Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

2026. We have a fairly packed agenda tonight. So let's just go ahead and get into it. First of all, can I get a motion to adopt tonight's agenda or asking for any adjustments or amendments to tonight's agenda? um i think the one item i would add to it is a brief discussion about rec barn resources to support the wa and the team heading to the little league world series so maybe we can make that item eight that would be what letter c8 Any other adjustments or amendments to tonight's agenda?

No.

All right. Let's go ahead and get a motion then to adopt tonight's agenda.

Motion to adopt tonight's agenda as amended.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Seeing none, hearing none. agenda is now adopted so we'll kick off our business item uh the first one is we have a couple items a few items actually for regarding carpo this first one is just a simple amendment to the memorandum of understanding this one's really really straightforward in that let's see here there's a name change going on officials yeah the metropolitan transit commission will now be the metropolitan public transportation authority throughout the document so basically we're replacing mtc with mpta not a lot else is being done so if you looked over those red lines And you'll see that that is the only change. So I don't see much here. I am obliged to get the board support before I can formally vote and approve my support of the MOU. So there will be a resolution at the next meeting confirming the board supports the red lines to the MOU. So any discussions, or are we all good with the red lines to the MOU?

Looks good.

Sounds good.

All right. In that case, can we just go ahead and throw that on the consent agenda? This is a fairly small item. These changes are really secretarial almost in nature. So I think we can just throw that on the consent agenda. Make things easy. All righty. Next up is a little bigger item. I did send out to everybody some background information regarding the I-77 South Express Lanes project. If folks have been paying attention, there's been some stories in the media The long story short is that Charlotte City Council has put forward a resolution to change their vote, rescinding their support for the I-77 South funding method. It's a 3P project, or a public-private partnership project. where a large corporation will file a bid. If they win the bid, they will then build an express lane that will be a toll lane or a managed lane, as they like to say, and that will be managed by a third party, a private entity. the vote was back in 2024 at a carpo meeting after a long and lengthy explanation over the course of several meetings by dot explaining the significance of this vote but the vote and the scope of the vote for carpo and its board was the approval of the funding method and unfortunately what dot laid out was a long lengthy description basically translating into this is the only way we're going to fund it the state will give us 600 million dollars for a 3.2 or 3.3 billion dollar project so that had to do with restrictions of how much money the state gives to each region because there's limits on that there's limits on how much the state will fund to this project For those not familiar, this is I-77 from basically where the managed lanes end north of town all the way to the South Carolina border, commonly referred to as I-77 South. So what I wanted to do with this is there's going to be another vote coming in September where the Carpo board will have another chance to either continue to rescind support or switch vote again to reaffirm support. So since our board composition has changed since the last vote, I just wanted to make sure I had a full understanding of the will of the Waxhaw board by getting a resolution confirm whether or not the town of waxhall fully supports the 3p funding model for a77 south or if the town of waxhall would like to join some of the other municipalities that have recently rescinded support the the municipalities that did rescind support do receive a penalty There has been some discussions to that effect. My understanding is that is still with the General Assembly. I don't know how it's proceeded at this point, if it's still looking like it's going to move forward. But that threat is definitely out there.

It was based on that $64 million that they put into planning and all that stuff.

Yes, there are millions of dollars that have already been spent in the engineering and design work. There's been a considerable amount of design work already put into play, and there is $600 million of funding from the state at play. I think one of the big questions nobody has answered is where does that money then go? At this point, it's safe to say that it goes back into the state coffer, and there's no guarantee it comes back to our region.

I would bet it wouldn't come back to our data.

I think that's a safe assumption.

So, yes, from what I listened to an interview with Representative Sawyer, I believe her name was, who wrote the budget amendment or was part of writing the budget amendment, and she seemed quite serious about imposing a penalty, so much so that they did write a budget amendment. It's there. And so I believe you know Charlotte would be responsible for like I don't know 40 million dollars or something like that and anybody else would be whatever percentage and we could anybody who would not support it could kiss any state funding on projects goodbye

It would probably have a negative impact on how the state views those municipalities and their willingness to support it.

It's kind of weird that it's a situation where this late in the game you can even scuttle that amount of money.

Exactly. And that's the big thing is this I-77 South as a project was voted on years ago. And the vote in 24 was the vote to approve the funding mechanism, not to vote to approve and execute the project. The vote to approve and execute the project was a long, long time ago. So DOT, I think, still has an interest in doing the project. It just scuttles its funding. And at this point, is DOT going to go to work Securing funding from the state, who knows? But the folks that I spoke with at DOT during the last CARPO meeting made it clear that they do not currently have an alternate funding method.

Are they going to look at their sequence of approvals to try and avoid this happening in the future?

because it seems something's wrong if if this is even coming up as an issue exactly one of the questions that came up at the carpo meeting was it even legal to rescind support for something that's already been supported can you vote on something and then two years later surreptitiously unvote on something so that i think is still a legal question that is being discussed and what was the

major reason for them rescinding these communities like Charlotte?

It's the affected communities. The affected communities mounted a fairly successful political campaign or sort of grassroots effort to try and sway both the Charlotte board and they were trying to sway the bulk of Carpo itself. By and large, when you compare the 24 vote against the vote from a couple months ago, the only real change was Charlotte. and Charlotte having 30 of the 68, 72 I think, 35 of the 72 some odd votes, obviously their weight carries. There were some other three vote municipalities, the county, for instance, Mecklenburg County, Matthews, Hunterville, Cornelius, a few others that were not in support as well but obviously the lion's share goes to charlotte and if charlotte wants or doesn't want something the only time you beat charlotte is if everybody is in lockstep that's the only time charlotte could be voted down because of the nature of the weighted votes so all of this happened because the charlotte city council kind of changed its mind and shifted its vote based on what rationale um I think that's a fair question. A lot of it that you hear is the impact to the community. This doesn't solve congestion. A lot of those types of arguments, we need alternate forms of transportation, money for buses and trains and such. I think the argument for buses is an interesting argument because I don't see many people getting on a bus if it's going to take them 45 minutes to get down the road. Whereas if you had a managed lane where buses ride for free, you get down the road in 10 minutes, 15 minutes. having that managed lane could benefit buses and commuter traffic better than not having it and just adding more buses and things and adding trains. The cost of trains, for instance, is far exceeding $3 billion to do anything with a choo-choo train. So it's those types of arguments that a lot of the folks were raising. But the road is there, the interstate is there. One of the arguments I made is that it's an interstate. It's not there to get you to Charlotte, it's there to get you through Charlotte. So it's currently a bottleneck. I've gone to the theater, I've gone to concerts, I've gone to shows on a Thursday night, a Friday night, a Saturday night. And getting into Charlotte in the evenings to catch shows and things can be a challenge as well. So that's why I personally supported it, even though I hate managed lanes. I think it's a terrible way to go, and I think the state needs to take responsibility and fund these things. But the idea of it either happens as a toll lane or it doesn't happen at all, that's what DOT presented CARPO, and CARPO voted to support it, and now they have rescinded it. it looks like we know it looks like that's the direction we're going to go right you support it we'll support it yeah if if the board is in support we can approve a resolution that way i can go to carpo and vote as a representative of the town of waxhaw and not just the mayor of waxhaw so i can represent the board in its entirety by saying i have a resolution voicing support so if the board agrees to that then we can get that done at the next board meeting

I agree with your sentiments about that it would be great if the state could just fund it. Exactly. I don't like that funding mechanism either, but I would also hate to scuttle that amount of money at this point, and so I would support a yes vote.

You're supporting a relief valve for the traffic. There's people in this region that have the means to pay the extra money. Not that I'd want them to. I join you in your sentiment about the state fund. But you really have the option for a safety valve or a relief valve. Exactly. And it just depends. Do you plan ahead or are you in a hurry enough to... you know how big of a hurry are you so um i would support the funding that you have agreed and to the point if you don't you're not making friends if you want to go ahead and ask for something later so

certainly that's I believe it Barbie correct me if I'm wrong but the board has the option to adopt that resolution this evening if it so chooses it's built into your meeting rules that you could adopt that resolution tonight and it is in front of you if you wanted to take action on that this evening okay I haven't read the resolution as it's been written yet is it in here in the package

After the MOU. I've got it right here if you want to borrow this.

I wanted to make sure I was clear on that with Barbie, because I do know on your business items, it's not listed there. But it is in whole. James, can they do it at the 11th and still be in time? So the board would have time. If the board wishes to go with its normal procedure, it could read it. ask any more questions and it could be on your meeting on the 11th as well mr mayor um we did not put it on there i'm i'm mistaken on that so yeah sorry barbie i mean i saw it looked good to me sorry

so you have project cost here at 4.3 and it's it's actually like 3.4 switch those two

for we could do it for the 11th you're not going to run out of time it'll be before your carpo meeting so you'll be able to go in with that resolution after the 11th but on that third whereas you say 4.3 and it's been estimated 3.3 to 3.4 has that been updated to 4.3

yes so what staff did was we looked at the actual program step or stip and it shows a total of 4.3 billion okay no if that's the real numbers that's the real number soviet and at this point it's still safe to say that all we're getting from the state is 600 million of the 4.3 so okay so yeah let's go ahead and we'll we'll do that at the next meeting we'll have that vote so we can take some time to digest it thoroughly all righty THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THE INPUT AND THE FEEDBACK. WE WILL MOVE ON TO THE NEXT ITEM, NUMBER THREE, THE FALL CALL FOR PROJECTS. MR. JAMES KELLY, WHAT DO YOU GOT?

Well, good evening. So this is your annual fall call for projects from the CRTPO. For those listening in, you may not know who CRTPO is. What is the fall call? CRTPO is the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization that we were just talking about with some other items. CRTPO receives direct attributable or DA funds to be allocated to member jurisdiction projects on a competitive basis. What this fall call does is it really supports projects that improve the community's transportation system across different project categories, those being highway, bicycle, pedestrian, transit, air quality, and transportation planning. So every year CRTPO announces this fall call. It's your opportunity as a board to identify what projects you want to submit for grant funding. It includes new discretionary transportation capital projects, supplemental fund requests if there's any shortfalls on your existing projects, and new planning study projects or feasibility studies and those types of things. So this presentation was provided at CRTPO, but it gives an overview of all the projects that CRTPO currently has active with other municipalities across the region. So there's currently 121 active projects, and you can see Waxhaw makes up three of those projects, being the Kensington Drive improvements, the Broom Street improvements, and the Helms Road extension, of which two of our projects are currently in the design phase, and one is about to move toward construction here. As far as timeline is concerned, we will need some direction and feedback from the board because August 17th is when the annual call opens. So we're looking to get some direction from you all at your next regular meeting on what grant opportunities you want to pursue, if any. Because we need this decision because the fall call closes October 30th. So we want to make sure that staff has adequate time to prepare any documents and get that submitted to CARPO for review. After submission, the TCC, or Technical Coordinating Committee, which is your staff-level folks, get together to score the projects with CRTPO staff based upon the Discretionary Grants Policy Program Guide. The TCC workshops helps to develop a recommended project list to then bring forth to the CRTPO member, Mayor Murray, FOR INFORMATION IN JANUARY AND THEN ULTIMATELY REQUEST ACTION ON PROJECTS IN FEBRUARY AND THEN GET THOSE AMENDMENTS COMPLETED IN MARCH, APRIL. SO THAT'S YOUR GENERAL TIMELINE. FALL CALL FUNDING AVAILABILITY IS HIGHER THAN PREVIOUS YEARS. NORMALLY IT IS AROUND 30 MILLION OR SO. THIS YEAR IS HIGHER BECAUSE THERE WAS A SURPLUS LAST YEAR WHICH CARRIES OVER TO THIS YEAR. SO THIS YEAR THERE'S APPROXIMATELY 52 MILLION IN FUNDING, IN TOTAL FUNDING AVAILABLE SPREAD ACROSS DIFFERENT FISCAL YEARS. There is a catch. There always is a catch. So per project category, so whether the project is a planning project, a highway project, or a non-highway project, there are these funding caps. So with planning projects, those funding caps are around 1% or $500,000. Highway projects, that award cap is 25% of the available funding. And that 25% is broken down from the 80-20 split between your highway and non-highway projects so when it comes to award caps the highway projects are capped at 10.37 million requested funding from carpo and the non-highway is 2.59 million here's some history as far as what these average award projects are granted at from crtpo When it comes to planning projects, 20% usually is upheld for that. However, in recent years with highway projects and non-highway projects, there is an increased local match in order to be competitive. So the average is about greater than 40% local match on highway projects and greater than 30% on non-highway projects for you to really be competitive with the CRTPO grants. As far as eligibility criteria, there's five things that make the project eligible, the first being federal aid eligibility. So the project must be on the federal aid system map. It's a map of different roadways throughout the region. And it must be on that map. And then it also must have adopted plan compliance. So if it's not on that map in particular, it must be on your locally adopted maps or CRTPO maps, such as the CTP, MTP, CIP. If you don't have an adopted plan or if the project is not on an adopted plan or on any of your locally adopted plans, such as like a pedestrian plan, for example, it's not compliant. So you want to make sure that whatever projects you look at are on your adopted plans. Eligible activities, we've already discussed that. That's your planning projects, your design, right-of-way construction, feasibility studies, that sort of thing. And they must address a clear problem and solution. That one's pretty simple. The last one is, of course, your local minimum match, with that local minimum match being 20% for all the projects, but really you need to be higher than that to be competitive at this level. So staff has brought forth some of the top two scoring projects that we think might score high at CARPO. And we've already discussed some of these projects with CARPO. Some of them have been previous grant submittals. And CARPO has iterated, yes, these are great projects to submit. This is not all inclusive, but these are the top two that staff is recommending. and seeking board direction on. The first is a corridor study or a feasibility study on the Waxhaw Parkway East. This falls under the planning category, so you are locked in at the 20% minimum match. You don't need to go anything higher than that for this category. Staff estimated the total cost of that study to be around $300,000, so the local town match of that would be approximately $60,000, with the remaining funds being state and federal at $240,000. One of the key things that has changed, and people may ask, well, what's the reason to study this again, is there has been a very, very significant change in the past year, which is that through CARPO and through the Federal Highway Administration, the urban area boundary has been adjusted. So what this means is before the project was in the rural area boundary, Now it's in the urban area boundary, which means staff can explore lower design speeds. We can explore different geometry when it comes to vertical horizontal curves and that sort of thing. Basically, alignments that we couldn't consider before due to the restrictions, we can now consider. So I know some folks have brought forth some alignments in the past, and we had to rule those out before because it was just not mathematically possible. Now it is mathematically possible. So it opens the door for potential for a future feasibility study and coordination with some folks. The second option is what staff has applied for in previous years, which is the Kensington Drive multi-use path, which falls under that non-highway category. This one has a much larger price tag. In order to be competitive, staff is recommending a 40% local match. The reason being is because of that award cap. So that award cap is $2.59 million. So to fall under that award cap, which is that 60% state and federal number, we have to at least do 60% to meet that cap. 40%. Correct. So 40% for your local match and 60% for your state or federal or CARPO funds. So that state and federal has to be lower than 2.59 million in this category. So we're right at the borderline 2.5. This is a project that picks up where we're going to be leaving off with the current Kensington Drive project, where we're adjusting the speed limit to 35 miles per hour. between NC 16 and Connells Point. I know you all can always explore other sections along Kensington-Cuthbertson Road as far as design speed and that sort of thing. But the main reason for just this section why it's important is because the roadway superelevation when it was constructed was constructed reverse. So that's why there's such a slow speed limit on that road is because to account for that reverse superelevation. or reverse geometry of the road of what it should be. The banking is opposite of what it should be. Correct. It's banked incorrectly. So we're fixing that as part of the first part of this project. And then if you all would like to explore the opportunity, you may want to just put this as a parking lot item and see if there's more funding available next year. Maybe that will help decrease that local match. But that's for your discussion. I will say a previous CRTPO submittal did fall just below the funding threshold. We were at 30 percent in our previous year, and it fell just below that threshold. Over 40 percent is almost a guarantee award for that project.

And that particular project, too, it would be connecting with some of the existing Kensington Road, North Broom, 16, some of those improvements that are already in play right now to, what is it, Connells Point Road or Avenue. So it would basically connect from there, getting you all the way then to Waxhaw-Marvin Road.

Correct. So one of the key things here, like the mayor has mentioned, is that with this project, it would provide for that full connection between Waxhaw-Marvin Road. We'll ultimately connect to our already programmed projects at Millbridge for the traffic signal, some pedestrian improvements that we're doing at Waxhaw-Marvin and Kensington Drive. So you'll really be able to connect with this full project, the Millbridge neighborhood, the Quellen neighborhood projects. Curitin, et cetera. So you would really connect those three primary neighborhoods to NC 16, which ties in with the future NC 16.

It would definitely give the Curitin and Quellin neighborhoods ready access to Town Creek Park, which we all know is connected kind of through the backside to the elementary school, which could then lead you to, what is it, Nesbitt Park? Correct, yeah.

That section of road really is a speed limit bottleneck with the super elevation area. And then this would also include pedestrian connection. So it could help with traffic if people are able to walk their kids to school.

Yeah, I completely agree. It's very, very helpful. It's just whether the board is comfortable with the price tag.

It's a hefty price tag.

It's a hefty price tag.

With everything else we have programmed.

And I think Scott's going to be talking about that.

I just want to be that reminder of the price tag.

Sorry to be Debbie Downer. I'll take your Debbie Downer role for this evening.

Since we're on this slide, too, I think when it comes to item one in the corridor study for Parkway East, I think one of the things that we have discussed extensively is keeping it within the town limits. And when we say adjusted urban area boundary, that doesn't mean exceeding or going beyond necessarily town limits. And I think the idea there is to attempt to control our own fate, at least, and find a solution that people can be happy with and stand behind. Yeah, great point.

Yeah, I mean, right now there are about, I don't know, how many alignments? It looks like a pot of spaghetti on that map.

Six or seven.

At least.

You know, I think with all those alignments being on there the way they are, it's really holding people hostage. on those alignments because you never know which one they're going to go with and now nobody can sell their home and it's affecting their property value and you kind of go, what do I do? Like now I'm stuck. And it's not a secret that I'm not a fan of the current alignment. It goes through an established neighborhood. I know that if you're looking at an aerial view, it looks like a lot of trees and it's only, you know, people, out there will say it only affects two or three houses. That's easy for you to fit in. It's not your house and you're not raising your family in that house and your grandkids aren't coming over there. You know, there are 10 acre tracks, there's horses and sheep and it's not undeveloped land. It is a community. I liken it to putting it through Curitan or putting it through Millbridge.

It's got an HOA.

It's got an HOA. They have CC&Rs. It's not just individuals' homes out in the country, which I think many out there don't understand that. And so it is a hot-button issue, and I just think we need to. And the county and Mineral Springs are not on board. So they're not going to vote for it, so maybe, well not maybe, we should really try to keep it within Waxhaw, and I think DOT should be able to do that. Now would we be able to give them that input? Is that something that they would take into consideration, that that's the direction we'd like to go?

Short answer, yes. So as a part of any feasibility study, it would involve outreach with all your partners, which could include Mineral Springs, Union County, especially those two partners in particular, and public input as well. But essentially, if given the opportunity, this could explore those alternatives within Waxhaw's limits and start to look at what's now possible with this federal change.

and would it keep like the ridiculous options off the table like plowing down through the downtown historical district that was one option looked at before uh we didn't want to scare folks with that option but

I guess, how about we do this? What if we presented it in a way of alternatives with breakdowns of impacts, similar to what we did last time? Look at those impacts, and then you all decide as far as which route.

I just want them to be serious considerations, because I don't know. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here that none of us would support. tearing down the downtown.

Of course.

I don't even bother with that one.

I think we as a board should try to come up with, if this gets green lit and they decide to do this exercise, I think as a board we should give them three to five key absolutely positivities. Obviously, one of those would be you're not tearing down any historic buildings downtown. We're not cutting into our retail base downtown. So I think it'd be good if we could give some of those criteria to DOT so it gives them something to work with. so they at least know maybe what not to do.

Yeah, that's a great idea. So we'll just consider those options as non-starters. In the feasibility study, say, hey, this is what we've seen. This is considered a non-starter for us. And then work to figure out which design works the best for you all.

And while this planning study is going, can we just modify our transportation plan so that we could extend the existing Parkway East stub to Waxhaw Indian Trail Road and submit that as a separate project that might be more likely to be funded because it's going to be a hell of a lot cheaper, just that piece, right? And it would create connectivity.

Yeah, that's a great point. I think you can already with your adopted plan. So your adopted master transportation plan shows an alignment. That's just a line on a map which can change. So if you're saying, let's just do the segment between 16 and Waxhaw Indian Trail and look at that one specifically, that is definitely an option.

Yeah, and remove the rest of it from the map while we do the planning.

I agree. Good point.

Great. What else you got? All right. So I guess the question is, are you all... Do you want to go to... Yeah, go to the next piece. Well, Matt, you can see me.

Sure, yeah. Let's get back to the presentation. The presentation is that we're going to need direction from the board. This sounds like something you like, number one. You also like number two. I think it would be good to hear the balance. We're not asking for a decision tonight. So it is a working session. So your input's really, really helpful right now. It opens up on the 17th of August. So you'll have another work session to work through this. You can call another work session if you need it. You can do a couple of things if you really want to spend a lot of time. But I did want to at least get us back to making sure we gave you the full thing so you could have the full understanding of what potential is there. We may not have something that you want on this list. So you all need to have that discussion and direct. So is it OK if James goes to the next page? Please.

That was a great tee up into some other options that we're currently looking at as well, based upon your adopted plan. So one option is the Waxhaw-Marvin and Gray-Byram intersection improvements. So it's currently unsignalized right now. So the scope of a project like that would be to add a traffic signal at the intersection. I will note that with some already approved development and offsite mitigations, there's currently program turn lanes being added at the intersection as a part of the Adelina development. Those mitigations are projected to take place over the few years, and once complete, it'll greatly reduce the overall cost of the project. So what I'm saying there is it may be best to hold off until a future fall call, because right now with those improvements, the Adelina development will be greatly decreasing the cost of what that project could be.

And I think the roundabout at Bonds Grove Church will alleviate a lot of pressure on that, because that roundabout might just encourage people to just go a little further up, because they're not that far apart.

And then we have, which we don't know when this is happening, but the widening of 16 will have those Michigan lefts. And wouldn't one go right around there? So if we put in a light, wouldn't it possibly be torn out?

It would actually be the other side of Grave Bar. The other side. Not the hospital side, but the other side.

I was just going to say, I know from my commute home, and it's getting more and more impacted just with standard commuting that's already existing here, not adding anything that's future scoped. That T intersection, there's a little bit of a rise and you can't always quite see kind of who's coming at you from town hall going back up to that great biome intersection and that T intersection.

The foliage too, the vegetation.

Yes, the vegetation does play a factor. i know i would agree we're probably not there yet because there are some layers of improvements coming but i would say i would like this to continue to be evaluated i know that this intersection is impacted and it likely will face future impacts and so having a signal option i think would be the most reasonable solution in the future, but I also do agree right now this might not be the optimal fall call to add that to the list.

Cool.

Great. Another item that we considered is the Howey Mine connection as a part of the non-highway category. This would be between North Providence Street and Deer Creek Drive. I'll note that if we did submit for this as a part of the COTPO fall call, your match for that would be closer to 35% to 50%, which you already have this included as a part of your SS4A grant, which the announcement is coming this November. at 20%. So it's just a matter of do we wait and see what we get from the SS4A award? Because if so, then you only have to do a 20% match.

I would wait. Why would we pay 35% when we pay 20? Hopefully we get it.

Some other things were improvements to the Waxhaw, Marvin, and Kennington intersection in addition to the pedestrian improvements that are upcoming here. So the scope would be to add some dual left turn lanes to the intersection. The downside of this one is we only have a very, very preliminary design available right now. So more work is needed to fully progress that at this stage. So it may not score well if we submit that one.

If you think it's not going to score well, I would say don't put all that work into it.

Yeah.

And then some other things. A couple years will score well.

But right now, maybe not.

And then some other things were some eligible downtown connections as part of the highway category. I think this one kind of falls in line with the last one. It would be tough to, it would be a tough lift at this point for those projects just because due to limited design that's available.

And what is that design about? It's a highway category. So is it road improvements?

Roadway improvements. So in particular, we're looking at NC 75, West North Main Street, West South Main Street, and East South Main Street in particular.

But the design isn't fully vetted, as you're saying.

Correct.

Yeah. I think it makes sense to focus on the top two you have and just let DOT know these are our top two priorities.

From the previous slide, do you mean? Yeah, sorry, not this slide.

Well, the Kensington one, that's a lot of money to put in. Do you think it would be better just to shoot for the Parkway East?

Yeah, I mean, the Parkway East is a lower spend. You certainly don't. I just know that that's something that's been clamored about so much, too. I get frequent... Yeah. Every other week, it seems, someone's approaching me about sidewalks in Kensington and connecting that area. And I know we're working on the trails and the Carolina Thread Trail and the other trails in the area. But, I mean, this time of year in particular, just the idea of a kid in Curitin trying to get to Nesbitt for baseball practice, it'd be nice if the kids could just get on their bike and go to practice and not have to get a ride from mom and dad.

I guess they wouldn't have to apply for it, at least, right?

Exactly.

Well, what happens? So how does the application process work? Do we apply for both?

Well, let's talk about that, but also let's... I have another question. Let's talk about that, but understand you do not need to decide tonight. So I do want to emphasize that to the board. We're recommending some things. You may have things on the list that we've never thought about. There is a master transportation plan for the town. You might want to go through and peruse that, take a look at it, confirm your thinking, talk to the folks that you talk to. We will come back again and walk through the process and how it would work. But as to applying for one or two, I don't know. James?

So you can apply for as many as you want, essentially. The issue is you start to compete with your own projects. So normally what we've done in the past, and you can always change what you want to do, is normally we just submit one project. And so that way we're not competing against ourselves. But you could always, since these are two different categories, you can compete within those various categories. I will say that something that you could also explore is progressing design and right away further. The reason why I mention that is because with the Kensington Drive multi-use path, you would really be applying for design, right-of-way, and construction. If you just applied for construction and you had design and right-of-way complete, you gain points based upon the scoring metrics that CRTPO has, which equates to a lesser local match, which equates to less money that you have to bring to the table.

Does that local match, does it get less daunting as we talk about another topic later on in the evening about the financing?

No. Well, I would say this. It becomes different. The conversations changes a bit. Part of our recommendation in that is that we're doing a lot of work on roads we don't own. a lot of work on things that we do not own, which make it harder to figure out eligible financing in one sense. It pushes it into a cash position, which means you have to save for a long time for things, or it pushes you into bonds. And both are reasonable discussions to have, and I think that's what we're going to have later. I think as you go through this, this will be a good prep for later. Nothing's looking to be decided tonight. So I think that gives the board some time to breathe and review the information and pull this back in. It is getting to be time, however, that it's going to get real. You've got around three mil, three and a half mil between now and December. on just three projects. And so, yes, it's coming to that point. So that discussion, I think, is valuable. And quite frankly, you could think about it in these. People may say, the folks who vote for you folks or the folks in town, the citizens in town, the partners in town may say, those are worthy things of being part of what we might consider on a bond. Or it might be the kind of thing we're willing to save up for. Or how do we make those things happen and give you a good discussion about those kinds of things. So that's how I would say that. Okay. Okay.

I have another question unrelated to this, but related to traffic. Is this a good time to ask that? Can you give me, as many of you may know, there's been an email sent out by Waxhaw Elementary, but really from the school district, not necessarily the school's decision, that they have removed the traffic person. And that they have changed the traffic pattern to make it right in, right out. And needless to say, it has not been received well by parents. And at first they thought it was a Waxhaw decision, but we don't have anything to do with that. It is a UCPS decision. Can you? Sure.

Your timing couldn't be better. I have something to hand out. Pass that around the board. Could you go to the next presentation, please?

Because I know that we have an officer in the morning at the Circle K already helping with the overflow because of school traffic. Is that correct?

No, not that one.

Just to make sure, are we complete on our last topic? Yes. We'll come back to it.

Yes.

Okay.

You're not making decisions on your last topic. We were at the very end.

That's why I want to make sure we've covered that topic.

Yes, sir. We have.

Perfect.

I'm going to turn this over to James now. We have been inundated, that's a nice word, with concern about this particular issue and both public safety and traffic have gotten together to have a conversation about that. I'm going to turn it over to James.

So like Scott mentioned, and I'm actually going to invite up Chief Dex Wilson and Mike Mulligan to kind of talk through this a little bit more. But I'll tee it up for the chief. But yes, the short answer is, and I apologize in advance, this presentation was prepared in the last 30 minutes. So this was a quick turnaround for us. We have been, like Scott has mentioned, inundated with requests, concerns about this. So I'll just start with saying what we currently know. So Waxhaw was informed today that the Waxhaw Elementary School traffic pattern has changed to a ride out only condition. We also know that Union County Public Schools made this decision. Town of Waxhaw and Waxhaw PD were not involved in this process. And UCPS released a statement today confirming the decision to remove the traffic directors, as you had mentioned, Mayor Pritam. from 13 schools, including Maxwell Elementary. We also know that UCPS has stated their reasoning is budgetary, and they are confident, and these are in quotes, that UCPS is confident that these changes will not compromise student safety. And staff, we disagree. We have several safety concerns. So I'll tee that up to Dex.

Just one thing. So they obviously have the authority to remove the traffic directors if they choose, but do they really have the authority to dictate right in and right out?

No. So the road is a NCDOT roadway. So DOT has the ultimate authority to decide access control, ride in, ride out when it comes to ingress, egress, those types of things. And we don't know. We simply don't know if UCPS has reached out to DOT. And in more particular, we don't know if UCPS has reached out to MSTA, which is a subdivision of that, which is the Municipal State Transportation Associates folks.

So those entities wouldn't necessarily grant them any authority to do this, right? Correct. I mean, it would come from DOT if... if there was to be a legitimate change like this.

Correct. So with these types of changes, in particular with schools, it has to go through NCDOT and MSTA. And we simply don't know if the school system has reached out. If they had, they'll have a permit and approvals for that.

All right, so while we are concerned about the ride in, or excuse me, the ride out of Wexel Elementary, I think our biggest concern is the pedestrian traffic in that crosswalk. If there's not a traffic director at that intersection, then these are elementary, children that will be crossing that road going to school and coming out of that school through that crosswalk. Another concern is rerouting the traffic to the intersection of NC 75 and Old Providence Road. We all know that's a bad intersection. DOT knows that's a bad intersection and that's why they've agreed to do a roundabout, but that's not until 2028. So until, if this were 2028, then I'd say absolutely right turn out of that school would work. The roundabout will take allow people to turn around. It'll take that traffic to allow them to turn around and come back the other way. You'd still have the issue of the crosswalk, but the issue of the ride out wouldn't be a problem because the roundabout would allow them to make that proper turn back to go back down Old Providence Road. But as it stands now, I know how much traffic we had at last year's school year in that intersection. That's why we have an officer in that intersection every morning to control that traffic. So between 7 o'clock and 8 o'clock in the morning, there's somebody in that intersection from the PD to make sure cars can get out safely, because that is a very bad intersection for wrecks. And most of those are left turn wrecks and right angle wrecks, meaning it's a T-bone type wreck. So we put an officer out there to be proactive to keep that from happening. Now, if you have a right turn only out of the school, now that adds more traffic that's gonna turn right, which means that traffic is going to back up. When that traffic backs up, it already backs up almost to the elementary school between them letting that traffic out. The only option would be to let traffic flow for up to five minutes at a time from Oak Providence Road onto NC 75, which will not work. If we stick with what we currently do, which is 15 to 20 to 25 cars at a time, then that traffic will back up into the school, which will compound the problem at the school because kids won't be able to get dropped off in time. On top of it, it's going to back up traffic further down Old Providence Road trying to get into that school. So there's numerous areas of problems that we see. Another issue is if they turn left onto 75 to attempt to make a U-turn back onto Old Providence Road, that is not safe. The other option would be to funnel them down to McCain Street. They would... They would turn on McCain, which takes them by another school as well as through a residential area to get back over to Arbor Drive to get back onto Old Providence Road. So there's just so many compounding issues. I don't know that they thought about this when they made this change.

This particular intersection is particularly bad. So I could see making this change, saying, OK, this right in, right out, that's obvious. It'll make things better. But this particular location is just terrible. You're going from bad to worse. This is literally out of the fire and into the frying pan type of thing when you pass the school and get up to 75. It's terrible. And once you get past 75, even if you do a right turn, there's still no good place to make a U-turn. And you're going all the way to Western Union, another school.

I assume whoever made this decision has never been at pick up and drop off.

And to my knowledge, they did not contact the principal from Wexel Elementary. They did not contact the traffic directors that worked out there last year. They contacted other jurisdictions that made changes similar to this and said they didn't have any issues. which that may be the case for other locations. Our location is different. And I believe they're going to find out a few other schools are different, but we're concerned about Waxhaw.

And it's that one size fits all approach that never works, right? Not in anything that I've done in my life has that ever worked. It might be great for Unionville where it's farms and they have a very small population and their schools are not overcrowded, but here they are. And sometimes there's two bus cycles for kids to get home. And so that's the reason a lot of parents drop their kids off Plus the fact that having them on a bus stop at 6.15 in the morning to get to school for 45 minutes isn't a great idea for any kid, especially not a kindergartner. It's a fifth grade.

We're talking about crossing guard, being eliminated, and they're really... pushing the cost onto either the municipality or the county.

That's what it boils down to, I think.

And they're lacking courage of doing other things to make accommodations to keep that crossing guard. This is downstream from that, but it's really them making poor decisions all along the way.

Now, the crosswalk that's there, that's not a signaled crosswalk, correct? It's just lines of the street.

The kids would just be hit.

Well, yeah, but I'm saying at least, you know, the argument could have been, well, they'll push the button and the light will go off, and you would hope people would stop if they don't do that on comfort zone, so I'm sure they're not going to do it there either. But it's not even signaled, so that's a bigger hazard. Yep.

You're correct. So the existing conditions do not include like an RRFB, which is a rectangular rapid flashing beacon, or any pedestrian refuge signage, those advanced type of signalization type things.

And what's the speed limit on that, Rick?

I think in the school zone it's 35. 35. 35 in the school zone.

But I think it's higher right before that.

We all know folks don't necessarily follow the speed limit. Yeah. And back to the Chief's point, when people say right in, right out is safer, it generally is, except when you look at the conditions here. For folks to make that right turn exclusively, they would have to travel up to the intersection of NC 75 and Old Providence Road where the Circle K is, which is a problem intersection that is well documented. So in order, what we're concerned about from an engineering standpoint is what happens when folks try to make that U-turn movement at that intersection. And we did put, compile some crash data for you as well.

Oh, go ahead. Excuse me for interrupting, but there's a point that I'd like to bring up that we haven't touched on. While they're closing the parents into a right in, right out movement, the next driveway cut is the buses. I didn't hear them restricting buses from turning left into the parents. They did. Did they?

Everything's right out. Everything's right out.

In that email, it did not say that the buses are also going to be forced to change routes. But with Waxhaw Elementary, a proportionate amount of those school attendees and the pupils attending Waxhaw Elementary are supported and reside in our county district, in our ex-urban area, back out towards JARS. So you're going to force all those families

to then come back up and create a hazard of a u-turn situation with buses and that's if they can get out so you've got other traffic on old providence road coming toward waxhall that aren't going to the school so once they get around those vehicles on the side of the road that are backed up waiting to get in the school they're not going to stop they're going to keep going so

I would also like to point out that there's regularly heavy equipment, semis, dump trucks that could traverse that. So not only is it a state road that is moving heavy equipment with kids, with buses, and now you can essentially have created a self-inflicted bottleneck through a unstudied pattern of movement by a school district that did not reach out to community partners for input. Correct.

So the data you're presenting here, what's the time span on this data?

So we usually do a five year crash history. So in particular, what we analyzed was the intersection of 75 and Old Providence because for folks, they would have to make that right and go to that intersection. So looking at the existing conditions, Within the past five years, which is your standard five-year crash history report, there is documented suspected minor injuries. There is documented suspected serious injuries. No fatalities, thankfully, but severe collisions nonetheless. And of those collisions, majority of which are your angled collisions, so your left turn, right turn collisions. So if this were to be the case and move forward, you're going to compound an already existing hazardous condition.

Do we have a grade on this intersection? I know we grade intersections and corridors.

I think it's failing. It is a level service F. Yeah. Which is why the roundabout is programmed. Which is why the roundabout is programmed.

Exactly. So we're taking an F and we're making it even worse. That's bad.

Getting the grades I got, F minus.

I have another question. How do we address this? Yeah, that's where I was going to go to. What's our next point? The last slide here says...

Maxwell will schedule a meeting with UCPS, Maxwell PD, Maxwell Engineering, NCDOT, MTSA, et cetera, to coordinate solutions.

I'll be there.

That should be easy to do, to coordinate all those things.

Well, we recommend that the... request to schedule the meeting come from the chief's office. We think that carries weight. And then anybody else who wants to be in that, but definitely staff to staff, we want to at least make sure that we're sitting at the table so we can give them this. But we were going to do that. However, Mr. Mayor, if you want to make the call, that'd be fine as well.

But I think it'd be good to come from the chief of police along with There's crash data from our traffic engineers. And a reminder that this intersection already has an F grade and is slated for a roundabout. I think one of the things to add, if there was a roundabout there today, you would have cross-street traffic that you're literally doubling. So you're doubling going north, and then you're going to make a U-turn, and then you're coming south. So you have twice as many car passes on an intersection or a crosswalk, if you will, than you would normally.

That's correct. And that's really the conclusion that we've come to is if the roundabout were in place, this really wouldn't be as high of a concern with it not being in place. So with the current proposal, it's just a safety concern for us.

And I don't think having a volunteer who's never directed traffic is a solution. Am I on the right path with that?

You're absolutely right. So we do have a school resource officer at that school. The problem with that is school resource officers are responsible for the children's safety at the school, in the school. So when kids are being dropped off, where do they need to be? the front of the school not out directing traffic same thing in the afternoon uh i know i've seen numerous posts saying why can't they just do that it's not that easy if something were to occur then that officer's out on the road we also looked at is it feasible to bring in other officers that were off because we don't have the manpower to man it with we already have one out in an intersection. The other's normally over near Kensington, making sure traffic's flowing there. And then we have a sergeant. That would put nobody available for calls if we put another officer in that intersection. So the only option would be call somebody in who's off or call in reserve officers to do that job. And it just costs a lot of money.

Well, that would be something UCPS would have to hire for off duty, no?

they're not willing to do that, they think this is the safest, best option.

I just hope that they don't ask a parent to do it.

I don't think that would happen. In their letter, it states that they're going to try this for a couple of weeks and monitor. I don't think it's going to take a couple of weeks. I think it's going to take two days and there's going to be outrage.

I mean, you guys know we're all for wise spending, but UCPS's budget is somewhere in the region of $630 million. How much money are they saving by cutting these 13 traffic directors? Tiny, tiny drop in the bucket that doesn't make sense, in my opinion.

We're going to craft a letter for Dex and the mayor's signature. I think it ought to have a dual. I think that would be impactful. Plus, we'll continue with our connections to make phone calls and try to set something up. Does that sound like a good direction from the board?

And again, I think the letter should highlight the crash data. It should highlight the current grade of that intersection. We're going to pump everybody to it. and how this would just make it even worse. Even if it did have a roundabout, it would just make things worse.

James, can we ask them for supportive documentation that made them come to this conclusion? And can we also say, how did you get to this determination?

It's a very reasonable question.

What study did you do? Did you do an origin and destination study to help facilitate this decision?

I would say it's all public information. So if the information exists, they should be able to provide it with a simple FOIA request.

Thank you. I would assume that there would be some parents that show up to a school board meeting to voice their concerns. I would assume that would be the case.

Well, I'm sure if North Carolina DOT was not contacted, that would be an issue.

Yeah.

So that may solve it right there.

Exactly.

But if you know people on the school board or in the Union County Public Schools, maybe reach out to them and let them know how dissatisfied you are.

Sounds good.

Thank you for everybody, Chief. James and Scott, I know this letter just came out of Wax Elementary, and you guys were, like James indicated, working on putting together this presentation quickly and thoroughly for us so we could be abreast of what's going on and what actions are available for us to take to support Wax Elementary and its parents that are traveling there daily. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Good job, James.

So we have item four now?

Yes, we do. But just to circle back to two, so you folks know, please give that a good review on the CRTPO projects. Please look at the master transportation plan we have. peruse it, make sure you're comfortable with where these things are coming from. So I just want to make sure the board knows it has the resources. And if you need further information, please let us know and we'll be happy to help you. You're not making a decision even at the 11th. It'll be another work session agenda for you on the last meeting in August. Does that sound fair? Okay. And on to four, I'm going to bring Janet up and then this is a pretty simple one and Barb is going to help me as well. And that is we have a request and staff agrees with declaring the intent to abandon a portion of right-of-way off of Prescott Glen. Now that the roundabout has been placed there and the development needs to move forward, the necessary easements are in place for water and sewer and some other things, but we don't need the right-of-way and the right-of-way really inhibits the project that goes in and then the addition off of that circle into that area. So it makes the circle function well. So in what you have in front of you tonight is simply if you adopt the proposed resolution, it declares your intent to consider that abandonment then the clerk's office barbie and team will then take it from there and they'll advertise and do all the things you do you hold a future public hearing you go through all your motions and then you work your way through this is just to get that piece started it is recommended by both engineering staff and planning staff that you move forward that have i missed anything okay Do you folks have any questions on that? This is fairly administrative right now. You will hold a public hearing, so you'll get more information, and you'll have further debate on this as well. But we do recommend that you move forward with this.

No, this makes perfect sense.

And that is an actionable item tonight. Barbie?

Yes. And just keep in mind...

Just keep in mind that the notice will be in the paper for four consecutive weeks before you hold that public hearing, which the public hearing will be showing on the September 8th meeting for you to do that part of it.

So do we want to vote on resolution RES 2026017?

I just wanted to ask real quick if there's an opinion on what the likely future use of that land will be after this goes through.

would not be useful because the roundabout is there and the design going in makes it not usable. We do have to reserve the right-of-way for, I mean, the easements for water and sewer, though. That's all we have to do. It doesn't need a right-of-way. It needs an easement, and that's it.

Alrighty then, can I get a motion to adopt Resolution 2026017? So moved. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this motion carries. All righty, discussion on the potential data centers in Waxhaw. Well, this is a hot topic. Come to roost and do a little wax off.

A little wax off. We actually have a presentation. I'm going to turn it over to our senior staff member, Janet. And our attorney is here as well. So they're going to guide you through this conversation.

And I'll just add, just as we kick this off, what would be helpful is where we stand at the state level, because I know the assembly had some items regarding data centers as well. So where they're at would be good to know as well.

OK. I can answer that question first. There was House Bill 1189, which is suggesting a two-year moratorium beginning August 1, 2026 through August 1, 2028. It's the Data Center Transparency Act. It's been referred to the House Committee on Rules, Calendar, and Operations back in May, and it's kind of at a standstill there. Okay.

So it's in rules?

Yes. or could spend who knows how long and i'll go through this quickly because it was in your packet so um i'm sure you've already seen it so just this came up because data centers are a rapidly growing land use here in north carolina and there are a lot of considerations around them noise and heat lighting utility water and electric capacity our regulatory landscape Locally, there are five jurisdictions that have adopted data center ordinances. There are 23 that have temporary moratoriums, the most recent being Charlotte just about a month ago. And then those moratoriums range from 60 days up to 32 months. options for your consideration do nothing which is not what I would suggest adopt a moratorium or adopt an ordinance amendment the ordinance amendment I think will take some time so a moratorium may be the route to follow there are a lot of Considerations, like I said, noise and heat and utilities. So there's a lot to consider as we put together an ordinance around these. How Waxhaw compares today, we do have a server farm allowable use in the EC zoning district, but no real guidelines around that. Things to consider as we go through this is what type of approval process would you like to use? OK. And then separations, buffering, and screening that would be required. Again, noise, light. HEIGHT, WHAT HAPPENS AT DECOMMISSIONING, ONCE ACTIVITY CEASES THERE, HOW LONG DO WE ALLOW THAT BEFORE WE CONSIDER IT DECOMMISSIONED. AND THEN, AGAIN, UTILITIES, WATER, SEWER, ELECTRIC CAPACITY REQUIREMENTS, THESE ARE ALL CONSIDERATIONS THAT WOULD HAVE TO GO INTO AN ORDINANCE. IF YOU PURSUE THE ORDINANCE AMENDMENT, WE WOULD WANT TO DEFINE WHAT DATA CENTERS ARE. Do we want to allow them in EC zoning districts? Do we consider some other zoning district for them? And then the different approval processes that are options. considerations, minimum parcel sizes, separation and buffering, again, noise, heat, and lighting, utilities, decommissioning. So all things to consider. So tonight we're here to just help with some discussion, determine what direction you would like to go, and then if you choose the moratorium, then we have some time to put together a draft ordinance to bring back to you.

When we say an ordinance, about how long do you think it would take to draft an ordinance?

Well, we do have some good examples. But again, there is a lot to consider. So I would say it would take several months.

Sometimes it's unknown, too. With something like this, it could take a while to really mull it over, and it seems totally reasonable to me to have a moratorium in place while we do that and give ourselves some time.

Yes, I would agree with that. I think the longer the better. I mean, I think a year... If we can do that, that would be great. There's just so many things to consider, and we don't want to rush, write something up, and then leave ourselves open up for something we don't want, and that wouldn't be good for Waxhaw. So if we can get that done, I think that would be great.

I agree with the moratorium. There's a lot of new information still flowing out actively as data centers are growing in headlines across multiple states, even within this state. I believe data centers are still actively pursuing Greensboro area or other Winston-Salem corridor. But for me, for Waxhaw, I think the moratorium is the best course of action now while one, we evaluate what actions we can take and then it gives us time too to see what other ordinances and to do other studies to see what has been effective in supporting residents as data centers or even maybe even classically server farms. What they were has morphed. It used to be just a small warehouse with backup generators. Now these server farms are scaling in something completely different in their own direction. And so giving us time through the moratorium lets us be mindful in how we structure it.

the meta server farm there's a meta server farm in santa clara county california and it has a substation adjacent to it so these things are consuming enough electricity to require a substation which is a phenomenal amount of electricity so yeah i don't know what duke and and union provide but duke's definitely not up for the challenge for that yeah

And I think, you know, Charlotte did this in about a month. So between putting the letters out, and I think Matt can help us out on how we structure this.

They did the moratorium, you mean? Yeah.

Yes. There's a lot of unknown effects, like air quality health hazards, the water stress and agricultural issues they're having. And then the decibel rate is...

The decibel rate is... like having a hair dryer next to your head so the buffering requirements would would be needed significant if we're going to talk about allowing these and not just banning them outright but if we're going to allow them in our ldc then the buffering requirements are going to be substantial union county has a i'm sorry

Union County has a draft ordinance now, and they're requiring noise studies. So what's the noise level like before? What's the noise level after? And I think that's something that we would probably consider including in ours.

But that's what I'm saying. That will all take time to do work sessions and your research and Matt's research and whatever else we can come up with. Rich's research. Rich's research. But if we can get this going and get these letters out and get it done as soon as possible, that would be great.

Right. So to do a moratorium that's over 60 days, and correct me if I'm wrong, we need to just send out two public notices. So we would have to have a notice in the newspaper. I get this week and then next week. And then you could probably hear about a moratorium at your next meeting. Is that correct? Correct. And what dates do we do public notices?

Can the moratorium last a year or two? Or are we bound by 60 days?

So just purely procedural. If you're going to choose to do a moratorium 61 days or longer, then you are required to put a notice in general circulation for two consecutive weeks. no less than 10 days before the hearing, no more than 25 days before the hearing, which should, I think, be able to align us to have it ready for August 11 meeting.

OK. I don't think so.

Sorry. Maybe close.

I don't think so.

10 calendar days.

We can do the notice.

I'm not sure if it's going to meet the 25 days.

So you have to have 10 days. So at least 10 days, not farther out than 25 days. So if you get 10 days in advance of that hearing date, we're good. Two consecutive weeks where you've put the first one out at least 10 days before.

So we need one this week and one next week?

Yeah, so we'll need to draft it. But we'll have to get it to them early tomorrow in order for it to be put in the paper for Thursday. Because the Charlotte Observer does not publish but on certain days. So we have to stay within that time frame there.

So we'll work as quickly as we can, I think is what you're hearing us say, right? August 11th is what we'll do. We control what we can control and try to get it done.

If we could get it done by August 11th, that would be great.

Right. So that's what our aim will be, to be able to set up that hearing. At the hearing, you would hear and consider some of the criteria. There are four criteria you have to meet for a moratorium. This is pursuant to state statute. You have to basically put a statement out of what the problems and conditions are that you're looking to solve by having the moratorium in place and why alternative courses of action were not adequate to do it right. all the research, all the time, all the iterative process going through the ordinance adoption procedures of the town. You'd have to put out a statement in that moratorium of what exactly you are making subject to the moratorium, which here is the approval of a data center, how you define it and what would be captured under that sort of development. You would need to put a date for the moratorium to terminate, and you'd also need to put a statement setting forth why the duration is reasonably necessary to address those issues, why the moratorium needs to be that long. the length that you're choosing. And then finally, a statement of what the actions that you expect to do and a schedule for those actions that you'll be doing during the moratorium. And we can work with you to help kind of put that together, put up a draft, make sure we capture what the board has in its mind. The other thing I would note, however long you put your duration in place for, you can have a renewal or an extension. To do so, you need to be able to state new facts or issues that have come up that warrant that extension at that time, and you'd have to go through the hearing process again. Kind of looking down the road a little bit on that, but just keep that in mind. So it is reasonable to put forth sufficient time to adequately allow for the research and the process to play out, to be well-informed and intentional with the ordinance that you're looking to draft. making sure that we're capturing these criteria that we're required to capture.

So we should probably make the initial period as long as, maybe even longer than we think we need, just so we have some cushion.

Yeah, so Charlotte did 150 days. Another one that's recently occurred is Kings Mountain. They did 182 days, six months. And they're about to extend theirs as a result of work that they went through and the process that they've gone through. And others, you know, the The presentation had a lot of them cited that you could reference. So yeah, I do think that, like all things here, let's be very intentional about how we're going about doing what we want to do.

I would say at least a year.

And then I guess to alleviate my concern, really, We don't have anyone knocking on our door trying to build a server farm right now.

Yeah, we have had no applications, no discussions. Okay.

I just want to make sure everyone's clear on that.

No, we have not had any applications or discussions.

And this is something that it's kind of a hot-button issue just in the ether, as it were, and we know the state's working on something. We know other municipalities have worked on it, so we're just doing our due diligence to make sure we're ahead of the curve and not behind the eight ball on anything.

And I just wanted to throw something out there as food for thought. As we work on amending or creating an ordinance or amending an ordinance, While the moratorium's in place, one of the justifications that these data center developers give is, well, it's going to bring jobs. But then sometimes the companies that bring these jobs can be a bit transitory, and maybe they go away, and then the jobs go away as well. Would we be allowed to require any data center developer to put money up in a bond so that any purported jobs and salaries would be secured by that regardless of what happened to the company?

I know that when Charlotte just went through their moratorium, some of the research that they found was that the jobs that are created are typically the construction jobs, and that once the facility is up and running, it's really only 20 to 50 new jobs per data center. So legally, are we allowed to rewire them?

I think that's certainly one of the things that we would want to review and analyze as part of any ordinance that you might want to consider. I don't have an answer here. I'll have to fly on that.

I didn't even know if it was within the realm of possibility. Okay.

one question i have for the board yes and this is uh supporting the clerk's office in what we do we put them we put this out your rules of procedure i just want to make sure that the board is intentional with us and that is if you hold a public hearing your general rule is that you then wait for action. So if you want this quickly, you need to say your intention is for this to move despite that if that's what you want, if that's what the board wants. I'm just trying to say that because your rules of procedure are something somebody would look for. So once we do this, we're out loud doing this. And there are people who advocate for data centers who are going to pay attention to your advocacy out loud. So I want to make sure we're dotting I's and crossing T's. And that's just one more procedural thing. Barbie, did I get that about right? Yes.

So I would say. it's a hot button issue but not one that i don't think we would have support from residents from what i hear right i don't think we're not going to change our position on that at this time so and we're not stopping them forever we need time to do research so i think that if if the board is okay with taking action on something like this then when do you need to know

I mean, I'll say now that I'm in favor of.

I don't want to speak for Barbie, but I do think we want direction tonight. If you want this to proceed towards publishing notice to be ready for hearing, we want that tonight.

We're not taking a stance on data centers. We're looking to. Correct. do our due diligence and that this year will help us.

Then I would suggest that you make a motion to allow for that to happen August the 11th for you to make that action after the public hearing because that is not written in your rules and you have expressed that you did not want to vary from that decision that you wanted to be consistent across the board. So if you are going to make that action after the public hearing, then I think it would be beneficial if you would put that in a motion.

All right. Let's do it.

You want that in a motion this evening, then? So the motion specifically states? that we will vote on the data center.

The motion would just basically state that the board is directing the clerk to draft a motion for you to approve the moratorium after the public hearing.

Well, I'll make a motion to direct the clerk that we will approve the moratorium after the public hearing.

Motion's been proposed. Any questions or comments on said motion? hearing none can i get a motion to approve so moved any opposed hearing none that motion carries all right thank you thank you thank you thank you janet thank you matt all righty so next up we have consider the adoption of a proposed resolution authorizing the installment financing for the police vehicles

okay so what we want to do at least tonight is give some background to the resolution and then answer two very specific questions about what the resolution does itself. So on our fleet replacement strategy, when we adopted the budget, you may or may not have noticed that I said a couple of times that I felt that on capital outlay or those those types of rolling stock that I would prefer to do smaller financial placements so as to keep our capacity open be able to replace and put it on more of a standard fleet maintenance replacement program so that we're replacing before things goes so low in value especially on on on rolling stock and some stock if you buy an f three fifty you're going to keep it for a long time it has a different depreciation rate it has a different schedule you buy a jcb uh... backhoe or something like that, they have longer replacement schedules. But some things replace more in the three to five year ratios. So you want to match your financing to it. Secondly, as we'll talk about in the second part of our discussion this evening, I want to make sure that we are preserving cash against our CIP strategies. So I want to go through this a little bit. I want to make sure... And this specifically has to deal with police fleet at this point in time. We're both adding officers and replacing vehicles at the same time, so we're doing both. We're coming off of a lease agreement that we had with Enterprise that we were not happy with. Now, that's a classic fleet lease agreement. uh... this terminology that we're going to use tonight is installment financing it's also called leach lease purchase agreements uh... but you gain title to this right up front okay that's the difference so i think the end Attorney language, Matt, usually says that we owe them a dollar on the very last day of the agreement or something like that.

It's a fourth-lift agreement.

Yeah.

It's a lease, and then you have a dollar fixed amount buyout.

A fixed amount buyout of a buck. That's right. So we want to make sure that we have fleet readiness, fiscal discipline. We want to strictly impose ourselves within these guidelines of this amount of money so that it's predictable moving forward. And I think when you see the second part of the discussion, you know why I want a lot of predictability in my math moving forward. And I think the board should want that as well. And then the real decision comes down to if you ask a banker that advice against that operational rolling debt strategy, it's called the banker-manager paradox. They're usually looking at the nominal interest rate, IM2, but the carrying cost of money is low enough if the terms are decent enough that this kind of thing keeps us within a dollar figure. And the dollar figure is more important to me from I'm a fixed, we're a fixed finance group. You know, we have fixed cost. We don't have a lot of variable costing in our structure. So we employ people to patrol streets, to set parks, to do things, to be a clerk. All the things that we do were mostly fixed costs. So I need steadiness in understanding how my numbers move forward, and so does the board. So the procurement request would be, in this particular case, for about seven vehicles totaling about 421. Now, believe it or not, these are really, really good prices. These are all off state contract. So this is all pre-procurement spread on these things. And we have been going back to state contract now since we were dissatisfied with the lease. It just wasn't working for us. So the type of arrangement we're looking at is a three-year term. Right now, we have one group that the lowest quote we have actually is 4.7. I'm showing you 4.9 just to let you know of where that is. This is the way it structures out over that time. You can see here that if you go to semiannual or monthly payments, your interest or carrying cost of money goes down. We would choose the one that goes down the most and is the easiest one. If we had a fleet of 500, 600, 700, we would go semiannual most likely, but we don't. So you save about 9,300 in this particular arrangement. We've asked three banks. We have three answers back. The lowest is 47 right now. It takes away budget spikes, which is one thing I want to do in my arrangement of how we do our accounting. We've tried to put out a modest inflation factor and see what that five-year cash purchase requirement would be. So it puts us within that. If we just did cash, and that's where I don't wanna get, and I don't wanna deplete the liquid general fund reserves that could otherwise leverage other things that we have. So that's the opportunity cost. That's the problem with cash. if you just pay for cash. Now, I get it. I understand it, but we're not buying a washer and dryer. You like to do these things. Plus a newer car is easier to maintain. We're doing tires, we're doing oil changes, we're doing basic maintenance as opposed to replacing radiators and everything else.

So after five years it's considered a salvage title?

Yeah, and then what we know after three years it's our title. We get title at the beginning under this financing arrangement.

Reading the resale at the end of it. But the idea is the goal to keep the vehicle then for five or for three years?

We would like to keep them for five. We do think that there's value past that, but we'll do some initial analysis. Our recommendation is three, but it could be five. If I can get five and I can still get within about $20,000 of that $105,000, I think that's probably a good... probably a good deal on that. You're depreciating the most in the first year. The minute you drive it off a lot, it depreciates, what, 13? And then after that, you're rolling down pretty hard for the first two to three years. After that, your depreciation is- And the bulk of the maintenance we're doing internally, correct? Yeah, we are, except if it's warranty work.

Correct.

So we're sending out for warranty because some of that's cheaper. We've been dealing with a lease arrangement with Enterprise that we have not been happy with, and I think some of the expectations we had out of maintenance of those are just not being met right now from Enterprise's perspective. But I think that's just the way the contract was written. So we think we can stretch them to five. We think that's a better move, but we'll run the math. But right now we've got it rolling at three.

And how is this impacted as we bring new cars online? So the goal here is to develop a strategy where your annual costs, like you say, are very predictable and very stable. But as we're rolling new cars online, how is that sort of factored in then? Does that still see this steady increase or?

No. What we're trying to do is keep the amount that we're spending per year at a certain level. And if we do it on three, we won't come back for three. So we'll start, you know, we're trying to space them out into a cycle moving forward. We'll really know if we're successful after two, if that makes, no, after two cycles. Yeah, two cycles. So two, three-year cycles. We'll have better data to come back and look at that. But it has been my experience that these ways of doing this are much better against the depreciation schedules and that predictability. And the resale is really what you want to be able to do as well. So that resale really helps you because then you're putting money back into the 500. So you're creating that cycle out. Like I said, if we were much larger, we would probably be doing this on one-year cycles with five-year lives. It depends on the life of the depreciation schedule per piece of equipment. But we're pretty simple here. We're not replacing a lot of things. So we're fairly in good shape. Where we wear things out the most is in place. Because they drive the most miles. They just do. They're driving miles. We're in a suburban setting, and they put the miles on the cars.

Yes, sir. How does this? Sorry, go ahead, Mike. So we're looking at a 4.7 interest rate, three-year term, and we're looking for a five-year keep on the asset?

Yeah, that's what we're doing. OK. Does that make sense? Yeah. OK. Absolutely.

And how does this impact our annual outlay from a budgetary standpoint compared to what we were doing with the enterprise deal?

It's more, but it is also less complicated under this. And we were not getting the payback. The cycle was also longer. I think the lease arrangement was five. five years as opposed to three. So it was really costing us more in their add-on fees. That's really where they were dinging us. This is very straight. We get title right away. We're managing. We own the asset.

No add-on fees.

Yeah, no add-on fees, nothing like that. So we're saving in there. Okay.

So overall you're saving because of the maintenance. Right.

Yeah, that's where you get the bigger savings. Resale. Yep, and then on resale because you haven't let it depreciate as much. You know, in some cases, folks, we've kept them for eight. That's our normal right now. They really begin to become maintenance issues after five is really when they start to become maintenance issues. And I'm not talking standard like brakes and things like that. They become more complicated issues after that.

Transmission gains. Power plants.

Yeah, all that other kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's got a positive return for us. It's a controllable number. It allows us some capacity in that number, that 500,000.

About the growth.

It allows us some capacity in there to then, if something comes up, we have the ability to deal with it in that number better than what we're doing now. So that 500 becomes a control line over time, which is what I'd like to have. That kind of predictability allows us to better plan on the fleet maintenance side.

Sounds good.

So the statutory and procurement compliance, I see Matt is still sitting behind me. So we have a bidding exemption. This is a bank qualified status. It enables a below market rate. So that's why we get a better rate. The collateral is only the vehicles. So they have a priority lien to the lender on the vehicles. If they don't like us, they can come back and take them. I don't think they'll do that. But you know what I'm saying. So we have that. We do not have to go to the LGC. This is the South, folks. If this was a Baptist church on Wednesday night, all God's people said amen. So it just doesn't require that because the statute already allows you to do this. 168-20 protects the future boards from long-term liabilities. It keeps it at a short note. It allows them to give us a below market rate. 4947 is below market. Anyone who's gone out to buy a car lately knows that those are much better numbers than they would be.

What triggers the bidding exemption?

We're buying them off state contract.

off a state contract.

Yeah, we're buying them off the state contract. We're allowed to bid. We're allowed to go and buy off the state contract. The people who participate in that, which are dealers, believe it or not, across the state, they've bid and said, we'll sell them at X, Y, and Z. So preset prices and those kinds of things. I think they change yearly, but yes, they're allowed to do those. We don't have to go through the formal bidding process and that saves time and money as well. So all of this is under state statute for us to do this. So what would happen is you would authorize a resolution of intent. And it does two things in this. It says that if any spending happens before the contract, Matt, help me here as I go through this section, but before a contract is signed. In other words, they're going off the lot. You got to get them tomorrow. If you pass this, we're allowed to reimburse ourselves. Okay, so we have a reimbursement section in this resolution. Barbie made sure of that, made sure it was in there. And it allows us to then negotiate with the three bidders and get the best rate. And then we do a three-year term. That's what you're telling us we can do. And it allows us, because of the state term contract, we can move on them quickly. The other thing that you're not doing is you do not have to sign an appropriation clause in your contract documents, which means you have to. That's a weird thing to say to you all. We're going to always pay our bills. We do that. you don't have that appropriation clause like you would on the building, for example. This is an installment financing, so you may not have had that. But if you go with GO bonds, then at that point you're appropriating. You're guaranteeing that you're going to appropriate. So it gets you out of that little wiggle form, but the fact of the matter is you still have to pay it because they can still come back and take it. Does that make sense? Yeah. They agree to just... They'll give us title, but they have the right to take it if they want to. Did I miss anything on that, Rosie? No. Now, I will tell you that banks have moved away from this. It's taken us quite a bit to get our bids in. We're having some conversations with the banks about why. That is and why they don't like to play in this area. I think this is a good cash flow area for us because it really does control things for us very well and gives us more space to maneuver and do things in case things happen. So that's really what Rosie and I want. We predictability, the ability to do this, get these things done and create a cycle on our asset management policy. So, that's what you would be doing, and then we'll go out for, we'll negotiate all those and get all those done, and then we're going to, we recommend the monthly or the semiannual, depending on which rate's better in the banks. Right now, we have 4.7. We're asking them for monthly, which means that they should drop that, hopefully. If they don't and it's 4.7, then we'll go yearly with them, but, you know, 4.7 is better than 4.9. That's where we're at. Do we have any questions? Rosie knows more than I do, so ask her. Yes, it's actually on your agenda that you can adopt this resolution, and then we can move forward with that. It won't be done tomorrow, but it will help us get that process moving.

Yeah, I think this really makes sense. And if we can save money by doing the monthly interest payments, that would be great. And I just love to see this kind of thing, to be honest. I really appreciate you, Mr. Manager, and staff who worked on this. This brings value to the residents, and I really appreciate it.

It brings value to the organization, to the department, too. It's a safe vehicle. That's what we want.

Also, it's not exhausting your cash position as well. Yeah, we're going to talk about that next. All right, right forward.

Can we answer any further questions on this?

oh i noticed the list of vehicles you have there are we switching from the fords to the chevys and i saw a mustang on the list so it's a combination mike there's two fords yeah let's go back to that list for you

There's two Fords and the rest are Chevy.

Yeah, there's two Fords and traffic enforcement, and then administratively, then you go Chevy, Silverado, then there's a Tahoe administrative, and then four in patrol.

The four patrol, two admin, and the two traffic vehicles.

And are we seeing the Mustang being a $95,000 vehicle? Are we seeing that necessary over the $60,000?

That's for two. That's for two.

That's for two.

We're not getting a GT. We're moving from Explorers to Tahoe's.

And the Durangos, we do have Durangos right now, but the resale value is the biggest sell for the Tahoe. We'll get a lot more money back on resale.

As opposed to the Fords?

The Fords or the Durangos. The Durangos especially.

Gotcha.

And the Mustang's going to blend in. The Mustang's going to blend into the environment.

I don't know. I think the Tahoe might blend in sometimes more.

Allow them to sneak around.

I don't know.

I've been suspicious of this.

Does that answer your question, Mr. Mayor?

Yeah, it does. The two, yeah, I missed that. You saw it. Sorry. That's okay. I saw the 95 and went, what the? But the two makes a little more sense.

It's a dare Mustang. It applies.

And actually that bottom amount is eight, but the number doesn't change from 421,000. That number is correct.

So my question is, with this cycling of rolling stock, Do we have a future rolling stock outlay because we have Durangos and Fords and a mixed bag of vehicles? Is there something that we would be expecting sooner than a three-year cycle off of this round?

Not off of this round. We're coming out of, again, that lease arrangement with Enterprise. That's got one more year left on payment. So those have been structured for a little bit longer. So the next round will come in two fiscal cycles. But next year, we could have others. So what I'm trying to do is create a role in the police department so that we constantly roll as we move forward.

So we've been buying as those leases expire? We've been buying those vehicles at the minimal rates, well, anywhere between $5,000 and $6,000 apiece. And so now those vehicles are five and six years old. So that's why we need to really go through and start the replacement. And we have all those vehicles, mostly police, but there's also public service and parks and rec and even the administrative vehicles we have here for the... the office. So those receive less use. Ours do. But we still have the value, and this makes it a better plan because so many of the vehicles are older now.

How much of our rolling stock is tied in with the enterprise lease programming?

Proportionate amount? Yeah, a pretty good amount. Pretty much almost all the vehicles

almost all well true and and came off of leases with with enterprise because the the leases started um i think they actually started about six years ago there were maybe even seven right before i came here they had that lease going and we there were parks and rec vehicles public services and we've just been buying them off so they're all they're all well used yeah

But again, we'll also do an analysis. I mean, an F-350, certain things we'll keep for a longer time. So we do have cycle analysis on that, vehicle replacement analysis on some of those things. Some of these trucks, for example. that we can keep for a long time. So an administrative car out in the parking lot can go eight, can go 10, those kinds of things. But again, this is our first use of this. So enterprise probably wasn't a horrible thing to think about at the beginning, depending on cashflow. I've used them in other places, they worked well, but the buyout at the end and the fees have been They just don't work for us.

Correct. And actually, with some of the legislative changes they made with the local government commission, in the first year of all these leases, they're double counted. because we're paying $250,000 a year. And then we also had to account for it. Because it's a lease, they're counting it as revenue and then on a deferred plan. So it was costing us $500,000 the first year for every time. And so this was also five years of putting new vehicles on leases. And so now we're getting to where they're rolling off.

So lots of reasons to go this way. If we had a different kind of fleet, if we had a larger fleet, or we had, again, different uses of fleet, we may consider other options. This is a more traditional financing option in North Carolina. It's allowed by statute. The banks have not used them as much anymore, but I like them. I do like them because I think there's a better control. They're less expensive to deal with. So it gives us more predictability in that. So we'd recommend that you enter into the resolution as a staff. Mike, would you agree with that as well? Yes, sir.

Very well, then. Can I get a motion to adopt resolution 20-26-018? So moved. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, this motion carries. Resolution is adopted. Thanks, Rosie. Thanks, Rosie.

Thank you, Rosie.

Thank you. Very good.

you can go if you want but only if you want but this is going to be the most exciting part so the last item we have here before we look ahead is a discussion about um supporting the wa and our little league team headed to the world series

Oh, I jumped ahead.

No wonder why I didn't know which resolution it was. Enough time to spend together. All right, number seven, capital costs. I got the glaze to put on my eyes, so shoot.

Okay. So this is not for decision processing. This is for information tonight. It's a lot of it. But essentially, it comes out of a very natural concern about how, over the next five years, what happens to our cash balances, which are important to us both by law and by operating procedure. Our cash position allows us a flexibility that... to operate efficiently and effectively and get things done for you folks, for the citizens here in town. But then the third piece is, what happens to both our cash position and your tax rate as we go through capitalized issues? So I'm going to take you through this. This is high level right now, but this has been on the basis We have been trying to create a financial scenario where the board could see what the different options are. A lot of what we are funding, we don't own. It's a very large number. Ask Rosie, I woke up from the budget hearing and went, oh my god, that's a lot of money. Because the drawdown of cash, while it sounds good at first, has an effect. Right now we budget $500,000, but the reality is in this budget we've made about $1 million in investment earnings, which represents about almost $0.02. So you already have a cushion built into there for your cost. We've tried to straight line your cost moving forward for the next five. We did a lot of discussion about over the last five, how have we tried to level that? And it's been a good job. The board created some expectations for that in the budget round, but how do we move forward? Because that's the conversation we haven't had about capitalization. So in this report, this is a high-level review, you're going to hear three terms, pay-go, investment, installment financing, which is something that you just did. It is also what pays for this building. That's an installment financing mechanism that we used. And we're going to use the word geobond because your question is, well, Scott, if we have millions of dollars in cash, why? Well, because drawing down your cash quickly... has an effect on your investment portfolio and your cash available to run your operations. It just has that effect. So, let's see, we're going to go like this. So, we've done some analysis on essentially about $14 million worth of expenditure over the next five years. And you'll see some language in there that says following Pine Oak signal correction. We're doing a lot. This is drafty, and we're doing a lot of analysis in-house. We met with Davenport, which is our financial bond advisors. They're the ones who advise us on public debt structuring or financing structuring of any type. We met with them. Last week and we're continuing the conversation as a matter of fact One of the things I hope it comes out of this is that the board wants to hear more from them I think they would be willing to come and have a conversation about this analysis as well So we did in-house analysis that asked them to go through it ask a series of questions and we're correcting this as we're going through and trying to make some adjustments and So there are three different types of ways you can pay for capital. PayGo, so you pay as you go along. Mixed installment financing, that allows you to do a blended mix of drawdown of cash as well as some financing. so you can blend that or mix that financing structure and then the last one is the geo bond the geo bond is the cheapest of all three and it's cheaper for a couple reasons if you're not drawing down as much cash then you're preserving the investment uh... the effective investment that your cash has for you as well as availability for fun fungibility and then uh... it also On a geobond, you can pay for things on things you don't own, such as highway improvements on roads you don't own. Broom Street is an example. Helms is going to be another one because you'll turn that back over. So those are examples of where you're doing investments on things you don't own. A geobond allows you the lowest rate. and you're securing it with that. You're not securing it with, they don't have title to the property because you can't give it, if that makes sense. So anyways, here's that first one that's that state maintain corridors jurisdictional constraint so bond grove church uh... the round about seventy five old providence on dollars in uh... sixteen turn lane and intersection design and construction those have jurisdictional constraints and that limits that last financing structure that we talked about which is installment financing because you the bank can't claim the road back. Fair enough, right? So the available paths in that scenario become PAYGO or grant or local match, which is what we do use. You can also do voter-approved GO bonds. You can also pay as you go outside of your cash position, but you would have to get rid of other expenses on your balance sheet in order to do that. They're not categorically excluded from financing, but because of the amount of money, for example, you could do a drainage project finance over against a road and if it's clearly yours. you could installment financing that. So you're not necessarily excluded from that, but generally road projects come in one neat, tidy package. If you recall, though, when we were talking about Helm, we were talking about how could we... We've got half of the money for the construction because... Things like the sidewalks or the bike lanes or anything else that is in that right-of-way wouldn't be funded by one set of dollars, but we could fund it with another set of dollars if you recall those conversations. And in dollar amounts that are in capital this big that aren't police cars, LGC approval is going to show back up. So they're not categorically excluded. But as we did the analysis and we looked at that 14.2 million, and I'm gonna explain to you why that sounds like it's a million more than what you had before. I'll explain that here in just a second. But about 6.9 millions in the state corridors, what would be available to a mixed installment financing out of your CIP list would be about 4.7 million. and then that would um allow about 2.5 million in pago you'd still have to use about a certain amount of your cash in order to do that now the reason that it's not 13 million is i put the paving in there so you're going to do about a million dollars worth of paving so one of the reasons i woke up at night about 2, 3 in the morning, concerned about this was our lowest point in time for cash is between now and the end of December. So we have a lull, and that's incoming cash. Our outgoing is pretty predictable, about $1.5 million, somewhere around there, a month in ongoing operations. But three things happen in addition to one other thing. One, Pine Oak is coming up, and that's about 1.1 million between now and December. That's getting ready to be... Remember how slow this has been? Now, all of a sudden, it's very quick. You budgeted for it, but it's there. Second is paving, so now you're up to two. Third was... We have a debt service payment in here, but you also have other cash that goes out. A lot of our partners like to bill us up front. That's a nice way of saying it. People like insurance companies. Folks like that, they do things like that to us. So a lot of cash goes out, and we try to control that or manage for that over time. But the extra two and a half, and in our analysis it's probably about three and a half, going out this quick would make a trough twice as deep. So that's been what we stay up at night and think about. Oh, and the Kensington project, that's the third one. Now, those are funded. They're sitting in pots. You've got them all there, but you're still taking down your cash. And while it's assigned or committed fund balance, it's still taking your cash position. And when it does that, it lowers, it just increases that risk And matter of fact, one of the suggestions in the analysis was to do what's called a TAN. And a TAN is a tax anticipation note. Now, I haven't heard that term in a really, really, really long time. Matter of fact, I don't know a lot of places that do them anymore. But one of the reasons you might do it is if you have a financial plan for the following year. So, what you're doing is you're borrowing against tax anticipation coming in in December. borrow through your lull and then you pay it back it's a bridge loan yeah yeah Now, it makes sense, but it really only makes sense if you have a funding process past that that protects your cash position, works well within your operating funds, and your cost. So when we started to do this analysis, the capital is one thing, but I'm comparing it to our operating costs. So I put a growth strategy into my operating costs. I put three scenarios in. So we're playing a little bit of scenario analysis if we have low growth, which is what we had last year or in our current year. And unless you get a lot more influx of investment, vertical investment, you're going to have a year two of low growth. Sales tax was low this year, about three and a half percent. Which took us off guard a little bit. So that was concerning. So we're really trying to play with much more conservative numbers as we talk about your operating costs. But we examined our operating costs moving forward in three different scenarios, low, mid, high. The high I think I put in there at 2.5%. So I really went extremely conservative on this. So I tried to look at the financing and what our cash position would be and what our operating costs would look like under a series of scenarios as we look forward. So the current funding reality we have is an all pay go plan. I flagged this as a risk in year three of your CIP. Your trough goes down to, or your unassigned fund balance goes down all the way down to 30%, 29.7%. That is a number that keeps me up at night. The actual November cash balance in year three goes down to $9 million. That's a really, that sounds like a lot of money. I know to a household that sounds like a lot of money, but for us, we have a $27 million a year budget. That's a very low number on cash position. And that's about three million below my 40% threshold. It's not above it, it's below it. And we maintain a cash position because the statutes of the state of North Carolina say we have to. Our own policy guidelines say we have to. So what happens here is on this particular chart, what you're seeing is you are seeing your cash positions under different scenarios pay go which is our current analysis right now that's where we are right now as a group it's where you are right now that's where we are unless you guys uh consider other options we're in payco so year one we're okay but it's still dropping as i told you i got three and a half million going out the door right now before december shows up on top of 1.5 million a month And you can see the different analysis over five years. Your lowest year is actually in year five in PAYGO. So it's farther out, but your spiky year is year three. Mixed. You can maintain a better balance in a GO bond perspective because you're missing this first year. It assumes that your first year is next year. You couldn't get a GO bond out now because it's the voter. So you've missed a window. Now, let me just as a side note explain a little something about GO bonds. The county issues GO bonds. one of the things you can do under north carolina law is that once you do one geo bond let's say to build the school let's say it's 100 million just use a number like that when you get down to two-thirds you can go back into that authority built into that geo bond and then borrow again and issue more geo bonds without a voter approval the North Carolina statutes allow you to do that. So it creates an asset cycle especially if you're building very large, very expensive things, schools, hospitals, jails, those kinds of... But for us, road projects are expensive. Buildings are expensive, you know, what we're living in now. These are expensive assets for us, rarer than most, but these are our things that are real to us.

In that example you just laid out, if you had a $10 million GEO bond, And then you spent $3 million of it, roughly 30%. You can go back for another $3 million or another $10 million? Yeah.

You have capacity built in by law. And you can get the same geo rate under the same geo conditions. Does that make sense?

So with one election, you can kind of keep pulling from the trough? You can. Pulling the whole amount.

Now, in order to do it correctly, again, these are drafts. Okay. I really want to pull in Davenport to give a better explanation than I can give for you on that. But it's a good question. It's a fair question. But yes, it creates a asset management cycle where you can cycle your debt structures against your needs. Because here's the deal. Tomorrow, You just don't know what you need tomorrow. We do the best we can with a capital plan. It's our best estimate for you. It's your best guess. It's based upon good things. I mean, a lot of your road stuff is contractual. You've been working on these. The town has been working on these for a long time. But this is what happens to your cash position. So this is your cash on hand trough. And where it happens is in year three. under a PAYGO. On the geo bonds, it holds steady. On a mixed, in other words, you're pulling down a little bit, you're installing. Remember in a slide or so ago, we were talking about there's about 6.9 million that is not eligible. It's geo eligible or cash eligible, but it's not installment. But there's about 4.7 million that's available to installment. You may not solve this all in one way, but what it points you towards is towards the geobond, and there's another reason. So geobonds, and I'm not sitting here tonight hammering it. I'm just saying this is what the math is telling us. Geobonds protect your cash position best, and they're tied with mix right now. The engineering confirmations, these are ownership questions that we asked out, so I put it in here. These are all NCDOT-owned roads. This is what we're doing our improvements on. This is what we're spending our money. It'd be nice if we could go to DOT and say, just pay for them all, but that's just not the way it works. So if we want these solutions now, this is what we've been planning towards and trying to work towards. So a non-referendum GO path, it's currently unavailable because your capacity is zero. You don't have a GO bond right now? You don't have one. You did do a reimbursement resolution on this building, but I think it's probably past the statutory limit where you could recapture back through a GO bond. So you don't necessarily have that unless, well, again, I want Davenport to come in and do a better job than I'm doing explaining it. But right now what I can tell you is that path just isn't available in our analysis right now.

And that wouldn't necessarily make sense given the rate.

Given the rate. We're at 3.5. It is a declining block, and I've worked that into the numbers. I've worked that into the math. So, in other words, the first initial debt payment on this was about $2.21 million. If you had kept it at 2-1 for 20 years, that capacity that you built between it would have been your capacity if you had then taken that differential and put it into fund 403, for example, or put it into a fund and said it's now designated for a prepayment at year seven, which is your model year to do it. uh... again your you have in your financial policy guidelines which i've also given to you folks it's the really exciting stuff that we like to live by uh... but right now you have any flip number you have a minimum fifteen a maximum twenty aggregate ten-year supported principal payout of fifty percent we think that that actually ought to be Yeah, yeah, you saw that number. We're at 62, which is good. But we think that minimum is, right now, that minimum is good. But also in your debt policy, it confines your projects and puts a cap on it instead of a minimum. So we're gonna recommend some changes in the financial policy that I think will help you go regardless of which structure you decide to go with. Then we've broken these financing categories down by department so you have a better understanding. Here's another representation. Engineering just really means roads. It's not the engineering department themselves. James, don't get your hope up. That's not 7.2 million for you.

Going to Vegas.

That's right. Or to Kings Mountain. You can go to the casino over there. So I just wanted to advertise for good old Kings Mountain. Parks and Recreation, it's about 6-5 over these five years. Public Services, about 330. That number, there are numbers that are not in here yet. Example, if you received the grant from Safe Grant, that's not in here yet. So we haven't played that model all the way out yet. Public services, that number should be higher because in that public service number right now is bridge replacement or upgrade or improvement to or preservation of the bridge over the railroad track. So the mayor can see that you choose. So we have to build that in there. You've built it into a reserve position, but we have counted that into your future financial access to dollars. So this also includes in this presentation, just so you know, I put all the data sources that I pulled and put into this. Anytime I do any analysis through AI, we have a little internal policy that we always tell you all the citations we use. that way you know. In other words, I put all of that in here. This is our information. So I want the board to know. When they say, well, where'd you get the number? We can point to it. This is just a reminder of what your CIP program is for this year. And again, that's why I'm concerned about the current numbers. Got about 978 in combined cash balances, 5.37 in your 403. So that 978 sits in other things, 405, 290, 385, 408, 407, 406, other things that you've done. You've called them the Broom Street Helms. So that money's sitting there, and it counts it. Second pound of money is in 403. You have, in the 26, 27 year, appropriation in your ordinance in other words that's what your capital ordinance is appropriating it's pulling from however those two other funds that 5.37 and then 9.78 so those are your active projects right now just a reminder of where everything is um this gives you a life to date authorization um Commissioner Daunt, you had asked, gosh, I can't believe I've been here almost a year, but about a year ago, you had asked about, can you explain to me the ups and downs in our balance sheet? And this really reflects that. You can see the town campus price has a life-to-date expenditure number, and then it's got a cash balance sitting in it. You can see, for example, there's a balance sitting in the town campus fund. That is an accounting issue. It's not a... It's just one of these, it's not real cash, but it's one of these odd little things we still work out. We have to work these things out between unassigned and assigned balances. Yeah, journal entries. But anyways, this gives you a better understanding of capital spent to date. Now, what I will tell you is that's a lot. I mean, that's a goodly amount of money. I mean, it's not like you haven't been investing, folks. Okay? And, you know, I think the staff and I on a daily basis or at least at our meetings we talk about, you know, we have good equipment and good things to serve the people of Waxhaw. So we're very appreciative of that. But it has been money planned for and spent, and it has been spent. Now, if I had been here 10 years ago, I would have had more of a heart attack, which probably would have been my heart attack range 10 years ago. But here's where you're sitting right now. So that's that $5.9 million. I put this in the presentation because I want you're going to sit there and go, help me remember where I'm at. And these are your projects moving forward. Now, what we've done is that's $6 million in cash coming out, unless we do something else. As you folks know, we don't exactly expend that way in capital. Some of it's planning money. Some of it's right away. It comes in spurts. Last year, we had it planned. We moved a lot of that money forward, right? We just moved it forward into forward appropriations and or fund balances. So these are all funds that you've saved for over time. So I gave you an executive report tonight. It is the best bedtime reading you could ever, ever have. I read it every night. It's exciting. But I think it gives you a little bit of a deeper dive and an understanding. So let's go back to Commissioner Wedger's comment about, does this affect these things? Yes and no. It affects it in that, how do you plan? What do you think is the appropriate thing to do? I can't answer that for you right now, but it does make you think about those things. What else do I want to do? Secondly, I've tried to give you an analysis. This analysis has been against a series of scenarios, low growth, which is the motor in right now, a medium and a high, albeit conservative, in the scenario planning. And all these numbers and what comes out of this report comes from an analysis against our operating costs. So I then put in scenarios for how much did we think operating costs were going up. Right now, costs are above growth. We've been in the other direction for a good while until now. Now, we could snap tomorrow. I don't know what's going to come in. I think all of you know that there's a lot of vertical going on. I mean, horizontal going on right now. You're seeing more things happen now than I've seen. I've been here a year, and it's been pretty quiet, to be honest. It's starting to get a little... depending on where you live and which neighborhood you live in, it's starting to get much noisier. Adelina. Emerson, Blythe, and once that intersection gets corrected, that allows that process to do.

Dirt's being moved at Rogers Pond?

We have 55 lots ready to go where they can go vertical now. And now they're doing the back out of 125. So they got the first 55 done. They've been approved. They're there. Yarborough, still behind, but not sure exactly where that one is right now. I do know that they went through a bankruptcy and a new company bought it like that. So that's where that is. Cottage Park is beginning to move dirt now again. So we've been working through a lot of those issues internally. So I don't know how to tell you what's going to happen exactly tomorrow and how quick a rise or slow a rise may be over time. But yes, there are things. But right now, there are not. I don't think enough things could go vertical between now and December where they'd be on the tax record. if that makes sense. So I have a concern about where we are right now, because property taxes in North Carolina are considered the most stable. The statutes of the state of North Carolina consider them primary. They are what we use here more than we use anything. So you also have potential future where you may not be able to raise them very high. Now, that might make a lot of people excited. But if you have bills to pay and you have other things that you want to do or devaluation happens, I've managed enough towns in this state where it's depreciating and not appreciating. You know, people want different things at different times in the life of a town. So I wanted to give you this snapshot. The other thing that I want to highlight, it's on the very first page of what I handed out to you, is that we talk about the financing strategies. I'm not going to mince words. I am recommending a financing strategy. The discussion by the board to have that and run the numbers, bring Davenport in, let you guys dive into this and tell us what you think. if we go to something like a GEO bond that is a political decision as well as a financial decision. So I've tried to give you some analysis in here. And I'm not saying for those watching, we're not saying that we're doing these. I'm looking at your operating, your capital, your next five years. We didn't do a lot of next five year in the budget. We don't get a chance to do that as much. We did a lot of analysis back. And we talked a lot about that and about where you want to be and where you folks think you want to be. Now we're going to start talking about how we move it forward, talking about cash position, where your troughs are, how you finance these things. Because here's the last thing I'll put, and this is on the first page. Rather you go PAYGO mixed or a GEO bond, it still has an effect on your ad valorem rate up. I just don't want to mince words. I want to be very straight with you folks. Where you're at now is not sufficient to cover capital. You'll go for a while, then you'll hit a trough. and then you've got other issues to deal with. So, I'm trying to give us a five-year discussion point to have as a group and what might be the best thing available to do that. So, on that first page, it talks about each of those scenarios and then it talks about rates. It talks about unassigned fund balance at the year five and debt services. so it puts some things in perspective for you so you can think about these things my office is always available as you begin to think about these things i will if it's okay with the board i would like to bring davenport back and dive deeper for you, help answer questions. But if in between now and that time you have questions, I want to make myself available to you. Please feel free to pick up the phone, let me know, and we'll sit down and we'll go through it. But these things concern me. I've been concerned, especially because the other taxes aren't popping as nicely as I was hoping they would. And when you have a two-year lull, that affects your cash. I just, you know, those are my concerns. This is an analysis of how we do that. So I'm going to stop. Can I answer any questions right now?

Any questions from the board at this point? There's definitely a lot to digest. It's very, very dense.

Yeah, I want to say thank you for all the work and thank you now. I'll be up at night thinking about this. I appreciate it. So I'll be calling you at 2 a.m.

Hey, since you're up, be up.

Be up, waiting for the phone call. The phone sits right by my bed.

But I do think we're in a different position than maybe seven, eight years ago. There was a reval. Taxes stayed steady instead of lowering. So there was a lot of money. The rate stayed steady, but the taxes were not very high.

Yes, they did.

So the rate stayed steady, but because of the reval, there was more money in the pot. And then the pandemic and ARPA money and all that money was here. And then decisions... were made to road improvements and this and that and the other, and now everything's gotta be paid for. So we have to make these decisions, but I'm thankful that you're on the case and we have some good options moving forward. And I think it's a good idea to bring them in and Davenport, you said, and then get more information as we go.

The peak required rate, is elevated from where we are currently, that doesn't mean that we have to raise the rate to that point. It just means that...

Peak rate in any given year? Yeah.

Well, let me explain that first page so we can go through that. The peak is that your cash position goes sufficiently low that you're starving some other things. And so you need additional revenue to do this. So you would have to raise a rate at a peak level. Let me explain this one more time. The required ad valorem rate by year five is what this says to you right now, talks about that. And you're at 29. And depending on which way you go, it talks about various rate scenarios under various financing scenarios. Again, I want to point out again, my analysis, and I am open to being questioned to the nth degree. It's fine. I'm not 100% expert on this. Davenport's much better. But for example, I would say, again, in PAYGO, it has the most pressure on your rate.

Sure. Yeah, yeah. That's apparent right there in the numbers. So if you go full program with a GO bond, you're not necessarily raising the rate.

You would, it would depend on how it came back, okay? GOs require a lot more financial analysis than this. They really run you through the ringer. Where's your rate? GO bonds require you to have a... something from the rating agencies, all of that kind of stuff. It requires a lot of work. It requires not only managerial work of getting your numbers right, but political work. These are not things that happen overnight. But even in this scenario, based upon what I put in, It requires a big bump at the beginning, but then it declines over time back to where you are. A geo bond has a higher push at the beginning because you're using probably a little bit more cash. for things at the beginning so that has an effect on your number it also because it's smooth and when it comes in because it it depends on the size of the escrow account if it's put into that kind of a thing the kind of arrangement you agree to with the bond holder you know it depends on a lot of things so my favorite answer as an economist is it depends but what this is in the initial analysis is what this is telling you is it has a very high punch at first but then it levels down

But the other ones have a higher punch.

They have a higher punch under those scenarios.

And then if you did a mix, you would go from that full geobond, full program access scenario. If you did a mix, you're going to ratchet it up from there, right? I mean, it could be small incrementally, but it would still be high or not low.

One of the reasons I'm okay with the numbers the way they are and understanding that we have about two and a half million walking out the door between now and then that are in capital is that you might get that grant. And that's about 1.5 million. So that just adds the number right back into your scenario. So I didn't put it in. Because I don't have it. I only put those things in that I knew I had. So I didn't do that yet. That's why I say this is not a one and done. I don't come to y'all. Y'all have a slight discussion on a Tuesday night while it's raining outside. This is a discussion that takes a lot more time for you guys to digest it. But yes, it does have a peak in it. All three of those scenarios, even PAYGO has a scenario and it says, year one, technically where your rate should be, it's about 3.33. That's a big rate compared to where you are right now. Now, I think if I look at your investments and what we've actually taken in, which is covering about two, cents in actuality, you're probably about two cents shy right now. So again, we're where we're at. I would love to have been here five, six years ago to have the same conversation. I'm not criticizing any past decisions. That's not for me to do. Well, it's just not for me to do. The numbers are what they are right now. Because one thing you do have is you do have cash on hand. So you're kind of sitting in a position where you can dictate a higher... Possibly a higher bond rate from the rating companies If you went that way you do have cash to do these things and you have a fallout effect Maybe you all of a sudden have a very spiky growth that compensates for that loss structure These are things I don't know John, I just don't know them 100%. But yeah, this tries to give you an understanding about what that peak rate requirement is. It also, importantly, tries to tell you where your fund balance needs to be at the end and where you want your cash position. You're in an enviable cash position. It allows you to get lower rates. It allows you to do things. It allows you to fund the trough, quite frankly, because you do have a trough. I mean, if we had a water and sewer system, we'd have money every month. or another type of utility or something like that. So great news, always glad to deliver.

Thank you.

Appreciate the cautious, conservative approach and the long-range thinking and just the thinking about stability as well. Really appreciate it.

Well, we want it for the next generation. And then the second thing is you have no idea what's going to happen year two. or three. I mean, things always come up. Helene comes up. They just happen, folks. They just do. And North Carolina has always had a pretty conservative approach to the amount of money required. The LGC is actually your best friend to the taxpayer because you can go back to the taxpayer and say, we have these constraints.

Yeah, this is an exercise that's necessary, not because we're looking to do something extra. It's because of what's already in front of us. Is that fair to say? That is fair to say. Because I know in neighboring communities, you say geobon, and people run for the hills with their hair on fire. And that's because maybe to some folks that was, they were trying to finance something that they were trying to bring in, something new. This is something that's already in front of us. I think it bears repeating that or for the benefit of the public to hear that because just kind of maybe clarifies it for folks and sets them a little bit more and he's not that, anybody wants to have this discussion but obviously you you see the numbers you're you're it's keeping you awake and and it's it's necessary to talk about so we do have deeper analysis for the board i feel like led zeppelin or something so um

And if you had heard me sing when I was 16, you would have said, no, he would never make Led Zeppelin. The Bad Brains, maybe. The Ramones, yes, but not Led Zeppelin. I want to say a couple of things. One, we're not that off. It's not like we're... We're poor, and we don't have growth, and people don't like us. People do like this town. They want to live here. This is a place of choice. We have quality employees and quality services. We provide a really nice high level of quality to the citizens, and I think that's a good thing. But things cost money, and that's where I think we're at. And there's good money in the bank. It's not bad money, but I'd like to protect your money as long as I can to use it to the extent that we can do things. Every household recognizes, as you said, John, you've got to buy a car at some point in time, and you have to add that extra shed at the back of the house or that additional mother-in-law suite. I'm not speaking from practical experience. But, you know, we do those things, and then we have to figure out how to do them and how we can both live within our means and do the smartest thing we can with some dollars. So this starts. I want to bring them back. I want to continue this discussion, and my door is always open. My phone is always on. Call me. For those of you who like to play with lots of numbers, I have lots of really cool Excel sheets if you'd like to play with them. So, you know, they're lots of fun.

this is a great start to what will be a very long conversation so thank you yeah yeah thanks for the work i appreciate it very much if everybody's okay we'll move to the next agenda item thank you yeah thank you scott thank you rosie thank you guys thanks rosie so we had a desire to have a brief discussion regarding the rec barn and allocating um some comp time, perhaps, to the WAA Little League. This is obviously dependent on availability. But there was the request from the WAA, since we do have a team headed to the Little League World Series. And those who may or may not have noticed, it's apparently raining outside. So there might be some need by the Little League team headed to the World Series to do some indoor practicing at the rec barn. So if that facility is available, I'm wondering if the board is amenable to providing that facility at no charge to the WAA teams headed to the World Series. Is that something the board is agreeable to? Again, this is completely contingent on availability of said facility. It's not to take away from anyone who has already reserved and paid for their time. It's just to capitalize on any availability that might be there.

And the timeline is a more immediate need where us booking that time would be kind of a... it would be a little bit of a stretch at this point because the timeline's immediate.

And the hope would be that the rec barn has already been reserved over the next month or so, the amount it is going to be reserved. And the idea being is that if there's any availability, that that could then be filled, again, as needed for weather. It could be filled by our little league heading to the World Series. Yes.

It's rare that teams get to the Little League World Series if you actually get that opportunity to go. I think it's a really small cost to ensure that. They're not asking for hotel costs or buses. They're asking for, hey, we need a place of practice, good inclement weather. I think it's something definitely to look into.

Yeah, I mean, Dina would have to check the schedule alone.

We'll do all that. See if it's at all possible. I think we can see what we can do to make that happen, if that's what the board would like.

That's great. And I think it's important we support our local athletes, especially the ones that are achieving at such a high level. And to kind of show our excitement for that, a little town pride, it doesn't hurt to sort of fund a little bit if necessary when they make it to that point. This is definitely not something I'm seeing as a long-term thing. I see it more as a reward for them getting to this level and making it to this point.

My favorite movie is The Sandlot, so I can't say.

Killing Me Smalls.

I remember when we made it to the All-Stars and how fun it was to practice with your peers and having a good place while you're preparing yourself for a larger competition, a regional competition now at this point. Yeah, I totally support that action and finding a pathway to success. partner with our Waxhaw Athletic Association and the youth that are going forward to and so reserving rec barn space and supporting them based off of availability that totally makes sense and I support that man Dan's got a CDL so he'll drive the bus up to Cooperstown when they make it that far it's only class B and that's all you need to haul kids in a bus

All right. Well, is that clear then? Are we good on that? You're good on that.

Great.

Thank you very much, Tina.

That's very exciting. That is exciting. Yep, it is.

I was excited to hear that we had a team making it, so that was very cool.

Congratulations.

All righty then. Our next regular Board of Commissioner meetings will be...

I have a comment.

Oh, comment. Sorry.

Yep. Just real quick. I don't know if everyone has heard, but Mr. Jim Black has passed away. I was sad to hear about Jim Black's passing or... as he was called Mr. Waxhaw. He was just, he was a great man. Jim Black, he never met a stranger and I remember meeting him the first time when we were running and it was like I had known him forever and he just kind of made you feel that way. I've seen so many tributes on social media, different establishments around town, even the local vet, he was just everywhere, ribbon cuttings, and you just always see that thumbs up from Mr. Black. He really just truly loved Waxhaw, he was always positive, and he will really, really be missed around town. He was, Always seen on a Tuesday at Queen South for BOGO Tuesdays with Donna and Chuck, the owners, with that thumbs up. And as a tribute today, Queen South has renamed their menu to all of Jim's favorites. So they dedicated it all to Jim, the thumbs up burger. His favorite burger had a little spice. He liked that sriracha and the Mr. Waxhaw. So I just wanted to say rest in peace, Jim. I can only imagine how big your smile is today looking down on us. And if we can maybe do something, a proclamation of some sort, that would be great. I know that the family is working toward... probably some type of celebration of life possibly at Queens out and in your future it was one of his favorite places along with Maxwell's and Mary's and all of those other places but BOGO Tuesdays were quite his favorite so RIP Jim

Well, thank you. I definitely echo those sentiments. He was definitely a staple of the community.

I had the pleasure of meeting him once, and you could just tell.

Yeah, we both met him at the same time.

Yeah, and it was the first time meeting him, and he had a really calming presence and just a real likable guy. And I can see why on social media people are really missing him and condolences for the family. Yeah. Yeah, YXL is going to miss a good guy.

Bit of a loss.

For sure.

Okay. Without further ado then, our next meeting, the Board of Commissioner meeting scheduled for Tuesday, August 11th, 6.30 p.m. here at the town chambers. Any other comments or questions or items to discuss tonight? With that, can I get a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. all in favor aye we are now adjourned thank you very much everyone thank you