaches for next year. We're starting to get ourselves organized for the next biennium. So one thing we're going to do is Michael's been helping sort of behind unofficially with a lot of this work. So we're going to bring him in officially and make this part of his portfolio. We will play with this as we go, because we want it to work well for our lobbyists. We want it to work well for you, and certainly for the manager's office. But starting out the gate, Michael's going to take development regulation, which is one very big bucket of work. And that ties in well with a lot of his other ongoing work with economic development and transportation. I'll continue to take tax policy, a lot of the health and human services and housing stuff, and some other topics. And you know, I think our hope here is that gives us a little more bandwidth, gives us more of an opportunity to do some proactive work on those priorities that y'all set. The next thing is, and David had shared that y'all brought this up I think in some of your discussions with him is that you're interested in doing a delegation roundtable, not just with our two or three members of Congress, but with our state delegation. So just to get things started, we put a placeholder on your calendar for late January. As soon as the election is done and maybe a few days to settle, we'll start getting invites out to those elected members. And I'm sort of picturing, and I welcome feedback on this, but something much like what we do with the representatives. invite people here, try to give them some education on Wake County trends and issues, and let y'all help explain some of the things that we might need.

Thank you. I just wanted to step back just a bit on the opportunity list because I would be remiss if I didn't at least ask the question. With so many challenges related to maintaining local control over elections, is that an issue that should be on this list? Where does that sit? I know that is a very important concern for many across our region and across the country.

So it has been our practice that when it comes to elections, the county has weighed in on things like unfunded mandates, perhaps procedural requirements from the state legislature that require us to add more positions or that cost more money. When it comes to election procedure, our practice has been to stay out of it and let the county board of elections, and there is a statewide group of elections directors that weighs in on those things. Again, that's been our practice. I think it's to help. I think the theory has been to stay in our lane because counties don't set election procedures. That's a state function. Now, certainly y'all can give us feedback to do that. Any comments?

I personally think there's some risk to that. You're weighing into some really meaty, hot topics that could land the wrong way with a brand new legislature. I would at least caution you to let's see how things shake out in November, what January, February, March look like. But there's a lot of drama in that world right now, as we all know.

I at least wanted to raise the topic, so thank you. Mr. Thomas.

So I just wanted to ask, I appreciate that, Commissioner Waters, that's a good point. And Ben, I think that you, I appreciate you also saying that it has been our practice, but what is happening with elections is not the norm. And so while that has been our practice, I think maybe, I don't know if it's just not on the opportunity list. I don't want it to get lost. And so I would like to maybe see it on the opportunity list, even though, Phillip, I hear what you're saying. I'm not trying to add it to the top three. I'm not trying to make it something that you go down and talk to them about in January. but I don't want it to get lost. And so I don't know if adding it to the opportunity list makes it not get lost, because what's happening is unprecedented.

The one thing I would say to that, Commissioner Thomas, the last election bill that passed was actually more bipartisan than there have been in a long time. And I didn't sit through all the committee hearings, but there has been a trend recently, in the House especially, where there's been much more transparency on setting the budget process, having Democrats at the table. The elections bill that came out was really a very bipartisan effort. Pricey Harrison was really, really, Representative Harrison, I should say, was really involved in that. That gave me some comfort as a resident of this state and county that there were changes there that were being made that I at least felt better about some of these things. And they had full committee meetings that were sometimes painful to listen to because they went over and it's very, very complicated. Many times there were protests where they had to clear the room too. So despite all that, what I think you saw at the end of this past session was something that you can arguably say was a bipartisan product of compromise and robust discussion. So just an FYI.

So I'm weighing in on that one. As someone who served on the Board of Election, we would prefer as board members at that particular time that the county did not weigh in because the The appointment process completely changed, of course, but speaking from having served there, I think that those that are in positions now would prefer that we didn't. Any other comments?

I have another. If you go forward a slide where you were talking about the new approaches in 2027, I see that you have the State Delegation Roundtable in January, and just wondering if, Phillip, you think that that is the best time for us to do something like the State Delegation Roundtable. I know you have been here for the conversations we've had with the federal delegation, and so just wondering what you think about that January timeframe.

So there will be newly appointed or sworn in members of the legislature. January is usually a pretty quiet month with the exception of the pomp and circumstance and sort of the first day on the job. The families are able to come onto the floor for the only time during the session. January is pretty slow. They're still trying to figure out what committees are going to look like. That's not a bad time to do that before things get really cranked up, I would say mid to late February. But here again, trying to peer into my crystal ball, which is pretty opaque right now, not knowing what the election results are gonna be like. It could be business as usual, that what we're used to for the last 15 years I've been doing this, or something that's completely different. So I would say it's very good to think about January, probably no later than mid-February as you begin to sort of coalesce on what the personality of the next General Assembly looks like, certainly what the personality of our own delegation looks like. That's gonna obviously be part of this as well. I personally think that having all of the electeds in one gathering is a good idea. I would just caution you to make sure you limit people's conversations to two minutes each.

Good luck with that. Okay, that's helpful.

It'll be an all-day event.

That's helpful. And then I wonder about when you talk about the more information sharing with counties, Ben, I know that just looking at 2027 in general, and I know this slide is about new approaches, I know that we'll have, if we have the state delegation roundtable in January, then in February we'll look at legislative goals with NACO in D.C. So when you talk about more information sharing with other counties, what does that look like?

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. So what I was going to share there is, you know, earlier we talked about our partners, right? NCACC hears from me a lot. In fact, I try not to overwhelm them when things are going busy.

I appreciate you not overwhelming them.

Well, and Joy and Andrew always say, no, when you have something, send it. And they've been wonderful to work with. I just have really enjoyed working with Julie and Andrew, and their predecessors. So what I mean by there is we've, on the side, y'all don't see this, but there are other folks around the state who are like me or Michael, and they either do this as a full-time gig or it's one of their assigned duties. I had a wonderful conversation at the NCACC conference last month and four or five of us sat down who do this work a lot. And we just sort of have some ideas about how to just kind of just take this to the next level, not an organization or, but just something where if, what we're trying to do is if I come up with a good set of talking points, You know, after I've sent it to y'all and Phillip and Joy and Andrew, then the next email goes out to this group of six or seven. And it's most of the big counties and a few others. And what we frankly want to do is add some more rural counties in there and start getting that message out. To me, it's just another, I'm looking for that other lever that can be pulled. when things go, when we need to push back on something. And so that's what that is. It's just kind of a, it's an informal network that I and some other staff around the state are just, we're trying to sort of take it up a notch.

Thank you. I appreciate knowing that and understanding that. I would encourage you to ask Kevin or Joy about creating a listserv for that group. We've talked about how the NCACC does not have a technology committee and lots of counties and counties municipalities are having cybersecurity threats and cybersecurity issues, and so they've created a listserv for folks to share best practices and thought partnership around that issue, and I'm sure that this would be something. It would also make it easier for you to have rural counties join you if that's what you desire. Thank you.

I have shared many thoughts with NCCC staff on how they might approach intergovernmentalism.

Commissioner Jackson, you had one.

Yeah, so this is... in part a comment to my colleagues as we begin to take this and work with it between now and the October work session. It's also in part a question to you, Phillip. When we look at the three buckets of state priorities, I think that it is a great start. I know you said it wasn't all, or maybe the federal wasn't all fully thought through, but I think that the state priorities is an excellent start, a really good start. I also like, so let me finish that thought. I think it's a great start and I think the headers at the top are very specific. I really like the way this is laid out in terms of like areas assigned to you and Michael James. And so my comment to colleagues and as we continue to think through this I'd really like to see our priority, that teal box at the top, be as broad areas like tax, HHS, public safety, or even development regulation. and then underneath have the bullet points of very specific areas. I think that would be more valuable for showing the areas that are our priorities as well as the sub-bullets. Yeah, like here. Because the first two columns could be combined under tax policy. for example. And so, Phillip, when you're doing your work, you're not really operating at that blue box or teal box. You're really looking at the items underneath, right? Or not?

It honestly depends. I mean, it depends on what's popped up. It depends on, you know, what I do every year is I try to talk to the delegation at the building and show, these are the county's priorities. Ben does a great job. He sends that to the entire delegation before things really begin in earnest. I'm there to answer other questions, but that's sort of how I do it. Now, again, when something pops up that's either stated or not stated, then we're on it. It just honestly depends on, you know, the issue of the day, the week, the month of what they're talking about. It is impossible to predict what they're going to want to do, okay? And that makes this process probably frustrating for the elected officials Because you want to have your list of things, and then all of a sudden, I mean, it's zigging instead of zagging. All of a sudden, like, oh, my gosh, we're not talking about this at all. Now they're talking about something completely different. So, you know, getting, I would suggest, you know, don't get sort of hyper-focused on what the words underneath the teal things are. Because we all know what you, I mean, I've done this long enough for you all. I was an elected official back in the day. I know the things that matter to elected officials at a local level. So you get that benefit from me regardless of what the words on the piece of paper are. And you have really incredible staffers that also have their spidey senses constantly being piqued. So I would just hesitate to say it's a fine idea, but the actual policies will expand or contract depending on the nature and ebb and flow of the actual legislative session.

Okay.

Okay. Yeah, I get that. And just in response to what Commissioner Evans just said, truly not trying to wordsmith, but instead recognize that we have three areas and one of them is tax. One of them is public safety. And I would like to see a third very different area, like development regulation or HHS. And by combining it, it would be more, give us a third pillar to talk about something distinct than what's up there. So not wordsmithing, but coming at it from that perspective of three distinct pillars.

I thought that the third was mitigating impacts of HR1. The third was not, I mean, there's not that there's a third. There's not a third. Instead of SNAP, we agreed to mitigate the impacts of HR1, and that doesn't always, that's not neatly fitting into property tax. It doesn't go there. And then my other comment was, I hear what you're saying, and I appreciate what you're thinking, I think that being in a former advocacy role, I think that for Phillip and for us articulating this information to our weight delegation, to other folks with state associations, and to our federal partners, that the way it is laid out, maybe some changes like we talked about in the teal boxes, is best. And that's one commissioner's opinion.

Right, and just to be clear, and I think that this is important, not wordsmithing, because I get that says property tax, and that says my recommendation was a pillar around taxes, period. Drop property, drop sale, like tax as a pillar. to align with our theme a little bit in the beginning. So either way, I look forward to talking about how, what our final priorities are and if there's room for things like development regulation, which was a huge theme and there's a lot of movement around that and I'd like to see us consider how that fits in while keeping three pillars. I don't want us to have four or five or go on and on.

It sounds a little like you want a ghost fourth goal there.

I just wanted to clarify, along with Commissioner Thomas, that middle category is not about tax. The tax... being withheld can be an impact but it's about there's several things around hr1 that are concerning around snap benefits there's dollars there's extra work on behalf of our staff and then there are potential penalties but what we were trying to say so that's not just something that's just about tax So it wouldn't belong over in that other category. And as we had already discussed, we proposed to change that to impacts of H.R. 1, which also includes the Medicaid challenges.

Yes.

Okay.

Maybe it is that it's a ghost fourth. Maybe. Because on my list, I had tax, HHS, which is HR1, public safety and development.

And when it comes to development, I think when we established that general guidance statement a few years ago, it was, I think the main thing we were thinking about was development regulation because there are so many bills that.

Exactly.

slowly chip away at local control. What we needed was some guidance to us that we have permission to go fight that. It may not be written out explicitly, but that's really what the general guidance was all meant, that and preserving your tax base.

Okay, Ben, go ahead to your next one there where we can move on to the next agenda items.

Are you okay if I finish up with the next? Yes. Yeah, sorry.

All right, so now we've given you a slate to start with.

I think the two things to discuss are, are you satisfied with those top three, state and federal, or do you want to make changes? I know I've gotten some feedback here to look at, perhaps take the SNAP sales tax one up a notch to capture more of the HR1 stuff, so I'll work with Tony on that. And we'll play with the wording on some of the other things. We'll get there. And then we would appreciate it if you would revisit this in your October work session and give us some guidance. If you want to wait longer, we can. I would ask, let's not push it off too far. And one reason is we want to get started with our preparations for next year. And the nice thing about it is if you'll give us a blessing and a set of goals in October, that gives us the fall to go ahead and maybe get our talking points ready, start meeting with some key players, things like that. Work through the NCACC process, and I appreciate the feedback on that. That might be a great topic maybe for one of your general, sorry, great government committees of the whole. We can play with that. We want this process to work for you. We've been doing this now for three or four years. If it's time to evolve, we can evolve. In January, that state delegation roundtable, I welcome any thoughts you have. This is an experiment. Hopefully it goes great and we'll build on it in the future. And then in April, I assume we'll do the federal roundtable again. I continue to get feedback from both the congressional staff and from you that y'all find that useful. And that is everything.

Yes, Ben, I just had a question about next steps. I have an item I'd like to add to the opportunities list. Is that something I should email? Should I have talked about it during this work session? What is the best process for me presenting that?

Do you want to share it right now?

Yeah. One of the things that happened in the last session is in the farm bill was more money for farm preservation. And that goes along with our program, our money. And they almost passed money to pay farmers for voluntary ag districts as well. The 10-year one, not the... So that would really complement our farmland preservation program if they would be state money to help us to pay for the 10-year conservation easements.

State money or federal money?

It was state money. It was at the state level because I had several conversations with the Farm Bureau about their legislative effort to get that passed. Yeah. Okay.

Sorry, when I hear Farm Bill, I typically think.

Yeah, and not the entire Farm Bill, that just one provision, because from my discussions with the Farm Bureau and their lobbyists that is at the state level, they felt like that or what they shared with me, is that perhaps the legislators didn't understand the value in giving farmers some type of compensation for the 10-year one, because the regular voluntary ag district, you can get out of it anytime. When you get the sign for your front yard, you can just wake up today and say, I'm done. But with the 10-year conservation easement, you're locked in for 10 years. You can't get out of it for 10 years. So the thought was, is we don't have any county money to give them some type of compensation for doing that. And the state should do that. And they came, I think it was in the House version, and the Senate pulled it out. So it got really close to passing as a little bitty part of the Farm Bill. But they did include more money for additional funding that they were really pleased with for the permanent easements and we think the money they pass for the permanent easement since we have such a robust program that probably half that money's coming to wake county so since we have well 11 now farms in the queue that we can preserve we're just waiting on state match and federal match we're gonna be able to clear a lot of those and since we have those in process and we have the most ten-year leases in the state and the thought is if our farmers in Wake County could get some compensation for agreeing not to develop it for ten years then that number would really mushroom for us, and it would be state funding. And the way the bill was written, we wouldn't have had to come up with any match. Now we do for the permanent stuff, but we already do that. So it's a provision that we get the most benefit out of than any other county in the state. Thank you. So it would have been nice to let somebody know that we love that and explain to them why it's important. Sure.

Yeah, if the board's comfortable with that, we can add it to the state opportunity list.

Okay. Well, thank you so much, Ben, Michael, and Phillip, for your legislative updates. And colleagues, of course, this is an item that just for FYI, with information only.

Chairman, I have a question.

Yes.

When will we hear, I saw the last slide, but Commissioner Jackson had mentioned she looks forward to having more discussions, plural. And so I'm just wondering, there will be one more discussion. We'll talk about this in the October work session, and then we will solidify what the top three will be and the opportunities list. Is that correct? Yes. Thank you.

Thanks for the clarification. Thank you, Ben. And now we will move on to our second item on the agenda. At this time, I'd like to welcome David Rutherford and Dale DeCambry. Okay. Okay, please, go ahead.

Good afternoon, Commissioners, Chair Miles. I'm very excited to be here today to talk about the schematic design for the Wake County Office Park redevelopment, with the first phase being general services, corporate training, and library admin in a combined building. I'm David Rutherford, Interim Director for Facilities Design and Construction. I'm joined by Dave Doakum, Facilities Project Manager for the county, as well as Todd Dalton with CPL Architects. I also have in the room GSA, our team GSA here, and library as well. So, thank you. Just do a little recap. They say time flies when you're having fun. It's hard to believe it's been two years since we sort of kicked off this effort. Initially with advanced planning, doing some early programming, site visits and so forth, doing test fits both on county property as well as unlisted property to come up with the best location for the new GSA, which we came to you in June of 2025 with the recommendation of redeveloping the office park, densifying and doing it at a high and best use as a campus. We, you all supported that, so we've been hard at work continuing into the schematic design efforts with additional design work. We went to the Energy Commission in February of this year. We went to a work session for budget to kind of talk about scale and scope of the project in April, and then the Library Commission last month. And today we're going to show you schematic design. I'll pass it over to David.

Good afternoon, commissioners. Thanks for having us. It's nice to see you all. Yeah, I'm Dave Dalcom. I work with Mr. Rutherford in facilities design and construction. So we're here today just to present the schematic design for the new general services, library administration, and the corporate training facilities. and also their related site development there at the county office park. We're here to seek board approval of the schematic design at the next September 21st meeting. So the agenda we have for you, just a few quick bullet points. Todd Dalton, our very capable partner here with CPL Architects. We'll run through a few of these for you, but we have some existing facilities information and a bit of information about the site selection. A little bit of discussion on the rezoning piece of the project, because that was an important component to it as well. the major schematic design elements, the site planning, a building plan, which Todd and his team have done a great job helping us with the planning and design of that. We can show you some of the building massing, conceptual ideas, the sustainable design concepts, and just a couple of slides about budget and the project schedule to give you an idea of those, and then a little room at the end for some questions, if you have any.

I'll go ahead and turn it over to Todd.

Good afternoon. Like Dave and David said, I wanted to give a little bit of background first before we jump into where we are now, but just to orient everybody, the GSA is currently divided between two facilities, the facility at Capital Boulevard, housing, the business administration and support team, fleet operations, physical plant, safety and security, four, and then the facility on the right, housing, the facility and field services team. The two programs that are currently at the office park include the Library Administration building, which is located on the south end of the office park, and then the Commons building, which is functioning as the county's corporate training facility. When this project began, we began looking at site selections really for a GSA-focused project. And so the office park was one of the six sites that we studied for that project. And as we couldn't find the site that really distinguished itself, it brought us back to the office park. And as part of looking at the opportunity of what sort of a bigger vision could be for the office park is where we brought in the library administration building and corporate training uses into the project. The key points of site selection with GSA specifically were that location and response time, being able to respond to the downtown campus, the detention center, and the public health building. And so you can see that the office park really fit right within that sort of perfect search area for GSA. And it also offered opportunities for the highest and best use of already owned county property. And then what could that look like as a bigger vision for the office park itself? Again, just orienting you to where we are. We're right off of Pool Road and 440. The red rectangle or red shape identifies the portion of the site that we're talking about for the redevelopment. The portion to the left of that is the historic Oakview Park. This is the master plan from back, like David said, when we met in 2025. And so, again, just giving you history of where we've been in this image here. And I want to call specific attention to the yellow U at the top of the page and then the sort of white rectangles to the left there. As we go through, we'll talk about how the site plan has changed and as we've worked to optimize the square footage and the layout. But the key with the development here is really orienting the scale of the GSA building combined with lab and corporate training, locating that toward the north of the site, closer to those industrial uses that exist to the north and to the east. letting the building be a buffer for activities that are going to be happening on that north end of the project, and then planning for the southern part of the site really being an opportunity for future office buildings, the parking deck to support this facility, and then the parking deck expansion that could support the future build out. also is part of this. If you've ever driven out there, you know how hard it is to navigate Civic and navigate into corporate training, into the site and into the park. We're gonna realign a new road to historic Oakview, just north of that blue circle there. So that has direct access instead of shared access right off of Civic Boulevard. And then we'll show you the future site plan here in just a second. As part of this process, we have had to rezone the portion of the site that we are redeveloping for the office park. That rezoning was dictated by the fleet operation used for GSA. So as you can see, we have a pretty favorable zoning case. We're almost finished with that process with the city of Raleigh. And so you've got the light industrial uses to the north and to the east. And so we've rezoned the office park site, the portion that we're developing for the new GSA lab and corporate training project, and the future office buildings also to IX3 to support that fleet use. It's also very favorable for office use. As we think about those future office buildings and how those would roll into the project, all of that is compatible within that IX mixed-use zoning. It offers a three-story building opportunity, and then we did cap the square footage for the rezoning of this project just to smooth out the rezoning process and timeline, but you can go through a text amendment to increase the cap up to like a million square feet, a million four square feet. schematic design. So as David also said, we In March of 20, or April of 2026, March, April of 2026, we were going through the budgeting process, and since then we've been working to look for opportunities to streamline the development, streamline the floor plan, working with the great stakeholder teams to understand as we go from colored blocks into blocks that have furniture, fixtures, and equipment, to more refined floor plan blocks that serve those same things. We've been able to, as we work from left to right, we've been able to make reductions in the square footage, really all, Most of the components of the project, except for the central energy plant, you can see the delta to the right. Anything in red means a reduction. So we've sort of netted a reduction of almost 20,000 square feet as we work through the schematic design. And as an effort, we'll continue as we continue developing through the next design phases. That also translates from a parking deck. We've also reduced the parking deck to just the first phase only, which also cut out another 500 plus spaces. Looking at the overall master plan, again, I've called your attention to the yellow U. We've changed shapes of the yellow block up there and the white blocks that were up there to the plan north and to the left. That's all part of that square footage reduction and trying to tighten our footprint and tighten the site so that we minimize the impact of the development overall, specifically to the northwest corner where we have the most topography and we have some tree conservation area that we're trying to protect there. We've also got some trail integration that we'll talk to you in a minute. But what this graphic is showing is sort of the future state that would also include those future offices to the south and the central energy plant that we've added to the east of the parking deck. Again, trying to locate those more industrial things closer to the industrial areas to the east and then maintain the historical view to the west and Olivia Rainey to the south. as we zoom in a little bit more on the first phase area that will be working again. One of the big things we tried to do with this is sort of orient the more county staff facing areas to the north, especially the back of house areas where county vehicles are coming and going, shipping and receiving is coming in and out. equipment storage, a lot of that traffic will be happening along that northern side where you see the equipment storage, GSA, and fuel and wash bubbles. One thing about the Office Park site is it has open opportunities for multiple points of access. So instead of shared access for public and nonpublic uses, now with the site we have here, we're able to really draw clear lines of delineation where, The northern entrance is not for public at all, but the southern entrance is for public access. We're using the building to help create that buffer of public and county use areas. as part of that you know with that distinct vehicle circulation and operational circulation we're also maintaining pretty clear flow of staff through the building from arrival through the main entry there in the middle of the page into the parking deck and then flowing to the north either into your workspace or out to your county vehicle to take that off site again through the north Looking at how the building lays out overall, we'll show you a diagram here in a second of how that breaks down, but you see the GSA is located mostly to the north and to the west. Lab is our front-facing building off of Civic Drive to the east, and then corporate training is situated in between so they can act. So for easy access for the public right off the parking deck, clear visibility, clear wayfinding in that space, but also putting in between Lab and GSA to serve as an amenity for those groups day to day. Highlighting the space program summary, as we were going through this process, really the uses of general services administration and library administration, there were a lot of similarities in the program types of offices, workspaces, warehousing and the book hub. Training administration uses and then again the corporate training space also offering additional meeting and pre-function space and the ability to have catering On-site as well to support that the images on the rider images of the current state of GSA and lab and corporate training And I will say from a breakdown standpoint The square footage for those I'm not finding the second one. I'll give you the breakdown of the square footage if you're interested. But GSA obviously is the larger portion of the facility and the library administration is coming in just under 40,000 square feet and corporate training is just under 19,000 square feet. The overall floor plan, just to kind of highlight who goes where, you can see if you follow the outline colors at the legend on the bottom left there of the magenta and the red and the blue. The magenta outline highlights GSA spaces. You know, again, talking about yellow color blocks, the yellow would be the fleet operations area. The more purple spaces and kind of light tan or green spaces are the physical plant areas. Facility fields located at the north there with the big red rectangle with the white rectangles inside of it. and then the warehouse would be the space in the middle that's colored orange. And then if you follow the red outline to the right, on the east side, that is the library administration building, again with the orange shape. highlighting the book hub sort of shipping and receiving area that really works well paired together with the GSA warehouse area. So we've got a shared use of loading and unloading shipping and receiving space instead of dedicating site use to two separate functions. We're able to consolidate that there together. We've also got the, we separate, if you've been to lab, you know how you sort of, you visit that building from the loading dock and then find the front entrance. We've positioned this as a way where you have clear delineation of entry, but then separating entry and the shipping or receiving clear front to back separate entrances, but also the book donation drop off for the public. Instead of having them bring that to the front door, providing a location that's near the back of house, but still outside of the secure fence so that the public could drop off book donations clearly separate from the front door facility, but a place where they could drop that off, easy access for people to book up folks to pick up those donations and process those through the shipping or receiving area to the north there. And then lastly, the corporate training is the blue in between. Again, the corporate training is mostly made up of a larger version of the commons where it's got large meeting spaces, extra large meeting spaces, and then the catering functionality and storage with substantial pre-function space also to prepare events in and out. We do have a partial second floor. That partial second floor is occupied only by the General Services Administration. And it's located where it is within the shape of the building to prioritize the views toward the park, but also help us, again, reduce the scale of the facility as you're kind of turning in off of Civic and using the massing, which you'll see here in a second, of building up to that second floor of GSA. And that is an office. Office level floor only, so there's no shop spaces, but it is offices, training rooms, workspaces. Starting to look at how the architecture should develop through the schematic design. If you were hovering in the air above the current Commons building, this would be the view you'd have looking back to the northeast with GSA on the corner with the Wake County logo on the two-story portion. If I knew which button to press here to get the laser, I would try that. But I knew I would do something to turn it off. So anyway, the brick just to the right of the GSA, that would be the corporate training entrance. So all three parts do have distinct entrances. At one point, we were looking at trying to share entrances, and it wasn't really giving us what we wanted. But by separating, having them close together enables GSA to maintain that and sort of really service the corporate training space, but provides that definition for folks who are coming to the building. And as you can see, we've located that corporate training entrance right off the corner of the parking deck. So with wayfinding in the parking deck, you can easily get from your car to the right stair, the right direction, and then straight out to go across. also point out the sort of the first take on landscaping in front of the building how do we use the landscaping as an amenity and also as a stormwater measure so it's functional also but also being employee in a county visitor amenity so that's a strategy we'll talk about again here in a second on the sustainability slot but trying to really make that integrated and maintain some of that park feel that's within the office park currently If you look at the far right of the building, that's the lab that's looking back. That's at the main entrance, that first corner you see. And so as you drive, you're coming in off of Civic Boulevard, you make that left turn onto the site. The first thing you would see would be the entrance to library administration. So we have this glass jewel box there on the corner with an outdoor area for staff. And it's kind of breakout space of the large training room that Lab has would be located in that area too. So they can break out in or out of that area with administration sort of working to the left. But instead of having to go find the entrance like you do now, the entrance to the lab would be the first thing you see. So upon arrival, you're seeing that. And as you see that, that would direct you where to pull into the parking deck and orient your way back out to reach lab. This is that combined entrance of general services administration and corporate training. Corporate training, like I said, would be very direct, right off the parking deck, trying to draw all your attention to that. If you're a non-general service administration staff member, that would be the first thing you see. That would be the entrance you're drawn to, but with a clear delineation of the GSA entrance off to the left there as well. But you see the two-story part, how we're building up the scale from lab across the west elevation, building up to the two-story portion of general services. This is one image of what the three-level parking deck could look like. We are adding an architectural treatment so it blends in with the rest of the development, trying to make it feel built in. Again, trying to maintain that park in the parking deck using a combination of masonry materials, screening, but also looking at how, as the topography helps make that deck look smaller, where we may see three levels on this end, but we're going to see one or two levels or one and a half levels on the other end, so using the existing topography that's out there to our advantage. And again, you see a little more of the landscaping and kind of that amenity and stormwater measure that we would integrate around the front of the building. Looking at some of the sustainability concepts, this is very similar to what we talked about before. We're still maintaining many of these strategies and developing them further as we move into the next phase of development. But with the integrated stormwater measure like we talked about, there's a clear opportunity to use that to make that amenity and a functional benefit. We've got the landscape buffers off of Civic Boulevard. And then the durable materials around the building, but also because of the type of use this building is, we're able to have a much lower window to wall ratio than you would have in like an office building, for example. And so we've got a really high performance building envelope that utilizes materials wisely. We've got a solar PV ready rooftop with a tremendous amount of building area that could be utilized for that, along with a higher solar reflectance roof membrane, which will help keep the heat off the building. We are using potential for clear story daylighting to try to bring light into those inboard spaces that are a little more buried within the footprint of the building. And then the second floor of general services has that skinny footprint so that the offices there have access to daylight and views through those office spaces. Same way that labs administration team has their offices located on the south end of the building where each office does have access to a window and access to views out. Now take it back to Dave.

So many parts and pieces, as you can see. Just real quick, a slide here to show you a cost summary view. Our soft costs were captured in this first gray column, FY25 and 26. That includes design fees, things like the geotechnical investigation on site to see what sort of rock we might have out there. construction management firm that's been helping us with pre-construction so far. Moving to the green column, in future years, the CIP's anticipating 60 million in 28, and 140 million in 29, to get to our total number there, the overall project budget, the 200 million number. That does include design contingencies and escalation that we're accounting for with the unknowns and uncertainties in the world and various things going on, inflation and that sort of thing. And then to arrive at our total project cost there, the 214. A quick view for you of the schedule. We're still more on the left-hand side than we are on the right in the planning and design phase. So we'll be continuing on with CPL with design continuing into late next year, about this time of year in 27. We will be working with a construction management firm, so the bidding green section there is a little bit larger because that will be – GMP, Guaranteed Maximum Price Award there. So the CM firm will be working with us to bid those packages in conjunction with the owner and the design firm, working as a team for a more comprehensive approach. And then with the goal of starting construction in late 27, a 24-month duration period of two years puts us into the end of calendar year 29 for construction completion. And that's what we have as far as slides. So we're happy to answer any questions you might have.

Okay, thank you, David. And David, great presentation. Commissioner Evans?

Thank you. I have a few comments and then a few questions. First of all, I think it was... Looks lovely. I really like, I think you've done a great job of taking in consideration good, efficient traffic flow and the love separating the employee from the public side and having direct access from the parking deck to the training facility. I've been coming to the, I carry a drive facility since way before I was a commissioner. And even once I became a commissioner, I can't tell you how many times I have turned in and still cannot figure out which parking lot I need to be in to go inside that building. And then you've got the circle, which is not efficient to even walk through or walk around. So this is not lost on me how much more efficient of a design it is. A couple of questions. I think you said that the square footage of the new training facility is larger than the current Commons building. Can you give me a sense how much larger? Because I don't know the square footage of the existing building. I mean, 10% more, 20% more? I don't need an exact number.

It's something around, I think the existing facility is around 14%. The existing facility, I think, is in the 14 to 15-ish thousand square feet range. And so we're just under 19,000 in the new plan. I think one of the big changes is that if you think about the large space of the commons, so right now it's, you can divide it up into three sections. We're bringing that up to where you could have, I think, up to four, so you'd have two, we would have the equivalent of four of the larger rooms that are there, plus we're bringing in a suite of, I think five extra large training rooms that we brought into that as well. And we have the same two large conference rooms that are there on your left, you know, when you come into the commons now. So I should have written that down and had that on my sheet here. That's okay. I think it's like something from 14-ish to just under 19,000. But that is the biggest change.

There would also be in that. some ability for catering or making food or something?

That's right, yeah. We do have the catering space in there. So not making food, being able to prep food, have food. And then we also have that expanded pre-function space to where you could set up, if you didn't want to set up your food in the catering space, receive it there, you have that pre-function space between the training rooms where you could set that up outside. It's very similar to what you do at a hotel convention center or something like that.

Okay, great. Thank you. Now, I just wanted to understand, so is the General Service Administration building, is it going to replace all the staff that we have at Capitol Boulevard and at the Deponi Drive in that yellow building?

So it would be the space within that sort of pinkish outline, and so it's the yellow, the purple, and the orange? Gotcha, because the orange is storage. That's right. The answer is yes.

Yes, great. Okay, love it. And so the future potential office buildings that surround the area, I believe we talked about the possibility for moving certain functions from downtown to those future buildings. Just trying to refresh my memory of what might end up being there at some point.

Thank you.

The first building is in the plan for 29 and 30 for design. It's going to be bringing back some of the groups that we're displacing with cooperative extension, soil and water, and the USDA, along with tax administration. So they'll be moving out there in that first building.

And I know some folks are going to ask some questions about some of that, so I'll let that.

And it also has some swing space for the future of planning and development services to go into that first building as well. But the first building is sort of in the plan.

One of the questions I have just out of curiosity, the building that we're looking at now, what is the rationale for keeping it mostly one story with a little bit of two story versus building up to three stories and having more things on that property?

So in the GSA and lab being most of it's like warehouse and heavy, you need to be on slab on grade for those kind of things as well as fleet, which make up the larger portion of that program. Whereas where we have the ability to do two-story for office uses, that's where you sort of see it showing up in the GSA section. When we looked at it, we did study in library admin's area if we could make that two-story, but because we would need sort of redundant elevators and stairs, the cost of going up for the amount of square footage we could put on the second floor wasn't worth that value.

Fair enough. Thank you. Okay, and I'm glad you've got it on this slide because my other set of questions was going to be, I thought the last time we talked about this whole campus redo that, We thought Olivia Rainey Library was going to have to move somewhere else. And so now you're saying we don't think that it will? Is that correct?

No. So this is just showing what, well. Just showing where it is at the moment. Oh, yeah. So it shows where it is. I mean, I think as you recall back in January, this project was originally going to be, the GSA portion was going to be limited obligation bonds. And then the library admin was a GO bond. And due to the way those are collateralized, we took an approach of making all limited obligation bond. So when community services came and you added Olivia Rainey to the bond project, it's at the end of the program, so there will be a study to see where Olivia Rainey could be relocated in the future. So it's still... been contemplated for being relocated also.

And so the plan is, and I'm looking at Emily, that everything below, I mean, we still have capacity below that new cut-through street, anticipating housing that we had talked about.

Yes, Commissioner Evans, for the purpose of today's presentation, we're focusing on really the GSA corporate training and the lab. You see the blocks for the future office buildings, which David mentioned, we already have in the plan to construct one of those. So anything you sort of see shaded out, it doesn't mean we're not going to do it. It just means it wasn't part of this phase of the Wake County Office Park project.

I think that is all of my questions for now. Thank you.

Thank you for bringing this forward. So for the years that those buildings are out of commission, what is the plan for the interim? What are we doing in the interim?

Okay. Different answer for different groups. So Board of ENR along with Cooperative Extension, they're gonna be relocated to Cary. We've assumed a lease from the school system in Cary that we're test fitting now for those to move to at the end of next year. in conversations with the rural center for a program, either we're gonna swing them out or they may just move out permanently. And then the soil and water and USDA, that's a program we're gonna be working on in calendar year 2027 to find another temporary lease space for those. They need to be more on the eastern side. because they have a lot of farmers come with their trailers. It's a unique kind of building we're trying to find. So that is in the program to be programming this coming year.

Yeah, because one of the, I mean, I think it's a fabulous plan. And I know when we first started talking about that eventually land was gonna run out in Wake County and we're gonna have to look at redevelopment. It was a radical sort of concept to start talking about publicly. So it's really good to see we're here and we're having the most efficient use of the land that we already own. But when there's a lot of concern about soul and water and a cooperative extension because the folks that visit them, especially soul and water, a lot of them, you know, live way out in the County. And when they come into Raleigh, they're doing multiple trips. So sometimes they're in larger trucks with trailers, which is not conducive to a parking deck. You know, those big farm trucks with the four wheels in the back and, that they would buy seed or fertilizer, whatever they're purchasing in combination with coming into Raleigh and stopping by. You know, some of them are too tall for parking decks, and they're really hard to maneuver. So wherever they go and come back to, I think we need to be concerned about parking those. Because when you talk about moving them in one of those.

There is surface parking that's going to be around and supplement to the parking deck and the expanded parking deck. There will be additional exterior parking as well that just hasn't been vetted yet.

Okay, that's good to know because I've heard from farmers who are concerned about doing multiple trips, especially with gasoline being so expensive that when they come out of their area, they want to be able to... to do more than one thing at a time all right thank you so there will be supplemental parking for the solar and it will be coming back to this site at some point yes okay soil water usda popular extension yeah what time frame is that that they would be back

calendar year 2030 so this phase is supposed to finish by the end of calendar year 29 oh i'm sorry i think at phase one so 2030 is this phase but the construction for the office building that was where they would be going would be about a year and a half after that so it'd be somewhere in calendar year so they'll be out 27 they'll be gone about four years so they'll be out four or five years okay sorry yeah keeping these thank you phase project thank you for that yeah thank you

Okay, Commissioner Waters, Stalin, then Jackson.

Thank you so much for all the hard work. You've done a really great job of using the space and bringing so many departments together. I really appreciate. I just wanted to get in the weeds just a little bit. I just wondered in terms of space, and I don't know if this is at the detailed level that you can share amenities for employees. Could you speak to any rooms or highlights that might benefit employees? And I'm specifically thinking about things like break areas and lactation rooms. I know those are important amenities that employees appreciate.

We have both interior and exterior. I don't know if you want to kind of talk about the exterior and the amenity. We can kind of go into spaces.

From an exterior amenity standpoint, we see the park as being a big amenity. And so how do we increase connections where you can spill out of the building into those park areas? We've met with Parks and Rec to talk about trail connections and things like that. We've also got the stormwater piece that we talked about as being an amenity, not just a functional feature. And so we've got outdoor spaces tied to indoor spaces. We've got break areas for... separate break areas for general services separate break area for library administration that are all i think at least i think we have three total and two of the three are located on an exterior wall with access from the break area out into the to the outdoor space we've got wellness rooms in all the facilities we've got a wellness room also in the corporate training space we've got a wellness room in the located off of the gsa entrance and corporate training space and so we've got your typical amenity space is located within the floor plan, sort of dispersed where they're easily located by everybody. And then we've also got, you know, the training spaces and amenity, you know, that's where if you need a quiet room or a focus room, there's focus rooms also in there to where GSA and library administration also have access to get into those small breakout areas, you know, if the breakout areas in their space are full or they need another quiet space. to where you're not just doing working in your workstation or working in your office, given your opportunities to break out and work elsewhere.

Well, those are great amenities. Any lactation rooms?

Yeah, I may have said mother's room or wellness room, but that's what those function as. So it has a refrigerator, chair, all the counter and all those parts and pieces in each space. So we have at least one of those in general services, one in lab, and one in corporate training.

Okay, I love that because I hate it when moms have to share a space that isn't specifically designated. So I appreciate that. And then also wanted to talk about maybe any of the sensory informed work that may be included. I know ADA compliance is always a part of the design, but any extra sensory designs or other elements that you can think of to highlight?

Yeah, sensory is a little bit of a challenge in a facility with spaces that are this big in some of these locations, like shop spaces and workspaces. Those are tough sensory environments all the way around. And so what we've tried to do in the layout that we have here, and I think I can figure out the laser, let's go around. But what we've tried to do, like I talked about earlier, is really locate the big spaces, more industrial type spaces that generate a lot of noise or have a lot of square footage to where it could be overwhelming. We've located those together so we have smaller space. You can see big rectangles, big colored blocks, and then smaller colored blocks that surround those things. So we've tried to have really clear separation of those big spaces and the small spaces. And then within the office environment, the smaller work spaces have places where people can work If you're in a workstation, you have sort of a way to do that or you can break out to a smaller space. But trying to provide a variety of spaces and a variety of places that people can work so that it can help with sensory issues that are directly related to work spaces. With this not being public facing, we're really focused on the staff experience and trying to provide that ability for staff to be able to break away, small space, big space, and come in and out of a workstation or an office.

Well, thank you. It sounds like you've done a lot of thoughtful work into making this space work for everyone.

Yeah. Commissioner Stallings?

Yes, and I would agree. Thank you all for the thoughtfulness that's gone into this. I think it's going to be great when it's done. I'm concerned about the ag services being really dispersed, and I was curious if you have – is there – It sounds like, from what I've heard from the community, it's sort of a one-stop shopping spot for those ag services and that they're gonna be really dispersed in this process. I'm curious if you engaged with those folks and have ideas about trying to minimize the difficulty or challenge that they may be facing with this design.

We have met with all the groups in depth. It's been a challenge to find We haven't been able to find one facility that would accommodate all of those in the same area. The short-term solution of them being in separate parts of the county potentially, I know that soil and water really needs to be more on the eastern side where we can find some of that large farm parking spaces. Whereas in Cary, based on the other components of cooperative extension that they feel that it's a workable solution for the interim, knowing that the bigger picture will hopefully, will bring them all back together.

You said it's about a four to five year disruption to them? Right. Okay, and then I wanted to go to your sustainability. I didn't see solar panels. I saw it could be solar ready. Is that a cost issue, or is there another reason?

Yeah, there'll be solar panels as the base approach, and then just depending on the market conditions, we obviously want to have them if we can on day one. But as you are aware with the things going on, on a national form, that's going to be hard to predict in 18 months what that's going to look like. So if we can, we will. The goal is to have them on the building, not the parking deck. Because that superstructure is just so costly.

So is the parking deck not viable, even if we had the funds?

Unlimited funds, you can do a lot, but yes. Good answer. We have a lot of roof that we can work with on this building. The overall square footage is 275,000 square feet, so there's quite a bit of roof surface we can generate a lot of.

I'll look forward to hearing more about that.

Thank you.

Okay, Commissioner Jackson.

Thank you. This is exciting. I look forward to following the rest of the journey. I have a question about the square footage that was reduced. Can you just talk a little bit about where and how you all found the ability, what decisions were made, what kind of cuts? How did you find that? Was it 20,000 square feet? And then on the other side of that, I didn't see, did that translate into...

So going back to March, we were at about 225 million, which would be equal to the 200 million you saw on the budget slide. So we got about 25 million out. because of that, between the parking deck and some square footage. The biggest part is the fleet with GSA. By changing that shape from a U into a rectangle with less circulation, in a sense, it was where we were able to pick up almost 10,000 square feet. The others are just... Really just dialing in efficiency when you go from blocks to actually trying to put in furniture and equipment, just some efficiency comes out of that. And we'll continue to do that as we go into design development, that those numbers could also adjust slightly more. But the biggest part of that was one, when we presented back in March, we were looking at a full build out of the parking deck at one time. We were directed to scale that back on this first phase. And then the other part was just really the general services component with the fleet being the biggest part of that squeeze. And then there's a little bit of study with the fleet, or I'm sorry, field services that are going on Deputy Drive, you know, kind of those outbuildings becoming more efficient. And that's also where we reduced some of that footprint in unconditioned space, but still had a footprint. Do you have anything else you want to add, Todd?

Yeah, so no program was pulled out or taken away. It was really working with staff to help find efficiencies where we may have misinterpreted something or thought there were two things when there was one thing. And so working with staff was really helpful to be able to fine tune that as we went from those colored blocks that David mentioned to actually putting equipment and physical things in to where we see, okay, we have this much space between this or that. It was part of that iterative process. And as we continue going forward, we'll continue to look at how we streamline what were just gross, sheer number assumptions as we work through the details and do virtual walkthroughs to really dial that in to what's needed for the staff operation.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And to confirm, these reductions did not result in financial reductions to the budget.

They definitely reduced, we did save costs for all these reductions, so we went from 225 million to just south of 200 million, so yeah, we did save.

Okay, got that. And just going to... Okay, great. And my other question, thank you for clarifying that. My other question is about outdoor seating, outdoor resting. I noticed some chairs outside of the, one of these slides.

Yeah, the overview slide.

Just if you could talk about Yeah, so I see a few of those chairs out there, and given the number of staff, I'm just curious about where there is outdoor resting, outdoor seating, outdoor exploration. I know the trails are there. Is that the extent of the seating right there?

Well, so it spans, you know, this is a pretty long building, so almost like a football field, so there's quite a bit of seating overall. You know, we were trying to, if you think of the McKimmon Center, where you have that sort of outdoor area. If you're in corporate training, you need a break. If the weather's good, you could come out and make those phone calls and so forth, so we want to have that little bit of an experience, give a little landscape buffering to make it, you know,

an amenity along with staff would also have that flexibility if they wanted their not be in their break room but go outside if the weather's appealing so we try to bring some of those components that are successful you know in that kind of corporate meeting space commissioner jackson to maybe clarify on your question so there's some here and i believe the note the other visual with the library administration building has some around the corner right around the corner are you asking for more outdoor seating than what is represented here potentially

Potentially, I one just wanted to understand the scope and scale of it. Thank you for pointing out those two areas. And... And it looks.

I would add.

Oh, I see. So there's some in front of the corporate training building, in front of the library, and the main building.

Yes. And so the specific chairs you see are just to give a flavor for what's possible. We're early in development for that level of detail. So as we go forward, we've identified where there's opportunities. And there's really a tremendous amount of opportunity. being in the office park environment, having the historic road view and other county amenities on the site. And so as we go, we've identified areas where we can do that. And so as we really dig into the details of what that final design is, we're looking for ways to integrate kind of that indoor outdoor experience as much as possible, especially with like industrial uses to the north and bringing people back to the south side where it's a little softer, a little more public, less industrial. And so how do we use these amenity spaces to really tie the overall master plan together? And so we've got spots around really all three program areas. We've got space around the deck. And so as the master plan really takes shape, we'll be able to get into a lot more detail with really specific answers. But I think the sort of highlight will answer your question that there's a lot of opportunity to integrate that. And then our goal is to use that as an employee experience amenity and improvement with the new facility.

Excellent. Yeah, thank you for prioritizing that.

Okay.

Commissioner Thomas.

Thank you. I appreciate that you said that you are early on in development. So my questions really stem from I recently had the opportunity to take active assailant training. And so I'm wondering, especially when we talk about parking deck access or we talk about these outdoor areas, Commissioner Evans did point out separating public and employee side. Thinking about training rooms that have window surrounds, one of the things that we talked about in active assailant training is rooms like this. The only exits and entrances in this room if something is happening are those two doors on that side. That one is not badge access. Anybody can walk in that door. And so do we have the opportunity to look at these since we are still early in development and make sure that our doors have badge access? Or to the kitchen, you can't barricade yourself in that kitchen because that door opens out. And so just thinking about some of these things when we think about our employees being there and safety, and while it's not the most pleasant thing to have to think about, it is something that in our society today we do have to think about. And so I'm just wondering if there's somebody from public safety that has done or gone through active assailant training that has been part of this design or if that is an opportunity because I do want to make sure that our employees can look around their workspace and know that they are safe and feel safe.

As you mentioned, we're early in design. We haven't gotten down to card readers and whatnot, but we do have spaces where there is a separation, intended separation for where the public can only go so far into the facility, and then staff would come through the back part of that conference space for those kind of physical barriers. But we do work with GSA security, as well as we have a security consultant that would look at those plans and evaluate those kind of components of whether it's doors and if they're card reader and where duress buttons go and things like that. So we would be taking a deeper dive as we go through design development.

And I also hope that you'll look at the way doors swing in and out for employees.

That's right. That's correct.

Yeah.

And we use, if you've ever heard the term SEPTED, crime prevention through environmental design, we incorporate that as we really look at the facility. And I think the opportunities here that are unique are that most of the uses are not public facing, and so to David's point, the public doesn't get but a few steps into the building before they are stopped by a hard security zone, if you let them get that far. But the corporate training space is the unique one where that is more public, but the way we've separated the entrances is really, one door you're using to get in, but we've got multiple ways to get out, and also being in the middle of GSA and in the middle of library administration, there's opportunities to create those really internal, hardened, secure zones, whether it's a storage space or another space we can identify for gathering. So I think we've got interesting opportunities, and as we work through the next level design, we'll really dive into that and understand that in cooperation with the staff.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I know that this building makes us feel a little more secure because there is security downstairs. But as we took the training in this building and walked around this building, there are lots of gaps. And this is not an old building. So thank you.

Okay. Thank you, David and David. Great presentation. Thank you. Colleagues. No, not yet. I just got one item that we need to decide on because the design here for our, make sure that we want this on our September 21st consent agenda. So I need to get a confirmation from everyone for that. So everybody good for this being on for September 21st on the consent agenda is the question.

Yes, I'm good with it being on consent. Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Will we see this again? Because I know we get more information a little later because I know this is early in terms of some of these things that we've talked about today.

The next time we'll be in front of you is for the GMP, the Guaranteed Maximum Price of Awards. That will be like ready for construction, ready to start. So that's the next time we'll be in front of you to show you sort of where all those details came together, ready to go.

Okay, so we will have more.

And that will be a little later than this time next year, to give you an idea. Okay. Because the funding's over two years, so we'll have an early sort of starting the site demolition package, and then there'll be a subsequent package potentially for the building. We'll see if it's all one or in two different parts. Okay, thank you. Based on funding.

Yeah. So, questions still on the table? Is everybody good?

Thumbs up.

Sounds good. So we will go ahead and have this on the consent agenda for our September 21st meeting. And to answer Commissioner Evans' question, yes, now is the time. Let's take five. Getting back into gear, Ruffin has a quick update before we get into your presentation.

Good afternoon, I want to stand in the way of strategic planning, because that's always a fun topic. But just really quickly, and this will help me save you sending some information on email, just getting some updates on the water main break and carry associated, a major water line break causing some disruption in the borehole. Yes, that's right. You can drink the bottled water here. I don't have a lot of updates on the specific repairs. We're hearing perhaps tomorrow afternoon, but Cary Wake Med is going on yellow diversion and limiting elective surgeries as abundance of caution. They're doing some preparations associated with that. And our emergency management folks are monitoring along with the town of Cary has activated their emergency operations function and are doing a lot of things to help with that. The road is back open, et cetera, but this was a big water line break. Do not know the specifics other than just what I read in the media from Jamie Revels, who's their utilities director, who's been at this a long time. They have some aging systems. This, I believe, was an older facility, but I do not know officially what the answer is. I don't think there was something specific. So lots of responses. Hopefully, we get repaired quickly. Just wanted to pass that along. Thank you so much, Ruffin.

And we are now moving to our third and final item on today's agenda at this time. And I'd love to invite Jason Horton to the podium. And he's there and geared and ready to go. So, Jason, we turn it over to you.

Thank you, Chair Myall. Good afternoon, or it's getting close to good evening, commissioners. The topic that I have for you today is a continuation of our discussion that we started at the retreat back in late August. In that retreat, we had two broad topics. One was about the financial and budget outlook. The second part of the day was about strategic plan. And I would describe the strategic plan as two subparts. One is kind of an update as to where we are. And then the second part was about Emerging or potential new areas that we may need to look at gaps that we may exist in our strategic plan. We're about two years into that plan and I came to you at an earlier work session and talked about our strategic plan being a living document. We are preparing to start making some edits to our plan, but we want to do that in a very thoughtful and deliberate way. So when we gathered for our retreat, we wrapped up before we got to that second part of the strategic plan, and so that's where we wanna pick up. But before opening up the floor to that discussion, I think it's important that we reset or kind of pull us back into the moment where we had to drop off. One is whenever we gave the update about the strategic plan, we shared that we are starting to see some successes where we are meeting or exceeding some of our stretch targets. And there's some commonalities that we see around those areas where we have been successful. Some of those are that the goal and the expectations are very clear and that clarity, that direction helps rally staff around a common theme and it drives us closer to success. The other is that areas where we have been successful When one door opens, we go a different path. And so having multiple initiatives that can advance us towards that outcome is very important. Areas where we have more than one ways of accomplishing the goal. And then another area is that we can directly connect those initiatives and sometimes those goals to a department and a department business plan. This is a process as an annual process where we work with departments and we have made a very intentional effort to identify a clear owner, particularly of initiatives, and those departments were asked to incorporate those into their department business plans. That business planning process usually kicks off after the development of a budget, and it takes place in the late summer into early fall. We're in the midst of that process now. But having that clear ownership and that accountability helps drive us towards success. And that's what we're seeing in some of those goals where we're already meeting or exceeding some of those stretch targets that in some cases we did not know if we'd be able to reach. The other part that I would share with you that honestly kind of came up organically in the retreat itself were some of these policy tensions. And if anyone's interested, I have a long list of policy tensions. Every time I identify one, I write another one on a notepad. But these are some that I recall that were discussed in our retreat that we had in late August. And it's important to point out that these tensions are not an either-or choice. Sometimes it's more of a continuum from left to right. And if circumstances change, we may have to slide left or right depending upon, say, resources or ability to influence the change. Some of those tensions that I recall very clearly from our retreat was we had conversations about required services, things that we have to do by general statutes versus services that are discretionary. And while discretionary may mean that they're optional, they are, but those discretionary services often are the things that are the most popular that we see in the county. And those are the services that also can distinguish us among our peers and contribute to a high quality of life in our community. The other tension that I heard was between whether or not goals are advancing towards community-wide benefit versus services that really address the needs of our most vulnerable populations, and where do we fall within that continuum from left to right? We also talked about how some of our goals are very aspirational. And as we get into trying to actually implement those, sometimes those aspirational goals may not always be achievable. And so we sometimes have to move, in this case, from the right side towards the left. And then I recall a short conversation between the county's role in an immediate response versus prevention. So that could include anything from healthcare and behavioral health to public safety, EMS services, and so on. So another tension that I did not have on the list is really around organizational capacity and priorities. And I think it's important to really echo a comment that David Ellis had at the beginning of the retreat when we started talking about strategic plan goals, that the creation of a goal or an initiative doesn't automatically generate new organizational capacities. Often, and when we think about capacity, it's not just the financial resources or the budget, it's also about where staff focus their time, energy, and attention. That if there's a new goal or initiative created, that may mean that we have to prioritize what meetings we go to, what work is at the top of our to-do list. And sometimes those new priorities can compete with existing responsibilities and commitments. The comment that David Ellis shared at the beginning of the retreat was that he challenged you all that if we were to create something new, that we consider other areas that we may be able to deprioritize or potentially take off on the goals. Your strategic plan has 24 goals. That already is a lot, and so the creation of new goals could potentially compete with those. The other point that I would just like to briefly share about capacity is as I look around the organization and talk to different staff, there is not, I've yet to identify folks that have capacity and they're looking for something to do. We still are a very lean organization and so we often have to, it takes us some time to ramp down some and then ramp up new priorities. So if we do create things, it may mean that we prioritize the goals that we have in our plan. Included in your packet is an article done by a professor, I believe she's a professor at North Carolina Central University. David Ellis shared this with those in the county manager's office shortly after our retreat. If you're wondering, there's no relation between David Ellis and Dr. Ellis in this article, even though if you do have time, I would encourage you to ask him later about how they did meet. And it's an interesting story. But in that article, it really talks about, strategic planning is really about capacity. Where, again, are we gonna spend that time? I'm not gonna go into that in more detail, but I would encourage you to take a look at the article. It was very helpful and syncs it up pretty well. And so here is the challenge that I would, or kind of the next steps and what we're looking for out of the conversation today. So if you know or identify areas that we may need to incorporate in our strategic plan, I would ask you if we have consensus among the board on that emerging issue or gap. Share that with us. In the retreat, you may recall a slide that talked about the staff focus teams. When those focus teams get together in the next quarter, we're going to start talking about those edits and we'll bring those edits back to you at a future date. I anticipate that that could happen as early as the end of 2026 or in early 2027. If you have an idea about a potential gap or emerging issue, if you can help us speed up that conversation by sharing the desired outcomes that you all would like to see, that would help us center around what change or impact that you wanna make within the community. And then we'll do that analysis and give you a straw proposal on a goal that you can consider. And then if you adopt that, it'll be incorporated into the strategic plan. So earlier in some conversations, I had shared with you all that the one area that I have received, I would describe as fairly broad consensus was around the aging population in the county. So I wanna set this up and get some clarity around this before we open up to other issues. This is a chart that shows the population change of seniors 65 and older by county for those counties that have a million. This is between 2020 and 2024. Wake County during that period grew by nearly 20%. That puts us second in the country. The other communities that have grown kind of in that range include Collin County, Texas, that is just north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Travis County, Texas, that is the Austin metro area. Duval, Jacksonville. In Orange County, Florida, hopefully I'm not mistaken, I believe that's down in the Tampa Bay area. I'm sorry, Orlando. Orlando, I apologize. Yes, the Orlando area. So North Carolina is represented as well as two counties from Florida and two from Texas. recognizing that we are one of the fastest growing areas for those 65 years or older we take a look around and see what other counties may have and we see an aging plan and so there was some interest by our social services department developing an aging plan we wanted to see what that might look like and so we're taking a very broad view And I'll share some what components that would look like here in a few seconds. But we're also working closely with Central Pines, our council of government. They have a very active role in developing a kind of how we utilize some community development block grants within our community. We're working to develop a clear understanding about what our responsibilities and roles are. And then, as you'll see in the next slides, aging is not just a social services responsibility. There are things that can happen in many different departments. Some things that we may already be doing, so we want to do a broad organizational scan to find out what we're doing. Are there potential gaps? And are there things that we can center around a common aging goal moving forward that would help this population? So when we took a step back and looked at what are some components that could potentially be in an aging plan, we found about eight areas. And so some of those areas include aging in place. Those are to help individuals that are, as they get older, stay in their homes. that may require services to improve accessibility, special assistance. Also, it could be care facilities dispersed throughout the county. We also see that there's care and family support, respite services for those caregivers that may just need a break. I'm not gonna go through each of these bullets, but this is, again, just to give you a broad overview. There are services that we can provide that are specialty for seniors around health and behavioral health. There's also an area where we have a very active responsibility or required service around guardianship and adult protective services. We also utilize, through our partnership with Central Pines, facility monitoring and compliance. There could be things we do around emergency preparedness and disaster needs for particularly those that are, I would say more advanced in age in our community. There's housing programs, there's things that we can do around mobility and transport, either through the county directly or through our partners, community partners, including municipalities or GoTriangle. Two other areas include social connection. The library system, I don't see anybody, they may have stepped out, but the library system has been doing a lot around social isolation and how to promote getting folks that may be have limited social interactions, potentially find that connection in our library facilities. Again, that's leveraging existing resources, and then things we can do around economic security. So again, this is an area where we may have a lot of different roles done by different departments that can all be centered around a goal in our strategic plan around aging. Before I go to the next, let me pause and see if there's any questions so far.

Really just a comment, and I don't know if Tony wants to add anything to it, because we did discuss this at our recent Health and Human Services Board meeting. I don't know if you were there or not, Jason, but we had several resources that were there. And Tony, do you want to speak to what you remember from that? Because I was thinking Central Pines was a really key player in that conversation. Do you mind if she? Right. And I think there was some conversation about should they take more of the lead and us take a supplemental lead given the work that they're already doing there. And I didn't know if Tony wanted to add to that conversation.

Yes. Take a mic, Tony. Thank you. Oh, thank you. They've been part of our conversations. We've had several meetings with Duane and Jason and we invited Central Pines to the table and they've been part of our conversation because in discussing aging in wake county we know that in social services we have mandated programs and we have several mandated programs for safety and we also know that we serve this much of the aging population and that if we are going to have an aging plan for wake county we want to make sure that it encompasses all people aging in Wake County, not just the people that we serve in social services, which is why we wanted to invite Central Pines to the table and hope that they would become a lead. Now, they have an aging plan. Basically, they have it for five different counties. And what we are hoping is to just kind of... With them, develop an aging plan specifically, a long-term 10-year aging plan for Wake County and for the citizens of Wake County that includes all of the partners, Central Pines, Resources for Seniors, as well as the other agencies that we work for. Lee? Oh, Meals on Wheels was also at the meeting, and they do tons of work with the aging population.

Lee or Brooke, do you have anything to add?

This has been one of the Human Services Board's interests.

Good evening or good afternoon, everyone, commissioners. Yeah, so we've been working with Carolina Pines. We've also been working with Meals on Wheels to establish and kind of come in with the additional work that they're already doing to support the whole Wake County. Wake County is just growing and growing, and we want to make sure that we're providing the service to the whole entire community that will support them moving forward for the next five or 10 years on that aging plan.

And I did want to say that Again, because the board is the board for social services as well as public health, as you'll recall in Live Well Wake, one of the populations we identified was vulnerable populations to include the aging population.

All right. So one more slide around this, and just to give you a preview, at a recent, one of our focus team meetings, our Inclusive Prosperity, we actually, I tested the waters with us a little bit, and, oh, I'm sorry.

I was gonna ask about aging. Mr. Anderson is on the same topic that, okay.

I apologize.

No, no, you're fine.

So I'm just wondering, thinking about state agencies and the opportunity maybe for a roadmap or resource guide outside of health and human services because, again, looking at the things you've listed like social interaction, emotional, economic, is there a state agency? I think one of the reasons that we see the growth happening in Texas and in Florida, specifically I know Florida, as I've had to look to the state of Florida for resources for both my grandmother and my mother, they have a division on aging. They have an entire state department on that. So do we know if there are any resources from the state or any of the agencies or cabinets that have that information?

outside of Health and Human Services.

That is the Department on Aging, and Central Pines acts as the Department of Aging within the five-county area, Wake County being one of them. Is that the question?

Thank you. That would be helpful.

Yeah.

Well, what they do is they partner with the different counties. And they actually receive the social services block grant. The money goes to them from the Department on Aging. And then they work with each county to determine how that money will be spent. And in this county, in Wake County, historically what has happened is that that money has gone to resources for seniors. They are the biggest provider. And so most of that money has gone for contracts for resources for seniors. And they provide services as well as Meals on Wheels, and they provide in-home services. For example, we provide APS services, Adult Protective Services, but we know that when we leave and we close that case, the families still might need some in-home services. So we partner with Resources for Seniors and they stay in there and they provide in-home services. And Brooke, you can speak a little bit more to the different programs, but Central Pines really is the intermediary.

Come on up.

Central Pine, from my experience, does not really provide direct resources to citizens in terms of services being provided. So they are, you know, a lot about advocacy, being there for the counties to guide them through aging needs and scenarios, but they're not providing dollars aside from block grant dollars and helping to manage those funds to provide for the needs of the senior population.

That's helpful. Commissioner Evans, did you have a? I know you work with Central Pines, too.

I may be wrong. Central Pines does a lot of different things that I try to keep up, but I believe they identify the ombudsmen that go into the nursing homes and home health care situations, and that's a big part of what they use that grant money for, but Do you know that?

Do y'all know if I've got that right? So I'm not sure that that's not correct. From my knowledge and my experience with Central Pines and resources for seniors, they're more so involved from social services through the block grant, the home and community block grant. So they are providing resources for seniors, is providing respite services, daycare services, in-home aid services, and then a large portion of the block grant funds go to Meals on Wheels. But we are very limited in terms of senior and adult services in terms of what we can provide to seniors in need to make their life healthier, happier, living independently, anything outside of those mandated services and what we can provide people with the block grant funding.

And because they work with the Department on Aging, they do work with an ombudsman's program if there are any complaints. Or if they hear from a senior who is not able to stay in their home safely and the senior needs services, they may call an ombudsman. put them in contact with what is called an ombudsman, and there's a state ombudsman, and there's also an, I'm having a hard time saying the word, ombudsman for every healthcare plan. And so each healthcare plan has one of those ombudsman, and they do the liaison, and they match them up with the correct one. That's really important because another big program that we have is called SA In Home and that program is a Medicaid program and what it does is it really provides in home services designed to keep aging folks safely in their homes. And what it does is it saves the aging population money, it keeps them in their home safely, but it also saves money because it costs a lot more for Medicaid to house someone in a nursing home or in long-term care. So if they can stay in their home safely with mobility equipment, with visits from a social worker, that's a big program that we run.

Thank you. That's helpful. And I asked the question because I've had several community meetings over the last year with the counselors from the town of Nightdale, the town of Wake Forest, and Councilor Stormy Fort in Raleigh with seniors. And they've talked a lot about the social connection and also the employment and workforce development information. And so while I feel like we might have some resources, though limited, around some health and human service things and Medicaid and Aging in Place, we're seeing lots of seniors who still want to work, who still want to have socialization, and not necessarily looking for the medical care or the in-home care, but looking to engage. A lot of folks, a lot of grandparents that are moving here to help take care of their kids in this child care crisis, right? And so just thinking about where we might find some of those resources and programming.

Capital Area Workforce Development has grants that serve senior companies

Awesome. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Addison. Commissioner Stoller.

I was just going to say senior centers, too. A number of our municipalities have senior centers. There are great opportunities for social connection.

That's where we had the community meeting where people are like, the community center in Wake Forest has burnt down twice and been rebuilt. And when it was rebuilt the last time, it's overcapacity. It was overcapacity when it opened. And so they're just like, we need something outside of the senior center. So thank you.

Commissioner Addison, then Commissioner Waters.

Thank you for bringing up about aging since I just turned 65. I'm now in this category. But I think right before the pandemic, we had identified that, you know, we were aging. Our population was aging more than the general other counties in the U.S. And we were going to do a work group on senior services, and the pandemic got that. I'm glad to see that we're back for this. But I personally have been taking care of an elderly person of some variety since 2005. And I think one of the things that gets missed is the stigma of having in-home health. Because even with folks who have the financial resources to private pay it. There's a stigma about getting somebody to come in and help. And then they don't have that support and then they fall. Or they have an accident cooking or something happens that precipitates them to have to go to the hospital. And when you're in the hospital, you have a social worker to help you with the next steps. Well, once you do the next step, then you're on your own. You're back to trying to figure it out by yourself. You're back to calling people. And if you're the family member who's trying to be this advocate, you're overwhelmed because you've got your person to deal with and probably children and a job and all this stuff. So it would be really nice if there's some way... to do some kind of handover from the hospital social worker to some case management outside of that. I know that's not in there, but I think some education on stigma and if you need help in not getting it is really important.

Yeah, I'll share briefly connecting Commissioner Adamson and Commissioner Thomas's comments. In one of the conversations we have in Central Pines, we heard from them say, we're often contacted by folks that are looking for some type of service navigation, whether it's caused by an injury or caused by, hey, I'm starting to see signs that my a loved one may need assistance. And quite honestly, that service navigation really depends on states. And sometimes we are having individuals that are moving to North Carolina and they may be accustomed to a level of service in a different state and they're wondering where that is in North Carolina. It's really determined on a state-by-state basis. And so part of this review, and as we get into next steps, is going to talk about what role do we want to have in the outcome that we want to see for our aging population. And that would help us identify what our next steps are.

Okay, great. Go ahead. You've got another follow-up.

One more comment, then I'll stop. I think our senior centers offer help with tax returns. You know, they have volunteers that come in if you struggle to get your tax returns done. But they don't offer any help with estates. And in my... handling of several estates in the last decade, I've noticed that when I go to do court filings and things of this nature, there's relatively elderly folks down there who are really struggling. They don't know what forms, they don't know how to file it, Anecdotally, I've had folks tell me that they've struggled because they couldn't get to their spouse's income, they couldn't get to their money. So it would be really nice if in our senior centers we offered estate assistance because it is unbelievably complicated. and you need access to your money. I mean, so these are folks who have money who struggle to get to it to pay their everyday bills and get the things filed and just do what you have to do. And attorneys are very, very expensive to help you with these things. So that would be a great service to offer is not legal help, but just this is the process. You know, if there's a will, you do this, you know. sort of like with tax returns so just my two cents worth okay thank you commissioner warders

Last week I had the opportunity to speak to a group through AARP and it was a packed room of seniors who were very active and always looking to engage in information. So I appreciate the attention that is being paid. And I also wanted to lift up a resource, NCDHH, as the Division of Aging is a great resource that highlights at a broader level across the state, of course, programs and services that are available. So, considering the government agencies as well as other non-profit groups that are providing resources, it might be beneficial to just do a bit of a search to see what existing services are already available so there isn't a duplication, but I think this is definitely an area where I'd like to see us focus some additional attention.

Okay, Commissioner Jackson.

Yes, I have a couple of comments and also specific thoughts about the discussion questions. I know you haven't officially put those on the table, but I'd just like to weigh in and say that I definitely agree that the evidence shows that we need to name and prioritize our aging population. The demographics show that, our Live Well Wake plan prioritize seniors. So clearly, as the quote says, the evidence is there for us to do something about it. So I support that. I also support us doing an inventory of really figuring out where the gaps are. These are a nice set of components. to think about, but it would be very valuable in the same way that we're doing our youth inventory to do a senior inventory to really identify where those gaps are. And one of the things that I noticed within Live Well Wake is that oftentimes youth and seniors are together as priority populations in that plan. So I agree with Commissioner Waters. The spectrum of, oh, and by the way, I really appreciate the tensions, summarizing the tensions, great job, that definitely reflects what we were discussing and the spectrum of community-wide benefits and kind of all seniors more broadly versus the most vulnerable seniors, that spectrum is one of the things that I'm thinking about now, particularly as we look at what's on the screen. So when we look at the recommendation that is on the table, the draft, goal language here to live independently, thinking about that spectrum and what Commissioner Adamson said about the stigma of in-home care, I'd like us to think about something like Live Well. It goes with our Live Well plan. It's more broad than just independence. It prioritizes that you can live well and have dependents coming into your home and helping you. So that's just my immediate feedback there. I'd like to, well, I'll stop. I have other questions on the following questions, what other comments, but in general, I think we should continue to think about this as broadly as we can, take an inventory to really identify where our gaps are and consider a more broader goal language than just living independently.

Okay, Commissioner Evans. Then Commissioner Waters.

Yes, it's... Commissioner, Vice Chair Jackson moved us on to this conversation I did want to weigh in. I agree. I don't think living independently is the goal for everyone. We want everybody who can to be able to live independently. So I've been thinking about this, you know, overnight, and I can't come up with quite the right phrasing. I thought about the word thrive, but even then it's thrive to their benefit. highest capacity, you know, each senior is a different place. And I don't know if just the word thrive, you know, what the resources they need to thrive. But anyway, I want to put that out there because it's going to be Yeah, combination of some of them can leave live independently. Others cannot and are going to need to be either having home health care or having a going into a facility. But nonetheless, we want to make sure they are thriving, whichever environment they're in. So Those are my thoughts on that. And I hadn't quite come up with quite the right phrase, but hopefully that's somewhat helpful.

Yeah, great. Okay, Commissioner Waters.

During my time with the city of Raleigh, one of the phrases that was often lifted up was aging in place, and that seemed to capture... the essence of people being able to stay within their own homes and communities. So that was just one term that was popular during that time. And I'd also like to see about the ability to include, the opportunity to include lifting up accessibility in this goal language to ensure that we are intentional about resources that might be needed to ensure that people can age in place or whatever terminology we ultimately decide to do. But I think accessibility is a part of that conversation.

Thank you. Okay, Jason, I think everybody.

If I can share, we actually started having conversations about what something might look like around aging. And the first question, the first version up here at the top of, that was the prompt that we had for our inclusive prosperity group. And we ended up having about a 45 minute to an hour long conversation just around is live independently the right term? And we came up with different versions and including like, well, there may be some folks that wanna live independently, but there may be others that want to live with family and with, please don't tell my mother-in-law. I love her to death. But there may be some individuals that wanna live with their family. Is live independently the right term? We also talk about, we want seniors to have a high quality of life. We have an existing quality of life goal that might create confusion. Where we kind of drew the line of the conversation is seniors feel safe and fulfilled. That was kind of where we, but again, we're not sure that that's the right terminology. So the question for you is, I think, call that the call uh... kind of where we are and i think the conversation you all have had it is is really does tell well with some of the the things that set us up for success there are multiple ways looking at all those list of things that we can address aging uh... there's multiple different ways that we can look at that what we could use i think i what i'm hearing is consistent we want to do something for our aging population as vice chair jackson the evidence shows it What we are looking for is that clarity around a goal or what the outcome is that we want to see. And Vice Chair Jackson also mentioned about the tensions. Are we looking at the community as a whole versus the most vulnerable populations? If you have direction on that, we can take that back and you may be able to help us speed up that process of narrowing down on a draft that we can bring back to you all for consideration.

Okay, Commissioner Adamson, then Commissioner Jackson.

I do agree that live independently may not be everybody's goal. Because I personally have been trying to figure out where I'm going next since I'm on my own now. And some of those places look like summer camp. I'm like, well, I run out of money if I move in them now. I mean, you know, but the other... So I agree it should be more what you want for yourself. And if live independently is that it, then that's it. But I think the other thing that was not addressed is is there places to go? And one of the reasons I've started looking is places have eight and 10 year long wait lists. And that's, you know, so the quality of facilities, is there enough? It's like daycare. You know, is there enough out there to meet the needs as folks grow older when they cannot or choose to leave their homes?

Okay, Commissioner Jackson. Then Commissioner Thomason.

I just want to, I'll pass, actually.

Okay. Are you good?

Are you sure?

Okay. I am thinking about the percentage, but still looking at the live independently, and I like what you've suggested, actually, about the safe and fulfilled. When I read it and it says community connections needed to live safe and fulfilled or be safe and fulfilled, Because living independently makes me think to Commissioner Adamson's last comment just about housing, just about where you're actually living, where you sleep every day, where you live, the roof over your head, as opposed to, I think the safe and fulfilled really talks more to the economic opportunity, the workforce development, the you know, social and emotional interactions, all of that could be encompassed there with that phrase versus live independently, I think, still, or even aging in place, which I love that term, and I've seen the popularity of that, still makes me think of specifically only housing when I read it.

Any other? Yes, Commissioner Evans.

Well, I just want to share one last thought. I'm good with warning all our older folks to feel safe, for sure. I'm waffling on the fulfilled word. I don't know if that's exactly, when I'm 90, whether I want to feel fulfilled. I want to feel like I have adequate care and can do the best that I can with whatever I have to work with, but I don't know that I'd call that fulfilled. fulfilled so i'm not sure like i said i'm still trying to think about thriving or something i wouldn't want us to limit us to the term aging in place because that's the same kind of thing where we're saying the goal is for everybody to stay in their own home and you know i've watched several of my elderly relatives get to a situation where that just wasn't an appropriate think that they needed to be somewhere with full-time supervision so while that could be the right thing for some people won't be the right thing for everyone so i wouldn't want that to be the terminology we lose i'd like for it to be more generic but um thriving maybe but not filled i think i'm getting past that point in my life if i'm not fulfilled by now then just forget it

Commissioner Jackson.

Do we have to decide on the words today?

You do not. The more clarity you can provide us, the faster we may be able to bring you back a recommended draft. Okay.

Well, I think we could think on it and get back to you in a week or so, or would you prefer us to come up?

You can email me anytime.

All right. I'm just thinking, well. My brain is a little overdone at this point, but I really do like the safe part.

And doing the best we can. Now that we can't be fulfilled, yes, that'd be great. All right, colleagues, bring it home.

Okay.

Any percentage suggestions, Jason?

Commissioner Jackson. I would suggest if we understand the outcome, then we'll start thinking about how we might measure it. And then we establish a baseline, then we identify the stretch target. So there's a progression that we can go. so right now where we are is we need to figure out what that right narrative is and what we're trying to achieve and then how yeah then we get to how we measure okay thank you yeah okay i know it's hard to follow up behind that one go ahead

Well, I just want to lift up the original suggestion that I had, which was live well, because we have a live well wake plan that specifically names seniors and a number of senior partners that that committee did in terms of looking at inventory. So I think that well allows it to be relative. If you're well, you're safe. If you're well, you're fulfilled on some level. So I just want to lift that up, especially since we have a Live Well, Wake plan that specifically names seniors. I have a question, though. Jason, can you walk me through the thought process of creating a brand new goal that names seniors? Yes. as opposed to including initiatives within existing goals? Like for example, the nine out of 10 residents will share that they find and enjoy enriching experience that supports the quality of life that you just mentioned, our quality of life goal. So how did you all process through integrating that priority population into existing goals versus naming it as its own goal?

Yeah, I would say it's more of a chicken or the egg thing. And so what I'm doing is responding to an earlier feedback about that we may need to do something about aging. To your point, we could actually create initiatives and embed them throughout existing goals and not create a different goal. And then we could potentially use this language to help if we were to create an aging plan at some point in the future. This could help center kind of that direction of what we're trying to achieve with the aging plan. But then the initiatives could be dispersed. There's no right or wrong answer to this as to whether or not it has to be a goal versus it could be dispersed initiatives through existing goals.

Yes, well I'm glad you said that because I totally agree there is no right or wrong, it's just a matter of balancing the decision of adding a new goal versus embedding in the others. So if it's okay, can I move us to the next question? About emerging priorities. That's my question.

I'll refer to the chair if you all are comfortable. I'll go back to what Commissioner Adams just asked. So the question is, have we cleared the question that was before us before we move on to the next one?

spend any time with our wordsmithing.

If everybody's good, then I'm good to keep moving. I mean, you know, because time is not on our side.

What I'll share is what I'm sensing or hearing from the conversation today, there is consensus for us to move forward. You all have given me and I've written down some of the feedback you have shared. What we can do is go back and start taking another stab at this and then come back with a draft language that checks as many of the boxes as we can, and we can move to the next question.

Okay, great. Yeah, go ahead.

I do want to make one quick comment before we move on. There seems to be an assumption that if the senior moves into a facility, they're safe. I don't think that's the correct assumption. Because with my grandparents, I had to deal with Medicaid nursing homes. And I can tell you, and that was years ago, like 30, before they cut rates like they have now. And there was nothing safe about the place they were. It was just the only option. So I think if somebody, we can't say, okay, you're going into assisted living, you're fine. Especially if it's a Medicaid type situation. Because if it had been a dog kennel, it would have been shut down. Just my opinion.

Okay, thank you. Jason, go ahead and move on to the next one.

All right, our next slide is, are there other emerging issues or gaps that you believe need attention? And as we're going through that, are there potentials that we could refine existing goal language to capture those issues rather than creating new goals?

All right. Thank you.

Your turn. Yes. All right.

I ask my colleagues to bear with me as I share where I think you all know exactly where I'm going. I want to acknowledge that first, Jason, like you said, there is the question of creating a whole new goal. versus integrating into existing goals, new initiatives. And this is around the cultural arts, the creative economy. And I want to start with where our quote started, the evidence that demands it. You mentioned social connections for seniors. Our Live Well plan also mentions youth and seniors. But this is really for everyone. We know that there is a loneliness epidemic and isolation, anxiety, depression, just overall well-being. And it's been proven that the creative economy and the arts, cultural arts helps to address that. So I would appeal to my colleagues for us to continue thinking about how do we build from the plan that we received, a countywide cultural creative economy plan, which we have not yet discussed as a full board. I would ask that we bring that cultivating creativity plan with ideas and options that were laid out and figure out how do we integrate it into the plan. One option, I found inclusive prosperity goals, land use goals, lifelong learning goals that already exist that it can be integrated in, and I see an opportunity to create its own goal given that it spans lifelong, you know, from cradle to grave, really, and the way that impacts our individual well-being, our community well-being, our economic development. So that's an area that I believe... is more than just an emerging priority, but it's something that I would like to see us name, especially given how hard it is these days. I mean, there's stressors coming from every rich way. We've got basic needs that we have to think about, like we talked about earlier, housing and food and health and just, people trying to hold it together. And I think this would signal to our community that while we're focusing on those basic needs, we understand that there is an opportunity to keep an eye on what it means to live well, not to overly use that term. So that's my appeal. I would like to talk more about how it could fit into three different areas of our plan or more. I mean, public safety it fits in. All the different ways that it fits in or ideally create a strategic goal that can live over time where initiatives iterate and change.

Okay, thank you. Commissioner Waters and then Commissioner Thomas.

So can we ask how many people support that? Yes.

Awesome.

Should I pause for the conversation around that topic or I have a completely different?

No.

Well, I will continue to lift up my desire and hope for us to see accessibility lifted up in the strategic plan, whether that is through an existing goal, which I think we've had some discussion about opportunities where accessibility can be lifted up. I think it is something that... spans all demographics, and so I'll continue to put that as a major ask for accessibility to be highlighted someplace in the strategic plan as we have lots of goals that are important to our neighbors, but if someone can't access the resources, then that puts limitations, so I'll continue to lift up my desire to see accessibility noted in the strategic plan, thank you.

Commissioner Thomas.

My question was to Commissioner Jackson. You said three areas or a new goal. So do you want three areas or a new goal? I'm just trying to.

Oh, I see pros and cons either way. I would like to discuss it. I appreciate that. Because we're looking at potentially like language or what that would look like. Ideally, right now, if I were asked what my ideal would, I would say a new goal because the goal is going to last over time and the initiatives allow us to iterate annually for what we're able to take on. Okay, thank you. In the same way, we're advocating for a new goal for aging. Thank you.

Okay, any other comments? Okay, Jason, back to you.

So I will say, this is my last slide, and this is not like a typical work session item. This is a little bit more like the retreat conversation. The question I would have back on if a new creative economy goal is what would the outcome that you may want to see from that goal? That way, if I were to take it back, we might be able to, again, fast track what a draft language might look like.

Yes, I can. Do you want to weigh in? I feel like I saw a hand go up.

No? Commissioner Addison went up, but he was proposing a question, so I would give you a chance to.

Yeah, so in terms of, I wouldn't want to take that on now. I would want to say, let me, follow up with you and send that to you. But essentially, it's the realm of... On the spectrum of tension, this would be more broad than specific in terms of who we're reaching. So similar language that... I don't know, throughout the lifespan that there would be, I don't know, let me get back to you because it's both supporting the entrepreneurs that create the art and the cultural experiences as well as those who benefit from it and also how it adds to the resource and well-being of our community. So those are the kind of major points that I would be thinking about in a very specific draft goal. But if you're asking me to draft one, I'm happy to and I will send it around for consideration. I didn't go there because I wanted to consider whether you all thought it'd be better to integrate it or have a new goal, but very happy and I would suggest that we go with a new goal and I'll offer that language, thank you.

And if I may clarify, I would welcome to, if you have a draft goal in mind, that is not necessarily my question. If you have an outcome that you would, then we can start drafting some examples for the board consideration.

Okay.

So the outcome is more of what we may, where we could use guidance.

Okay. Note it.

Okay. I'll go.

Commissioner, I'll just say I'll go back to the cultivating creativity plan as a source for thinking about outcomes in a way that's broad enough that it can stick with us over time.

OK. OK, Commissioner Anderson and then Commissioner Waters.

Okay, I think we need to be careful about adding a lot of goals because one of the reasons we went to this is because we had all these goals and all these actions that were just too much to get done. But now I would support incorporating it in strategies, the arts and how they play into the overall health of the county from economic to recreation for seniors to therapy and, you know, because art therapy is very helpful in the mental health space. So I think it would be good to integrate it into the rest of our strategies. And the same thing with accessibility. Because especially with aging and youth stuff, if we have a strategy but it's not accessible to everybody, the action with that strategy, then we're missing people. So I guess I think... you know, like with the libraries where we just did this stuff with the earphones and, you know, did all the training for the staff to be more accommodating of people who are neurodiverse and maybe interact with the world a little differently than others. So I personally wouldn't think a whole goal would be that But when we say we want to make more library usage or whatever comes with that, then we would incorporate into that how to work with folks with disabilities, whether it's physical, emotional, or whatever their need is. That also helps us get to our overall strategy if we work with folks who are typically left out of those things, if that makes sense.

I believe so.

That's my thought.

Okay. Thank you. Ralph, you want to chime in, then I'll come back to Commissioner Warderson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to add a few thoughts for this particular discussion. Obviously, anytime you look at your strategic plan, that represents a set of priorities. We all know that those priorities are a reflection of the board's policy direction, where that's gonna go. It's just sort of a reminder that that, and it's actually linked to the article that's in your materials, Additional strategic planning doesn't necessarily generate additional capacity. So I know we've talked about this a little bit before. Just encourage the group to think about if you're going to add additional goals, whatever they are, then what are some other things that need to not occur? So it's not a one-for-one and those things. I'm not trying to suggest that the ideas aren't. fantastic, they are all super valuable, similar to the legislative discussion. I just, there is a certain amount of capacity we have, how do we wanna allocate that? I think all of us on the staff would be happy to do that. But we would like to hear some board reaction, I think, to also what's your priority in that work. So if we wanna work on any of those things, absolutely can do that. Just need to know what's the trade-off.

Thank you. Commissioner Waters, let me go to her, then I'll come back to you.

Thank you, Ruffin, for highlighting capacity. I know that was in the early part of the slides, and I appreciate Commissioner Adamson lifting up accessibility as well. And I support the creative economy and serve as the liaison. I did want to really note, if the ask is for a creative economy to come back with some measurable benefits and what that could look like. I'd like to also have the same level of consideration around accessibility as that has been an area that I've been advocating for for a while, but if there's a way to embed, I just don't want accessibility to get lost in the conversation as I completely support the creative economy and I just wanna also advocate for equal consideration as we move forward with next steps.

Okay. Commissioner Jackson, then Commissioner Thomas.

Two things. Ruffin, I hear you loud and clear reiterating what was shared at the beginning. And my question back to you all as staff is when this goal was presented as a new goal, what recommendations did you all have for what to stop implementing your own recommendation? How are you all thinking about that? And then I can see how this goal that is offered could even be broader. Right now it's very specific to 65 year olds, but I could see a goal that says increase the percentage of youth and adults who report having the resources, youth, adults, and seniors, but people, resources, services, and community connections to live well. So I could see this goal even made more broad to include, again, our Live Well plan, names youth and seniors. So I can see how this, if we're gonna add a goal, could even incorporate the creative economy and the cultural arts space. So that's my comment question. Where did you all think about cutting goals to create capacity for this goal?

We have not gotten that far as far as would we cut a goal. That was part of we may come back to you with areas where we've not been able to find capacity or areas where we have not been able to find measurable impacts or the initiatives just seem to be bare. And so we have not gotten to that point as far as cutting out specific initiatives. That's part one. The other thing I would share with you is I want to call back to, for the goals of where we have been able to make meaningful progress, we've had clear understanding about the expectations. And I've seen this before in other plans, not necessarily our strategic plan and other plans, but where the definition of the target audience gets wider and wider and wider. And when it does, does it become as clear? And that can affect the success of whether or not we're making a measurable impact. And so sometimes naming your target audience will help drive a result.

Okay, thank you, Jason. Then Commissioner Thomas, and I think that what we're trying to get to is to give staff an opportunity to review our concerns, then bring it back to us, then for clarification. I think that's where the direction we seem to sound like we're heading. So, Commissioner Thomas.

Well, I just had a follow-up.

I wanted to answer the question as well. Go ahead, Commissioner Jackson.

Yeah, please.

I'm losing track of what I'm answering, but I'll give you a shot.

Oh, the question was, as you all presented this goal, using your advice and consideration, where did you all think about cutting?

See, what I would suggest is that the choice to bring back aging was a result of a collective response from the group that had many of the members talking about that particular topic. That's my understanding. And no, to Jason's point, we haven't said that there's a trade-off associated with that. The point whether it's it doesn't matter if it's aging or the cultural economy or accessibility or any of the other goals. I don't want to suggest the comment is so one to one. What I'm just suggesting is that the more things we add to the plan the more things that the staff will have to juggle to not do something else. I don't want to get into a statement of trade-off one from another. I get what your question is. I totally understand that.

And I want, just, I think I can... I know I've had conversations with other commissioners, fully understand capacity, like completely understand capacity, which is why I brought forth the question of integrating into existing goals or creating a new goal. But I would like us to explore the conversation fully. We heed the warnings and the concerns. I don't want that to get in the way of our good thinking and our exploration of what could be So, yeah, I look forward to the conversations and I take on the ask to think about outcomes and I'll share it for us to continue this conversation as we narrow it down.

Thank you. Commissioner Thomas.

Okay, so I just have a couple of things. One, I would like, to your question, Commissioner Jackson, I would like to see data from the staff and then I would suggest or offer that we prioritize what goals we want to see accomplished. This is not a strategic plan that was created by the staff. It was created by the commissioners. And so it's us to prioritize what we would like to see. But I think having the data and information from Jason that shows us what goals have been progressing, what goals might need a little more massaging, what is taking up staff time, like some of that data might help us make a more informed decision. I don't think that it's staff's job or duty even to make the decision on where to cut staff and move folks. The strategic plan was created by the commissioners and I think that it's us to make the priority determinations. The other thing is that I did ask about a new goal versus three areas. And I heard Commissioner Waters, I think I heard you say that you didn't have a preference. You just wanted to make sure that your subject matter was lifted up, right? As opposed to, I think when I asked Commissioner Jackson, you said right now your preference would be a new goal. And my preference would be to incorporate it into things that we already have. I think that when we look at things like inclusive prosperity, both of those things could fit. I think when we look at foundations of service, those things could fit. And we could create goals with metrics into things we already have instead of coming up with an entirely new header. And that's just me as one commissioner's opinion. The last thing I would ask is I know, Commissioner Jackson, you had talked about that this comes from the cultural arts plan and how we kind of move with that. And that has been a while. And so I'm just wondering when you say fully explore, you want to make sure that we fully explore. I would just like to know what that looks like to you so that – we could attempt to meet an expectation, but I don't know what fully exploring this looks like to you and thinking of additional conversations like where and when and in what format would you like to see those conversations so that we are fully exploring to your satisfaction?

Yes, yes, both great points. To your first point, we did have conversation at our strategic planning session about where we're meeting goals, where some things are unclear and we might wanna take them off. I was actually surprised that we didn't pick up that part of the conversation because we've already started, as Ruffin and you have pointed out, we've already started kind of chipping away in things that might naturally fall off because they're unclear or ambiguous or for all the reasons. So I would like to pick back up on that conversation because we did talk about even goals that have been met and exceeded. So I think that that is part of the conversation that we need to bring back to your point because it is our decision and staff was going to come back to us with some of that thought. Fully explore. Fully explore for me is fully explore the value add, the value proposition to creative economy. That includes the cultural, excuse me y'all, that includes the cultivating creativity plan. I think we could have a small work session talking about what's in that plan. I think we could have small groups of commissioners tackling that. I just know we hadn't had a conversation about that plan, but I don't want to suggest that that plan is the end all, be all. It's just an important input because, again, this is much bigger than just that plan. This is loneliness, anxiety, mental health, behavioral health more broadly. So I don't remember exactly when I said fully explore, but I would like us to fully explore this priority as a county, as a board, to integrate somewhere into the plan.

Okay, that's helpful. And I asked the question about what it means to you to fully explore and what those conversations could look like and what the mechanism for those conversations are. And I appreciate that you said small groups. I'm happy. I know Michael James and I have had several conversations about how it fits into the Growth, Sustainability, Economic Development Committee and to have that conversation potentially in a committee. And so if Michael James and Jason Commissioner Jackson would get together I'm happy as chair of that committee to put an agenda item together that would satisfy what it looks like to you to fully explore if that looks like a smaller group conversation and to say smaller group smaller group is a committee meeting is open to all commissioners it's just not the work session agenda where we're trying to move things to a board meeting's consent or regular agenda vote. And so I'm not sure what Michael James and Jason think about that opportunity to have that at the next committee meeting or at a future committee meeting for our committee. looking at what your expectation is to fully explore, adding some goals. And if you could come to that conversation with what you think goals and metrics could look like for yours, that would be helpful. And I think similar, Commissioner Waters, I'm not sure if it fits into growth and sustainability, but it could. And so I'm just trying to figure out the best way for us to have a conversation, especially since you mentioned that you wanted us as a group to I don't want to keep using that, but that's the term you use to fully explore it, right?

So I'm just trying to figure out what that looks like. Let's talk about the timeline of this process versus the committee meetings. I think we've discussed discussing it in committee, and I think that would be great. When I take a look at, like in my notes here, I have integrating into inclusive prosperity, which naturally fits into that committee, but also land use, also lifelong learning. So it could also be part of our education. So it includes a number of different areas, very similar to aging. It's one of those things that are embedded across. So I'm happy to have it as part of the growth and sustainability conversation. but don't want it to be narrowly focused on just that part of the value proposition.

Thank you. That's helpful. Michael James, is that helpful to you to understand? We've had several conversations and have tried to put it on the agenda. Michael James and I have tried to figure out how to put it on the agenda, but we have not had the clarity that you just gave around it potentially being added to goals that we already have in the strategic plan. It was just kind of a nebulous idea, like, what are we going to do about cultural arts, right? And so I think it's a good opportunity, if that makes sense to you, Michael James, for us to be able to add it to an agenda after a conversation with Commissioner Jackson, who will bring specific metrics, and Jason, who could potentially put it into places in the strategic plan.

Yes, thank you, Commissioner Thomas. So in anticipation of this topic, we have reserved time on the next committee meeting for discussion on this. the clarity that you were just talking about would be very helpful for us to bring the committee the information that you're interested in. So I would be supportive of that approach and we can refine that or talk a little more about it. But overall, I think that would be.

Okay.

And Jason, do you think that that could work for you as well to have a conversation with the three of you so that we could bring that to the committee?

Absolutely, and we could provide some framework for consideration at the committee meeting on next steps.

Thank you, and I don't want, Commissioner Waters, I don't want you to feel like an afterthought or an aside. I was just trying to answer or get to what Commissioner Jackson was saying when she mentioned that she wanted to fully explore so that we didn't necessarily have to think that, oh, it has to be on another work session agenda or what the timeline could look like. So if you want to also... have a conversation with Jason and Michael James so that it could be a conversation that we have in the next committee. If that would be helpful to you to be incorporated in the strategic plan, I would appreciate that as well.

Okay, sound like y'all have solved this concern. Well, she was going to answer me, I think. Yeah, well, you got a comment?

I just wanted to say I appreciate you giving the attention as well because I was beginning to wonder if it would get lost in the conversation and the advocacy, so I appreciate the space.

Yeah, because bringing it through the committee, it sounds like the best approach in terms of trying to get this addressed, and that way everybody could attend that committee meeting, and that way we can get it addressed and get it on a lot sooner.

I'm sorry, y'all, I have got to get to another meeting and Apex, but is that something we want to do in all committees?

Well, I mean, each committee is open as a chair. Each one of you guys chair different committees, so it's up to you guys to turn what y'all bring. It's up to y'all what you bring to your committees.

Would that be helpful? Yeah.

As we wrap up, because I do want to be all wrapping up too, what is the timeline? Can you remind us of the timeline? of when these decisions, is there a timeline?

Well, that's what she was saying, that she was looking at bringing it forth in her next committee meeting.

I'm talking about the strategic planning decisions with Jason.

Yeah, well, that would depend on what comes out of the committee in terms of where he will bring it forth. We need to clear here.

There's two parts. One is we could have these conversations in the staff internal teams and bring back options to you all. We could also dovetail that with the committee meetings um what i foresee happening is that if we can get together on what either the goals or the initiatives look like we could come back in late 2026 or in early 2027 with a package of edits to the strategic plan particularly at that focus level and goal level the the initiatives are a little more fluid and so we can incorporate those at various times of the year

okay uh can i just add that my committee meeting is october 26th so that's the deadline that you're shooting for for your goals to with jason and michael james okay so if everybody's good because i know that the time is of the essence you you got a meeting you're trying to get to and don't want and you got one i know you got got the little ones you try to get to so if there's nothing else uh commission adamson close the door

Okay. Roughing at our next Public Safety Committee meeting, it might be great to talk about how disabilities are handled at the detention center and in the justice system. Sure. Because I know that's been a really hot topic for a lot of issues. Would you be comfortable with that? Yeah, let's do that.

Okay, because it sounds like the committee is going to be our best avenue here to get this thing addressed as soon as possible. Okay. Long day. Yes, thank you, everybody. So before everybody heads out, meeting adjourned.