Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Exactly. This one's working. All right, folks. Good evening. Good evening. Uh welcome to those in the crowd. Uh this is our work session for today, February 24th, for the town of Waxall. Uh we'll go ahead and ask for an adoption of tonight's agenda. Are there any amendments or adjustments to the agenda tonight? Hearing none, then can I get a motion to adopt tonight's agenda? So move. All in favor?

Any opposed? Hearing none, this motion carries. Next we will go to the adoption of proclamation in support of Mr. the young Mr. Charlie Rose. Would anyone like to read this or shall I? Hearing no volunteers. Very well. This is a proclamation honoring Mr. Charlie Rose, Charlie E. Rose, a resident of the area here around Waxaw. Um, I believe he officially lives in Weddington, but he has a Waxaw zip code, so we're honoring him nonetheless. He is turning the ripe young age of 100 this weekend, and he had the dubious honor of serving in World War II in the Pacific Theater. So, we have a proclamation honoring the service of Major Charles E. Rose. Whereas on February 28th, 1926, Major Charles E. Rose was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and has lived his life defined by courage, dedication, and service to his country and community. Whereas Major Rose enlisted in the United States Navy in 1943 and honorably served as a singleman aboard the USS Bellavar APA34 during World War II participating in key operations in the Asia-Pacific theater including the battles of Saipan, Guam, Langen Gulf, Euoima and the Philippine Liberation. Whereas following the honorable discharge from the Navy in December 1945, Major Rose continued his commitment to our nation by joining the United States Army in 1946 as a radio man serving in Germany and Korea in addition to serving the Third Armored

Cavalry Regiment, 9inth Cavalry Regiment, 68th Armor, and the 39th Infantry Regiment over his career. Whereas Major Rose completed officer candidate school in 1953 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant, later rising through the ranks to major and served as a commanding officer of the headquarters and headquarters troop of the first experimental regiment at the combat development experimentation center in Fort California. Whereas after retiring from military service in 1966, Major Rose continued serving others by earning his teaching credential and dedicating 21 years to teaching special education, positively impacting the lives of many students. Whereas Major Rose has continued to exemplify the values of service to community, recently relocating to Waxaw to be near his family and actively participating in the Veterans Coffee House. Whereas the town of Waxaw, North Carolina is honored to recognize Major Major Charles E. Rose for his distinguished military career, lifelong service, and commitment to improving the lives of others. And now, therefore, be it proclaimed that I, Robert Joseph Murray III, mayor of the town of Waxaw, on behalf of the Waxaw Board of Commissioners and the citizens of the wonderful town of Waxaw, do hereby honor Major Charles E. Rose for his distinguished military service, his dedication to education, and his continued contributions to the community, and extend our deepest gratitude and appreciation for his lifetime of service. Duly adopted and effective this 24th day of February, 2026.

Can I get a motion to adopt proclamation pro 2026 003 in support of Charles Rose Day? I like to so move. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Hearing none. This motion is adopted and this proclamation now holds. Thank you. All righty. Next up, we have the discussion for the cost to serve analysis and scope expansion. Scott and Kevin, I guess. Go ahead and kick it off, Scott.

We have u a guest this evening, uh Matt Nuncker, who did the original study. Uh you folks back in November, I believe, asked for him to come back. So, I'm going to turn this over to Kevin and Matt um who will um help with the discussion. Uh you should have things in your packet, but uh they'll try to frame some things for you and uh then it'll be y'alls to discuss from that point on. Sound good? Sounds good. So, feel free to interrupt and chime in with questions. So, this is for the board's education so we all know what's going on and understand these numbers and how they apply to all of us. I'll sit back.

Thanks.

Thanks, y'all. Um, real quick, um, I was curious before the meeting, I ran some quick numbers. Um, we have, regardless of future annexations, right now we have about 3,000 acres of land that is in the city that we currently do not have any development approved development plans for. Um, that's about 36 to 37% of the city's land right now. Um, so that's undeveloped or underdeveloped. majority of it is EC which is highly flexible. Um but I think and we have a some other properties as well that could redevelop. So it could be as much as 40 42% of the city that is kind of available for redevelopment in the future. There's a lot of variables there but the cost of services really leans into this. We need to be thinking about what we want to see there. what we're going to get the is going to give the city the most bang for its buck, so to speak. Um, and Matt Duncaster presented the cost of services to y'all um a few months ago. Um, as Scott mentioned, um, he's going to give a real quick synopsis of that again, but really we want to know from y'all what are the next steps, what are the next things that you're looking for. There's a lot of different information. and some of it easy to get, some of it much harder to figure out, but we need some direction on where to go with that if you want to um continue down that path.

Well, thank you. Good to see you all again. Appreciate you having me this evening. Um, as Kevin had mentioned, I just want to do a quick refresher because it was November um that we were together. Um, but I'm going to keep it pretty high level, but you can ask as many detailed questions as you want. And I thought maybe the first thing to do would be um on the handouts that are coming around uh we actually worked out four questions just to kind of set the tone for what we would talk about this evening. And let me tell you first since November um I have had the chance to uh discuss and work and meet with staff several times. And this is what we're bringing to you as a little bit more of like a collaboration up to this point. Uh as you know uh frankly I was hired under um older leadership before and they had a vision of what they wanted to do. Um on my left and my right you have two very wellqualified people who understand the economics of land use and development and growth and so it's been a joy to kind of partner with them and brainstorm even since November to now. Um so some of these questions and ideas we came up with together. So I just want to put that out there and some of the research that's even been done as well. So the first question though is is all to to me and I'm just going to go clockwise starting in the top left of if you have any technical questions about what I did specifically. I want to make sure we're here to answer that for you. Um and again what we did was a uh cost of service analysis townwide uh was our original charge. Then if you just kind of continue um around the clock. Then the other question though is based on what some of the findings might be. What are what are you interested in in terms of um solutions or the symptoms of what's going on? As Kevin had mentioned, you have a lot of undeveloped land still ahead of you. So are there certain development policies you're looking to put in place that might shape the intensity, the location, the pattern, the form of development? um which for many things you're trying to achieve,

one of them will be tax production. And just to be very uh honest with you, basically your future land use map creates the wealth of the town. It creates the amount of money you generate in part in order to turn out the money you need to provide services. So I mean there there's a direct correlation between your development pattern and how much money you're going to have to provide services in the future. If you go to the bottom right corner, um, also want to start thinking a little bit about what I call the full cost of infrastructure. Um, you have a lot of nice shiny new things right now. Over time, they're going to age. Um, and when you're in 10, 15, 20 years from now, those things need maintenance. Um, and to be honest with you, some communities are almost hooked on growth like a drug because what they do is the new growth that's shiny and new, they take their tax dollars and they fix the old. And so they're subsidizing back and forth, but eventually everything ages and it's their turn to receive the growth. And so if you decide to slow or no growth, then you have to have a different mindset of how you're going to pay for things and rainy day funds when you're budgeting and that kind of stuff. It's not to say don't grow, but you just have to plan ahead for how you're going to maintain your infrastructure and those kind of things as you go through. And so just to be very clear when I talk about the four phases of infrastructure I'm talking about either construction or or purchase of something and then you have to operate it every year and then you have to do certain maintenance to it every year or every couple of years and then eventually you have to replace it or rehabilitate it and that's when the big thing comes in. And where communities have trouble is they defer that maintenance until it's an immediate now. Like the fire engine won't roll, the tires won't roll anymore, something's broken on it, or the wa the street completely washes out, those kind of things. And now you have to emergency plan for those things. And they're usually more expensive than if you had done the maintenance year to year. So again, something to think about there. And then as Kevin had mentioned, sort of what direction you want to take from here. again, are you looking at uh

policies that influence growth and development? Are you looking at capital spending scenarios or targets you want to look at? Um there's a whole array of things that you can do um when you're looking at solutions for these things. So with that kind of setup, um I just move we'll move past the cover slide. And again, um under my contract, which because we waited for data to mature, remember we waited for the assessment to work its way through for data. So, we've been under contract with you all for a very long time, although we were on pause for a very long time as well, but under that initiative that we had originally, we were really focused on the town's resources um and what you could control in terms of revenues and expenditures. As we've had our conversations together, we've talked more about total picture. So, schools, water, sewer, NCDAT, all of those kind of things as well. and we've done some initial just kind of soouththing and and high level research, but as you can imagine, I'll use the schools as an example. Um, and I was a long-term resident of Union County for many, many years, so I I know this firsthand, but when you start to look at the values of the county and those kind of things, there are certain areas of the county that are probably paying more in than other parts of the county to the school system just from their tax values and those kind of things as well. And then the amount of state and federal funding coming in is actually significant for Union County. So you have to pull it back and you know we could take the number of students and the cost right now and say per student it costs this but if you really want to know it for waxall you really need to say okay what does it cost to go to cupersonson high school because that's your cost there that's your revenue that you're coming in but we would have to get and frankly a true partnership with the school district where they would release to us how many students are in each household and some of those things that they tend to hold pretty tight to the chest we would have to will really frankly through your relationships unlock some of that information as we go through but you can do a high level um and we can report some of the findings we've had with conversations with them this evening.

Um, so then I move into what says part one uh on the slide. And frankly, this was this was the section part one that we were contracted to do. And so by part of that, what we did was we looked at fiscal year 2324 as your budget year. Again, we started pretty early in this process. Um, and we looked at six different development categories. So a single family home on a single lot, a town home, an apartment building, and then general retail, office, and industrial. And we tried to figure out um generally what do each of those six development categories cost for you to provide services on an annual basis operating and maintenance and what do they bring to you in revenue on an annual basis. And we did an average uh townwide cost study which I'll be honest with you uh frankly works nine out of 10 times everywhere I go. As we peel back the onion on Waxaw, you the numbers you have for single family detached, feel pretty good about it because you have a huge sample size, a lot of single family homes. When you get in, you have two apartment complexes or you have really just Waxaw professional office as one like the the law of averages are really going away. Like sample size is a concern. And so what we ended up doing was we generated the numbers that we had to contractually. And you see those on the next slide. And again you see that the single family detached and the town homes and industrial would be positive net revenue. Uh whereas the apartments, the office and the retail would actually be negative net revenue. Now it's townwide averages. So it's taking into account the new and the old and everything going on. Um, but what we ended up doing and as I was frankly giving my briefing, um, I think it was in June, it just felt a little bit uneasy if all I did was fulfill the contract but give you numbers based on such weak data in terms of number of cases to look at. So, we volunteered to

do what's in part two. Um, and part two was to dive down deep into specific areas to figure out, well, what is generating a positive net revenue and what might be a draw as a negative net revenue and what are the characteristics or correlations that go with that? Is it the age of the neighborhood? Is the number of amenities in the neighborhood? Is it the density of the neighborhood? The unit cost of a home, a median value of a home, those kind of things. So we tried to figure out what was the causational relationship or the elasticity factors in terms of our cause and our effect. And so not surprisingly, you know, if you ever want to see a sentence of Mr. and Mrs. Obvious, the last sentence of the first paragraph, the results of study confirmed some sites performed above the average and some below, which is the definition of an average, right? So we're able to find out which ones were performing well and which ones weren't. More importantly, we were able to identify those specifically. And so on the next slide, just so you're aware, those are the uh locations that we looked at. And so again, you start to see under the office or the apartment complexes or even the town home communities, a small sample size. Again, you have, let's just take town homes for an example, you have more town home communities coming out of the ground right now, but that data a is after the time of purchase and then the county catching up on the on the tax revenue side that we actually can fold those into the analysis. Otherwise, it's just old bad data and it's going to give us false indicators in terms of where to go. Um, you know, and so, for example, right now, I I just pulled um up on either Zillow or Redf Fin, and you know, your town homes are like4 to $500,000, very expensive town homes. Once those come online, they're going to improve some of your conditions as you go through from a tax perspective. So, again, those were the areas we looked at. And if you go to the next page, there's there's some um green cells that are highlighted in here. Those are the ones that are performing over the average. So basically giving

you net positive revenue and the ones that are not highlighted are net uh negative revenue. So those are the ones that are a draw down. Um and so as you can see, if you if we only had done part one and said contracts done, you know, wipe our hands, we're finished, you would have said that retail was a bad thing for wax on. But actually it's not. if you look um many of the sites in here are actually positive and so then the question is why are they positive you know and so that's that's what we would try to peel back and start to see again those correlations and things um again it's just hard with the office or or um even the town homes because our sample size is really really small but even if you look at the apartment complex I want to draw your attention to there if I pick one site I tell you that that apartments are bad for Waxaw if I pick the other site I tell you they're rate for Waxall. That's a danger because you only have two sample data points. Um, but again, we need to peel back the wise, you know, is it the age, is it the the design, is it the amenities, those kind of things that are causing either that positive or negative correlation as you go through. So, then we got to part three, which again was generated after our meeting uh in November, where we just like, well, let's leave you with some ideas as well. um just some nuggets in order to see kind of which way to go. And so if you look at the next uh slide that is there um opportunities to increase taxbased production because your overwhelming contributor to your bottom line is your real advalorum tax. So your property tax is really what's generating a lot of your wealth in order to spend on services. So here are kind of four ideas that were there. One is to consider whether it's um during a a site plan review or those kind of things like to really amenitize the neighborhoods and the developments and the destinations that you have. It's demonstrated all over the country. It creates value. Um

and so uh the National Parks and Recreation Association finds about an 8 to 10% bump if you can see or walk to a park for those areas. I told the story at the last meeting that I paid a $15,000 lot premium in carry so I could back up to the greenway. It's real like you actually can generate more money by having more amenities. And in the full presentation we gave you the list of the top I think it's eight or 10 amenities that everyone's looking for in the country right now. Most of them are about green space, open space and natural type things. And so you know um don't let those things just get negotiated out. You know thinking oh sidewalk on one side that's great. Well, no. Sidewalk on two sides means both properties um have a little bit more bounce and bump in their worth. So, just think about that as you're as you're going through your decision- making processes. And it also has to do with, you know, pocket parks in downtown or those kind of things as well. It's not just a neighborhood thing. And then active property considerations. Again, being a longer term resident of of Union County myself, you know, I was here when the Lowe's was built. I was here when the McDonald's on the corner was built. and you did it right, you know, wrapping them in brick and those kind of things. It's not just the franchise architecture. So, they'll have longer staying power, but eventually all of those things do uh age and and sort of decay and will need to have investment made. And so, what you if you can try to minimize the amount of time that they're in decline, all the best. And it might be something like in other areas of the country, they do beautifification grants or some type of an incentive to get people to keep it going. Um, other times it might be how your zoning rules and regulations work for infill development. Maybe you find after years of study that that parking lot is never completely full. Your zoning requirements require excess parking in the time. Well, maybe now they can turn some of that gray back to green and you can put a little park or something in there that again amenitizes the place and you're really not losing

any effectiveness because the parking was never 100% utilized anyways. So that's the kind of thinking as you're trying to keep these places active as you go through um mix of uses and development intensities. Now this this one's a little bit uh tough. You have to really think of this holistically and with broad perspective because um from a residential perspective we would say build apartments all day because they have the highest per acre land value for you. Uh but you have to think about it in terms of customers. They also bring the most customers to you. So, you're looking at that sweet spot of what is the most customers versus what's the revenue being generated. And again, from our analysis, your single family homes are worth so much in this area um that they're actually performing above what might be normal in some other places. Um so, it's really development intensity increase and mix of uses creating place. exper experiential and experimental um type retail is still very popular. Even while some people might say retail might be on the decline, brick and mortar, that's more like the suburban power center. If you can create places of activity, um they still are renting very well around the country and are very popular in terms of occupancy. Um and actually that picture right there is from um North Hills, which is up in the Raleigh area. I'm not telling you to don't get don't get the idea that I'm telling you to to have this be wax on in terms of intensity and things, but it's just interesting. It was an old um suburban commercial strip mall had a JC pennies and those kind of things there. And it was worth about $450,000 an acre or something. And um I had have to pull back the exact number, but it's worth millions and millions per acre now because of what they did reusing the same infrastructure that they already had. They didn't have to extend lines. They did have to increase capacity of lines, things of that nature. Um create ways to circulate by non-automobile modes, those kind of things. But those were site solutions that could be done,

but that same amount of land became so much more productive. But again, emphasize the mix of use, not just the development intensity. So when they come and tell you, you know, just let me build apartments, apartments, apartments. Again, that's creating more customers. It's the balance of the mix of uses and creating place that's really important. And then the last thing is just design and character. And you know, as I put in there, you know, frankly, um, attractive buildings and attractive site designs sell and they sell at a premium. Um, so when you come in, set the standard. I always say this to places like Waxaw, if you have all these developments coming, it's because people know that it'll work. The financing will work, the things will work. So don't settle. The people who need to settle are the ones who are begging for development. You're not begging for development. So if you have development, come, have it come on your terms. and what you want to get out of it. And again, amenities, quality, those kind of things generate more money for you. So I can make a tax base argument for you on that. So then I I bring it to the last slide and and um this was when in collaboration with staff and so things that we were not able to go in with the current resources that we had, but really it depends what you're even interested in frankly because there's no reason to do things you're not interested in. Um, so in terms of long-term infrastructure costs, uh, that goes back to the four phases of infrastructure like I talked about. So construction or purchase, operations, maintenance or rehabilitation. Um, in other communities are interested. So for example, we would take and look at what new large capital projects you'll need. Um, but we'll also life cycle everything you have. So a police cruiser only lasts so long, a firetruck only lasts so long. So we would actually work in the replacement cycles of those as well to get you the full picture cost of what has to go in. And then we we could couple that with things like um you know I understand now depending on year-to-year capital projects sometimes you're going into your reserves. Well,

how long can you do that? Um can you close the gap? How do you close the gap? Those kind of things can be looked at in terms of long-term infrastructure costs. The second one is again some of the services that are provided by others. I can get you an answer if you want to know how much it costs per student and we can look at it, but I don't I think that might be a false indicator. I think um and frankly we have to unlock some of that data either through your partnerships or through them just wanting to do the studies on their own potentially. Um but right now and and chime in if you want on the conversations like with the school district or the others um if you ask them what it costs to serve, they can't tell you right now. They don't know. they just kind of they just kind of do it. Um, and it's funny because like when I work with school districts, don't ask them to think any more than five years out. They just literally can't do it. Um, and so it's just a different mindset in in terms of how they look at things and they're so weighted on federal and state funding that it's really an interesting kind of model here. Um, do you remember the percentages? I

about 55% is state and about 30% is local. balance would be federal andor other or others. Yeah, I don't know what the other is.

We'll call it grants donations in in kinds. Uh uh and then things like with NC DOT, we would just really want to look uh it's less about property taxes or things and they're more like about gas tax and stuff like that. And again, when you start to get into NC DOT level, you're getting into different district levels. And again, they're sliding the money even more around um to pay for projects in certain areas while everybody's paying for them. So, in some ways, we would you would want to do a snapshot in time, but you'd also want to look historically back a little bit to see how that money has moved around um to kind of see the benefits the benefits of those as well. Uh revenue versus cost for some specific buildout scenarios. And this goes back to what Ken was mentioning in the opening. If you have 43% or so vacant land, what if you build it all single family detached? What if you build it with a mix of uses? What is the optimal mix of uses to build? There are there are models and tools you can build that'll give you some feedback on those things um to approximate sort of what is your best balance as you go forward. So, it's something that can be done. Um and then balancing the revenues uh from land uses, tax rates, provision services, the like. So, uh, you know, everyone thinks the answer to provide services is to raise taxes because you need more money to provide the same services. Some communities that we work in, uh, maybe in the Northeast where they're having population decline, it's more about cutting services or managing services or what you're going to do there. So, you know, it's not always just raise taxes, raise taxes, but how do you tighten the belt? How do you do those kind of things as well? Um, to make sure what you're really providing is as efficient as possible. So again, um you could do a million dollars worth of work whether it's through consulting or your staff time because again you've got very qualified people who've been through this before now. Um but I think they need the direction. I'm speaking freely as the consultant. I think they need the direction to know what interests you

most so they spend their time and resources wisely for you. So with that, I'll I'll kind of end it there, but it comes back to those four questions. So, if you want to just keep those handy uh maybe to guide some of our conversation.

Thanks for all your work. I really appreciate your expertise and uh all the data we've got now. um back it was like two years ago that I asked for the cost to serve study to be done and um I this was two town managers ago that I did ask them to take county uh things into account as well costs to serve into account as well uh such as cost of providing wastewater uh services and you know cost per pupil and it doesn't have to be um you know we don't have to go into analysis paralysis here of uh trying to get it exactly perfect. But those are two big items for the taxpayer and that was my motivation for asking for this uh study to begin with was so that we would have a uh taxpayer centric uh way of looking at at things when we get projects before us. And um so you know if I didn't have to pay my mortgage, well my balance would be a lot better, right? The two the two the two biggest items from the county side is the infrastructure for wastewater and and the schools and union I mean uh Waxaw taxpayers or union county taxpayers. So um if we leave those things out then it I think we're just operating in a fiscal bubble somewhat. You know, I mean, things might look nice on our balance sheet, but then you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yeah. The burden the burden is still real for the taxpayer. It's just they're paying somebody else. I I get that. Um I would be most interested first in the schools because it's property tax driven. Um and then looking at at the rates um in terms of water, sewer is an enterprise fund. So I think there's two way those departments would be looked at differently uh for each one but the schools to me would be most like be like my number one interest and then the water sewer obviously it's expensive and things but um that one

yeah I mean I know you were saying about you know the cuffson versus average across the county and how that could get a little muddy you know we don't have to get too granular here um I just feel like we should not just have this be a wax or bubble. You know, we need to have some thought and it it would help with board decisions if there's a formula that staff could go through and say, well, we've got Matt's data from his cost to serve study. We've got couple of numbers from Union County and we just put it into the formula. Here's how we think this development would play out. And it's not an exact science, but it's some it provides some transparency for the public and and helps us to understand as well.

Okay,

I understand completely on that. And I think that's something if we did get those numbers, we could definitely present that to you. I would probably try to split them up a little bit when we're presenting just because of the fact that they're in coming from two different pots, but I do think it would paint the bigger picture there to kind of know all of that. Um some of the other stuff in there like our infrastructure costs we haven't gone into great detail on those are things that are going to directly influence the town are coming in directly from the you know town's revenues and everything. So um I would add those in to that pot as well and do as part of the calculation. Um and and you can come up with some some rough averages per land use type on what those cost. So yeah, but students too, I guess different types of development, different uh Sorry, it's fine. Um, so I guess um a concern for me is the roads, the bridges, the sidewalks, because later on this evening, we're going to be talking about what type of grant we can apply for to improve our roads or add a road and and um even at the uh at a 20% because that would be our responsibility. 20% of X amount of money, we can apply for 20 $25 million in this grant. But 20% of $25 million per year in 5 years, it's a lot of money. So when we take into consideration the growth and all the residential homes coming online and the commercial business we are going to be going after because that's what we need. Our ratio is upside down. um we need to consider that because that again is going to be a direct cost to the taxpayer uh whether it's now later over a long term 5 10 years. So um that's important. Now whether we do a rough estimate of that if we can do that

in-house that's great too but we need to have some idea of what we're committing to right I mean I think when Lawson came on board you know 20 years ago and that was planned and Millbridge I don't think any of this was taken into consideration because the town was not in that position there weren't a lot of people here and and they wanted the growth they needed the growth uh but we're in a position now where we have to make some really informed decision and we really can't go in it blind and if we have the mechanism to do that I think we should utilize that.

One other thought just to maybe expand the solutions you you look at that. I mean obviously you need to look at the cost to maintain and rehabilitate what you have now. But I would even challenge you to think a little bit about your street standards for new neighborhoods.

I'll give you an example. Um and again I'm just stating fact. I used to live in Marvin and in Marvin I lived in Marvin Creek and there are driveways there. My driveway was 125 feet long. Okay. But yet they required 32 foot wide streets thinking people were going to park on the street. Nobody parks on the street normally because their driveways are so long if they're not in the garage. So now when it comes time to replace it and rehabilitate it as as the village there, they're now maintaining streets that are probably 10t wider than they needed to be. You multiply that by the lineal distance of all the streets in the neighborhood. That's a lot of extra money. So when you're starting to think about your designs and things, obviously you think about safety and context and character, but also after the developer creates them and dedicates them to they're yours. So you know, do you want oversized streets? Because now you have to maintain oversized streets for the for their

Oh, and on the other side of things, we have areas of Milbridge where you can't get a fire truck through. So yes. No, it goes it goes both directions. I mean, there's there's a maximum and a minimum to be to be considered. But yeah, no, my my point is just that all the decisions in the now is yeah, I want bigger, better, faster, whatever. And then all of a sudden while you maintain it, you're like, well, oh wow, I could have lost two feet here or did I've done whatever. And so it's just something to think about because you're going to own it. So,

one of the things that I thought was most interesting is the fact that I've been told for years that, you know, apartments pay and apartments and town homes and density and it's all about density. And that's that's kind of the story we hear on a regular basis. Half of the developers that walk up to the day to to report to the board are singing the praises of how higher density is going to get you more tax dollars. And the data just doesn't conclude that. And the the question that I'm triggered by or that comes to mind is we have I understand the limited data and as an engineer I understand the difficulty of making decisions based on two data points and in R&D two data points is more than enough to make a conclusion. However, do we have a good understanding of the difference for instance between these two particular apartment complexes? Can we actually tease out an explanation as to why they're basically inverses of each other? Why is one up four something, the other one's down three something? So, is there any way to tease that out? And I guess the same applies then for the single family detach. Uh when I look at these neighborhoods and stuff, um some of these I'm not really that familiar with, others I'm very familiar with. and the ones that I'm very familiar with like a Millbridge, it has, as you were mentioning, lots of amenities. So, it's got good value there. And then neighborhoods like Quellin and Lawson, these are big homes on big lots. So, it it kind of this data is kind of pointing me in a variety of directions as someone who's trying to lead a town as it grows. Um, I'm wondering if there's just ways of teasing out some information that can help guide a conclusion because based on this data, again, I I can jump to a conclusion, but with this data set, I'm 50/50 as to whether or not I'll be

right.

Yeah, that that's a good point, Mayor. And uh part of the reason why I would like um a little bit more detail on the town infrastructure costs um I don't know that that's going to completely reverse things, but oftentimes you do when you get into smaller lots and you get into multif family. The reason that that does bring in more money is that you have less overall street surface for each one of those. You have less sidewalks that are public, a lot more contained individually on the sites. Um, when it comes to lot size, typically the larger the lot, the more overall cost is going to be on the city because the more street and the more sidewalk street trees, which we're already we've already encountered. Um, but then you you also have to get into what the property value is. Those that are, you know, you know, higher property values, you can have a little bit larger lot. Um, it's going to pay for itself. So, it's it's just a whole bunch of variables on both sides of things and trying to kind of balance those out, which is what we would, you know, try to do with that. I think the big one is that apartment question, how they're just complete inverses of each other. And if there's a way to get an explanation of that, I think that would be very informative.

From a methodology standpoint, I think you would attack on multiple fronts. So, we could look at more data, you know, try to figure out why one has a correlation to the other. we may just want to go to Union County the assessor and say why did you assess this one higher than the other one and get get some of their mind and methodology in there as well. Interview them basically. Um so it may not be all quantitative. There might be some qu like understand like what what in your gut tells you this one's worth more when you're assessing it versus the other as well

because apartments in particular don't really change hands much. um you get tenants and such, but in terms of these numbers don't take into account the profitability of the owner, the profit margins of the owner. It's just the assessed value. And if apartments aren't changing hands, you don't have a lot of assessed value data to go on. Um I'm sure it'll come back to me. I think I had another thought, but not recalling.

Oh. Um, we talk about streets and street size and I think we just touched on the differences between Marvin and then Marvin and Milbridge. Again, opposite sides of almost different coins. The Millbridge streets are almost unusable. Um, if if you've ever attended someone's party in in Millbridge, it's it's it's a it gets pretty packed pretty quick. And if there's most of those streets, if someone's parked on both sides, I mean, Commissioner Wedger's point, you can't get a fire truck through there. And it's it's difficult enough just to get your car. Um, so I think that we need to think carefully about standards when it comes to road width, for instance, because um I look at some of the new town houses that are being developed, that's going to have the same problem. um once those places are fully occupied, I shudder to think what it's going to look like driving down those streets and the problems that EMS will have to try and get in and out of those small little neighborhoods that are going to be completely impassible because the roads are just too small because there's no place to park. So, that's definitely a big concern.

And then back to um the sidewalk. So, it's it's great when we have a a developer come in and they're building the sidewalks, but then when we take over the sidewalks, uh we have to also be careful where they're planting these trees that might not belong

in those uh in those areas because now they're going to crack the sidewalk and now we're responsible for the sidewalks and the sidewalks are very expensive. Back in New York, I had to take care of my own sidewalks. So if that sidewalk cracked and I will tell you it is very expensive to do one piece of sidewalk, not an entire you know corner. So um all of these uh factors have not been I don't think considered in the years past and and probably because they didn't know they didn't have the tools for it whatever the case may be. But now that we do, I think that anything we we're going to have to replace sidewalks at some point in some of these older neighborhoods. And a lot of um the plans moving forward is to add sidewalks, right? So now we're adding sidewalks. And I don't think we're taking any of that into consideration. So quickly these numbers can shift because we're just looking at it quite frankly on an elementary level, right? We're just saying, "Oh, well, you know, this brings in this much money and, you know, it's not accurate because we have to pay for all that maintenance and we have to uh service the students and we have to and service the trash and all that and trash costs go up and utilities go up and that's not even been considered. So, uh, I just want to be able moving forward to make good decisions and, um, you know, for for me personally, I think we need to, like I said, go after the commercial and that will also hopefully bring jobs to the area and keep high school kids, college kids here instead of driving to Valentine and and that will also increase revenues. So, uh, I think we need to shift our thinking a little bit and, uh, get our costs under control or have an idea of what

everything's going to cost and not say, "Hey, that's a shiny new development and it's going to have, you know, nice restaurants. Okay, but what else in there is going to to detract from that or cost us more than what that restaurant's bringing in?" I know for me one of the concerns that I think of it to add on to uh what my other commissioners have already laid out roads, infrastructures, water, sewer. I mean all those are tangible uh track traceable data points. Um, one of the data points that I think gets undervalued is essentially, and we're going through it right now, is we're having to go through a retrofit on Kensington. Um, that's a data point of a cost that that could be tracked, a a reasonable retrofit in a critical area. It and what that cost in that section essentially is is burdening the town and the taxpayer at this point. But that wouldn't be just the only retrofit that we'd be looking at over time as these pressures continue because in reality Waxaw is essentially a regional lynch pin essentially with multiple directions of pressure um all growth is going to inevitably continue. How do we address those is essentially what we're discussing right now and how to put it in a tangible number. but the retrofit of some of our key sidewalks. Um I also know that we want to expand some of those things into multi-use trails. Well, that will be a cost over time. Um but yet having those key attractive points, value added points, um buffers, boundaries, sidewalks, multi-use trails, those do add value over time, but to an extent because there is will be essentially a long-term associated cost that should be looked at

as a metric point in my personal opinion. That would be a technical piece of data I'd hope to see. Just one thought to think about because you bring up these streets and things that need to be retrofitted. Also remember in the full presentation I gave um even just coordinating with Union County on all the development they're allowing outside of your buffer. Those are customers and users of your system and you're getting nothing for it. Right. So even just coordinating growth and development with unincorporated county could be another one of your initiatives. I I know definitely um you know longer term creating better regional partnerships, better friends over the region um exploring how our ETJ uh can be utilized to best partner with us as a as a municipality too um with our county teams. So I know that that is a longer term conversation, but I it is a critical one to to bring to your point. We do have essentially spillover from our county and that that that spillover has an impact. It's been clearly metricked before in a traffic impact analysis. Um it there but at the same time um those are multilateral conversations with county partners at a certain point too. And I think that going back to what I said before with the county and other partners, I think some of the developments coming online now from the county were approved probably 15 years or so ago again without maybe thinking ahead and that sort of thing. I think everyone's in the same boat right now with dealing with decisions made a long time ago and now trying to work around it. So, I think that um moving forward, like what do you need from us? What kind

of um for me, I'd like to see a little bit higher level numbers with schools, sewer, and water. I don't know how anybody feels about that. And um some numbers um on the infrastructure costs of what we need to fix and what's coming online. We know what developments are coming. What's that going to look like when we have to repair something? So, um, yeah,

I I have one thing I think that might be worthwhile when it comes to the schools. I know Waxaw and the way our zoning currently operates, it Waxaw is not a conclusive zone. Uh, we are essentially having um we we spill over into a couple of different uh clusters. I believe the school calls it um in cluster zones. Part of Waxaw is part of the Parkwood cluster. Then we have a cutthr cluster and then of Kensington and Marvin kind of have a little tug-of-war between between those. So it might be wise to break that down into a possible school cost per cluster if possible. But I at the same time too I know at a broader view yeah ha having a having a holistic view of course is is always good

I think. for that. I think a holistic view might work right now because I think those numbers are going to be harder to get. It's going to take a lot more time. Um I mean, and we're paying county tax for that. So that's in our tax bill, you know, spread across. Um but I think that you there growth has an impact everywhere, right? So now the schools are going to need to be fixed and you know the bonds are going to be put up and a bond is a tax. People are paying for that. So I I think a holistic number I think would be good for now and just to to get something concrete and then maybe drill a little bit closer to the infrastructure numbers and um and maybe working with the county to get their water and sewer numbers which I think Scott I think you said you had a conversation about that.

We went ahead and uh asked the county manager did they have they ever done a cost to serve study and they have not. That might be a um political question that I think this board can ask the county. Would you consider one? You know, let them b pay the burden of of cost to serve. Um that would be helpful. Um we can get high level numbers. We just can't get any deeper than that. And then secondly, on uh the utility system itself, it's set up as a business or an enterprise system. we can get those numbers that though those are not difficult numbers to get their burdens are actually a little different uh based upon uh watersheds um where they're uh we're split as a county between uh sources um and they've got to be able to provide for as a business you would think uh and what their CIP is um for both u current and what they anticipate as a future and then they've got to be able to calculate a number both in life cycle issue like we have to. Um and then there are also um utilities that you haven't thought about yet. Storm water being one of them which has not become a burden to you yet but it may legislatively become a burden. Uh the state is pretty infamous on pushing down and not pulling up. So um at least on on cost structures and rules. So um that is something that we are aware of as a staff. And the last thing I was going to tell you is that some of this discussion will come back up to the board very brief uh very shortly and in that uh I'm tasking staff to update a CIP plan. We have not had an adopted CIP plan. We have ordinances. We have an overview of what we think. Uh but the board needs to by a resolution adopt the five-year plan. And that's the

plan. And it should probably include some room in there for error because we can only you know like you'll have a discussion later about where did you come up with one million for a park right so um that kind of thing you know needs to be understood in the methodology that you use and then secondly you have to begin we have to begin to calculate in life cycle um at some point in time um rolling stock we're fairly good at it we don't u have a fire department so we're okay with that. Uh but our fire department is a tax on the citizens of Waxaw. So asking them that question is a good good thing to ask. Um so those are some of the things but we did reach out to the county. We sure did.

Yeah, there are many levels of weeds that we could get into here and uh I don't want to do that. You know, I think the high level uh like my fellow commissioners were mentioning is important. Um, I'm just going to read from the UNCC School of Government's economic development handbook because it really encapsulates the high level view that I think we need to take with this. Economic development can help expand and balance a tax base so that a jurisdiction will have the resources it needs to provide highquality public services at a reasonable cost to its residents. Balancing the tax base among the various land uses, agricultural, residential, commercial, and industrial, is especially important for the many bedroom communities that exist in North Carolina. These communities rely on local tax bases comprised mostly of residential property. However, residential development does not typically generate sufficient tax revenues to pay for the public services it requires. By contrast, commercial and industrial development project projects not only pay for themselves but produce net tax revenues in excess of the costs for needed public services. So I think there you're talking about what's the balance that you want, right? So the the conversation that I've heard since I've been here is that we have around seven to eight% of non residential, commercial andor industrial percentage of uh the tax base. Um and the question is that's been around for town's been around for what 130 140 years and um that's the number. So the question is if you double that to 16 how how long does it take to do that? what kind of investment strategy do you have to have and what kind of infrastructure do you have to have in place in order to

do that? So, lots of great questions about what you want and then how do we plan to get there? So, um we want to make sure also in this because I know we're asking you that in this study, what else would you want in any future information? I I hear you saying balance. Um, can someone articulate that better than I just said it?

No, I mean I mean I I've read there the verdict's out on what's the healthiest balance, right? I've heard 6040. I've heard 7030. We're nowhere near there. So, if we could double it, it's better than where we are. Ideally, I'd love to see 7030, but I don't know if we can get there with what we've got left. You know, I I that's just honest. I don't I don't know that we can because the new developments coming online that were approved just in the last year are have mostly residents in it and and the little commercial that we have doesn't remotely come close to what we should for that EC property. just the Olivia project. That's not even close to what we should have accepted. So, how do we get to at least 16 or 20? I mean, that's what I I would like to do. I'd like to see that and see what do we what do you need from us? What do we have to do as a town to go after more commercial and get them here? Because the idea that we don't have enough population, I'm not buying because between Waxaw, Weddington, Marvin, Mineral Springs, and Wesley Chapel, people will come to Waxaw. People want to come to Waxaw. They're coming to Waxaw now. We have great things going on between our events and our downtown. People are coming. If there's more here, they will continue to come. So, not to quote one of my favorite movies, but if you build it, they will come. Yeah, some good stuff.

I think there's a lot of strategies that come with that, too. Uh, and it may be that we may have to more aggressively go out and try to attract

um some of those uses that you want to see here. Um, we we we've got a lot here. We've also got a lot competing with us. If you go three miles that way, you know, west, we've got, you know, everything that's out there on 521 as well. So, um, it, you know, we we'll have to look at some different strategies to attract that kind of growth as well in those sectors. To Commissioner Wed's point, I think we all shop in Indianland, so if that was here, it would be an opportunity. Um, a couple of questions of the four infrastructure types, and we know what's coming already, and we're talking about the available land balance that's going to be available. You know, how do we plug into the big three impact on roads, cost to serve, and the cost of taxpayers. So, I I think what's available, we already know what's coming. How do we plan within your scope? I know it's not a plug-and-play system, but based on today's values and metrics, how do we best look at what's available to build on so we can meet those needs? Which again, that imbalance of 937 or 928, whatever it is, that's not sustainable. Well, and even to that end, what I would ask from a researcher standpoint is you may set a goal to double from 8 to 16 as a town, but of the 43% left, do you want to set a goal of 7030 for that? And then whatever that does to improve your bottom line is what it is, but what do you want to I mean, I'm working in a community right now in the triangle and they would love to change it. And I look and you've got like 10% undeveloped. I'm like, it's done. Like, there's nothing we can do. um you have 43% left. So what goal do you want to set for the town? But what goal do you want to set for your yet to be developed area might even be more important because that's what you really control. I mean it's like over $4 billion of residential. Like it's it's going to be hard to move the needle for the entire town but hit the 43% left first and then it

comes down to redevelopment for the other areas. So just something to think about. You could do it in two parts. Thank you.

You were talking about uh resources available to us. What uh what resources were you talking about? Um I'm trying to find my note here. Yeah. on a revenue verse cost for specific buildout scenarios to do those calculations. Where do you where do we get those resources? Are they available right now to you? We would Kevin,

we would need to we would need to actually dig into some of those other other numbers that we were talking about on here, but then we could apply that. Um there are uh there are revenue calculators that you can create once you know kind of what your rough costs uh for for different types of developments are. Um it it it of course it's it's they're rough numbers. Um but there are, you know, you can put together spreadsheets that will then spit out those numbers. I've got x number of units of this and um this many roads and it'll it'll kind of tell you, you know, whether you're going to be running in the black or in the red. Um, but we could take a look at different scenarios there if we're going to have commercial out here or if we're going to have single family out here and kind of look at what those potential revenues might be

on on some of those undeveloped tracks and un unplanned for tracks.

Just from my perspective, I would also just look around the state. So, for example, we work with Nightdale uh up east of Raleigh and they provide that kind of information for making like reasonzoning decisions and things of that nature and I agree we we can analyze it to a high precision, but maybe looking at what's been used in other communities and has passed legal challenge and thing. You don't want to get into contract zoning and things where like you have this spreadsheet and now you say, "Oh, if you build me this home at this price, I'll say yeah." and that that's contract zoning. So, um I would also say to look around. You can go through the school government um as well to just find out what your peers are doing because it's it's stood the test of time.

All righty. Are there any other points that uh our commissioners want to go through or questions to be had on this one? Well, thank you very much. I think this has been very informative. Um it sounds like we have a couple action items then stemming from some of the board's questions. Um my only suggestion was kind of my previous point was if we can pick some data points to tease out some of the why if we can get that information somehow um as it relates to stuff that isn't behaving the way we expect it. Um, and I think the same applies on the retail side of things cuz again, just based on these numbers, if you replicated this number and had it at a 7030, that's still not going to help us. So, if we can try and answer that question and see because that might help us then focus our economic redevelopment activities and and stuff of that nature. So,

um Scott and I will talk about it and um and of course we'd have to revise or do another contract with Matt for any of that, but absolutely we can we can and what we can do we actually have some of the some of that data with roads uh engineering staff has actually put I've used I've used one of those before in the past. It's not as accurate because you don't have uh some of the actual um non-physical services and stuff um associated, but um staff here engineering has actually put some rough numbers together on that. So, we might be a step ahead. We could pull that in. Matt could work with that. Um there's a lot of different stuff we could do with it. But yeah, we we'll talk about maybe a proposal for how we want to do that. And we will be coming back with CIP in March, April to talk to you folks.

That's the cost of cost of Matt serving us, right? Well, again though, you do have, you know, it's time, money, and patience, right? Those are the three things you manage. And so, uh, you do have a very capable staff. You don't you don't have to hire everything out. You've got a staff who can do this and do it pretty well. um talk yourself out of another job.

Well, I mean I'll spend money where it needs to be spent, but I mean I could be an adviser, I could just watch as interested party or I could do the work, you know, it's all three of those are possible. It doesn't matter to me. But um I mean because my point is that maybe just let me tell you I think what you are asking for is longevity you know decision-m things of those natures and when things change you can change with it. If you rely only on the consultant to do that then you have to hire me every time something changes. If your staff knows what they're doing and we're working as a team the chances that it survives long term is much higher. I'll just leave it that way.

Yeah. And I'm not personally looking to add a huge amount to this study. I think you've done a lot of work already. It's just a couple of major metrics from the county that we could get and hopefully we don't have to pay a lot more in study costs for that, you know.

All right. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. Again, great information. I appreciate all of it. Um, and I think this is helpful for our new board members as well. So, thank you. Uh, next up, we have a discussion regarding the parking regulations along Red Oak Trails. Uh, there was a little bit of back and forth last year in this regard, and I think there's some interest to take a reook at this particular topic and have the board sort of re-evaluate the options and rethink decisions. So, I will leave it to you, Scott, and your team to kind of present those options.

Sure. Thank you. Uh I've got U James Kelly, our traffic engineer, uh up here with us this evening. Um and he has a handout for you folks, I believe. Is that correct? And uh so you can have uh a discussion about the uh various options and choices um that uh both were presented. and um with regards to this. So um we'll let that pass out so you all can talk and I'm going to let James uh do a bit of an overview for you so that you folks can give some direction back on what you'd like to do.

So to provide some additional context here, there's a there's a long history behind this one. Um staff is really just seeking your direction, the board's direction as far as which alternative you would like to move forward with. So in front of you are three basic sketches. There's nothing real fancy to it, just just a basic sketch. But um version A is what you what the previous board currently adopted uh which we don't believe you wish to continue with. You want to look at something different. So version A outlines a 13 parking space approach um which really maximizes the parking. Version B, if you flip to the next page, is the original alternative five recommendation that you all had requested. Um, this does still provide parking on both sides. Um, decreases the um, parking spaces from 13 to 11. So, you're still meeting the uh, minimum desire of the 5 to seven parking spaces that the business owners had requested. And then ultimately, version C is focusing more on um, limiting parking to one side of the roadway. um making sure that there's adequate parking widths um to support larger vehicles. So, that's really the gist. Um we're looking to get your your feedback on number one, do you want to keep with what you currently have or do you want to look at something else?

So, what are what are the questions then and recommendations of the board at this point? I I know a couple of y'all have seen this more than once and it might be new for some. So give it a look and let us know what your thoughts are.

They're parking on both sides of the street right now. Correct. That is correct. It's just the parking is not designated. So the the the the issue here is once we start to designate parking, we have to abide by all the standards, the ADA standards and the modern codes. So, right now you can park on both sides of the streets. It's just undesated parking. Um, do you have a feel for the peak hours of how much parking is being done? Right now,

it varies. Uh, most of the time it does occur on the weekends and then during certain points during the lunch hour rush during the week. We've gone out there, staff has gone out there multiple times just for observation purposes to see, you know, how many cars are parked on the street um during some of these peak hours. And it does average between 7 to nine typically. Um on the higher end, on the more average to low end, you're looking at about 3 to five. No, that's that's excellent. Thank you. That was the uh information I was looking for. I think on I would love to be able to keep parking to one side of the street. The only problem for the um option C and I'm I'm going to contradict myself or not contradict, but I'll give you two sides here. Um I like the fact that it's on one side. It sounds like the nine would be enough parking for those peak times, but every time somebody wants to park on a street, they have to cross some. And so some of those days where it's a lighter traffic, you could park on the near side of the street and that might be enough parking, but you have the ability to park on the other side if necessary. So it's safer to have some parking on the near side of the street. Um, so there's there's a yin-yang there. Uh, for me, I would like to see the nine spaces and kind of keep that street more free. But going back to your original

proposal, which was 11 spaces, I think, and was option B, where you have the longer sight lines or better sight lines for the crosswalk. Um, I mean that's I think that's kind of where I'm my mind's going just because you can park on the near side of the street. Have those couple the option of parking on the near side of the street.

I think the complaint has been that having parking on both sides of the street causes a problem with uh cars turning in. They turn in pretty quick over there. Um, I would say I would like to keep it more on one side of the street and maybe a handicap spot closer to the business because clearly if they need a handicap spot, then having them cross is probably not great. So, uh, if we do maybe nine spots on the, um, south side and maybe just one handicap spot closer to the business, that gives them 10. Does is that feasible? Short answer is we'll have to take a look at it. Um longer answer is I think yes as long as we look at the um ADA codes and we're able to meet that. Um if you look at version B for example, you'll see like the spots labeled 9 10 and 11. There's room to work there as far as making sure that we can meet the ADA. But I just can't get you give you a firm answer until we really dive into it.

Right. Because if 10 is already an ADA and you're not doing 11, correct? I mean, I'm no engineer, but I guess it might work.

The trick uh the trick is yes, as long as we still have that adequate um aisle width that we'll have to build there because if you still have 10 in that placement, you'll have to narrow the the other side there for a little bit as far as the parking to make sure you still have adequate width or expand the width of just that particular parking space. So, there there there are options with that. I mean, I I would be comfortable with that just so that the handicap parking is there and if utilized, it'll be utilized with a tag. Somebody's it's just not going to be a random person using it and parking on both sides of the street. And I think it satisfies the extra parking that they requested. Plus, it gives them one more. I I recall in our community meeting at the Oaks on Providence uh that the community members openly expressed that there would be reasonleness to have a handicap parking along that side that we're talking about. If you're looking at plan B, it would be parking space labeled number nine. Um so I to I totally concur that having a handicap on that side would be reasonable. if there's an additional room to have um the handicapped also away from 10 and 11, leaving that frontage essentially open for navigable purposes for cars and vehicular traffic as well as the larger vehicles and buses that um I think that would probably be something that would be optimized. I know that we've talked about nine uh parking spaces. I would designate that on that east side of Red Oaks Trail on that wooded side. I think that's reasonable. If you had 9, 10, and 11 for handicap spots, essentially closest to uh the hair salon and the um the actual active commercial property. I think that would be something that would be reasonable if

again the ADA compliance allows with our engineers. So to add on to that, we did look um at the ADA locations. So number nine, there is a slight issue with some of the grades there. So we were concerned about that. Just preliminary looking at this. So really, as far as like an ADA spot, 10 would be the most optimal. Um parking space number 10 on version B that you're looking at there would be the most optimal as far as an ADA spot to meet those uh required grades that we would have to have to do per ADA code. Um but we can we can definitely look at it. I just want some more clarification which is if you're proceeding with that approach um when you look back at numbers 9 10 and 11 are you s are you um suggesting that we should make all those ADA spots or just have just have one ADA spot?

Uh one ADA spot would be probably my original preference as something that that would be compliant for essentially uh van loading or something like that for typical ADA services. Um, now with 10 and 11 again going back to if you were looking at version A, it would be 10 and 11. Yes, if if that would be possible to have the ADA, I think it's reasonable to investigate uh that option. And then essentially again if you're looking at version A having 12 and 13 eliminated uh for essentially the in vehicular traffic because what is occurring uh from firsthand experience and essentially sec secondhand conversations with neighbors is as you're pulling in with cars parked at 12 and 13, you cannot see vehicular commercial traffic pulling out of the property and there so there's no line of sight availability. And so you can't see in and some and they can't see you coming down the road. And so it just creates essentially a conflict and and it's an unintentional conflict section uh just because it it goes back into what is the available geometry but to stay in compliance and allow the commercial development. It was nothing that the town could do. It was just essentially what was available at the time. So, what I'm hearing is version B um have the ADA spot at number nine that's on there and eliminate 10 and 11 if that's possible.

That's what I'm hearing.

That is correct. Sorry if I asked this in the open meeting a few months ago, but would it be possible to take 9, 10, and 11 and option B and then basically push them closer to the sidewalk? So, you're you're cutting into that green space between the sidewalk and the street. Is there any reason the parking couldn't be pushed over essentially widening that section of the street completely? I know that'd be a little bit more costly than paint, but um is that something maybe we can ask the property owner to partner with something like that? And then that might then allow being closer in little wider lanes, maybe there could be a parking spot than what shown here, maybe to the left of nine on option B. I know that puts that close to the crosswalk, so maybe that's prohibitive. But um the idea being that the main concern with the street is coming off of Providence. It's a narrow road. Um so if there's any way to take spots 9, 10, and 11, just push them over two or three feet towards the sidewalk. Um if that's something worth looking at, maybe we can again partner with the land owner to to see if that's something that we can make happen.

Almost like a like similar to like a bulb out solution where you just bulb that inward. Is that Yeah. Okay. And it would it would only be in that area of parking really. So it would be in the section when you come off Providence. You would go in and pave that section, make it a shoulder, and then the rest of it you would pave it good enough for parking. Um not reinforced for a bus, not suitable for heavy road traffic, but just good enough for parking. and um just essentially get those cars out of the way a little bit.

When we're when we're adding parking spaces, our ordinance says we need to put in a certain amount of ADA spaces, right? So, it's not like you can move that ADA spot into the parking lot. You can't do that. You have to. Okay. So, just making sure.

Yep. You're right. So, they're they're treated separately. So, Oh, testing one, two. There we go. Yes. So they're treated separately. So you cannot count the on street ADA spot um for the on-site ADA spot and vice versa. So when we're designating this, we do have the standard. I believe it's 1 to 25 spaces. If you're adding or designating within that range, one of those spots has to be ADA. So that's that this would meet that. I I mean I think B is a good option with just the one handicap. Um and I know uh Mayor Murray wants to explore his option. Um and I would heir on the side of the most cost effective because this is something that we're trying to um it's not something we need to do. It's not something that has to be done. So, I'd like to help the um the neighbors there and the property and and the the business so that there isn't any conflict there on busy time. So, but I just don't I don't want it to cost us a ton of money doing it.

Do I recall correctly from the last time we discussed this that essentially v version A was the because there was sort of a tension between you know in the meeting between the business owners and the residents, right? So that your version A here was sort of the more business ccentric one, the version C was the resident centric and then B was the compromise. Is that right? That's correct. Okay.

Comment question. B testing. I like B. I like the fact that we put an ADA in number nine because it's not by that corner. anybody that's coming around that corner, it comes quick and having a ADA in 10 would be a concern. Um, it being that the eight spaces would be sufficient even through busy times, I think that's a good I think that's a good plan, a good compromise for both of them. Any other questions or comments on this matter? Then it sounds like everybody's feeling pretty good about option B. Would that be safe to say? modified option.

Modified option B. Yeah. With the ADA at 9. All righty. I look forward to seeing that at a board meeting near you. Thank you.

Uh next up, we have a discussion on Safe Streets for all the implementation grant. All right, we'll have James and and possibly some other characters uh from out in the audience uh joining for this one. And I think I think James has got actually a exercise for you all. So uh that means uh getting out of your seat and stretching time. So

true workshop, right? So um the discussion is so the other thing to frame to remind everyone we have a deadline to make an application to the state. Okay state not the feds.

Okay the feds through the state. Thank you. I always have to look at James what's east west feds state. So, um, for those of you who have heard my conversations with him before, um, so we have a deadline to make an application. Yes. Um, one of the things that we want to do is clearly define what the worthwhile investable number is. Uh, there is a 20% cost. So, um, to do this, however, it's hard to ignore 80. Fair enough. and it does overlap with some of the other things that we have had in previous CIPs and transportation plan needs. So, you're actually capturing that. We didn't come up with new things. There are some new things in this, but some of this comes from your 2020 transportation plan. So, you're getting some things you haven't been able to get to date. Uh, I just wanted to be clear about that. So, um, James is going to lead you through an exercise, um, and, uh, we have pretty maps and all kinds of things, uh, for you folks. And, uh, I'm going to turn the mic over to James and go from there. Any questions for me? We're good. Okay. So, what Barbie is passing out right now um is something that you all requested to help acknowledge the projects that we already have on the books and the contributions that you already are committing. So, when we talk through this SS4A, I think that's very important to acknowledge upfront is um yes, we there's a huge cost savings with SS4A and you know, we we've committed quite a lot and the board has been able to successfully program a lot as well. So

the first sheet that I have handed out to you is this uh preliminary it's not official so it's just preliminary uh unodudited uh tabulation of um local and other fund contributions along with the the board's success in um achieving state and federal uh and other contributions as well throughout projects. So throughout the um town limit you see at the bottom of this first column that um you know you you're secured uh about approximately $10.5 million in local and other contributions. So those others come into play from fianl's and that sort of thing. Um and then also you've been very successful with coordinating with your state and federal partners um to really achieve a incredibly significant amount of funding through um through roadway improvements that totals to about $272 million. Um these projects are all programmed within the next 5 to seven years. So some projects are coming on sooner the next year or two and whereas some projects may be at the tail end of that. So, um, you all have been very successful in that, but that that just this list just shows that you've made a lot of contributions up to this point. So, that's what this first list shows. Um, to help the board before we walk over and look at this activity to kind of just recap a few things.

And just real quick, yeah, just this is just to clarify, these are obligations that we've already committed to. This isn't stuff we've spent thus far. This is stuff that we're kind of committed to spend. Correct. Correct. Um again those those numbers are unawudited. Can I get Yeah, sure. If I can get clarification from that, James, this is committed or is this already spent? So this is committed.

This is committed. And that makes sense in my analysis as well. and you have spent probably since fiscal year 21-22 um somewhere around 52 million um in local monies but that also includes the buildings and some other things. So you take that money out probably around 30 million in in committable issues overtime parks um downtown projects other things and other road projects that were prior to this list. So, uh, the town's been on a about a fiveyear investment, uh, piece where it's using both current dollars and then other match dollars, too. So, when I use that number, I'm using a macro number. I just want you to understand that prior to this, this is future commitments, but you also have been committing for five, six, seven years now uh, in long-term commitments. So column one, the 10,513,231.50 is what we need to that's what we're committed to and what we need to save for. Correct. And just in in plain terms,

that's right. You have um if you recall your last financial um report, we talked about you've already reserved around 9.2 2 million and you're short about 3.8, right? Okay. So that's out of these commitments and it also includes fee in lie of so those amounts. So, right. So, we So, our balance is around $3 million that we still need to account for. And so, anything that we're looking forward to, we should consider that balance of 3 million on top of whatever we're going to agree to tonight. Just so that I'm That's right. calculating that properly.

But let me do one step further. Some of these things were in your 2020 transportation plan anyway. So there there are various pieces where for example last week in the manager's report I reported out that James came back from KARPO saying here's another 378,000 on

Kensington projects. So that frees up 300 and some odd thousand that will then move over to future obligations. So it's a living list. It moves I just wanted to be clear. I think James has done a good job of showing ROI though, you know, for your investment and future commitment. You're getting a a very healthy amount back. Uh the cost of highways, the cost of rightway, the cost of design, it's it's expensive. It just is. And um but uh we wanted to make sure you understood your value. You had asked the question. We just Yeah. I just wanted That's why we said undudited and caveed.

Yeah. I like to know what to save for before I spend. There you go. That's a good thing.

Correct. So, just a brief recap before we um get up and walk over to the table behind us for a nice um activity is some some basic um outlines as far as what the program is, how much you can commit, the minimums, the maximums, that sort of thing. So, that's just something to be mindful of is when you if you are going to commit to this program, number one, you have to go for the minimum grant award at least, which is the $2.5 million. Whereas the maximum is the up to the 25 million noting that it's really you're only responsible responsible for a 20% share and that 20% share is spread over five years. Does that does that make sense?

500,000 over five years. If we were to do a minimum, if we were to do the minimum, that would be around 500,000 over five years or

Right. So, so if you did the minimum, for example, um that actually equates down to a $2.5 million grant where your annual commitment is 20% of that 2.5 million or 500,000 over five years, which equates to $100,000 per year. and and during the presentation uh at our last meeting um we were looking at $18,500 was a round number and then I think the calculation was $740,000 per year for five years if we went for that much.

Correct. So this so this second um handout that I'm providing you it shows that 18.2 million broken further down.

Okay. um across road segments. And the key to thing to remember is, you know, you don't have to commit to everything within that certain bracket. You can commit to a certain rogue segment. You can change the scope of that. You can narrow the scope. Um you can take a look into that. But um one of the things that we we we dived a little further deeper on as far as you know during this process, this was a by as part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. So it included um both administrations, both the Biden administration and the Trump administration. With the new focus with the um Trump administration, you know, once we talked about this before at your last meeting is really you need to hone in on three things. The first thing is the safety aspect specifically um projects that are on your high injury network. Um which we'll dive into that here momentarily. Um second part is more of that economic return on investment approach model. Um and of course infrastructure. So your big three things are safety, economic return on investment and infrastructure. So when you're looking at project selections, you want to make sure that you're aligning with those the goals of the current administration to maximize your award success. James, if you don't mind me interrupting real fast, how does the how do these grant programs from the federal government uh define uh infrastructure? Because just recently we we learned that our state defines it slightly differently. And so do you mind elaborating on that definition?

To put it simply, the way the uh federal folks identify infrastructure explicitly when it comes to SS4A is roadways. roadways, um, pedestrian uses or anything really adjacent to the roadway and the roadway itself is infrastructure. So, if you're ready, let's walk over here to this table here.

Did you include that in the bridge? We got it shown. It's included in in one of those on that table. Okay. Well, not not specifically in that. It's it's built in.

So, come gather around. Gather around. We'll give a overview of the different roads here. Um, but we really wanted to dive into the downtown vicinity and kind of blow this area up for you guys so you can see what you already have programmed. So, green, the color green is what you currently already have programmed. and on your high injury network. The orange is what you currently do not have programmed and is on your high injury network. Now, here comes the tough piece. Um, with the removal of the equity component uh with the uh new administration, the pink, everything in pink is was originally recommended by your task force. With that said, we we do need to express some concerns that if you do select anything in the pink, um it could, you know, it could make it things more challenging when it comes to your uh grant application because the pink is really based upon that equity component whereas the orange is based upon your high injury safety network um component. So to kind of outline this a little bit, you can see the green line running down here um from Waxel Parkway going past Ble Mill all the way down to 75 and that corner there, that's your Broom Street or your 16 or 75 improvements that you already have programmed going uh eastward and south east down that way towards um the Circle K. That's your roundabout U6248 that you have programmed with the North Carolina Department of Transportation. and some of this green stuff in here going towards the downtown park is stuff that you've already completed um along that and then some of this other green stuff here along Waxel Marvin and Broad Street is currently programmed with uh incoming development as a part of their traffic mitigations. So, when you really start to hone in on this, looking specifically at the orange, um, what are you most interested in accomplishing?

Both maps are the same. Both maps are the same. Yeah. Yeah. Really, one just in case you messed up or something like that, do it again. So, if you put them on one, it would be best. So is that widening of how we mine or so the scope is is up to you to decide how to address that. Um the scope adding to the scope will obviously increase the cost but the scope for how mine aligns with your downtown u master plan that you also have. So, it's really improving the sidewalk along Howy Mine, adding some uh necessary drainage structures, redoing the roadway structure, that sort of thing.

Well, I think Howy Mine is important. I mean, it's very dangerous down there uh to walk anywhere down there. So, um I've been talking about m how we mine and improving that sidewalk for a couple years now. If we can get that done with some help, that would be great. and I think it would help everyone that lives in that area. Um so that in my eyes that should be a priority.

That's a great point. And I will also add that um you know the town has tried other methods to fund this project which have been unsuccessful specifically with like the CRTPO DA grant. Um I think how mine would be a definite um a great project for a program like this. Do you think the um Church Street I know that you know when Broom Street gets backed up, people go down Church Street? Um but could that possibly be less of a priority once the Helms Road bypass comes in and you know there's more maybe people won't be trying to crowd on there so much?

Yeah, it's a it's a good point you make from a congestion standpoint. You're you're likely correct that will help as far as congestion. Um, thinking back to your economic component though, as far as your return on investment, North Church Street could be a good project to consider because if you widen this area and provide for more sidewalk um, uses and uh, safety uses as well, this really opens up uh, some of the parcels in here for a return on your investment. One of the things I was thinking of about Church Street, since you bring it up, Commissioner Don, is connecting with Emerson Park and the development that's going to come there. And I think if we're to forward think this a little bit, it would be beneficial to have Church Street connect with the Emerson Park retail space that's going to be there. And then it could also help bring the folks from Blemill in. And then the other thing I was thinking of is access to Oldtown Village, uh the sidewalks along Providence that could help those residents come into downtown more easily. Um just to kind of the whole idea it is a walking distance, so it'd be nice to make it a nice walk. So Church Street and then Providence for the Oldtown Village folks.

Mary, you bring up a great point. That was actually something that I wanted to point out was as we're talking about this, I I do wish that we had had a a small silhouette of Emerson Park because Emerson Park will bring about a 140,000 square ft of commercial aspect that we must consider in my personal opinion when looking about where we want to connect these walkable places uh within our road network. Church Street will be part of that probably improvement, but really, if I recall correctly, the map, it will be Broad Street will be the land bridge technically wi with a walking aspect that connects over just past the town homes up towards the commercial. So therefore, I think that it would be Price of McDonald that would probably give you the most reward with some improvements on Church Street. So I think price and McDonald uh definitely price would require an re re-evaluation of essentially what walkable scope we'd look for to essentially connect those two commercial pieces to the future

and those two will be cheaper than so if we do how we mine and then we look at um price and McDonald. So how minus 2.3 million price is 250,000 McDonald's 100,000

and and can church be split up into maybe two sections when we when if possible you know price to church and then that that's kind of your your your two pieces uh for walkable improvements or you know is there MC and does the McDonald to just stay as an internal aspect with more classical homes that are more historic in its current uh preservation piece.

Yeah. And I don't know about this section right here, a residential section, but this section all through here, you you've got a lot of inconsistency with your streets, your sidewalks, your parking. Um, and from an outside perspective, someone that hasn't been here that long, it's really confusing trying to figure out where to park, where to walk around there. So, the more my recommendation, the more consistent you can be in your central core downtown area with the upgrades, the better off, the more effective it's going to be. And that aligns with some of the conversations that we had with some of the external stakeholders such as um the North Carolina Department of Transportation and CRTO where they said, you know, you want to try to get the most bang for your buck and bundle projects the best you can. So if those all kind of group together, that increases your success.

So then what are we looking at here? But Commissioner Ferris, to your point, um we're we're happy to if you would like to see any of these broken up by different blocks or whatever, we're happy to do some revised numbers on those as well. Uh I I think it would be wise because Church Street can lead into uh some other aspects that we don't know what it's going to be yet at that triangle piece at this point. Um, but uh uh when I think of walkability of and connectivity uh you know again thinking into the future of what Emerson could be of five to seven years Price seems like a natural walkable lane

and then the natural draw would be back over down that Church Street piece uh to and to bringing it down to North Main. So, you know, what can be done there to just start with to digest this into bite-sized pieces. So, as I'm as I'm tallying up what's been said, and I'm assuming there's consensus, there may not be, but based upon what's been said, I have Howie Mine, North Church Street, uh, McDonald, and Price. That totals up to approximately 6.2 million. If you do the math, the town's match would be 20% of that or 1.2 2 million which equates to about 250,000 uh every year for five years.

And and I will note based on the last uh meeting that the committee had on this um we did we did add this section right here this would just be the uh replacement of the replacement and repair of the bridge which is going to everything alto together is is about a million dollar price tag to do that. So we threw it in here as part of that.

That would be something to consider. One other aspect that I I I think for an economic point of view and to play devil's advocate is sometimes uh that north side of town uh sees more investment, sees a little more activity on a regular basis. Even though that that I do believe will pay larger dividends over a period of time, I would like to not leave off um Caldwell and just to understand what what might be able to be done and improved over there in that aspect. I think it's worth at least asking and investigating in um and and what kind of sidewalk network improvements can be done over there. So, that's that's a good point because we also currently have Caldwell Street on a future CIP project list um which would include um widening that roadway to accommodate for more parking and more of uh that roadway type structure to support that. So, that would be a uh significant cost savings if you added that to this list as well. And so if we if we can get more essentially and to James' point long-term cost savings by is just at least evaluating that scope it might be worthwhile.

So if you if you add calculator No that's fine. I'm keeping I'm keeping track over here on that one too. Yeah. So based upon what I currently have if you were to add Caldwell you're at 6.8 8 or um a 20% of that would be 1.36 which equates to about 272,000 every year for 5 years. And just to be thorough, what specifically are the improvements for uh West South Main Street between Rahobath and North Church? So this section here, this one there. Yes.

What specifically? because there's sidewalks there right now all the all the way correct uh on the one side. So it would be considering sidewalks on the other side so folks don't have to cross from that parking there. Um and also factoring in some other uh entity involvement as well. I don't know if you're gonna get a bang for your buck with that right here because they're talking about putting a sidewalk on the other side of the street. So here where this parking is, but but you have a strip where people can walk safely right now. I I don't know if you get your bang for the buck. Yeah.

This is going to be done. Yeah. Yeah, that's

I'm with you. No, I just wanted to ask a question because I wasn't sure specifically what they were

looking to do in the future could be more done. Do I think looking at North Main in the future to make it more multi-use um oriented especially with I I if I recall the correct the longer term vision of Wax on Marvin was to have a more multiuse bike pedestrian friendly uh section. I North Main long-term could use an evaluation but at this time I don't think it's necessary. it has a reasonable infrastructure already in place serving us more than modestly well. Um, if that's what you're bringing up in in that north main section, I'm not I don't know what other improvements outside of I think two sidewalks uh sidewalks on both sides.

So, if you're looking specifically at West North Main, it would be similar to what we did with the TAP or downtown pedestrian project on um East North Main Street. So, you would want to have a consistent look across town if that's what you're looking for. Okay. Yeah. But that's just gives you some frame of reference there. I I don't see the economic driver on that one at this time to improve that West North main corridor.

Yeah. And and then also that side of town is also having the S sewer and water main project now. And that's a business disrup disruption. And then if we have to get this done within five years, that's more business disruption. and um from business owners on the um by Middle James, that area there. Um although it was a six-month impact physically, the business took another hit for another six months after that while people got used to the new pattern. Timing is not great.

Yeah. So that's So I just want to consider that for the businesses. I don't want to hit them from every direction. Um, so I think I don't know. I think this is a good plan. So what I'm what I'm hearing is I just want to make sure that there is consensus. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm hearing is how mine specifically the whole piece. What I'm also hearing is North Church Street the whole piece. Um third what I'm hearing is McDonald's Street those missing that whatever is in orange there on McDonald Street. And same thing with with uh Caldwell. I think those have to go together. McDonald and Price.

McDonald and Price. Yeah. Yeah. And Price right here too, right? Yep. So, let me let me just read these numbers up real quick here. So, we have Price Street. We have uh McDonald Providence right there. Yep. Price as well. Yeah, you're correct. You're right. that as well. Price Street and Caldwell. Now, I wasn't I wasn't certain on the um Do you want to go past broad with price or just that may not be necessary? So, you're talking about just price to broad that piece right there. Okay. And then the other piece on the other side. Okay. Yeah, I think you know.

Okay. So, that that if I read Let me just quickly redo the math here. 2.3 plus What about this right here? This is burn. That's kind of disjointed. That's one of those random ones, right? Wait. So, yes, we're still at 6.8. So, the the previous math holds. Um, so that'll be about a $272,000 annual commitment for five years. Now, did you all want to do this section of broom right here coming down to Caldwell?

This would be the um And I mean, it just needs to be defined more. Yeah. Because Yeah. It leads to parking. Yeah. And it's a little bit disjointed. It may be one of the cheaper ones because there's only so much you're going to do there with the buildings as close as they are. Yeah. I think that would be a good And and then the other question is did you want to did you want to roll the bridge into this as part of this project or leave it off? I would I think whatever makes it most likely you're going to save about 800,000 or you're going to spend a million on it later.

That was one of the things that we for the state advocacy. I mean, can you say that were to get picked up by somebody else? Could that come off of the grant later on to get a grant for that? I think from a pedestrian standpoint, it's definitely a huge necessity. Um, and from a safety standpoint as well, because if you're going to focus priority on how we mine, those folks are going to be coming across the bridge and you'll have this these other projects interworking with that. So, from a safety component, not only is your bridge historical, but it's a huge safety aspect.

We've got that included in the parks plan as well. But to Commissioner Don's point, if um if this is listed right now on our advocacy list if this were to be picked up on another grant, another funding funded somehow else, could we we just lose it? Would we just would that money come out of this? Would it go to something else? How how would that work? So could you So you're saying if if you get Oh, I see. Well, I think one important thing to note is, you know, all of this money is um whatever your match is is nonfederal. So that means that if you do get state advocacy monies, that money is nonfederal and can be used towards your match. That would make it even cheaper then. Might be get the whole thing done for free.

Yeah. What's the plan for reinforcing? Yeah, I think we would have to Yeah, we'd have to do some assessment, but it would be like rehabilitation. Rehabilitation. Yeah, would be largely a rebuild, but trying to keep the same design unless of course. Yes. So, so you're right. You're right. So, Susan and Barbie made a great point is sometimes the state money is earmarked for federal dollars. So, you just have to be very mindful of that not to have a double count of federal dollars. But if that state money is earmarked for state dollars, that can count towards your non-federal match.

Has there been much discussion or any discussion about a second walking bridge? It's an interesting idea. I I would love it. I've thought about if you had one broad or high. Yeah, exactly. Um um maybe not by church, but more towards Broad or even High Street just to connect those areas straight to your park right there. Yeah, it's an interesting point, especially considering your downtown master plan. I think it's worth it. I' I've heard it discussed once or twice. A couple citizens have brought it up more than once,

but um you just look at the pedestrian and the foot flow and a lot of it, you know, this whole section of North and South Maine, it's difficult to cross. And even right here at Providence or 16, it's it's a treacherous cross. So, if there was another bridge at Broad or High, then that would help it would help connect the two sides, the north and the south, a little bit better. Yeah, put a question mark. But I don't know how feasible that is in terms of Exactly. Exactly. Right now, we've definitely been talking with them various things. So, we can bring and we have an easement with them right now for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Just a thought. It's something I mean since we're looking at maps and lines, it's something to maybe throw as a dotted line on there at some point and and start considering. So to kind of con conclude and wrap up um with those added mentions that raised it from 6.8 to about 7.5 um which if you do the math 20% of that is one one and a half million right on the dot. And then um if you take that across five years, it's really a $300,000 commitment. But if but if you guys are fine with that, we can come back to your next meeting with a resolution request.

And that's assuming we get every single one we apply for. Correct. Yeah. The leading caveat minimum. So the minimum is two and a half. So you it's definitely a strong application once you factor in the safety components focuses with the pedestrian and with the economic return on investment and of course the infrastructure component as well. I think it makes for a strong application. When you say strong application, do you mean that they view that favorably when I think more things?

I think they would. Um, as long as you can combine that into one story, which we will be able to. And there's one additional piece and I'm going to invite uh Susan if there she is. Susan's going to tell you a little bit about some additional cost savings opportunities that you have uh utilizing services through the league. So, I'm just going to quickly pass the torch over to her real quick.

Well, thank you guys. And for those listening, I'm Susan Lee, administrative services manager. I also handle the the grants. Uh what we've what I found was through the North Carolina League of Municipalities, of which we're a member, they had a federal grant a few years ago that offer these grant writing services for a variety of of opportunities. specifically for us SS4A so we can take this um outside of our house work smarter not harder and use the services of a grant writer and that's Widow Brian's who specializes in SS4A funding have a phenomenal success rate with these so this is at no cost to us and approximately what they estimated when James and I talked to her about a $30,000 savings if we contracted these services so this is part of July, we're under a deadline. Uh what we'll have at the if once this gets finalized, what we'll have at the March meeting is a resolution and a contract that was vetted by Matt for signature just to get the grant writing services started. Then as we go deeper into this process, I'm sure there'll be various other components that will be go before the board, most likely a resolution confirming funding. And from my experience with Fed grants, various other pieces that either Scott or the mayor will have to sign to get this funding started. So, it's a it's a good good opportunity all the way around on various options. So,

all good.

Outstanding. Thank you very much, James. This is a great exercise. Great to see it kind of on paper. I Welcome. Next on the agenda, we have a discussion about the municipal agreement between NC DOT for the Helms Road extension. Uh this is something we've talked about from a funding standpoint and making sure money is appropriately allocated, I believe. Um so that's been done and now I I think now is the point to actually enter into the contract with DOT on this one. So, is there much more to it than that?

Well, I just want sure that James covered how these contracts work so you understand um so when you authorize me to enter into it at the March meeting uh that it's clear that you guys are clear of what your obligations are, what we get out of it. It's uh it's in that um uh sheet that he gave you. um it's it's in that that local part that we're paying for uh gets us a very high rate of return on a project. So um this happens to be uh through NC DOT through CARPO. Is that correct? Yeah. So with your regional um transportation group, so I'm going to have James just kind of make sure we do a very high level uh uh review of the contract. um we're going to ask you at your March 10th meeting for me to authorize enter into it. Um you've already done some um adjusting in your capital for this. So um that's a good thing and that's what we want to do. For example, uh when James when we announced that we had gotten some money for design on Kensington, that frees up money. So, um, we can literally almost go into next budget year with the, uh, right-of-way part, uh, dealt with. Now, we're only left with the, uh, our part other part of the construction. So, um, that's what I mean by it being, you know, as we go through these projects, the things that move around in in the money. So, I'm going to let James go through the contract. So on that on that sheet that you have, the first sheet that I gave you with the breakdown of the state and federal, this is the um HL0158, which is the Helms Road extension. Um you all have already heard this before, but we just wanted to go over it again. The um the short bit of this is once you're in, you're in. Um so if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. Um,

so there are there are contractual consequences if the board or if the town is unable to fulfill their obligations once they make that obligation. So, um, we're just going to go through this executive summary and contract um, just at a very high level again and if you have any questions, feel free to stop me, but this was this is in your agenda packet and you saw this at the last board meeting, too. So, you know, the first section talks about just general provisions, um, the federal funding accountability and transparency act, some of the basic stuff's there. The second part talks about the scope of the project and then moves into talking about the funding commitments, um, which we've outlined. Um, so th when we bring this to you at March, those are the commitments that you that you must make moving forward with the project over the course of the next uh, five years. Um the contract further talks about the period of performance which is that 5-year period. It talks about uh preliminary engineering authorization, professional services, the rules that you have to uh abide by with that. Um the environmental documentation, the design stuff, the rightway information construction, all that sort of thing. Any questions so far? Hearing none. Um it also moves into talk about utilities uh railroad certifications that if you have any involvement there proposals engineer estimates procurement uh and awarding of the contract you know this is a federal uh federal federal dollars are here so we have to abide by those uh federal rules. Um the department and their representatives so also the federal high administration has at any point in time the right to inspect. So there they can show up on site at any point in time to do inspections. So that's just something else and the contractor must comply uh

with those inspections. Um moving into closeout and maintenance. So this was one of the key things that the town worked strongly with in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Transportation. We realized that a roadway like this from a maintenance standpoint is going to be a significant burden on the town of Waxaw. So we explicitly uh agreed that um upon completion of this uh new roadway section, DOT is going to maintain the roadway which will be a huge future maintenance cost savings uh to the town. So that's that's a plus. Some other things are, you know, with this being a locally administered project, this is not traditional in the sense of DOT is managing the work. DOT is really more of just oversight. we your staff are going to be doing most of the work when it comes to um this local process. So it'll be more involved. You'll have more timelines there provided to you. Um I know that's that's always an issue that pops up. Uh especially when the project is not managed by locally. Question so far.

So you mentioned final inspection before we take possession of the road. Is it similar to with the development um the build housing developments that we get to inspect and then say, "Yeah, it meets our standards. We'll take it now." Correct. And they'll fix anything that's not quite up to snuff. That's correct. And DOT is also included throughout the entire process. So, they can review the design. They can review uh and make comments throughout the course of the uh project. So, that way if they do have any concerns, those concerns are addressed. So that way by the time you get to the finish line, it's like, okay, yes, we've checked all the boxes and DOT will now take over maintenance of the facility.

And when you say we're taking care of it, are you saying that town staff is essentially serving as the general contractor and then we'll be subbing out for, you know, the bulldozers, the pavers, and the roads and all the actual correct. So your your town engineering team will be uh facilitating this and administering the contracts. So, um, we're really the administrator, so to speak, where DOT would traditionally be the administrator, we're going to be that. So, you have more involvement, more opportunity for public comment and that sort of thing.

And, uh, this is not a funding question, it's um a general question. Uh, we had discussed when I guess maybe a year or so ago about um possibly making this a truck route. How do we go about doing that? because I know a lot of the complaints is these heavy trucks going through downtown. If this road is going to be built for fire trucks and that sort of thing, um it should be able to support larger trucks. Uh how do we get how do we do that? How do we try to get NC DOT to help us out on that?

Yeah. So, first thing is um updating the standards, which is what we're doing with this roadway design. So, we're doing a full depth reclamation and making sure that the there's a large covert along the roadway, some drainage issues. We're making sure that everything meets codes for those larger trucks. Um, so that way hopefully in the long run, DOT is going to ask I don't think you're you're going to get a yes from them at this point in time. I think it's more of well, can you show a continuous path moving forward um that reroutes those trucks safely?

What does that mean? So, for example, um you know that with this path, a lot of your truck movement is really from the southeast part of town going north. So, if they if they reroute this way, it's going to be complicated for the trucks to um I mean, they definitely can. You can definitely ordinance that um but I think DOT at that point in time will ask you, well, are you willing to take over some of the roads in your downtown vicinity to do that?

Okay. Well, so but we are the road will be uh fit for that though. So it's not something that they're going to come back and say, "Sorry, you didn't make the road, you know, strong enough to withstand this type of traffic." That's just what I wanted to avoid. I wanted to make sure that everything's in place for that to happen if we could make it happen.

We're designing it to accommodate for those larger trucks. Yeah. All right, moving forward. Um there are some of the um last little bits of the contract which is reporting requirements and records retention. So the municipality, the town in this case has to after completion of the project and approval um hold on to any documents associated with the contract and project for a minimum of five years. So, that's something that we'll have to keep on file. Um, everything associated with the with the project. Some other provisions, you know, um, following um, title six, making sure that you're in line with those federal federal requirements, um, audits, u reimbursements by the municipality, and, you know, in the unlikely event, I'll say, um, the termination of the project if there's unable to fulfill the obligations. So there it does outline that um talked about authorizations to execute and ultimately the uh sunset provision after the project is complete. So any questions hearing? None. So the board's good on this and I think we'll have it on the agenda for March. Thank you. Uh, next up we have a discussion about the proposed agreement for the David G. Barnes skate park and the meeting place. We have a park improvement action plan to discuss.

So, um, the board wanted us to come back, um, and have and staff has been doing work since that time, since the board's direction, uh, has that been a month and a half or so ago? So, um, since that time, uh, to, um, talk about both, better understanding of the contract and what it achieves if you were to go that way, what other alts you have and and the comprehensiveness of this or how you might want to break that along. So, uh, Deian's going to be here to represent that and, uh, try to answer any questions. uh she might have an overview first um and then uh let you all fire away at questions and things like that. So Dina,

thank you sir. Okay, just want to make sure that you have your cheat sheet kind of this two pager should be in your packet if you don't have it ready available. I do have extra copies and this basically gives you an overview of kind of what we've um found so far and then um some options for for y'all to consider. I also have a um basically overview uh survey of the downtown park and how barns and the skate park kind of play in. um that is not in your packet and I do have extra copies if you so choose to have one of those as well. And then I also have in my packet um kind of the the presentation that y'all saw in January just in case if y'all need a refresher. Um so that's all the things I have up here. Do y'all need any extras or are you good? Which one?

Okay. pass. Pass that.

Thank you. And no worries. Does anybody need a refresher?

So, what is this? No. Oh, yeah. I have this. Oh my goodness.

I don't even know what I'm looking at. All righty. Okay. So, with the cheat sheet, that's that um double-sided kind of umformational sheet that was in your packet. It goes over the original action plan. Um and that is what Miss Melissa went over with y'all in January. And then we've got from that direction to u look at the skate park a little more um in depth. So, we that's what we've been doing. With the original plan, it went over barns, the skate park, and the meeting place as a holistic um look at and that is the understanding the ownership and the property areas because we have concerns about that utilities, storm water, all the safety and security, the pedestrian connectivity to the um to 75 and to the downtown park. Um, and then also it gives you a more in depth of surveys and in-person meetings to see uh what our residents are um looking for for this uh for this special area in our downtown. And then it went into that 30% construction documents for the skate park in particular. Um it was uh mentioned also that phase one we were u recommend just to focus on the skate park because we see that being more of our um safety hazard area and then we wanted to uh move on with that aspect of the action plan. On the back of that page it tells you um that we got direction to look further into uh the

skate park. So we then broke out um some options for the skate park and that is to be its own design and then that would be a design build on that but then still go through all those components of surveys um getting public input making sure that we address the storm water and utilities in that section of the skate park. um the on your map that is off of Caldwell Street. So that is the the section right below um the parking lot. So the parking lot coming off of Codwell is that square. We own the skate park.

Yes.

Okay. Just want to make sure I said that out loud. Um and uh Caldwell is part of that paper, the extension of Codwell and then Codwell goes to um South Broad. So it goes further all the way over. So that whole that we own, right? So we're just want to make sure I was clear on that because I know some of the other areas in Barnes we have easements for which is awesome and some of it's paper roads. So, and then some of it is areas that we don't own. So, that's just want to make sure I'm clear on that. Then, so that second option, thank you, Miss Barbie. Um, second option go basically goes in uh looking at the skate park as holistically and that is seeing what it all the things that needs to be upgraded on it. Um, it also looks at it from it's it is on a landfill. We already know that. Um, it is it has a spring right beside it. We know that because I I found it. I found that one. Um, but also we're not utilizing the whole space. The fence is not the footprint of that land. Okay? It goes further out. Um so all these things need to be considered that would that would fix all the safety issues and then the all the unknowns um for um for the skate park. Option three is resurfacing the whole um skate park. that's a little more labor intensive because it's having to grind down a lot. Um, we also know that it is

on a landfill, so everything's still settling. So, that is a fix, but it is not a long-term fix. Okay. Um, I do have a estimate from one vendor at this point of 73,000 and change to just do the surfacing. Okay. Um, that is not fixing any drainage issues or any conflict issues of when skaters are in the park. Okay, that is just touching the surface, right? And getting all the rough edges out. Then option uh four is just patching as we're being patching. And we have another estimate for that at 18 and change. Um and that is just the the really really really bad areas. Um again that is not um taking any of the safety concerns of the conflicts or drainage or settling that's a longer a like a smaller term of fixing.

Yes sir. Dina, outside of the drainage issues, u which conflicts do we have at the park that are most pressing top three safety concerns outside of just drainage? What what are these conflicts?

So the elements were built actually let me give you a little background. So yesterday, today is Tuesday, right? Yes. Yesterday we met with Mr. Tom Rizzer. Um Mr. Will is actually in the audience. Um he owns our skate shop downtown. Uh also a skate park builder and myself and staff met with um the team and we basically went over where the park was built in two phases. The first phase was built about 20 years ago. The second phase about 12 years ago. What happened was everything was built kind of organically and it was built for like 15ish skaters to be on at a time. Our community loves a skate park. We have closer to 30 to 50 people on the skate park at a time. So the conflicts where unless you're experienced skater, you know like the groove of where to go and what happens is when you have that many skaters in a very small, this is a very small footprint. They're constantly running into each other. That's the reason why we made a rule a a few years back to take bikes totally off of it because we kept on getting um like serious injuries like bones out of you can see the bone kind of thing or lots of head injuries. We're still getting still getting those injuries but we're not getting them as as frequently as we did when we had the bikes in there. So, they're still conflicting. That That's what I mean by conflicting. The the elements are so compacted on top of each

other that they it it's hard to for the skaters to get to A to B with an element without experience another skater either in the space or they're running into a person in the space. Does that make you understand? Okay.

Yeah. I I think I understand what you're saying. So there's no transitional zone between the elements. Essentially, you're having to make essentially more advanced skill decisions in between these sections where it's not allowing for essentially a stepping stone approach for some of the youth to also be participating in the skate park as well as yet still having some of those more advanced skilled elements that make it an attractive piece for some destination skaters to come into Waxaw from other portions of our county and uh and enjoy the facilities.

So, it's I mean I'm grateful to have it, right? So, it's just we've gotten to the point where because of all these elements of at one time are just conflicting with each other. We It's time to get some TLC.

Well, part of it is sort of a a crowding thing, right, where it's popular, there's a lot of people trying to skate on it at the same time. Um, and one thing I heard from the skaters themselves was that they could use just some flat area to do some street skating on, you know. Um, it doesn't have to be some grand big new park. It can just be a nice flat surface for them to do their flip kick flip trick tricks and things like that, you know. that actually was brought up um yesterday about having um some of the elements uh reformed, right? Um and have more miscable style street skating and that's what is more open area and you're having a little more freestyle um with that um since you're past skater. Correct. And um so that's part of it, right? But when you're when we found out um talking with Mr. Tom, there's a lot of rebar in a lot of steel um because he built up. He didn't go down uh because of the topo of the park. And um when you're opening something up to mitigate that, I just I don't want us to go into it blind. I want us to make sure we have all the all the bits and pieces uh with this plan so we understand what we're getting ourselves into and be able to phase it. That way it's we can go after grants and we can actually um be more budget conscious in it. So, in order to free up space to eliminate some of that um those merging points where skaters are running into

each other, you've either got to eliminate some elements or you have to come up with more surface area for the skaters. So, are you saying we're going to take that skate park if either you eliminate the uh elements or you got to go wider or longer, right? That's that's what the the action plan would help us basically vet out what that looks like. And we can go further west on that property. You can go further south.

Okay. All right. Further south, Dina, we can't go west towards Hick Street because So Hick Street's on the west side of the skate park. So further south towards the house towards the house we can go there's the property line is just about 10 15 feet further from the fence line. Okay. So there's about the the fence and in other words the fence can move 10 feet. Yes. But we also have to make sure with my planning engineering friends about buffers and stuff like that. So I we have to bet all that out there. There is on the west side on the on the west side

on the Hicks side through the middle where we're would make the connection to downtown park that would there is a lineated stream that starts on the park the downtown park side. It is storm water on the barn side. And and then what's the situation with this? We've talked about the paper street. Hick Street is a paper street. Yes, sir. Clearly, I'm I'm looking at the satellite here. I don't see no road. Um, is going in towards Hick Hick Street or into Hicks Street, is that conceived as an option at all or is that still kind of a no-go for some reason or what's the s?

Say it one more time. Sorry. So, in other words, when we we talk about expanding the park and taking up a little bit more space, so we can move the fence 10 ft to the south to get it actually on the property line. That's a possibility. Yep. And then what about going west into Hick Street? That is also a possibility. Okay. But again, we need to like you had and that would that's that uh greenway section that goes straight into the park. Yeah. So, that's how you get that connection. Yep. Because we heard a lot in this past year about line of sight for um all of our downtown friends that want to see the area and how walkability

the park is. Yeah. So I took that in consideration as well. Okay. Is Hick Street who owns that dirt? It's it's the rightway of the for the town. It's a town rightaway and the town essentially owns it. Okay. That's a good start. Yeah. So, I guess of course my question is going to be about pricing again. That's okay. Um, that's the reason I like I like the table for option two. Do we have any numbers for that? We don't. I just see three dollar signs. Yes. It's is higher because I I know.

Yeah. Is there is there a range? Because you know I between a $1 sign and a $3 I

I I don't I I learned my lesson of putting a number down and that that's the reason why we need that plan um so we can get that number and phase it out. Okay. We phased a lot of our park projects out and and then but also gives us time to go for grant funding. I mean, we we got over almost $2 million of other other people's money for the downtown park. Okay. For the wreck barn, it was the state's money for the whole thing that we that's what we need to try to go for.

Well, yeah. And the skate park is one of our top priorities for the legislative uh our legislators. So, I mean, that's fine. I just um I guess in your mind or it in in a situation like this and you're saying phasing it, you know, I don't want to keep this park down for too long either. So what are we looking at when you're saying phases? It is used. I want to get it. So I don't want to make it an insurmountable feat so that I want to be able to pay for it and I want to be able to get them the park sooner rather than later. Right. And I know they appreciate you can't just

So that's with half the park is being under construction or it could be again it could be physically half of it this if there's an expansion what that looks like um if it the more street style skaters in that expansion area or if elements were like the park was done in two phases you can you can do that and then it could be the mainly fix all the conflicts area and put that into the new phase and and that was streamline a lot of um a lot of those elements and then a second phase could be that major resurfacing. It could be a lot. That's the reason why I really want a like I'm a big checklister. So, if I had a plan that I could just start marking stuff off, the problem right now, I don't have a clear picture because I don't have all the information in front of me. And then if I don't have the information, I can't give it to you. And that that leaves us in a wishy-washy muddy area that does no good for any of anybody.

And I want to make sure that they they have a place to go. Oh, no. I do, too. Yeah. I just I'm always worried about when you build something on a landfill, what you're gonna find when you start digging stuff up and then what's that going to add to the cost? That's part of it, right?

And so what is the impact? Because I know, you know, a lot of times we'll say, well, this is going to cost, you know, a million dollars, right? But I don't know that we always factor in how much it's going to cost in five years in maintenance, staff. I mean I for me I'd be more comfortable having that picture as well because it it's not just the initial cost it's the rolling costs go moving forward. I'm hearing a couple of different things um that essentially went into what I had asked with scope and scale and that's you're asking us to give you some feedback into that and what I'm picking up is that there park was originally phased in two sessions a 20 year a 20-year-old plan can you enlighten me that 20 year old piece is that closer on the front half of Codwell or Caldwell and Church or is it further in the back half

is the is the first back. So if we're at the parking lot so it's closer to the section it's closer to the back fence closer to the back fence. So half of the park was done closer to the two the dwelling unit uh I think it's 200 the res our neighbor is closer to the neighbor where the where the shade structures at. So that's the older park in the bowl area and then the newer park is closer to the front and you it's basically there's a you can see there's a really big line. Yes.

Um and then then the area closest to the parking lot off of Church Street, that area is the newer park. Okay. That area closest to Church Street. Like a ramp up. Yes. a little half uh concrete halfpipe. Yes. Okay. Good. And then so that that area is the the last 12 years, newest within the last decade.

Got it. So to me it sounds like there's a couple of things at play here. You would originally had incorporated the meeting place. I believe also the kids barn barns park and the skate park into essentially your original number uh that you had estimated at 140 for the for the action plan for for the action plan for the design the whole design action plan for the

so then to better to to better understand your design and scope let me add this did that design and scope include essentially utilization of the hicks paper street I believe is what the mayor was kind of leaning towards did that design come into that? And then and then did it also include design uh essentially giving us that additional greenway connection over to South Broad Street. And so it did it it did. Okay. So then I guess then what for scope and scale that Dena is asking back is is not just the park because the park is does sound like it is waiting for it to be redone but there's steel and rebar forms that once you start splitting that up into sections that you may have unintended consequences. And so that's the catch that we don't know and in in a for scope and scale of once we start dissecting essentially that park it might have an unintended consequence of okay this is going to balloon to commissioner Ouija's fear that we're going to have a balloon effect uh of what we are going to have to bite off of in the park and then that would al ultimately then end up closing down essentially our our beloved skatepark because once you start sometimes it's harder to stop.

Yes. But I want to preface the action plan would pretty much tell us if the whole park doesn't have to be totally like redone either. So there there there could be some compromises in there. But again, I don't have all the facts in front of me to help y'all with that decision or give you the facts for that.

So, I was there uh this morning and I took a look and just from from eyeballing it, the back half of So, you come into the gate. I'm going to call that the front part. When you come into the uh come through the gate, you look on either side of you, that's like the front part. The back part was actually in pretty good shape. Although, you do see stress cracks on some of the higher mounds. You see some stress cracks, but that's not unsafe. It was all pretty smooth and it looked like it was in pretty good shape. Even the the halfpipe area was in good shape. You come when you look at the front and the cement work that would need to be done was all on the front side by the gate. And that's where you're saying, you know, there's there's pretty uh visible demarcation of where the old work was done and the new work. If if and plus on the front side, you had some goofy little elements like little humps that aren't practical probably for the skaters today. That could be the flat part where you create that space, that flat space. And then the back part, it's really in pretty good shape. You're saying it's the older part. That's amazing. That that looks like it's good stuff. Then you've got extra room then to move a fence later in another phase in the backside where it could be more flat space or you put a younger person's track in there of some sort or you can tie it into the other stuff somehow. I don't know. But that I'm thinking out loud but eyeballing it just from a visual. It's something that you could keep the park open and and do it in phases while the park's still open and and the uh skaters can

still use it. And so I just want to make sure that I'm a big safety person. You'll learn that about me. Um but that we would we'd have to if there's any machinery in there, we would close have have to close the park. Um, my goal is to have an overall what the plan is for to do that work and what it looks like in the end and phase it out to what it looks like in the end. I can't answer all those questions for you right now. That's the reason why we need to do the action plan.

This starts to sound a little more and more like one of those things where we might need to do literally two phases where it's what can we do immediately at a budget and then what planning activities need to occur for a long-term grand revision and when do we pay for that. So more immediately we think about how to pay for option three and then maybe a year or two from now we start talking about how to pay for the planning involved in option two. But in the original plan, you had included Barnes Park, right? In in that. So, is this option to including that or is that just solely the skate park? That's just solely the skate park.

That's just solely the skate park. So, if we take Barnes out of it and we're just looking at option two and getting I mean, is there a cost for the action plan just on that? Yes, ma'am. You So you have that number? I That's I would have to get a vetted out again. I have to bid out. Okay. So I mean the 140 was including Barnes Park.

The 140 was in Barnes Park for it to have its action plan and what it looks like and to do all the sharetses for it and and also the meeting place what it next what it wants to be when it grows up. and then 30% construction plans to go along with the skate park. So I guess part of Barnes Park is not ours, correct? But there's some there's the paper road that is um ours um on two ways on Caldwell and Hicks, right?

And then we have an easement with Windstream where the large playground is. Mhm. We own the restrooms and the meeting place and a portion of the circle at the front and then a portion of the tot lot is part of the gas station that's not with the paper road. It's like there's a little skirt in there. Yeah. Because I think, you know, for me, I think the focus should be on the skate park. Okay. For me,

yeah, I agree. I I like uh John's thought process that uh Commissioner Jimnyani his uh thought process there uh with perhaps flattening out some of the front parts and having that be a flat area. Um because that's less invasive of a of a repair and could be extended to the to the west. Um, and but you know, we I think we need numbers before we can make a decision. I mean, um, we're not skate park designers, so we need somebody who is to say this is what we could do. This is how much it's going to cost. Based on the scope and the size of it, there should be a some existing models that we can benchmark off prices, existing prices,

but like square footage. Yeah. Let's go through go through the options. Option one's the original bid and scope. That's the full pack of a design. Included in that would be what's called 30% design build. And that was the 140 that we were discussing. That's the 140. Yep. Option two would have to probably be rebid. It would focus solely and wholly on the park on the skate park and you'd only be dealing in that footprint. Okay. So then you'd have an estimate of cost and that kind of thing. Um option three I heard se around 73,000. Yeah.

Okay. So around 73,000 for option three and option four around 18,000. Yes. So options three and four are closer to what uh Commissioner Jim Manani was talking about and uh Commissioner Dawn. So th those two are priced up. They are a repair and fix option within that. Um ju just so you know. So the 73,000 that would be it's just resurfacing, right? all surface sand. It has for 5 years

and patching that does not do any of the drainage or the conflicts. That's not taking anything out. That is just what's there gets resurfacing the entire park

and removal of conflicting elements. It makes sense almost to to resurface the park because we get the immediate benefit and then we get some longevity out of it. we're going to get at least five years and then in that five years we're figuring out option two and I think again we can figure out when to initiate the expense on the planning aspect of option two and then option two planning will give us a big number and then in the five years of that resurfacing life is when we work on funding the plan that was developed for option two. So in other words, think about immediately funding the 733k for resurface and then very shortly maybe with the budget discussions we can talk about funding the design work needed for option two.

So we're expecting I want to confuse the whole thing again. Please do

because what I think what I described and and if you look at the option two, option three, option four, you're talking about being really in invasive with uh de demolishing a portion of what's there on the front part. I'm telling you, if you I'd love to go over there with some engineers and just say, "Hey, you tell me what is unsafe or what is possible." But really from from the visual, the the problem concrete is at the front and it's got those weird probably unusable elements. Now you're going to eliminate some elements.

So that would not resurface and and I'm telling you, you don't have to resurface the whole park because the stuff in the back looks pretty good. I and and so then you're then you get into an option four for some of it,

right, with just patching and that type of thing. Uh on the back side, but on the front side, you get your biggest bang for your buck and you're not having to do the whole part. But I would yeah I would just caution that on the back part visually it might be okay but we're not skating on it so I don't know what a skater would feel if they're smooth smoothness on it. It's a work session, so we'd like to go ahead and bring up. Come on. An an expert witness being quiet, but an expert witness. He's been shaking his head at you, John. Identify yourself there, Will. He's been behind you going.

Okay.

Okay. So, I hear you with the the resurfacing. There's a lot of structural integrity issues are going to be bigger issues with the resurfacing as far as it's still a band-aid fix for 5 years. You're not fixing the collision zones. You're not fixing the increased use of this skate park like 30 to 50 people. That's that's a very small square footage for that many people. but with a new design that's not the 1970s because that's how that park was designed was a mogul 70s style skatepark which is 60 years ago was the design for that when four people in this town probably would skateboard um with it that square footage and a new modern design can accommodate 30 40 50 60 70 people and it can also be built for progression and the longevity of the sport. The skatepark is your cheapest long-term maintenance option because there hasn't been any maintenance done except for the grinding in 10 years. Tom Rizzer said it himself yesterday. I haven't touched this thing in 10 years and before that I didn't touch it for 12. It's essentially a parking lot. You're not you're going to have to refix some cracks, some bumps every four or five years, but it's concrete metal. It's not going anywhere. So, I think personally, selfishly, well, not selfishly because I'm representing the whole community, not just a business owner, but I see from y'all's aspect, you want an RARI on your investment. Right now, we're also in a unique uh position as well of there's nothing in Charlotte except for Moresville that can host any contest. With our skate team, we sponsor a bunch of local skaters. We pay for them to go to contests. We pay for them to compete. And we want to be able to bring those competitions to Waxaw. And we're in a perfect market to do that. Right now in York County, there's not even a skatepark. In Rock Hill, there's an Olympic skateboarder. How does an

Olympic skateboarder grow up in an area with no skate park? We built an illegal skatepark in the woods. They just demolished it three years ago. That that's all we had. So if you build it, they will come. Oh, see? Yeah. But

anyways, that's that's my input. Well, I'd like to add too that you not only taking a minute to talk about this, which I think it has been a productive holy conversation. Um, it's part of investing in culture and and we do have to put some of those cornerstones in place over time and and how are we going to help essentially culture have a positive place to have time to be outside to be essentially engaged in our community. And it just so happens that it is right downtown. So that is a perk in my personal opinion. I understand that there it goes back into you know what what was the scope and size. So it sounds like there's two two short-term options. The one resurfacing it does sound like it would be still a band-aid. So it comes down to what is our timing? Do we need one to two years to essentially come down come in with a two-phase plan? because obviously Dena is talking about aspects here that where we have a tiein to our park uh through Hick Street. We have a tiein over to South Broad uh Street um that ties in with David G. Barnes and that's is that a phase two and then is the phase one essentially a more focused phase one on that essentially that postage stamp over the park and how how are we biting this out essentially and is the way I'm looking at it and does a resurfacing give us just enough times where we can lay down some of those plans or does a patching give us enough time to lay down some of those plans for not one to two years but you know 10. So would it make sense? We still need to go to bid for option two. And it sounds like there's an appetite for option two. So I think

just over the skate park.

Over the skate park. And if we want to extend into the paper street a little bit on Hicks, you know, we can talk about that and maybe that could be different scopes of the quote for the final project. So in other words, that's part of the bid ask is going to be scope this big a park, scope that big a park and we get some numbers there. So, does the board have the appetite then to consider the number, the bid for the design work of just the skate park, a couple different sizes, and then we can compare that bid against the 73 and the 18 and then the timing therein in terms of how long we think it would actually take to fund this stuff. Um because I think just realistically the 73 that sounds like something we can probably fund in a year or two. But if we spend say 50 or 80 grand on a plan and that plan then costs two or three million obviously that's going to be a long lead item which would justify the 73 expense until we can cover that. So, but anyway, moral of the story is it sounds like it makes sense to get the bid for option two, couple different size parks. And we have a question for our mayor prom.

And so, will there be any construction? So, I know the other plan had uh 30% of it was going to have some construction costs. I can put that into the bid of the of the the action plan for the skatepark is that this would be the action plan with construction documents with it just like I had before. And what do construction documents look like? Is there any specific?

So, um what you were getting out of the original one was an overall idea and plan, right? plus an understanding of who's where, what the soil is, all of the other things. If you do this one and then you were getting what are called 30%. So they're only designed up to a 30% level. You then bid it as a design build and then they come back and say, I'll value engineer this thing at X and next one says, I'll do it at Y and next one says Z. But that's what you're doing. You have a the concept of it, all the issues addressed, then when they're bidding, they're bidding on a clear set of documents, all on the same documents, knowing the same problems. Um, in this particular case, if what you said is go out and rebid option two, we can do that. You would be rejecting the first one. You would then be instructing staff to redo an RFP and go out for option two and hoping that that that cost will be both a within your 140 that's what you have in budget or less than half of that. Okay. So um may be that you get your design build plans out of it and you may have out of that a design for the first phase of maintenance. So you get something done in that first while you then have a cost estimate to figure out how you're going to fund the balance. Does that make sense?

So you have those monies in the budget right now. um they're in your budget right now, but you would get a a very clear understanding on option two. It's only concentrated on the skate park. And then you'd be looking for 30% design plan. You'd be looking for design plans and cost estimates and a framework to work on. Um and then you'd know how much you'd have left over for the other things for maintenance. But you don't know that until you do it. And um with with all that information, we can go out for future grants with that information, which is completely awesome.

Thank you. And that's one of the main reasons why I would even entertain the idea of the 73 spend on a resurface because that gives us five years to go fishing for grants trying to get legislative money and so forth. Um, but again, I think it's important for us to know what we're paying for or what we're spending to get this plan, this 30% design versus the 73. So, we know it won't be 140, but hopefully it's not 130 and something much smaller than that. And then we can talk about that when we get those numbers. Um, and then speaking of grants, now that we have the parks and trails, uh, yes, team, uh, we can go out for grants on that and

we can hit it at all sides from town side and the nonprofit side. The other thing it would allow us to do is also consider options three and four more holistically as we're doing the other part. So, uh, we might be able to tighten that up even further and figure out what some of the short-term things we can do in the meantime, both as a maintenance level, scraping other funds together, whatever we might have to do to get us through that design phase in that. Sounds good. Sounds good. You feeling good?

So, just so I understand my marching orders, I am going back out to bid with a scope of option two. and 100% under the 140 be but y'all would like it way under the 140 if I can get it there. Okay. Okay. And um and then uh we will then have that scope ready, right? and then um look at those smaller options three and four to get us in the break. Exactly. Okay. Any other questions or comments from the board? Thank you to our guest speaker.

Thank you so much, Mr. Ferris. Thank you, Will. Even if uh

I appreciate your input. It's it's very helpful. Even even if there might need to be an action plan to um a phase in certain what do what do we need to patch now and and then what can be resurfaced uh kind of thing if there's a way to essentially dissect dissect any problem problems like that. So, um, with the one quote that we have, we would have to get more than this one quote, but this this in the short amount of time to get that information back, I need to at least get something in front of you, right? So, we would come back with we would have to get other contractors to come out and quote and give us.

It would be a separate quoting phase. Yes. Yeah. We we'll refine three and four. Okay. a as a staff and see what we can get back on some short-term issues while we're working on option two. Thank you. Sounds great. Okay. Thank you, Dina. All right. Thank you guys. Awesome. Great work session topic. I'm glad we're able to chew through that with all the detail and all the input from everybody. So, thank you. This is a good meeting so far. So, we'll move on to our legislative affecting local zoning and land use authority. Resolution 20260001.

Did we have a draft of that somewhere, Barbie? It's in there.

Yeah. 118 should be in your packet. So the very last page. So what we did is we went for a generic instead of being bill specific so that you had flexibility in direction to Deborah your lobbyist or to staff um in in dealing with the issue but and in talking but you at least have a more generic about what you want. You don't care which number it is that gets it done, but you you just have the ability. And if the other thing is it also allows you to catch it if it shows up in the swimming pool bill.

So that's what happened to it last time um to those issues. They showed up in another bill as an add-on. So we can be paying attention and still have an advocacy position one way or another about something. cold. Country. So, we'll give everyone another minute or two to read this. Has everyone had time to consider it a little bit. Someone did their homework. Of course, the teacher. Of course, the teacher did her homework.

I think this looks really good. Um, and again, it's I like the fact that it's general and so, you know, it's it's the hammer we can wield anytime something pops up somewhere mysterious. So, any other edits or comments or questions from the board on this matter then? All righty. Hearing none, we'll go ahead and look forward to seeing this in March. Thank you. Uh, actually, you have the author. Okay, that's right. It's discussion only tonight, right? Yeah, I forgot that. That's right. Sorry about that. you the way you change your rules. You could have adopted. Okay, that's a false start. One more of those and you got to start from the rear.

I know. Fair enough.

We needed it. All righty. Without further ado, could I get a motion to recess into close session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143-318.11A5 and NC General Statute 143.318.1183. All in favor? Any opposed? Hearing none, this motion carries. We are now in close session. You have to invite anybody in. Uh yeah. Um You'll have Kevin