Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

i had to master the top screen because that's what i would do all righty folks we'll go ahead and get things started welcome to this work session may 26 2026 for the town of waxhalls board of commissioners tonight we have a few things on the agenda we'll go ahead and get things started can i get a motion to adopt tonight's agenda mr mayor before we begin i was looking over the agenda i want to make sure

If it was like to open up a conversation about removing item C3, discussion of restructuring planning department public hearing process land development code LDC amendments. I'd like to propose an amendment.

Are we suggesting a removal of that item or tabling it to a different day?

Suggesting a removal and sending it back to staff for continued study and conversation.

Okay. The idea was to have that conversation a little bit tonight. This is just a work session. Okay. Would you like to do that tonight or push it off to another time?

We'd like to push it off if anybody would be agreeable. If not, I do understand continuing to have that conversation and moving forward.

thoughts of the board Mr. Datson I was gonna say I think I think for this evening what staff really would like to have from you folks is some direction on how to move all things in front of you so that they have better direction about how to time them how to get them in front of you is the list good is there anything missing off the list so just for what it's worth i think it would be beneficial to have that conversation we haven't recommended changing anything around but we'd like that direction so that we can better understand is the list these are the list of things can we get some feedback from you how can we best get the list to you we did a work session first then a public hearing you know orders of things um and how you want to do that so just from a work session perspective we would like that direction but i'll you know okay certainly do what the board wants is there a presentation of anything specific tonight no okay in your packet was a list yeah of those things that they've been working on with the planning commission So it was that and just getting some feedback on how to proceed best. You know, do you want work sessions first? Do you want, you know, how much involvement in this product? Because it's basically planning staff planning commission hearing and then you folks making sure that we're working with you one to making sure that the list is are we missing anything on this? Is there something on the list that you need further understanding about? Yeah, that's it.

If it's structured around the list and we're going through essentially in concert with the planning team and the planning board and we're working in concert on that list, my fear was there was a little operational drift and it was getting towards looking at how to forgive my framing, form an expedited process and finding a way to condense things. And I was a little worried about that structure and I wanted to continue to advance that conversation, but just offline.

Well, we want to make sure that we know this one works better. We want to make sure that we're working in a process both on a list and in a process that allows for direction, discussion, the regular process of the planning commission to absorb and do those things, all the public hearings things. So we want to make sure that that's fulfilled and that we're going in that order with you folks. If you had a different order or you preferred things in a backwards way or a sidewards way or something like that, we just want to make sure we're having that conversation with you folks. Definitely.

i'm happy with things the way that the process the way it is and uh i think in the last meeting the board uh expressed that we would like to have plenty of time to think about these things and uh it's really not necessary for us to change the process uh to take action immediately after a public hearing we can do that anytime we want um then i withdraw my recommendation okay thank you mr mayor fair enough

I will repeat then. Can I get a motion to adopt tonight's agenda?

So moved.

All in favor? Aye. No one's opposed. All right. Sounds good. Tonight's agenda is now adopted. We will go to the business items, starting with C1. Consideration for the approval of the Wax Hall Skate Park Restoration Action Plan. So we have, I think, two items on this list at this point. Ms. Sabinski? She brought the clicker.

Thank you, Jeff. There we go.

OK, in your packet, you have the actual paper copy in front of you. And then for our TV friends at home, we've got the PowerPoint on the screen. OK, I'm going to go through tonight the skate park project. I'm going to do a little bit of a history, go into the renovation of where the cracks and everything are at, and then go into the action plan. OK, history-wise, in the beginning, the park was actually where the skate park is at right now was a playground.

Whoa.

And through evolution of that, the skate park got put in, but it was a community built. So I wanted to make sure I highlight that the community actually put the funding and the labor into the first build and the add-on. around 14, 15. So that was a big contribution from the community that wanted this park. The playground got moved to where it currently lives in Barnes Park. And then recently we did some upgrades with the sales and that was actually a 100% grant from the state, like appropriations. And then the town did a wonderful thing and upgraded the restrooms. And so they didn't have the chrome, you know, potties anymore. So that was an awesome thing. And then the boardwalk. went into this year's CIP, and then the town made a commitment to look at the master plan for that park itself. Then we went into narrowing it down just to this skate park. Through a couple discussions, we went through looking at what can be done at the skate park to get us to that next phase. And then I'm going to go over that and then getting back the action plan. So through all that and a lot of negotiations, at the end of the day, we went and tried to get contracts for the temporary fix to get us the three to five years. And at the end, we're able to do the cracks only. And I'll go through that process of why we're only able to do the cracks at this time. OK? All right. Let me get to my notes. So why the skate park needs some repair. It's jumpy. We looked at the whole park itself, saw that there's about 1,500 linear feet that is the major cracks where you've got more than a half an inch of open where a wheel can get caught up into a crack. Through the evolution of going through, getting the contractor out there, checking it out, we got it neared down to the 1500. And then we were going to use a overlay like we talked about. So that would have been overlay for the whole park and that would have sealed it. And that would have gave us a better chance for longevity before we have to do some major renovations. The concern that came up was the cost. So at the full scope of work, at the current prices, if you wanted to do what we went solid after is, goodness, $177,000. That is out of our budget. So going back with the contractor, just to repair the real critical areas, and that is the 1,500 square linear feet, I got it under the budget of where we were at with the 75. So 64 gets all those major cracks. The reason why we're not doing the MMA, and that's that basically cover, it went up three times in the last month because of the fuel prices going up. So we're getting affected across the board on this, and I understand about getting at least one of the areas fixed for us to continue to keep the skate park open was a major critical thing that we wanted to do as a team. So the overlay I took, we just don't have enough to even do one of the patches area to get us to float the water off. The 11,000 just wasn't gonna do it. So we settled on the 64. And that's where we're at right now. And that gets you cleaning out the cracks, getting everything filled in, sanded down. It's not going to look pretty, but it'll be safer. At the end of the day, that's what we need. I'm going to pause right here for questions.

Any questions from the board at this point?

So this is crack repair only, not resurfacing?

Correct. It's just crack repair.

So are we still doing any general grinding to resurface any uneven corridors? None?

It's just the cracks.

This is just essentially any crack seal infill and known casualty location.

So this is literally half an inch or more. All those are going to get grinded out, put the poly in, sand it down, clean it up.

Is this operating and essentially, so we're essentially just, this is a pure patch at this point?

Yes. Okay. Yes.

So the... The end product won't be a finished uniform surface at this point.

It's still just a patching. It's not going to look pretty, but you won't have to worry about something rolling across and you getting caught into something.

Correct. But there still will be that maybe perceptible little skipping or bumping as you're riding over the wheel.

They're going to sand that down. So if you have a, so you've got a crack, right? So they're going to clean that out, pour the poly in, then sand, wait till it dries, sand that off. And so they will have a smooth surface. So this won't be there.

So they're doing a sanding process after they apply the polyurethane.

Yes, so it's two types of sanding. So you've got the cleaning out, and then pouring in, and then sanding it in.

So the patching will be blended with the existing concrete so that it's a . . .

Yeah, it'll be a smooth surface. Yes, sir. That makes sense.

And then we also have to talk about transitions between sections.

Those are not being addressed.

Okay. Dina.

Yes, sir.

Based off of the current steps that we're looking at and through this operational lens, what is the timeline that we're looking at to give us an optional, what's our extended timeline that we can work with here? Are we looking at, we're gonna really have to address this in four years?

So with this material, we'll still get to three to five. OK. But we're not coding the whole thing. So we're not taking into account new cracks.

New cracks, got it. That could happen.

With the coating, we had a better chance of longevity. We still didn't have the conflicts taken care of, but we at least had the longevity of the park itself.

It reduced and increased our possibility of maintaining the current standard of what is there, but without the additional top coating sealing, it will continue to wear at a normal pace.

Yes.

And so maybe instead of three to five, we're looking at a two to four timeline window.

For new things that will pop up.

Or a need. I understand new cracks, but this should help address these needs at this point.

It definitely addresses the safety seams at this moment in time.

Our key safety.

Yes. Concerns. On cracks.

On cracks. Not conflicts. Non-conflicts, which conflicts were expanded in larger scope.

yeah that's with the action plan okay because that had the conflict areas that involved basically reshaping the park yes sir and there were some unknown factors about uh initial if we open it up yes i know that will cause if we open up we open it up without knowing what's under it exactly you might be surprised

Yes.

And until we're ready for that, we're working in stages. Got it. And being budget responsible in that process.

I'm just reading here that the polyurethane is very durable and is expected to last.

Yes, sir. So that was the other that's the one of the reasons why we went to this company as well. The first company, again, could not guarantee with their product. This one can. As long as they're given their chance to put it down properly, we wait, all that good jazz. It would have been better if we had the MMA on top of it, but they still will stand by their three to five years with the crack.

Oh, that's great.

So that's a positive for everyone.

So that remains for the crack repairs?

That's for the crack repairs.

Thank you.

so that'll be something we'll need to continue to kind of monitor and keep the board appraised on how that's holding up yes sir now four years from now yep and just remember it it's a very well-loved park for sure i always see kids there it's it's it's all day i mean we've got a transition of our little ones on scooters and then we have our bigger kids and our our bigger bigger kids and our kids at heart exactly not i and then once this is

done would it be safe to say that we'd be able to move skate night back there because right now we're not doing that because of the cracks

I would do it on a see if there are any other complex issues. So that's part of the safety issue.

Then can we ask you as a policy lens, can you follow back up with us post repairs to give us a report to see if and we would like to see if we can reinitiate and support skate night to be come back to our skate park.

They like it at the park.

I know. They love the skate park. They love the skate park. I understand.

So if we can get it back there with these repairs, that would be great. I mean, I guess my argument would be if we're not closing it down for safety reasons, then we should be able to have skate night there with repairs.

So let me make an assessment afterwards and just double check on that because I'm also looking after y'all on other levels.

Much appreciated. Do you need any action from us?

I will at the end. But I wanted to make sure everybody was good, give you a stopping point. Y'all had excellent questions. Y'all know I love questions. That works.

Thank you, Dina.

Okay, so this is just a picture of the skate park and what we're gonna, there's lots of colors on the ground right now where we've marked up the skate park basically. And if you also choose in the future and if you wanna do the overlay, that's how much that costs. Okay, now we're into the action plan.

So this one's 113, but the other one's 177.

So it's the 64 and the 113 together.

Oh, okay.

That would be an additional 113. To put that overlay?

Yes, ma'am.

Got it.

Yes, sir. OK, action plan. So super excited. We had seven national known skate park companies that bidded on this project. That is amazing. So I just wanted to just say that out loud. That is super cool. Through the process, we did a RFP, went out, basically sent it out to well-known skate companies all the way to California as well, in which we had a couple that bid from California. Right? It's awesome. And then went through the scope of action, public engagement, site analysts, and then design and then administrative and then budget, okay? Through that process, we got it down to two finalists and then we went and got references, checked backgrounds, all that good jazz. At the end of the day, the one who won out was someone had more local presence in North Carolina. So we've got it again under budget at 60,000 for the action plan for the skate park. And Pillar Design is our winner on getting the action plan done. This is just a few highlights of who Pillars are. At the end of the day, they come up with the design, planning, engineering, and the construction. So we can move in after getting this plan, if funding is available, into that next phase after that 30%. They can straight into the rest of the design. Okay, so the phases, this is how they've broken it out. It takes a little over three months to get everything kind of ironed out. We got started in mid-June. We would finish up the beginning of October and then go through a meeting with y'all, sitting down, going over it, making sure that we got all the points that y'all would like to see. And if there's anything that we need to update, we can do it that time. And... We would go into what that looks like. So your motions tonight. Oh, let me go back in front. Okay. Uh, do you have any questions about the action plan itself?

What does, what is it estimated to cost to implement 60,000? Well, the action plan itself is $60,000. But what about implementation of the plan?

That comes with the plan.

So that's the output of the plan.

Can you stop with the input in the study? So it would be essentially funding the initiation of a study with input sessions and staff time and essentially funding that line to move the skate park into essentially an executive planning stage.

At that, when we get back the action plan, that's when we sit back down. And then they're going to give us cost estimates. I think that's what you're asking for, right? Cost estimates. So they'll give us cost estimates of what that looks like. And then with the finishing of the rest of the design, so we're going to get 30%, which is awesome. And then we'll be able, y'all would give me the OK to move forward or go off through our grant. which is a big possibility for especially for this park then we would go into what that next stage looks like but at least then you'll have the soil report you'll have the storm water report you'll understand what utilities are under there and then also you'll understand that if this is the right place because are we thinking of

Would this plan also be investigating other locations, you know, within the David G. Ponds downtown park?

Within the downtown area.

Yeah, within the downtown area, because I think there's definitely the need to keep it there, aside from just being centrally located. That's where it currently is.

Your main user base is walking distance of this park, especially. So we need to make sure we're good on that.

So a site visibility study would be included, not just for this site, but any other tangible sites that we know of.

We would look at those... Reasonablenesses. Yeah, reasonable areas.

Yes. And that's a big part of phase one when we talk about defining the scope and establishing sort of... the survey and the reports of where things should go or can't go, could go.

Staff really has delivered on what we've asked. We've asked for them to come up with an alternative packet to extend the life of our skate park so we can bring it back in as best as we can, operational compliant. and safe for our kids. And essentially, it's an alternative mean compared to traditional sports. It's an outlet, as you would know, for alternative action sports. And that's something that our staff has brought up regionally.

Again, it's a very loved park.

Well, not just very loved. Technically, you could use it as that type of park is unique amongst our peers. And everybody else is essentially in a desert compared to Waxhaw.

We're the only one in Union County.

As far as the citizen survey, is that done through FlashVote?

There's two different ways. We are going to do one through FlashVote, and then also they're going to do like a sit-down with on-site two times. And then we'll send that certificate valid survey out through FlashVote.

Yeah, and then who comes up with those questions?

So we're going to work with the consultant. And then I'm going to ask investigators.

Yes. Good. I'm asking the user base. Yeah, I just, yeah, I always.

We have firsthand knowledge available to us.

The consultant company, they've got a little skin in the game, so I'd like the questions asked a little bit more generically so that we can make an unbiased decision.

And I think building in and including our key users, our key demographics, including them, I think, will be instrumental in coming up with a really good plan.

Apologies, Mary. How many questions are you targeting, do you think, in the survey?

With FlashVote, it's only five tops. Because the thing is to get them to go through it pretty fast.

I have this request. Operationally, can you bring us back more than five as a menu of questions to select from? and let us at least preview the questions before they're distributed. Sure.

Yeah. Think that'd be helpful?

Yeah.

OK.

Cool. Yes, sir.

Just for comparison, the original design we were talking about was like $140,000. And that was like 30% construction documents or something like that. Can you just compare that with this?

Yes, sir. So the original 140 was for Barnes Skate Park, the meeting place, and the skate park. So you've got three parks in one with that 140.

And this would only be the skate park.

Now we have the crack repair and an action plan under budget. Right, but the plan is only the skate park. Yes, sir. It's only the skate park.

So we essentially, we asked them to hone down and narrow that scope. Now, I think that we did talk about in that plan if there was any operational elbow room in and near that Barnes Park area where it's reasonable. I think you brought up a very valid point to see when designing, you're not having to use the exact footprint. You can use, I think there was even additional space in the tree lined area.

So the skate park itself has a little bit of wiggle room. Yeah. But we'd have to investigate because there is a lineated stream on. If I'm looking down, it's on the right. So there's just that's the whole point of having like an engineer come in to make sure what our boundaries are on that. And if we can expand a little bit, that'd be great if we can. But the original was to look at the whole space. So if we went out of that fenced-in area for the skate park into Barnes and what that looked like, but y'all wanted to focus on just the skate park by itself. And that's the direction I went in.

Is there any wiggle room if there is any, essentially, optionality to expand that footprint, flat street deck area that was more geared towards kids. Would you want that included in the scope?

Well, yeah, they asked for more flat area for skating.

sounds good to me yeah yeah i would think in the design and that's that goes back yes ma'am so they're going to take all those considerations we've already given them the survey of the area they're going to get some more information from us but i i kind of stopped with giving out information until y'all gave me the okayed before okay are we at a spot where we can support dina with this motion

okay yeah i think we have the two and the plan is to have a decision on one of these two items or both of the items um at the next meeting so that'll be something that we can do it now before we can do it now so there's two emotions emotions there's two motions up for consideration tonight as we've just discussed then it's the crack ceiling and smoothing which is a 64 000 expense so we have a motion for that and then we have a motion to basically enter a new agreement with pillar design for sixty thousand dollars to work on an all-new skate park design So are there any other questions or concerns the board might have regarding these two matters, or do we feel ready to vote on these two motions?

I do feel ready to make a vote.

All righty. Well, then can I get a motion to approve the agreement with Durafy for the Waxhaw Skate Park Creek crack repair restoration project in the amount of $64,000 and authorize the town manager to execute said agreement?

So moved.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Seeing none, that motion carries. Could I get a motion to approve the agreement with Pillar Design Studios for the Waxhaw Skate Park Action Plan in the amount of $60,000 and authorize the town manager to execute said agreement?

So moved.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? No. All righty.

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Nina.

I'm excited. I can't wait to see what kind of designs we come up with. I think this is going to be great.

Yep. Very much looking forward to the input sessions.

And hopefully we can get a grant on it.

Yeah.

Yes, sir. Thank you for the work. Parks and trails.

Parks and trails can help out. Sponsor. I don't know what a sponsor would be. Give Travis Pastrana a call or... Whoever the other guy is. What's that Sean White kid doing these days? Alrighty, next up we have a discussion of the repeal of ordinance 2018-009, the existing section 90.19A and section 10-29. animal licensing from the Waxhaw Code of Ordinances. Want to discuss this a little more, give us some detail on what we're talking about here?

Yes. Currently, what historically Waxhaw has done is they have collected the fees for license of animals. about $20 a year. They have a company at one point that would bring in, collect all of the fees from everyone. They would come in and register their dog or cat and then they would get a license for that animal. They would collect the fee, then we would get the data from them. They no longer are collecting any fees for Waxhaw and we have currently been collecting just a minimal fee from very few people. Staff did a research of area jurisdictions within Union County as to who was collecting or registering, requiring the registering of animals and even Union County and the area jurisdictions in Union County are not requiring them to register their animals. Now, according to state law, they have to register, do the rabies and register that way with their vet, but they don't have to have a separate pet fee.

So there's a state registration currently on the books that people need to abide by?

Yes, for the rabies vaccine.

Is that for just dogs or?

That's dogs and cats. So what staff is asking since we haven't we may have two or three that we've collected funds it is actually really staff manual labor type thing for them to do that. Finance collects the fees and then store and collects that data. But it's just time consuming for them to have to do that for just very few registrations. So what we're asking is if you would consider repealing the ordinance that is on the books right now, which is ORD 2018-009, which is actually section 90.19a of the code. And we would remove it from the code of ordinance, which is section 10-29 for animal licensing.

So it's just the money part. It's not, we still enforce an animal nuisance control issue, all of that kind of stuff. We still enforce that, but it's just the collection of that fee, which like Barbie said, maybe three, $400. That's about it. How do you keep track?

And you know,

Well, I mean, just... Well, yes.

And, you know, it's $20 per dog, 15, I think 15 per year for any spayed or neutered animal. So if they've spayed or neutered, then it's 15. If they're not, then it's 20. So it's just the fee collection that we would like to not do. We still have the ordinances for tethering and making sure that the animals are well kept. But it's just the collection of the fee for the registration.

Yeah, I think that. Makes sense.

Yeah, I mean, if we're no longer actively administrating it, and it's essentially a piece that we could remove and administrate a burden, I mean, this is a program that it sounds like our residents would be more than happy to have

I would argue many residents don't know.

I was going to say it's outdated. It's just sitting on the books essentially. We can clean this up. It doesn't sound like we're losing any of our safety gates and controls that support our enforcements, our state. It supports the broader requirements for immunization and vaccination of your pets. That is outside of municipal services.

And the animal control officer still enforces those ordinances that are state mandated as well as local.

We don't have any of the services that are typically associated with your animal licensing fees, such as a shelter, your classic dog catcher, and all that stuff. So since we don't offer any of those services, there's really no justification to charge the fee. So for that reason, I think, on top of the fact that we just don't have a good system for it, it sounds like, it makes complete sense to remove it.

OK. So I will put this on your agenda for June 9 for approval. That sounds great. Please.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you.

Okay, next up we have the infamous item three. Well, yeah, it started out infamously. Well, you know, set the standard. All right.

So let me set the stage for what your current practices are for public hearings. Basically, the item comes into planning. Planning sends it to the planning board. The planning board will send it to you guys for approval. Many of those are public hearing based, which is 10-day notice. So they hear it. then we send it and set up for the public hearing and then you guys review that. And then historically you have at the next regular meeting, you take action from that public hearing. So I think one of the asks is for us to allow you to take action after the public hearing if you see that you're able to do that. So it's just what your thoughts are, what your thought processes are if you want to continue your current practice or if you want to kind of amend that to take that second meeting action requirement from that procedure.

If I could back up on that real quick. The board is, of course, welcome to take whatever process it feels necessary with these. I don't honestly a staff not sure exactly what if there was a standardized process or what exactly that was. So really looking for some guidance with that. As you see in the list here that I'd love to go over with you guys as well. It be really, really helpful for us with with scheduling this with prioritizing these items. We're trying to figure out the best way to move them all through and along what kind of timeline and There's also the issue of announcing these and making sure we've advertised them for them properly. Technically, by state law, we should have an announcement of the public hearing and then we should either have a second announcement when a decision is being made or there should be a continuance of the case to another meeting where that will be done. That will help us plan for that. We do have a couple different ways that could be done.

Can you pause and walk us through those two options again and the way you framed a continuance of the case and how that procedurally works within Robert rules of order?

So per state law, if you have a public hearing and you have an item, you have a case being considered, you can continue that indefinitely. You do need to announce the date that it is to be continued to at the next meeting. So anytime we don't do that, that really requires us to go back through and pay for advertisement again, or at least we should be. So it's, you know, it's not a ton of money, but it is a little bit of money. And it's just, you know, again, trying to standardize what we have with the understanding that every now and then we are going to get items that will take longer. We will need to continue them and take extra time with them.

um i mean and we've had this discussion a couple of times i'd like to keep the public hearing have that gap and then the next time vote on it i don't feel comfortable voting in the same meeting just because historically People just don't know, and they catch wind from a neighbor that this is happening, and then we've already voted, and then they feel like they have no recourse.

OK. And the word often spreads as a result of the public meeting.

And sometimes not accurately. So it would be better that we give them that opportunity to call. ask questions, email us, and get back to them. So that's for me. I'd like to keep that procedure the way it is.

That's good. So we do public hearing. We'll advertise public hearing. After the public hearing, close it down. If you have questions, whatnot, we can continue the discussion to the workshop meeting, at which point y'all can vote on it at that time if you want.

Well, we're not rushing the vote. I mean, we're generally not even I mean, I would say do the work session.

Let us do a work session, right, kind of like this. And then if we need to have a public meeting, and then a vote, I guess. Because I'm not going to be able to make, at least for the LDC and big decisions, right there on the spot after a work session. Personally, I'm going to need to digest it, look at it, look at the wording. These LDC ordinances are wordy and, you know, may, shall, they have very different meanings and, you know, you overlook one word and you get yourself in. in a situation where you don't want to be. And with 382 hamstringing us and not being able to do anything, everything's going to be considered a down zone or so many things are considered a down zone. I think we have to be really, really careful on what we're changing right now, unless we get a local bill that gives us our authority back where we had it before.

So let me let me backtrack with that, because I really wanted to start off with this list that I've got here. This is something that I started putting together when I got here. I do think overall we do have a good LDC. We've got a very good LDC. There are weak points in it. We've tried to identify some of those items. We've also heard from some of you other items in there that should be considered. So we put together this list. It is in no way exhaustive. Welcome to other items that need to be added in. But again, this is something I'm trying to develop for my staff, a process to move forward to make these changes. I don't want to go down that route with them if that's not what this board wants. So if it's not the process you want to move ahead with and you don't want to explore these, then we can by all means, we can put them on the side burner for right now.

I think I hear what you're trying to come up with a good operational tempo. Yes, I'm tempted to. Yeah. And I hear you. Matt, can I can I get you for a hot second on this? Can we by statute, allow a public hearing in our work session?

I'm going to ask Barbie about the rules of procedure on that. If it's allowed in your rules of procedure and you've noticed it, you can hold a public hearing in a public meeting.

Currently, you do not have it listed as part of one of the business items for you to hold a public hearing. The public hearings are held in your regular meeting. So basically how that procedure goes, Let's just say planning is bringing the text amendment like they did before. They're bringing it to you for the work session for you to discuss. If you have questions, want to change something, then once you're finished with that item, that item is either slated for the regular meeting, and at that meeting, you choose to... At the work session, you can direct me to submit the public notice for the public hearing to be held if it meets with the statutory requirement as far as timing. If it doesn't, then we'll have to hold that public hearing at another meeting. Now, if you want to amend your rules of procedure to add public hearings when necessary, then you could do that. The only thing I would caution you as, when you hold a public hearing, you are required to have public comments. And if you were going to do that, I would suggest that we are not in this format so that public has the opportunity to ask questions on that particular topic. So I'm not certain if work session would be you know the best.

It would require time for you to investigate the full mechanics of how it could work. But essentially it could be an option on the table within the scope of what we're looking to accomplish and give us more optionality to essentially accomplish and work with staff to finding a good tempo.

I just get concerned that people aren't going to know. And if we've always done it at a regular meeting, we should probably keep it a regular meeting.

So to your point, we would still, because I am with you. I am not willing to push efficiencies to sacrifice public trust. But if I can find up another mechanic and mechanism to support staff on that.

I'm not trying to push efficiencies to stagger the public trust at all. All I'm saying is that some of the items that we have are going to be very simple. And they're going to be out there and they're going to be available for everyone to review. And all I'm saying is that you have a standard process and you can always deviate. You can always continue and add more time onto that. If it's very simple and everyone understands it, there's no reason to Add time on to that unnecessarily.

If I may.

There's not much ambiguity in how we set these work sessions up.

John, hold on one second. If I may. I'm trying not to set a set of operational lenses just for myself. I want to make it repeatable for someone that's next behind me. Gotcha. That's my mission. And so that's what I'm working for. I know someone's going to be replacing me someday. I look forward to it. But until then, I'm going to continue to serve and set up good operational lenses to the best of my ability. And so I'm trying to think not just for myself what might be convenient for me, but what we can do to support you. Because I hear you. But at the same time, I'm not willing to essentially adjust right now the steps within our LDC to essentially make an expedited process.

I think what would make sense is within the confines of how we're doing things, I think it would make sense if items are introduced in the work session. And then if in that work session we vet it thoroughly and we're feeling good that it can then go to public hearing, then obviously the next meeting is a public hearing. It's a standard meeting. And then if as a result of that public hearing, the board is then satisfied, it can still be voted on at the next work session. It's just the public hearing needs to land on that standard public meeting.

I would like to preserve the cadence that we have and we can always, if there was something pressing, we can always suspend our own rules and move faster if we want to, but I like the cadence that we have.

Is the cadence that I just laid out agreeable to what you're thinking or was there something different?

I thought that was the cadence to begin with.

I just wanted to be clear on the idea that... I'm sorry, what, John? i said it wasn't a question for me exactly that's current what we do exactly i just want to make sure everybody was clear that we can have the public hearing during the standard public meeting and then the work sessions we can still vote on and approve things in the work sessions we don't want to normalize that though we made these work sessions so that we could have discussion and then vote on things in the regular meeting also that's a the regular meeting is the one time a month the

if the public needs to be, they want to dial in just that one time a month, get all their happenings in that one meeting.

But I mean, for example, the skate park, we did do that tonight, but that skate park has been discussed in work sessions over and over since February, March, you know, so we've kind of already vetted that out. We've digested staff work. They came back. I mean, it wasn't, a work session and vote um i mean for me personally i need more time to get to get through these um and i think that that's what we're trying to get clarity on it it sounds like if i'm not mistaken like you said some might be easier than others if you want three meetings for it that's fine it helps us know what to expect with it and everything and in terms of

moving these along, that helps us to plan that out. That's also all we're looking for there.

And that's what it sounds like. We need the clarity. We need the clarity to understand that we discuss an item in a work session, we forward it to public hearing, then are we going to vote on it at the next work session? Or are we saying we should vote on it during the next public meeting? Or is that something we discuss at the work session and say, no, I want to defer the vote till the next meeting? Because if we say we're going to vote during a work session, that doesn't necessarily lock us into voting that night. Correct. Correct.

And I actually like that. We have optionality.

So we have that option. But if we set that up as sort of a typical cadence on something, so for instance, the ordinance for removing the pet fees and such. So we've discussed it tonight. If it required a public hearing, let's just say, it would be at the next meeting. And then we would vote on it very easily at the next work session because it's a fairly simple, straightforward item.

Could we vote on it in that meeting if we decided? If we decide in the work session, oh, it's just animal licensing, we don't.

Yeah. That's kind of my point, is that a lot of this stuff that we bring through is probably going to be relatively mundane to you.

Some of these are not, though. I understand. and i and i want to caution that we're not you know if there's a development coming on board that that's never going to happen in a work session like i'm never going to vote on a rezone or anything like that these are strictly text amendments we're looking at right now right you got a couple of simple ones we're going to do two at a time if we well that's what we're doing it means we're trying to change three at a time but yeah but we've got a so what's rush

i guess barbie if we were to change this it gets changed in our rules and procedure and then is that a blanket change no i can write an amendment and have it to you on um at your next regular meeting and um you can decide if the language meets your needs or if we need to amend it to uh to say what you want it to say and then you can approve that contingent to those amendments

I would also add, just to make sure it's perfectly clear, you guys can always defer. You can always defer it and you can defer it to a date specific so that you can create a set of rules for yourselves with the option to act more swiftly if it is a benign animal ordinance, knowing that in any and every meeting you will have that authority to defer it. not just for one meeting, but to a date and time specific if you need more time to unpack it. You can defer it back to the planning board for more input. You can do whatever you want to best achieve the result that you want. The only thing you can't do is get ahead of yourself if your rules don't allow you to. So you can't speed it up if your rules require a longer process.

That was our point, in effect. Exactly. You could have a fast process and then always continue, defer if you need to.

But you're locked in otherwise.

I don't want a fast process. I don't want it exactly as it is.

If the cadence tempo is what the mayor laid out, then it's currently what I believe.

And that's what I was just trying to make clear. Is it work session, public hearing, then vote at the next work session? No. Next meeting. So we're saying work session, public hearing, work session, and then it gets voted on at the next opening.

Right. So you'll have your work session. You'll hear it. You'll set the public hearing for the regular meeting. When you have the regular meeting, you would have the public hearing. You'd also open the floor for public comment. And then once that's closed, then at the next regular meeting, you would vote generally have your action now with your work sessions being your second meeting then it makes it a little difficult and a little longer process but um and we have some on some of the public hearings especially if they're the conditional uh rezonings and uh special use then we will have to be mindful of the 60-day window that statutes puts on that decision. So that might be one of those that we would have to take action at a work session. But that's the way you set your work sessions up is to, if you needed to take an action because of a deadline, then you have that option to do that.

Right, but that should be a rare circumstance. We have the ability to do that now, case by case.

Right, you only do it case by case.

Is there anything on this list that is pressing because of legal consideration?

or anything that might be on your docket that has you concerned that might benefit from it?

Not right off the top of my head, no. I was going to say, do you have this in a way of a ranking to where you find it critical versus, as you said, benign?

Well, yeah, I think we've got them. i think we have them somewhat grouped together um yeah we have the first three that were on there we're trying to do the open space heritage tree save those items next that will be several different sections all somewhat related we're going to try to kind of keep them together the subject matter as much as possible it's not always possible but when we can connectivity street networks Underdeveloped lots, commercial design standards were a little ways off from that, but that was something else that staff discussed. Dressing, cottage dwellings, residential curb cuts, sidewalks. And again, we're open to suggestions from the board. If you have specific items that you would like to see on here, we're happy to take those on as well.

Well, definitely the heritage tree safe is a good one. Some of the other ones with the words by right and then sort of throw up a red flag for me because of the down zoning prohibition we have. The ratchet only goes one way at the moment and so I'd be very reluctant to make anything more by right.

Right. I mean, I think and that may go away if if we don't have if we can get around the down zoning stuff in the future. But the idea with that was that we could codify some of what y'all are looking for right now in those easy districts. You want a certain percentage of commercial.

You might get all commercial.

I understand that. I understand that.

But yeah, but I mean, that's that's so we're probably not allowed to do that.

Yeah, that was it. And that's one that's going to take a good bit of discussion. We fully expect that. I mean, but that's one of those things that, you know, could you incentivize that stuff by making it a by right process? If you do X, Y and Z, these criteria that you have spelled out it'll be a faster process for you. I can see it. And that's, you can take that off the list. If that's not, you know what the board wants, we're just trying to come up with some creative ways to work around our current restrictions with the state. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I can see a narrow window. And when we're seeing industrial is worth investigating.

Okay. So it sounds like then that we're still in agreement then that it'll be introduced at a work session. We'll call a public hearing at the next open meeting. And then if we want to vote on it at the next work session, we can. it'll typically be scheduled at the next open meeting correct i think we should avoid that because i mean avoid voting in work sessions because people are expecting it in the regular i agree and i think that's one of the things that if we're going to write anything in the rules have it stated such that it's at the next open meeting but it could be if necessary because i could just foresee instances where You don't have a quorum at a meeting and it just sort of creates this need for maybe a special meeting just to get it voted to meet the 60-day statute.

Yeah, we can always have a special meeting if we need.

But I'm just trying to bake something into the rules that maybe prevents the need to do that while allowing for that sort of full month, basically, between the public session, the public hearing, and then voting on it.

okay so would you be in agreement to allow myself kevin and the town attorney to draft some language a standardized method for holding those public hearings and as an amendment to your rules i mean if we're keeping them the same do we need to do that yes what would change what would we be changing i think

I mean, I want to keep things the same.

Because we're not currently doing it. Is it spelled out right now? I don't care.

I'm not 100% sure whether or not that is a spelled out policy. We have gone around in circles about it, trying to figure out what, yeah. It's always been told to me as it is the policy of the board. But it was from a former town attorney. So what I would recommend is we could standardize and just add it to your rules. That way it's already there. with the the same procedure that you're currently current practicing now and then that would just be an amendment and just to formalize what we're already doing right right so let's review the rules then it sounds like we'll need to review the rules see what's currently there and see what needs to change to kind of codify what we're talking about in terms of a schedule

yes and then then that way you you have this procedure already in place agreed upon in place exactly so my goal with my staff is to be as efficient as possible with this and to be as productive with y'all as possible when we come in and to know that um to know that we're giving you what you need um and that we're we're working through it whether it's denied whether it's approved whether you want to change everything on there we just want to make sure we're being productive with it that's all

well productivity isn't necessarily conducive to transparency so sure i don't know what kind of actions we've taken or not taken to hold up progress and i just came to think of it right now

The other thing I would remind everyone, this does go through a planning board public process prior to you guys ever having a chance to vote on it. That's statutorily required. So it's never just going to show up night one and you'll decide something on the text amendment.

Right. Understood.

And that's one of the reasons why, for transparency reasons, I think it's reasonable to at least look at having the optionality and making sure that that is codified, that we could, if needed, at the discretion of the mayor or the mayor pro tem, go ahead and take an action item on a work session.

We're trying to anticipate all these special circumstances. If it's a special circumstance, then it's going to get discussed as a special circumstance. And we can... We're going to change, you know, either suspend our regular rules or just speak things up at our discretion. It's really, I mean, I'm sorry, this discussion has gone on way too long and we've all said that we like the regular cadence and the regular process that we've set up. I think we just stick with it. There's no secret to this. I mean, there's no ambiguity as far as from the first meeting that we had when we came out of the board. Yeah. And just keep going and going.

If it's not codified, are you saying you don't want to codify it?

No, we could. I mean, just codify it.

Then I think we should. Yeah, the goal is to codify it how it is. I agree with that.

I thought it was already a regular thing that we were. Barbara, you're saying you didn't really see it in there.

I have not been able to find anything tangible that says that. It's just been the practice of every board in Waxhaw.

Because I thought when we started the work sessions, didn't we have to change the rules slightly to allow motions and votes to occur in a work session? I believe so, yes. Did we make some little change like that on the rules? Yes.

Yes, because before, the work sessions were just special meetings. And so you changed your rules to include it as one of your meetings, as a regular meeting. So this is your place where you come and do your discussions. It wasn't originally set up for you to take action but there are some circumstances where We need an action and we have in its time sensitive then you have that that option to do that but that is strictly up to the board board would have to and by by majority vote, you would have to agree that's what you want to do. So you do have that option. But it probably would be advisable to at least have it written in your rules so that it will go beyond just being hearsay.

Yeah. No, I think it makes sense to get it in the rules and figure out that language and bring it to the board.

And I'll get with Kevin and the town attorney to draft something for you for the June 9th. Perfect.

Two other questions. Please. One, presentation-wise, on these text amendments, they can be rather difficult. I understand that. We've tried to provide some graphics wherever possible. Is there any other way that we can present these that would be helpful to you all?

would be a longer period of time that we give them to y'all before the agendas go out i mean what's the best way to really how we present my side would be nice if you had like here's what it is here's what we want to change it to okay i i would like a red line to copy of the ldc i mean he did the red line but it wasn't side by side with the old if you're doing a correct red line it should all be there

correct red line where you show the crossouts because i can still read across it but well it got it got confusing because i think we had two or three versions that were in there it was hard to kind of show those consecutively in there but we can we can work on that and try to look at different and i think that that's what i final version was cleaned up when i and and it was nice at the end exactly and and i'm not going to review and try to approve and argue for a final version

I want to see the red lines. So I think that at least our agenda packet includes the red-lined copy of the LDC for the section that you're changing and modifying. It doesn't have to be the whole LDC. If it's just the five or ten pages that you're looking at, include those red lines showing what's been crossed out and what's being added. because I can read the cross out. You can definitely read what's being added.

So, you know, I don't want to use more drawn up photos. Should be larger. The last couple ones that we got are kind of small and then just a little bit better explanation on those changes. The befores and afters or what's not acceptable and what's acceptable. OK, a little bit more robust because you can wherever we can, we'll try to get those in there.

Yeah.

I mean, since you're using Word, if you used a note for the red lines, so you do your red lines and then add a note with a justification or rationale for these red lines. We're changing this because of yada, yada, yada.

Okay.

So that'll be in the notes on one side, and then I'll be able to read the red lines, the old, the new. and understand what's going on.

OK. All right. Last question. The current items that we have, are you ready to have those at the next meeting, the next regular meeting, as an old business?

The ones we talked about.

The ones we talked about at the last meeting. OK.

The board ready for that? Keeping that on track. Sounds like it's good.

All right.

Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you.

Hope that helps. Alrighty, discuss the enhancing efficiency and maximizing resources policy. Ms. Emily. Thanks, Kevin.

for this agenda item I had two attachments in your agenda packet the executive summary for this and as well as the updated policy I just want to make sure you have both of those in front of you if not I have extra copies okay So this policy actually already exists. It's one that has been drafted before. But as we're actually working on a larger policy update, looking at all of our personnel policies across the board and getting those updated, this is one of the specific items that I think you all wanted pulled out of here and to look at a little bit more. And we noticed that it had the submission process and it had the reward, but it was missing a couple pieces. One, the eligibility criteria, we added a little bit more to that, as well as how submissions are reviewed and then moved forward. So those pieces were out of there, and we think that's really important to have that so that there's an actual process to every submission when somebody submits. Essentially what we're adding in is one, the eligibility criteria. So we're looking at when someone submits something, there's an online form through our, it's a LaserFish form that we have. They submit an idea. So we're looking at the, is it, you know, reducing time labor materials, is it improving methods or procedures, is it improving revenue, is it enhancing health safety, those type of items. When someone submits their form, we'll take it in, we'll look at it, we'll make sure that it has all the pieces that's needed to look at it further, and then a review committee, which will be made up of, we're trying to have a representative from each department on the review committee for these submissions. that will look at the submission and then we're going to be looking at Is it feasible? What's the impact of it? Does it align with the town goals? Looking at viability, cost, safety, all of those type of things. So with having a review committee look at it, it keeps it consistent. So it would be the same review committee looking at each one and kind of have a checklist to go by for each submission. And then there they can see, is this something that can move forward or is this something we can't move forward with at this time? So just adding those pieces in there into the policy, I think we think is very important so that there's consistency across the board with how these submissions are handled. And then the incentive and recognition structure remains the same as is, as we've had it. If someone submits and it's looked at for further evaluation, $200 bonus. And then if something is actually implemented, it's a $500 bonus for that submitter. And then, of course, there's some recognition pieces like, you know, newsletter highlights, social media postings, recognition at town board meetings, those type of things. So, again, this is going to come to you, this updated policy is going to come to you in our larger personnel policy update, but just want to see if there's anything in here that you think is missing or you want to see that's not in here or anything that needs to be clarified that we do that before this comes before you as part of that personnel policy update.

Do we clarify who the review committee is?

we can we can we can do that it would be a representative from each department so wouldn't be so specific as to the person per se but it would have we would have a person from each department on the committee kind of like we have a employee culture committee and we have that has a representative from each department so that kind of all voices are heard so that there's kind of a representation from across the whole organization on that committee it could be all levels different levels yeah so it doesn't have to be just department heads but we'd ideally have some senior leadership on there too just have that as well i think it looks good yeah um is it going to be uh you know what's approved is it going to be socialized to the employees oh absolutely yes yes we'll uh we'll send that out just to make sure everyone understands the process we'll remind in department head meetings things like that um and then you know of course department heads and their team meetings can can remind their team members of of these as well I think once we have the process, we can really kind of get it out there so that the people know. And we already have been talking about it, but we just wanted a little bit more beefed up process so that it is consistent. So we'll absolutely get that out to employees.

Well, if it doesn't get any action, should we increase the rewards?

I think that's something we can look at. I think... it is I think you know with because we have you know our employee award ceremony too so there's an innovation award so that can be wrapped up in it too and there's monetary with that as well so there's something we can definitely look at and get feedback from staff if that's something we need to look at a little bit more but I think with the recognition and the monetary reward with implement you know the submission was it further you know approved for further action you get a little reward there and then once it's actually implemented. And then project management, one piece I did want to highlight from there is Once suggestions are approved to proceed, there would be a project manager assigned to it, someone that's kind of their area of expertise. And the original suggestion would, of course, be invited as part of the process as well in its execution since it was their idea. And then it would be highlighted again.

Thanks for the suggestion. Please get it done.

Question.

Yes. How will the review community determine whether the idea falls inside or outside of the normal operational scope of the role and duties? Do you have a scoring matrix?

Yeah, so I think we will have a matrix. We're going to be kind of looking at we're kind of a checklist, so is it, you know, is this idea something that's feasible that we can do, yes or no? So you're kind of just, it's a checklist to go by really. What is its impact, both positive and negative? What are the pros and cons of this? If we proceed with this, what are the pros and cons? And then looking at our kind of town goals that we've been establishing too, and is, does this align with those things? So it's kind of a checklist, if you will, more than a matrix per se. But if matrix is something you all are interested in seeing, we can absolutely incorporate something like that.

I definitely would think that it's something that should be rationally considered, at least. Is it a new idea? Is there something that's just part of normal roles and duties?

And that is actually something in there that ineligible submissions, this is part in the policy, it says suggestions within the normal job responsibilities than within their normal job responsibilities. Is it duplicate suggestion? Those type of things. Has this been done before? It's really similar. Is this kind of the same thing or is there something different? So that language is in the policy, but that'll again be looked at by that review committee as part of the checklist as well.

sounds good i i think overall like it it's the overall program is good finding efficiencies and department by department sometimes i mean it could be the lowest newest person this is why we do this the same way all the time is that fresh set of eyes have a committee process to qualify their awards is it's really good i like that i do too wonderful thank you absolutely any other questions

I'm good. Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, a discussion about the Merit Strategy Performance Alignment. The next page.

With this piece, I had one attachment in your agenda packet. It's the merits pay strategy and performance alignment. It's the executive summary, but I also wanna pass out some additional information I think might be helpful to you. So I'm gonna just pass this around. It's basically just breaking out the numbers from the merit pools, which I think might be helpful. wonderful so this is a front and back piece so I'll just kind of walk you through so the merit strategy town managers kind of talked about the merit pool and that we've implemented in the budget already a 2% merit pool for each department so that merit pool is 2% of that departments base salaries So and then, of course, merits, as you know, are awarded based on performance. And then the idea behind this is that employees performing above expectations would receive a larger part of that pool than those, you know, performing a little less or under expectations, those type of things. If you'll flip over to the back, I'll actually break down the merit amounts. So the total base salaries cost for all departments. And actually, Joe, can you pull up that other attachment I have for this just so everybody online can see it? Perfect. Thank you. The total base salaries cost for all departments is $9,438,507. And then 2% of that is that merit pool across the organization. So the total merit pool for all departments combined would be $188,770. That would only be really about 1.37% of the total personnel cost for the organization. And then you can see each department has their base salaries. And so what I did is I calculated per department what that merit pool amount would be, just so you can see it broken down. So essentially, what we would do, and this is kind of the process, I want to get your feedback if this is something that aligns with what you're thinking. Supervisors, department heads would fill out their performance evaluations for their staff like they always do. And as part of that performance evaluation, you give kind of an overall rating, right? So it exceeds, meets, needs improvement below standards. Those are kind of the overall ratings. And then we'd like to, just so there's some consistency across the organization so you don't have, you know, all sorts of different percentages so that it's fair, we have kind of a general rule of thumb and guidance framework. So if someone, you know, scores most or all, or meets standards, that would be a 2%, kind of a 2% raise advised. If you've got some kind of a mix of meets and exceeds, maybe going up half a percent. And then if you have someone that has mostly or all exceeds, you can go kind of 3%, can go up to four, but that would really be reserved for those top, the highest performers. And then if you have kind of a mix of meets and below, no more than 1% would be advised. And then if you have someone with mostly below or needs improvement, then no merit would be advised there. So it just gives kind of a guidance, general rule of thumb for everyone to go by so you don't have one department giving 10% for their exceeds and then a different department giving much less. So it just gives uniformity across and consistency. then something we haven't done before that we would like to do is a calibration meeting so after the supervisors department heads give their they'll have a an excel sheet for each department they'll be an excel sheet created and they'll have all their department personnel in there and their salaries and then they'll be able to put in that percentage that they're recommending for the merit and it'll total automatically for them and they'll know their max pool number and they can see if it's above or below that and where they need to make adjustments. And then they'll do some calibration meetings with myself, the finance director, Rosie, and then the town manager, Scott Dadson, just to make sure we're being consistent and that we are not going above that department's merit pool maximum. You know, it's kind of just a good way to kind of strategically think across the organization who is actually exceeding on their performance, who's meeting and who's below. And then after those calibration meetings are completed, we can identify any challenge areas if we need to kind of discuss and go back to the drawing board a little bit. But once ready to go, those department heads can then meet with their staff like they normally do to go over that performance evaluation and their merit that will be going with that. And then merits would go into effect. So that is kind of the breakdown of the process that we've kind of thought through. Just want to invite any feedback, any concern, anything else you want to see in that?

So the calibration meetings, it's like a performance feedback from a staff member?

Yeah, it would be the department head and town manager, myself, and the finance director, just to make sure, let's look at your department's, the ratings, make sure we're not exceeding your merit pool, but to make sure that we don't have any inconsistencies somewhere, that we're kind of treating it fairly. So it helps with just from an audit standpoint, just making sure we're being fair and consistent.

Is that like a monthly or quarterly look?

That's something we can do. Really, this is at performance evaluation time that these would happen. But, I mean, we can implement. Annually, yes.

What do we do as far as if we wanted to get somebody, if they're not making goal, want to give them an opportunity to do that? If it's yearly, a little too late? Right. At that point, if you're doing a quarterly or monthly, you give an opportunity to catch up.

That's right, yeah, and that's, you know, we do kind of say quarterly check-ins are a really good idea because if someone has an area where they're struggling or need to improve on, it's great to give that feedback so that they know that so that when it comes time for the annual performance that they know that they've made those adjustments and they're good to go. It is too late once it's annual, you know, performance time and you could have told them that a while ago and they could have made that adjustment.

And even not just for the employee, but for the performance of the department. That's right.

That's right. You're looking at it not just individually, but performance overall of that department, that team. So that's right.

I would think supervisors are giving constructive feedback throughout so that it doesn't get to that.

Right, yes. And that's always our advice is to don't wait until it's performance time. Give them that feedback along the way so it's not a surprise. You don't want to blindside somebody with that.

No, I appreciate the gating of the calibration meeting and what you guys are setting up to check with me, essentially. For me, there's one thing that I'd like to know a little bit more. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were talking about in the presentation, at least in the packet, there was a little bit of direction of linkage of the merits with the board-established strategic plan. Can you walk me through a little bit about that? How do you see that being tied together?

Yes. Yeah, so we've had our standard performance evaluation packet for a while, and we've gotten feedback from department heads along the way. Do we need to change this up a little bit? But we would like to in the future. You know how we've kind of been going through the strategies, the goals. Once we have those set, we can incorporate that into the performance evaluation so that it's speaking that same language across the organization. So, I can't speak specifically to it on what will be those goals and strategies. We're still working on that. But once we do, we can have – I have an example in here of something like you have – and they're weighted. And so, you can have goal achievement, core competencies, strategic contribution, professional development. So, it's just kind of different categories and you give different weights to it. This is not something that's set in stone. It's just an example. But just being able to have those strategies and goals within the performance evaluation so that that's something that we're living and breathing all the time and not just at performance evaluation time, but just constantly.

the merit pools are kind of a new thing right like uh because i remember last year i asked how many people get yes you said something like 80 well that this would be a natural governor on that wouldn't it because you only right don't exceed the merit pool you can't give everyone an a

You can't. You're forced to look at, okay, who's actually really exceeding on their performance? Who's meeting? Who's below? And so it does kind of put a little bit of a cap on that. You're looking at it more strategically, making those adjustments where necessary so you're not exceeding that performance.

I definitely support that archetype of keeping a departmental miracle. It gives some autonomy, but yet supports those essentially in those moments.

This is all very typical and very familiar to me.

Wonderful.

This is very familiar to you. Are you exceeding?

I've learned and lived and loved it.

wonderful and then there's also one other there's a special compensation provisions in here and it's actually something that was already existed in our policies it was just never really followed and that's a lump sum merit so for anybody that's actually exceeded their salary range instead of adding to their base salary it would be a lump sum payment lump sum merit type thing so one-time merit bonus where it's a lump sum rather than adding to their base

I can just add an extra step if you do that. Some people have topped out. Does that make sense?

That's right.

And is there a percentage parameter or ceiling with the merit bonus?

I think 4% was the most.

Right, yeah. Just kind of those general guidelines, rule of thumb, so we're not, again, having one department giving their exceeds 10%, other department giving something way less. So it just gets some uniformity, so it's not all over the board.

Makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else to discuss? Any concerns? All right. All right. Sure.

No problem.

Thank you, Emily.

All righty, the fun one we've all been waiting for. Fiscal year, 26-27.

formal presentation on this at all. This is your time. I've published my message. It's out. It's been advertised. Barbie has advertised the amount in the budget and the tax rate. So all of that is out. Your public hearing is on the second. So that'll be next Tuesday, Tuesday week. Is that right? Yes. Wow. I'm just having a hard time thinking it's almost June. So it'll be then. And then after that, we would slate it for action or for board consideration on the 9th. That's the. proceeding now your public hearing just so you folks are aware that's the only thing on your agenda that evening is just your public hearing on the budget so I'll do a presentation a brief presentation and then you folks will hear public comment on that after that I think Barbie they can discuss if they want they can

gnaw on it at least and chew on it uh we can discuss now so i think so yep yeah so i'm gonna uh back off now this it's in front of you uh you've had three or four work sessions on this matter so yeah i appreciate what you've published and i can see you've put a lot of effort into keeping costs down and asking people to cut things um We are using a million of our reserves to balance the budget. Eventually we need to transition to a more sustainable model and be cost conscious as over development costs will catch up with us in the future. A lot of residential development that was approved by prior boards is gonna come online and then there'll be an injection of property taxes but then the costs will kick in and unfortunately those won't be covered by the new property taxes. I was just trying to think of which departments have the most discretionary spending and which ones have the least. You had a term in your budget, operational backbone, which I like. Last week, before I had really read through the latest one that you had sent, the ones popped to mind for me immediately were PD and public services as operational backbone. very little wiggle room, but then this week and over the weekend as I was reading some more, I think there's really several departments, not just PD and public services, there's facilities, emergency management, sanitation, public service, those ones don't have a lot of wiggle room, but Outside of that operational backbone, is there room? Could the department heads identify a 5% efficiency reduction so the board can evaluate priorities and preserve long-term flexibility? You know, we're fortunate to have strong reserves today, but we need to be careful not to build an operational structure that assumes those conditions will always continue. As elected officials, we have a responsibility to establish a culture of prioritization restraint before financial pressure forces much harder decisions later. Those were just some opening thoughts. I noted a bunch of questions here, but I don't want to of the opening time if anyone else has something else to say.

The floor is open. So whoever wants to chime in first, chime in, please. This is our opportunity to kind of gnaw on this a little bit and cut through some of this stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, I appreciate the budget and all the work that everyone's gone through to bring us a good budget. And I guess the question I had, there was a question on training and travel last year. Is that still in-state training that we're focusing on?

until you say differently. Yes.

I mean, but that should cover any licensing or any requirement.

A lot of the training is required by a lot of positions, as you both well know. The one thing about in-state versus out-of-state, I would say to you folks, just so you know, I think I understand what the intent was, but it's... Oh, yeah. Apologies. But you know, it's quicker to Columbia than it is to Raleigh sometimes. So I think one of the things that happens, at least in the Carolinas, so you folks know, is that a lot of training is combined between the two states. So you just have joint planning. People come to Charlotte all the time for planning, that kind of thing, for training. So I'm not as restrictive. However, if it's in Los Angeles, that's a little different. So if the board's intention is use really strict understanding of what the funds are for, making sure that they're used in its proper place. I think our folks understand that. I don't travel out that much. I do the manager's meeting about once a year, and that's about it. And then, of course, you folks have the league meetings if you want them and things like that. Of course, those are in-state. Right.

Well, yeah, I guess that my question was, The concern was, are we going to Orlando on a conference that's not yielding a return on investment? And how many people are going to a conference like that? how necessary is that to training that directly is correlated to running the town? So that was my question. Concern, yeah. And concern last.

I didn't put any guardrails on it. The guardrails are on, at least for this fiscal year. If you folks want to talk about travel policies, we'll mention that and have a conversation about that, certainly with Emily as well, because folks will be seeing that. That'd be the proper place to kind of talk about your training, that training should be relevant to the certificate that you need or relevant to the organization, things like that. I don't think there's anything wrong with the board having it. I think in the personnel policy, it's probably the proper place. And then, of course, the second way you control is just the amount of money.

I remember Richard Hex last year implemented an out-of-state travel ban. Are we still operating on that? We're still operating on that, yeah. All right. Because, I mean, I was talking with the chief yesterday, felt that there was some necessary training they needed to take that is out of state. And the out of state prohibition can be a little arbitrary, I guess. I think so.

As long as it's applicable to their job and to the organization and it fits within fiscal constraints. My judgment as a manager is that it needs to be relevant to what they're doing, needs to be cost considered. whether it's in South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, or Virginia, gets a little less concerning. Even if you didn't have the travel restrictions, the cost of an airplane ticket right now, we have good department heads here. They would guess. They'd take a second guess on some of these costs. I read an interesting report this morning that single night hotel rooms are going up, which I thought was an interesting one.

Do we have any guidelines as far as where How much people spend per night?

I think we have some rules like that.

We do?

Thank you. Yeah, we have per diems and those kinds of things.

We don't have to force them into Motel 8, but it doesn't have to be the Four Seasons either.

No, but we ask them to. And a lot of times if you go to a conference, they've booked things. They try to get considerations of those, at least the organizations that I'm used to, APA and the City Managers Association, just things like that. They generally will try to do those kinds of things, is get book rates that are booked and blocked. And then some of those lease trainings are in dorms. The best guiding rule We can talk about it in the budget, and we can talk about it in policy, but the best rule is do you want your name on the front of a paper? Do we have papers anymore? Do you want it in a meme? Exactly. Do you want to be memed? Do you want to be memed that you did something like that? And I think most people exercise some pretty good common sense about those things. But I think the proper place for that is really less in the budget. That's the money part. The more proper place is probably in the personnel policy, just to give some guidelines and some things there. And we do have a pre-audit stamp approval. So most travel and things like that, the department heads are looking at before people do, or I'm looking at it and those things. So sorry for the generalized question, but that's the answer.

Well, yeah. I'd like to pass on my appreciation for folks coming in from what I calculate is about 8.1% under what was adopted last year, the projected spend, which is excellent. that that has a couple that leads to a couple questions in the budget those number one what's the drivers of those and we can we can see some of that in the detail of the departments what drove the savings there but is there that leads into a discussion of the manager's recommended budget is there an opportunity for us to dial in the budgeting Are we going to be 8.1% under next year? Are we comfortable with that? What steps are we taking to dial in the budget to give us a little bit more accuracy on how we're attacking these lineups?

There's a couple things to talk about with that. Will we end up at 8.1% less? I'm not convinced of that yet, only because we haven't made a series of adjusting journal entries yet towards the end of the year, especially on capital. So we'll have to do those things. I would say if we were less minus one, minus two, or at par, we're probably going to be lucky there were a couple things that happened during your budget process last year and i'm not here to throw dispersions one way or another but y'all had a y'all had an interesting process last year i wasn't here yet so i get to say those kinds of things i did watch it yeah it was part of the entertainment while i was in ireland it was a lot of fun but um but you did and you kind of went back and forth you had an interim manager richard taught me how to do budget so you know i've known richard for a long time great guy and really good manager. But, you know, Rosie and I, as you've noticed, we've come back to you every month and or every other month and adjusted some things. and had to adjust some things because some things were in there, some things were not, some things needed to be moved around, some things were double counted. And as we've gone through the year, you all have been very good about adjusting those, making those adjustments. We give you the financial reports to show you where those are at. So I think it's a little bit tighter than it has been historically. I think the last three to four years have had a bubble effect of cash flow here. You've had $5 million in ARPA. You've had $2.5, $3 million from the state on rec barn and learning centers. So those were outside dollars that you didn't anticipate. And the way your audit counts it, you had $18 million worth of bond proceeds that counts as inflow of cash. It really is a project fund. It sits off to the side, but it counted in your cash flow. As a matter of fact, it was one of the reasons for the ding, if you recall, in the audit that we wanted to adjust. We adjusted it the way the auditor told us. He did that. He came back and said, you're not supposed to do that. We're like, we did exactly what you told us to do and dinged it around. There wasn't any money missing. It's just where it flowed in and how it flowed back out. So it makes some of your cash flow look a little interesting over time. And that's true for everybody. and some of these things where cash flow was very very high were really big bumps for a lot of people very quickly and we're no different than that as i look back at the finances so to answer your question john i think you know we'll end up less your department heads have always done a very good job of trying to not go overboard. A lot of the numbers that will drive them up one way or another is maybe capital didn't get done. So it's deferred over into a cash position, you know, into your savings account, those kinds of things over time. So to answer your question best, I think we'll be a little bit less, but I think par to maybe one, 2% less, actually more normal. If you've heard my conversations before, I think you're meeting where your operational costs and your revenues are now crossing. And they're crossing because the growth isn't there right now, at least the growth in revenues. The biggest one that concerns me, of course, is sales tax. That's the real undercutting one. That's a more broad-based one. And you've issued 10 building permits in seven months. I mean, those are the forward-looking indicators for next year's cash flow. So tax collection, people pay their taxes here mostly because they have mortgages. The banks are very, very good about cutting a check. It's just the way it is everywhere.

I noticed the sales and use was about $2 million less than...

I don't know if it's $2 million.

But it's low anyway. It's lower.

It's about 3.5% less. It's low. Yeah, it's much less. And we were very conservative in our estimates. And this year, I didn't adjust them at all. So I had a conservative number last year. I laid it out there. I was told by the folks who tell me how much they think those estimates are worth that it would be much higher, 3% to 6%. And I said, nope, I'm 3% less. So we kept them as is. So the way you really achieve that differential, is overestimating expenditures, underestimating revenues, showing a fund balance draw. If you look at what was adopted last year, it was zero. Zero draw down as a revenue from fund balance last year. So there wasn't room to gallop. And I know that sounds strange, but you in our world of how we control our costs, that's how we do it. And then what happens is hopefully you earn in the differential and savings that fund balance back and never have to draw it, but instead put it into the bank. You've also had over your last three to six years, two assessments, three assessments, and you're no different than anyone else. The value of housing from 2020 on was an inordinately large spike in the underlying value of assets there's a couple of you from the west coast i lived out there it's more expensive here at least from where I was moving. Now, there's some really expensive places out there, but, you know, I mean, it was going on everywhere. So, that underlying value of asset really spiked. You're seeing it in your tax rates. You're seeing it in things like that, your values. So, you had two reassessments in that. So, those are spiky things.

Yep. Definitely.

Regarding IT, I support investing in cybersecurity and essential operational technology, but I also want us to avoid quietly building a permanent enterprise software overhead structure that grows faster than taxpayers' ability to sustain it. I noticed our software costs are getting kind of big. And before we expand that software cost, and you mentioned this before, you know, we need a comprehensive software inventory utilization review and overlap analysis.

Also a lot of compliance in that software probably baked in. Sorry? Compliance. in that software for RITs, the compliance checks, the safety checks, the malware, all of those programs and all of that server support integrations, cloud to physical. I mean, there's a lot of sometimes compliance worked into that that you need to account for within your IT software.

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I think one of the things, Richard, you and I have had this conversation about the software. We tried to break it into a different format for you folks. And I don't disagree, Richard, with your assessment on the software end up. That's where a lot of cost is, I think, that needs a review.

No, I like the way that you put it all. Baseline. Scattered throughout the department.

And we have some really good folks here. Our cyber attack was a real scare, right? That was a real thing. So I think from a hardware perspective, We were able to rebuild in a year where we didn't want to, but we did, which I think got us up to speed, especially on our baselines and things like that. But that didn't change our licensing and some of those things. So we tried to divide between operational and baseline and what we use and see where we can maximize some efficiencies in some of those things. I think now that it's clear, it's an easier thing for us to do. But it's a good point. I don't necessarily understand all that stuff as a practicing manager. You know, I use what I use, and I just don't think through it a lot. But we do have a good team of people who do, so we can definitely take a look at those things. And I think the way they stacked it helps us look at it a little bit more critically now.

so i'm hoping that will come out of that sort of someone who's primarily responsible for the procurement side of software you know sort of analyzing uh what we're licensed for how long the licenses last how many seats we're paying for you know we may not have utilization data but

Recurring versus one time? Yeah. Yeah. I think the way we set it up this year, I think the gatekeeper is definitely needed. And I think that became really clear. So I think we're going to do that. Make sure that we're not doing anything repetitive unnecessarily redundant or repetitive. Redundancy is good, yes. But there could be things that we could be doing with one software versus another. I appreciate you all highlighting that because I think the way we stacked it really became much clearer this time. Not sure exactly what the answer is, but yes, we do have people inside our IT team as well as others. It was a little less formal before, but I think the need to formalize it is definitely there.

I'd like to go back to Richard's point. So for clarification, you're asking to see where we can possibly look and evaluate for additional proposed 5% in cost reductions?

Yeah. Like I said, there's certain departments, PD, emergency management facilities, sanitation, public services. I don't really see any wiggle room in budget.

Our capital improvement projects are already called off. We have our commitments. Our PD, we want to stay competitive.

Speaking of capital improvement, I would like to see the park restrooms and the amphitheater roof removed from the CIP list. I know that we as a board kind of were iffy about those items. And I see that it's in the budget. So, I mean, if the board's amenable, I think we should remove those.

We talked about it. I would agree.

Which restaurants specifically? Because there was two call-offs.

The Emerson Park and the Town Creek Park.

So you're both?

Half a million dollars each. And there was also the amphitheater roof, half a million dollars, I think.

Well, I think we've sequenced the amphitheater roof to where we can evaluate that and send that out in the years out to where it's not gone because it was asked for in a public input session. But at the same time, where are our core priorities? And we've sequenced that to where we are addressing our core priorities.

I just don't think it makes sense to shelter an amphitheater stage and not the rest of the amphitheater.

You know, and that is a valid point. If it's just the stage and we're not really working. If the audience isn't comfortable, why do you?

It's not just a comfort issue as well. It's a PA system. It has to be clear, though. So you're trying to protect that. when you have something going on. I mean, it's like when we were at, just this weekend, we saw parks and recs scurrying to protect the speakers and everything else. So when the downpour occurs, yeah, the people can tough it out, but the electronics cannot. And that's one of the main reasons for that amphitheater is to get the performers out of the sun, get the equipment out of the rain.

Well, it's not that the idea is horrible. It's just that the price tag is like half a million dollars for a roof. I mean, you could...

I'd hate to see it fall off the CIP in the fear that it would never happen or that it's, you know, 20, 30 years down the road instead of 5 or 10. So, I mean, I think we can continue to deprioritize it or push it back, but it would be nice to kind of leave it on the list of, hey, big government, can you give us some money?

So just to be clear in the that's in the plan. So that's a resolution, right?

Yeah, we haven't allocated. Right, right.

You haven't allocated funds for any of those things. And every year you'll get to do that.

So just, you know, the half million dollar bathrooms are going on.

The bathrooms, I remember thinking about, I think the bathrooms, it's like one of the parks I don't think is big enough to sustain and necessitate a bathroom. And then the other park being adjacent to all that retail space, there's probably other mechanisms to fund that park or that bathroom being as its proximity to all that retail space. It's also a small area, but it would also attract a lot of retail traffic. Well, for the price, it should take up the whole area. How big is that bathroom? The point is, if you want a public bathroom there, you get the business to pay for it.

Regarding the shade structures, I would like it left. I think the public has still asked for it, and it's part of the programming within the park at this time. I think it's worth getting input, not just our... in addition as we're going through this is great that we're talking about line items but i want to make sure that we also are understanding where we're at what kind of impact might that have i know we've talked a lot about essentially cost to serve and but that at that time when we're looking at these we need to understand what that cut might reduce in service and what additional layers of deferral and risk it might bring on when we're looking at these diagrams. And so if you're asking for a whole philosophy, I would like to at least make sure that we're setting up some reasonable and tangible expectations for staff to come back through us so we can also digest these cuts because we are getting operationally thinner. You guys did a great job keeping us in an even fashion in a very budget conflict. It was a clashing of two philosophies. And so we're now in this point, and the manager, and this is where I'm at, and I sit, the manager's delivered on a very operationally stable budget. And so for me, the way I'm looking at it is the staff has aligned with us. They've supported us in our mission and with our work groups. And we've delivered essentially a very operationally stable budget while there's some unknown on the horizon as well, short and long term.

Are you talking about the CIP or are you talking about the budget and your 5% as a whole?

So as we go through line item by line item, I want to make sure that we understand when we remove things, what are we removing? And then what is also the risk behind it to removal as a whole?

No one of us knows everything about everything.

Correct. And that's why I'm asking the departments to formalize.

They're the ones who can really understand what's going on and provide savings.

But at the same time, when we're asking for them to evaluate cuts, we should be asking what is that service impact? What are we doing? What's that cost return or extension of risk?

Well, yeah, we wouldn't want anything. That's why we would ask the department heads to evaluate that, and if it's going to be risky, then we would say, yeah, well, don't do it, right? But I just got confused because I thought you were talking about the bathrooms and assessing risk.

No, we're talking about finding line items. Richard was going down into line items of possible cuts. But in the whole context, we're talking about it in the budget of finding cuts. And as we're doing that, my fear is that we're going into essentially a policy procedure of micromanaging where we should be sitting here asking the department, hey, we are looking for an additional 5%, which I do support.

That's what I'm proposing.

But we're actually getting to a catalyst point of where those departments, as we've identified the core backbones, We don't want to add any operational risk. We support the goals and policies that we've outlaid for those core backbones. But in the other departments, we also should openly ask, okay, if we do make that cut in a software license, what's that risk?

Well, I don't think that they would suggest something that would...

What if there is nothing else to suggest?

They'll say there's nothing else to suggest. And I'm good with that. I'm just saying.

I'm good with it too.

If I ask my kids, what can you give up? I'm sure that they'll give up. If I give up this, I now may need to create

additional labor in a manual way or we wouldn't ask that we're just asking if there is anything yeah can it be done if it can't be done then honestly tell me it can't be done this is the best you're looking at a budget that was overestimated by 8.1 were were the budgets or the department budgets scrutinized to such a degree that they pinched every penny. If you're talking about an 8.1% budget, you come under budget 8.1%? are you accurately budgeting from the beginning of the year what your needs are i would argue that it would need a little bit more accuracy and a little bit more work we can talk ourselves out of budget cuts here all day which we've been doing for the past 10 minutes but what i'm saying is Yeah, we have.

No one's talked about and not talked about ourselves out of any budget cuts or no cuts. No one said anything to that effect.

The point being, though, there is room here to dial in this budget.

So you're talking about the FY25-26 budget adopted versus final actual, correct?

Yeah, I mean, for example,

So I guess my question, I think, Scott, you answered it earlier in your assessment being that you weren't a part of that. To get that threshold at 8% or 7.7, what it is, was that previously overly aggressive, built-in contingencies, safety nets? Because if I work, if I operate over 5%, I have some explaining to do in my world. If I'm below 5%, I'm blaming the person that came up with the plan. If I'm over 5%, it looked like I was sandbagging. So that's why I'm asking, how do we come up with that? And then moving to FY26-27, where is there some wiggle room? Is Richard what we're talking about, 5%?

There's percentages here that are worth discussing. lots well i would i would get into it yeah this is our time to talk about the budget i'd like to talk about the specific percentages that are that jump out at yeah that's what we're here to do yeah that's what i thought we were here to do yeah well it's a nice open discussion we don't have a particular presentation or anything so yeah let's go Do you want me to answer a question? What I want to do is present a couple of these percentages and open those up for discussion. But if you look at the overall manager recommended, and this is overall. So is your question about

Is there a reasonable explanation as to why we've missed the mark so much? Is that the real question?

Well, yeah, but the real question, yeah. That's part of the question of answering, can this be dialed in more accurately?

Because my question is along those lines. It's like, do we have a sound, reasonable explanation as to why it was so far off? And is that likely to continue? meaning is there anything about the current expenditures that we know and understand that going into next year, things won't be that out of control and we're likely to have another 8% or so of underspend? Because I thought a lot about that number that you'd been discussing, John. And you hear the story of these budgets where it's a use it or lose it. If you don't spend it all, you're not getting it all next year. That's not the situation we want to create here, I think. But I think we do want to understand, is there something we can give the people of Waxhaw because of this underspend? If this underspend is likely to continue, then is there room to make some adjustments for the people of Waxhaw?

Or to save for the millions of dollars on the road.

But it gives you options.

If you're more accurate with how you're budgeting, it gives you options. Can we give something back, or do we need to put it to something specific in the future because of rising costs and stuff like that? Yeah, I mean, we know we still have to feed Helms Road. But if there's something tangible that people can actually see, you're getting the value... for their tax dollar.

Yeah, I hope people continue to see that because our CIP is long and it's inaction. Yeah, I see that in general terms.

I think it's very responsible for what they're getting from the tax dollar.

I think there's plenty of things on the CIP list, for instance, that any sort of surplus money or underspent funds, there's any number of things on the CIP that the underspent funding can go towards. And it's our decision as a board to determine are we going to invest in those projects or are we thinking we give back to the people? And I think that that's the kind of thing we need to work out tonight.

I mean, we'll talk about it going forward. The tax rate, any reduction in the tax rate would give you a reduction in revenue.

Exactly.

Right? So then your numbers change and how much money you can accumulate. for CIP projects and that type of thing, right? So all that, we take that into account.

Yeah, I just, I like to be cautious and just know that if we do get the SS4A grant, that's additional monies that we have to put aside for the next five years so that we want to just, yes, we want to, We want to be careful to spend on the necessary. And all these things, these roads, we have a lot coming and a lot to pay for. And if there is a cushion in there that is going to go back in the general fund and then be able to be used for other things, I don't think that that's a bad thing. we could be smart about how we're saving for the future. Because for me and for maybe and for Richard and Robert, this is the first thank you to scott for and i've said this before the numbers are coming to us more often and it's a very real picture of what's coming rather than okay in 2022 we approved this road project and oh it's five years later now we have to pay for it and you know how are we doing that right and oh, and now this is coming online, too, with that. And so I think that we're able to make better decisions moving forward because of the way you're presenting everything. So I just want to be careful with that. I mean, nobody likes to save a buck more than me.

If we know what the question is, then I think we should be budgeting something a little bit more accurate than 8.1% under.

So I guess we'll give Scott a chance to chime in here because I think the overarching question initially was sort of an explanation for the 8%. Is that kind of where you're going, John?

Well, besides that, I mean, you look at a budget that is proposed to spend 18.5% more than what we're projecting to spend this year. That is something that is glaring. That was on the FY26 adopted.

Correct. That was from the adopted from FY25-26.

Yeah. What this budget says versus...

Difference between actual spend and proposed budget.

Correct. From FY25-26, it was an 18%, is what you're saying. Okay. Sorry, I said 8%.

I said 8%.

No, no, no. Okay. So projected... to spend this year is eight percent under what was adopted last year okay okay but what we're projected to spend in this upcoming budget is 18 and a half percent higher than what we're projected to spend by june 30th of this year yeah that's a big number

Well, I'm going to anticipate the first thing that Scott's going to say, which is contingency funds. Which is smart. I think that's part of the story, right? Because we have some contingency funds that are quite large, a couple hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, 200.

There's only one contingency fund in the budget, and that's a $200,000 amount that sits in there more or less on a yearly basis. It's maybe spent, maybe not spent.

The Ed one you're talking about.

Yeah. And that is really to deal with the budget law, how things move from fund to fund. When they begin to restrict it, especially the legislature a couple of years ago, um that was a way to make sure there was a place to go so we only have one contingency fund and that's 200. the 8.1 percent looks like it's there but the reality is it's not because we have not moved over about 2.5 million into capital so in the budget itself you have around 2.5 million that has been already assigned to capital out of the general fund And the board in an action at the last meeting moved your retained earnings from the prior fiscal year of 1.5 million into capital reserves. so the cushion the year before this one was 1.5 but it was only because people spent less and not all projects were completed yeah so you would naturally move those things into into your committed or restricted fund positions so the cash is there and that if you recall the beginning of the plan i said you have a ground nine point five nine point six million already there in your cash you moved over another 1.5 and this year i've already committed to those 2.5 million in various things we spent it on the other side we do an adjusting journal entry it was current fund dollars it'll it'll be gone but it's not on people and operations it's on capital it's capital So, your cushion was that, for lack of a better term. In prior years, if a capital item moved from year to year, you may spend a dollar of it, you may spend all of it, or you may spend somewhere in between, so your numbers will fluctuate on your percentages over a five-year time. So if you'll recall, a couple of meetings ago, I gave you a five-year synopsis. It was a rough draft of operations, personnel, and then revenues. It was a big Excel sheet. Yeah, OK. So those are our five-year numbers. And yeah, you remember this. And so to go back and ask the first question first to Michael, he asked me today, earlier today, what did I think we were going to do? And I said, around negative 1%, 2% to par. So I don't think you're going to have retained earnings out of this year. The way the budget was structured, it was structured to all be spent mostly on capital. Now, the department heads have done a good job of keeping their expenditures more or less in line. If you look at what they've done over time, they're more or less along that operational control line for the most part. But the other thing that you don't have is any growth in your revenues. So between that and whether things were spent or not spent, as part of the year, as part of a project, as part of how they managed, that's what was giving you more or less about $12 million in reserve positions over the last five. And you spent well over that, over the last five to six. You spent a lot mostly in capital. You have also built up personnel and operating costs. Your personnel costs are We have not recommended anything except for the continued part of the three-year plan to make sure that we have enough officers. And then we've allocated some money for basically part-time folks, not number of billets, but just part-time dollars to be charged against for your opening two new facilities. And there's been a lot of complaint that we don't fully cover the rec barn all the time. So making sure that we cover that both with existing and some additional funds to do that. Outside of that, you added three this year. That rolls up into a full year's worth of cost next year. Your increases in sanitation, street lights, and gas by themselves are around $511,000 in additional cost structure. So if last year my retained earnings were $1.5 million, I've already eaten up most of that.

Because the sanitation contract isn't a fixed contract.

It rises every year. There's a kicker in it every year. That's right. Well, but more than that, there are additional customers. Most of it came from additional customers coming on board.

That was going to be one of my questions, was the sanitation line, was that additional customers?

Both. It's both the 4% and the additional customers. And there was an undercount in your budget last year, so we've had to adjust for that. So that last year's number was down by about maybe $150,000. Undercount of homes? uh the count hadn't come in yet you guys had a lower number when you went into your budget it's the first thing we had to deal with um through an amendment just to make sure that you guys were square when i came on in august or september of that year so like i said i watched last year it was there were just things moved around rosie and i have come back to you folks on a pretty consistent basis to correct and to nullify those things so sanitation

It's going up 32% over what we're projected to spend this year.

Well, not 32%, about $300,000, I think, $300,000 to $400,000.

And that's just nothing we could do about it. That's one of those things.

That's number of customers. Well, because the way your structure works is this. You have it in your tax base instead of it being a segregated fee. Right. Most people pay segregated fees for sanitation, water and sewer, things like that. So as it grows, and if all of a sudden you don't have growth, that kicker is going to keep going up on the one side, whether you add people or not. And when you go out to bid the next time, you'll have that. Plus you have fuel kickers in this year. You've had, we'll have those in our next billing cycle. Because they're allowed to, by contract, do that to us.

And is there a percentage they're allowed to? Nope.

No, it just says national average.

Whatever they feel like.

Yep, based off of national average. So we've got some control mechanisms in it, okay? It's not carte blanche, but it's there and we know it. It'll be more than the amount we pay on a monthly basis. We pay around $186,000 a month, somewhere around that amount. Matt, how many customers? About 2,300 now? 2,300 households.

Seventy-three, 72.

Seventy-two hundreds, but only pickups are around. Seventy-two something. Seventy-two hundred. I'm thinking about the amount. Sorry about that.

So before this company, there was another one.

They got bought. They're gone. It was a small mom and pop. They've been absorbed. They're gone.

Yeah, the contract will be up in 28. So when that comes around, we would be prepared to go out to bid again and do what we're going to do at that point.

WastePro is absorbing a lot of smaller region places. It's monopolistic more than it is anything else.

Is it kind of like cable? They give you a one year. Deal and then the next year.

No, we have a five-year contract. I think we have a five-year, so 28 is the next time it's up. So, you know, we'll deal with that issue at that point in time.

And is that like a basic every five years? Is that just what the standard is?

Fairly standard. You can either do that or you can do your own, which is a costly endeavor, especially from a risk and liability perspective. Yeah, we don't want to do that. or you can franchise it. Franchising is a little different. That would mean anybody who could confer with the franchise, but then you would not have the one thing that you folks like. on Thursday in my neighborhood, it always gets picked up. You know, you would have, oh, my neighbor picked Monday. I picked Thursday. You know, you'd have to have some rules about franchising. You could do it. But you'd have to have a lot of competition in the marketplace in order to achieve that kind of return. You just would. And as Daniel said, they're getting eaten up by the big boy. Waste Pro is a pretty big company. So regardless of that, so you've got built-in costs that are rolled up. You've got the full cost of employees added through the police. That's your biggest one. But that's a board decision, and that's just a reality. So you have the full year of cost, not a half a year of cost. That is the full year of cost? Yeah, it has been rolled into that. Okay. And then secondly, you'll have those rising costs that I just indicated, those three. You have more streets now. You have more street lights that you pay for. You made some decisions about tree maintenance and things like that, and... luck going to the pool at your hoa this summer before someone taps you on the shoulder about trees so we're maintaining that yeah you're already probably getting that a little bit fair enough got it but you know we only have so much that we can spend on it we try to do it ourselves we try to maintain them that in the sidewalk work so um Of the amount of money last year, John, just to answer your question plainly, that was absorbed through capital, and that would bring it up to around what it should be. I give you those estimated numbers so we can track them so we have a better idea. it's the capital that's missing and it's the capital that's that 8.1 percent so um that will be a you know that just gets absorbed and they've already been spent or or obligated by the board and through previous actions so um i think you're gonna i i think to be at par would be good But if the board directs to find savings, we would go back as a team. I would ask that you ask me to do that with my team and come back to the board and do that if that were the direction of the board. We're happy to do those things. Well, we're not happy-go-lucky to do all those things. But that's our job and that's what we would do. And we have a really capable team of folks who can think through those processes. and those issues, so we would do that. That's the absorption factor. Also, to be really clear, when I say that your revenues and your expenses are meeting, inflation doesn't go away. It piles on top of last month's inflation, which piles on top of the month before that's inflation. So things are costly. You guys, everyone knows this. Everyone at this table knows that every household knows it. So you all know the stacking effect of inflation. So we're not any different than that. People cost more. The one that's really blatant in front of us is oil and gas right now, obviously, and then shipping costs for things as they come in too.

Well, it's things like that that drive the concern for asking for more savings because oil and gas, how the war is affecting it, and you had mentioned about us being short on the money we need to save for road projects.

You guys have gotten yourself ahead a good bit in this year, which is good. movement of current dollars over and then retained earnings from last year into your restricted reserves that help fill a lot of holes. Do you still have an outward hole on Helms? Yeah, that's your biggest one that sits out there. All you've although you've closed the gap on that considerably in this year with your actions. So there are those that CIP plan doesn't mean it gets spent if there's no reserve or you don't get a grant or you don't get this or you don't get that. You have to rethink some of those things, but there's also opportunities in that. John and I serve on the Friends of Rails and Parks. At least we now have a list to talk to them about various things. Yeah, tomorrow. Oh, that's right. You're on too. That's right. I haven't been to the last couple of meetings. Sorry. I'll be there with a smile on John. I'll be there. I'll be there with you.

That hurt. For me, I was looking back and just absorbing this budget. And this is my first budget in this fashion with you all, with this team. But in 2022, the budget was themed growing. I would not title this budget whatsoever that Scott has delivered anything close to that. If anything, stabilizing would be the word I would use. It's stabilizing and supporting our core infrastructures that we've asked him as a set of policy governances to support. and stabilizing essentially in our facilities. We're absorbing everything that we saw that was in that growing in 2022. We are operationally absorbing that in this budget and managing it and keeping the core services that we have come to know as this town and that we cherish. I do not see this as essentially a wandering or drifting budget.

No, it's not.

I don't think you said that. What I'm saying is... To seek?

To seek out, yes.

Well, not just that, but I think you're not really talking about cutting line items. You're talking about budgeting more accurately. There's a difference.

There is a difference.

And that's what I'm saying. And then in that way, you have a more accurate accounting of what your revenues are going to be or what you're going to be left with at the end of the year and where you can actually put that money. So, look, when I see that you're spending 18.5% or projected to spend, sorry, that this budget is 18.5% more than what we're projected to spend in this current fiscal year?

I mean, that's... If you just bake in inflationary numbers, just... Inflation is inflation.

Exactly. 18.5%.

It's not 18.5%, but you know it's a portion of.

It's a portion.

And so in finding the portion of... Yeah, but at the same time, too, while we're going through and looking at those cuts, like we've all talked about here, I want to make sure that we're understanding what the additional cuts will entail. And that was my point earlier, is making sure that we look at it objectively. Not just line items by line items, but a set of policies.

And like you said, and I agree, I think Scott's done a great job with done things in as much as he can. But I don't think it hurts for us as a board to also.

And that's our job. We're meant to be a check and a pressure test. It doesn't hurt to go through it. But I just want to make sure when we're doing that, we're doing it objectively. And so we understand what we're asking and what is being possibly cut and how that may or may not affect services and support.

Yeah. Anything that's been reviewed for reduction, you got to look at what would, what transpires if removed is what breaks, what does it affect? And I get that. And I don't think anybody's going to disagree. Scott's done a fantastic job on this end. I think the most proactive thing is to submit some examples like we talked about for staff to review where there might be some opportunity to find some savings. That's not going to, um jeopardize regulatory or business necessities if there's some latitude there I think that would be something to look at whatever that number turns out to be it may be nothing but there might be something there too well it sounds like we have an ask at this point then is is that what we're calling Commissioner Dondon it sounds like we have an ask on the table then I mean, I think when we discuss getting together and going over some line items and just bringing those up, that way we can give them to staff, subject matter experts, and say, can you explain this a little bit more so I can get my arms around it so it makes sense to me? Like I said, there might be some there for or there might not be.

Yeah. We're happy to look at it. We need to depend on the staff's knowledge as well because they're there doing the job. They know what's going on much better than any of us.

That's why I was working through Scott, get with the subject matter experts, which is staff, so they can explain the process and they can best see this is where we have some latitude versus we're dialed in here. We have no more latitude. Yeah.

And giving that direction to me fits with the charter and the role. I'm happy to sit down with our folks to stop using that word happy. Start using a word like we will sit down and have a conversation about it. And I hear target rates. And I think it's proper for you guys to do it. I am concerned about the same thing, and that is the While growth can be definitely a Ponzi scheme, there's no doubt about it, because there's cost always associated with it as you grow. I get that. There is a looming hole, and we've been warning you about it. And you all have accepted that warning. You've taken that warning to heart. So we appreciate that, and we appreciate the opportunity to give you some answers to those things, too.

OK. Anything else we want to go through deeper on this?

Well, I have a big list of questions, but maybe I should save that for another time. I don't want to belabor. Email, follow up.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think emailing is more productive. And like I said, you go line by line versus blind. Nobody works good getting blindsided. No.

No one does.

I think it gives the recipient a little more time to think through the response. Absolutely. Sure. Yeah. So that seems fair.

OK. And give it a little structure.

All right. Anything else that we want to discuss this evening? So I sent you guys a sample of a podcast.

It was in your last manager's report. This is a test. I always bury them in there to see how far you read down into my manager's report on a weekly basis. So this is your test. But in there, I would ask that you please go in and take a listen to it. Staff has worked very hard to try to put something together, some rules, some regulations about how we'll do them, so that what we're doing is a very public-facing process. But we put a sample of what one might look in there. Hint, hint, it's about 16. So I think you might like listening. Did you like listening to John?

23 minutes. Bradley did a great job. James did as well. It was excellent.

And the DOT folks did.

You just wind that guy up. Yeah, wind that guy up.

Yeah, there you go.

No, I thought it was great. He did a great job. I mean, he was, everything was, there you all explained it.

I think it's a great way to get the message out, and those are questions everyone's asking. It's great if we can get DOT to answer those questions. It's not coming from us. It's coming from them.

So what we'll try to do is...

In my manager's report, which you need to read, John does. He gets a point. He gets two points here. Just give them one. You only get one, John. Take a listen. Look at the rules that we developed for it. In there, it asks for suggestions and ideas about topics to be covered and those kinds of things. We have our list, but we want to listen to your list and make sure that we're moving things in the correct direction for you folks and including you all in that process as well. I think it'd be fun to... It'd be fun to have Sue on there talking about things. Why not? Why not? John on there talking about something.

One last item I wanted to bring up, reading the legislative bulletin instead of podcasts, there's a law they're working on to eliminate municipalities' ability to establish parking requirements.

Yeah, we know who brought that up.

It would be nice to have a resolution condemning such a move. That was a great topic in one of our last apartments that was approved. And it'll come up again, I'm sure, the next time someone wants to build higher density.

Sounds like another attempt to save those poor, poor developers money.

Those poor developers that hardly make any money on developing apartments and things.

Yeah, I'd happily support that.

So, yeah. So if we can get a resolution or something, The municipalities have the right to determine how many parking spaces.

Considering it's going to be our problem when people can't park anywhere.

It'll be our police department's department to solve said arguments regarding parking, which I'm sure get ugly sometimes. If we can have a resolution for that, I think by the next meeting or something, I'd be fine.

Yesterday's Memorial Day event was Really well done. Thank you. Lieutenant Colonel DeMarco's.

Yeah, DeMarco's fantastic.

That was incredible. And the Cuthbertson Choir was amazing.

The Cuthbertson Choir was really good.

They were fabulous. Cadets did a great job.

Staff did an amazing job of adapting with weather.

Our cadets did a great job of performing their duties.

yeah the stoicism of the Parkwood ROTC I thought it was cool yeah so I I appreciate the reference around those events and all of them thanks for those comments all the citizens parks and rec did it again yeah the attendance was amazing everybody

All righty, so looking ahead, we have a Board of Commissioners will be holding a special meeting on June 2nd, 6.30 p.m. at this very location, Town Hall. This will be a public hearing regarding budget. So if anybody has any comments, concerns, questions about the budget, that's the time to come. um and then we have a regular board meeting on june 9th i will not be here on june 2nd so please record all that so i can check it out and get everybody's public comments i have a work commitment unfortunately that keeps me out of town anything else hearing nothing can i get a motion to adjourn All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? I oppose. I want to talk somewhere. No, just kidding. Well, with my one opposal and inability to vote, this meeting is adjourned.