City Council - Regular Meeting

Bring the meeting to order the Wilmington City Council like to welcome all those who are with us here this evening and all those who are at home watching us on TV, or whatever device you're on. Thank you for taking an interest in your government. This time I'd like to call on firefighter Torres from the Wilmington Fire Department if she'll please come forward and give us our invocation if everyone will stand and remain standing afterwards for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Hello everyone. My name is Natasha Torres and I am honored to be here as a representative of city of Wilmington fire department, both as a firefighter and as a member of our chaplain program. So at this time, I'd like to ask you all to please join me for a moment of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your gift of rain that gives life to our green earth. We ask that you watch over those who must search for shelter from the storm, and we thank you for this shelter that we find ourselves in now. I ask that you be with us today as we continue on this journey of building up our community. Please, Lord, grant us all here the wisdom to be fair and clarity within our souls to pursue what is just for every neighbor. Unite us as one city as we persevere toward our common goal of creating a bright future for Wilmington. May you continue to guide us and keep us in the sheltered harbor of your everlasting grace. Amen. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We have one presentation this evening. I'd like to recognize Captain Timothy List, the commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Sector North Carolina. He's the commander here of the proclamation honoring the 236th United States Coast Guard anniversary and proclaiming August the 4th, 2026 as U.S. Coast Guard Day in the city of Wilmington.

I'm sorry everybody, come on down.

I think this is an important day since the Coast Guard has been in the city of Wilmington since it was incorporated.

Yeah. Thank you.

Mayor. Good to see you, sir. Good to see you. Good to see you. Excuse me.

City of Wilmington, North Carolina proclamation reads, whereas the United States Coast Guard, Reserve, and Coast Guard Auxiliary all commemorate the founding of the Coast Guard on August the 4th, 1790, as our nation's oldest continuous seagoing service. And whereas the U.S. Coast Guard is the world's foremost maritime safety, security, environmental protection, and life-saving service, and whereas the U.S. Coast Guard assets and personnel in sector North Carolina are headquartered right here in Wilmington, North Carolina, and represent more stations, personnel, cutters, patrol craft, an aircraft than ever before and whereas in 2003 the city of wilmington proudly received the honor of being designated an official coast guard city was the fourth city in the united states to receive such an honor and whereas the united states coast guard celebrates its 236th birthday on august the 4th 2026 now therefore i bill saffel on behalf of the wilmington city council do hereby proclaim the week of August the 3rd, 2026 through August the 9th, 2026 as Coast Guard Week in the City of Wilmington. And I just want to say, Commander, thank you for everything that you folks do. I know y'all do a lot, and I think the community would like to hear what you folks do, but I know that one of our first revenue cutters here was right here in Wilmington and right here at the foot of Market Street, and you do a phenomenal job day in and day out. The floor is yours, sir.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. And I'll be very brief. Appreciate it. Mr. Mayor, thank you again. And thank you to everyone in the city of Wilmington for being a Coast Guard city. As the mayor mentioned, the Coast Guard cutter diligence, the original diligence was one of the first revenue cutter cutters in our organization built here in North Carolina, worked up in New Bern for about a year and then moved down here. And for a long period of time, variations of the diligence were home ported right here, moored up right downtown. It's been a few years. Our newest cutters are larger, unfortunately, and bigger. So as we've replaced diligence, they don't anymore but this is still a strong strong Coast Guard city and your support of the Coast Guard is can is is impressive and amazing and I think the future is just going to be bright moving forward as one of the few Coast Guard cities in our nation so thank you to everyone in the city of Wilmington and mr. mayor thank you thanks to you sir

So the irony is that the first Coast Guard cutter was the diligence and the last Coast Guard cutter that left the city of Wilmington was called the diligence.

Factoid right there for the Star News. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Okay, that brings us to our next item of business, which is our consent agenda. Items one through four, are there any items that any council member would like to hear separately? If not, what are the wishes of council in respect to the consent agenda? We have a motion to approve by Council Member Andrews, seconded by Council Member Quintana. Any further discussion? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? That item passes unanimously. That brings us to our next item of business, which is our public information segment. We have two speakers that have signed up to speak with us this evening. Each speaker will be allotted Three minutes per speaker. Our first speaker is Tracy Bannon, who is a city resident and wants to talk to us about benches. Is Tracy Bannon here? There's Ms. Bannon.

Hi, I'm Tracy Bannon. Some of you know me. I'm not here to moan, groan, or raise cane about the benches placed by the Democrat Socialists of America. I know it will do no good, and you know it will do no good. Your mind is made up. I will just state in words that you all know and love. in the name of equity and inclusion where everyone is on the same even playing field and everyone has the same outcome. Where shall I place my biblically inspired and patriotically themed benches? You see, you cannot allow one without allowing all. Or things could get a bit dicey for the city legally. There's a new park being built beside my housing development. I was thinking that would be a good place to start. Since we don't need permits or need these benches at the Wilmington codes or regulations, this will be easy to accomplish. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. Next speaker is Travis Gilbert, who is a city resident, will be speaking to us about the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement. Is Mr. Gilbert here? Okay. Okay. We have another two speakers that have signed up to speak that we do have room for. Next speaker is Renegade Cherokee, who will be speaking to us about making Wilmington great again.

Cherokee here.

Okay. And then another speaker is Cameron Riley Strickland, who will be speaking to us about questions and concerns about Wilmington. Mr. Strickland, there he is. Strickland, welcome.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. I don't Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. Sorry, I don't know the terminology and council members. I'll be straightforward with you. I'm not a very I've never been a very political guy. I don't know much about politics. So forgive me if any of my ignorance, maybe a lot of this doesn't really pertain to this meeting. Just some concerns that I have had for a while. One, you know, my family's been here in North Carolina for since the 1600s. Both my grandfathers and my grandmothers been in Wilmington for generations. I want to just ask about the growing population in Wilmington. It's really been a bit concerning for a little over a decade, but coming from it being a relatively small town, it's becoming bigger and bigger. So it's just a concern of mine, especially a lot of people I know, certainly family members. And I see across the country this, I don't want to get Wilmington too involved in national politics or anything, but There's a lot of division even that I see here. I'm an actor and filmmaker. I'm going to Cape Fear and start here in the fall. I will likely end up getting an undergraduate in economics, but a big difference there. But there's been a lot of unrest just even in the film community with different politics. People can be very divisive. And then another thing is, you know, any advice that you might have to get into politics. I'd like to serve my country the best I can. And then I want to see more patriotism across our country. I think that is a must in America to have as much patriotism as possible. And lastly, this is about, you know, any, I am concerned about the possibility of eventually ICE might come in here and not that I have a concern that they come. I just want to know that we're prepared for it because, you know, I certainly respect law enforcement and legal immigration is a problem in our country. I don't know how big of a problem it is here, but for all I know, it could become more of a problem. And I just want to make sure we're prepared for that. So those are really my main concerns. And I believe that was it. And then there was just a quote that I wanted to make, and it's from Thomas Sowell. And it says, life does not ask us what we want. It presents us with options. Economics is one way of trying to make the most of those options, not what we want. Thank you.

Very well said. Thank you, sir.

And God bless America. Thank you, the Coast Guard. I appreciate your service.

Thank you. Okay, that brings us to our next item of business, which is our public hearings. Our first item is PH1, which is an ordinance amending the official zoning maps of the City of Wilmington to rezone property containing 1.76 acres located at 524 South College Road from O&I Office and Institutional District to CBCD Community Business Conditional District for a convenience store and a fuel station. At this time, I'd like to recognize our City Manager, Ms. Becky Alkmaar. Ms. Alkmaar?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and members of council. We have a number of planning staff up today, but the first one is long range planner Haley Hopkins.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of Council. For your review this evening, I present a conditional rezoning from O&I Office and Institutional District to CB Community Business Conditional District at 524 South College Road. Prior to submittal, a community meeting was held in February of 2025. The application to rezone was submitted in December of 2025 and reviewed by staff. The applicant received two variances for this site in May of 2026 for tree preservation and a drive-through facility. In July, the Planning Commission heard the item and recommended approval. The site is currently zoned O&I Office and Institutional District. Potential uses include professional and medical offices, places of assembly such as churches, small scale services, and commercial district mixed use, all limited to a height of 45 feet or 96 feet with a step back. This proposal is for a conditional district with a specific use, a convenience store with fuel pumps in the CB Community Business Zoning District. This map shows the site and the general vicinity surrounding this request. The site is on South College Road near the UNCW campus. The site is currently zoned O&I Office and Institutional District. The site is bordered by MD 17 to the west and O&I to the north, east, and south. These are photos of the existing conditions of the subject property. The site currently includes the vacant furniture fair building, which is proposed to be removed. These are views of the areas surrounding the property, including looking north and south on South College Road and at the rear of the site from University Drive. These are photos of the adjacent properties and land uses. There's a fast food restaurant to the north, the UNCW campus to the east across College Road, a bank and restaurant to the south, and a vacant lot to the west. The proposed development includes a Wawa convenience store and fuel station with a drive-through. Both the building and the fuel pumps will front South College Road. The applicant has provided an updated site plan and elevations that differ from those in your packet. A landscape buffer is required along the rear of the site adjacent to the residential MD 17 to the west. 43 parking spaces are proposed. The entrance from South College Road is proposed to be right in and right out. There is an additional connection to the site from University Drive. Cross access easements are provided to the adjacent north and south developments. This redevelopment would decrease the amount of impervious coverage on the site by a little more than 900 square feet. These are the proposed elevations for the site. Again, the primary frontage is along South College Road, which requires a primary entrance. Elevation four on the bottom shows a rendering of the development facing South College Road. A few site-specific conditions are recommended. These conditions include relocating trees removed within the right-of-way on site unless prevented by utilities, NCDOT, or if relocation is expected to cause irreparable damage to the health of the tree, ensuring the design of all doors located on the street-facing facade present an inviting and pedestrian-oriented experience, providing a pedestrian connection to the adjacent site zoned MD 17 to the west for connectivity upon redevelopment, and screening parking and loading areas along South College Road with a three-foot tall planting strip. In May of 2026, two variances were approved by the Board of Adjustment for this site, which allowed the removal of one specimen tree within the access easement connecting to New University Drive and a reduction in the required setback from residential areas for a drive-through facility. Staff has reviewed this application's alignment with relevant adopted plans. The Create Wilmington Comprehensive Plan is the only plan that applies to this site. The comprehensive plan's growth strategies map identifies areas of opportunity with corresponding policies to guide the look, feel, and use of new development. This site is not located in an area of opportunity, but is along a major corridor and regional parkway and a high capacity transit route. The comprehensive plan recommends landscape street yards and higher density residential development along corridors and transit routes. The Create Wilmington Comprehensive Plan also offers broader policy guidance to shape new development throughout the city. Staff assessed this application with relevant policies and found modest support for the application's alignment with the plan. Key policies that support rezoning the site to CBCD highlight the need to improve access to goods and services through infill and redevelopment and to increase connectivity to sites along major roadways through frontage and backage roads. While no comments have been received in support of the application, three comments were submitted in opposition. In summary, the proposed rezoning request to redevelop the vacant furniture fair site for a Wawa convenience store and fuel station on South College Road. Several conditions are recommended to maintain and enhance the existing character of the streetscape along South College Road and to include pedestrian-oriented features that create a welcoming and human-centered development. Along major corridors, the Great Wilmington Comprehensive Plan encourages retail services and vehicle-oriented development. Planning Commission voted to recommend conditional approval six to zero with a modification to condition five related to tree preservation and relocation to reflect circumstances under which preservation and relocation may not be possible. Staff finds the request to be consistent with the create moment to comprehensive plan, reasonable and in public interest. Staff recommends approval. I'm happy to answer any questions. And we also have our technical review planner present and our city traffic engineer.

Are there any questions for staff? Yes, we do. We have Mr. Joyner.

We received an email today talking about the easement onto the street that runs perpendicular to college. Can you fill us in on that? And I'm a little bit on university, I think, and I'm a little confused about why this property would have that easement, whereas I'm not necessarily seeing easements at adjacent properties along college.

Yes. The area that the email you're referring to was discussing was the portion of University Drive where it stops being maintained by the city and becomes a private easement. So there's a small area where we see this connection on University Drive across the back. Yes. That does not meet University Drive. That's private and is owned by that adjacent parcel to the west, that MD 17. So that would be up to the applicant. to find a way to make that connection as it is would be conditioned by the site plan.

Anybody else? Thank you. This time I'd like to recognize the applicant.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, council members. My name is Sam Frank. I represent the applicant. Before I delve into my presentation this evening, Councilman Joyner identified a correspondence that you received about an hour ago or an hour before the meeting requesting some changes to conditions. And if you would like for me to answer questions about that or to engage in a dialogue about what changed conditions would make sense. Before I go through the other aspects of my presentation, I'm certainly glad to. Also glad to hold that aspect of the conversation until we get to the dialogue about conditions. I'll follow your lead on that.

I think we'd like to go ahead and do your presentation, then we can address those particular specific issues.

Yes, sir. You got it. Thank you. With me this evening are Payman Nadimi, who's a representative of the Ultimate Operator, which is Wawa, no surprise to anyone here, and our civil engineer, Jeremy Yee, and also Jeffrey Lewin, who's a representative of the developer. If at any point along the way here you think that a question would be better answered by an engineer or an operator than the lawyer, please don't hesitate to stop me and ask. This project is a redevelopment site, an almost entirely covered site that's currently used as a furniture fair. It is not currently occupied, and so we consider it a redevelopment site. The location is fantastic. It's on a popular section of College Road immediately across from UNCW. The proposed use is a Wawa store together with fuel sales. Of course, the site's not utilized at all today, and so we consider the use that we propose here far more valuable to the community than what sits on the land now. The property is 1.76 acres. It's currently zoned ONI, and the proposed rezoning to support the new use is CB conditional. You can see the subject site on the zoning map relative to other zoning. It's located, again, across the street from the university, which is zoned O&I, just down the way from an RB site, which is the most intense of our zoning districts, and just up the way from another CB zone site and immediately to the east of an MD-17 or higher density residential property. Several uses in the immediate vicinity that are very consistent with the use that's proposed here. There's a Bojangles with a drive-through immediately to the north of the site. There's a Little Caesars with a fly-through pickup window located immediately to the south, as well as a Wells Fargo Bank. The next business working your way south beyond Wells Fargo is a fuel station with a convenience store. This is the site plan. As you can see, the orientation of the store and the fuel pumps has been carefully designed in cooperation with and through guidance from staff. It is organized in a way that's consistent with our current requirements of the code that that fuel pumps and the canopy be located no closer to the street than the building is. This arrangement makes for a more attractive streetscape and of course also allows for the functional utilization of the site. um the some nuances that i would like to like to point out as you can see in the bottom right we've incorporated some additional streetscape landscaping that hatched area is a loading zone that will on on occasions be occupied by trucks and the streetscape landscaping will help make that facade more attractive The trash collection facilities have been located in the planned top right corner of the site. That keeps them away from the streetscape. They're also designed to be enclosed in a very attractive shelter that I can show you an image of if you would like. Site has two access points for vehicles. The primary access point is along College Road. It's a right in, right out. Today, and you can see this a little bit on the satellite overlay, there are two curb cuts. The furniture fair has one at each end of the site. We will be eliminating one of those and consistent with the TIA requirements, extending the length of the turn lane there in front of the site. Secondary access across the top of the property connects ultimately to University Drive. Councilman Joyner, as you asked about a moment ago, there is a piece of University Drive that abuts this property that's private. There's not a property line on this image, but you can see pretty clearly on the east side of Little Caesars where that property ends. That is the line at which the public right of way of University Drive ends coming up from College Road. And so from that boundary west or up on the plan is a private access easement. This site plan Plainly contemplates and requires connection at two points of access. It is in every way the applicant's obligation and risk to create whatever roads are necessary to establish those two points of connection. All right. Here's some elevations. These are included now in our conditional zoning process. We have material consistency with the site plan, but also with the elevations. Typically, these are just used to demonstrate massing and size. In this case, Wawa is very, very confident about the appearance of its facility, and therefore we've included some meaningful architectural detail on these elevations. this is what the store will actually look like. Note some of the landscaping along the streetscape. I mentioned the section in front of the loading zone, but you can see there's also incorporated some other large trees and shrub lines there. There is a condition that's included that contemplates relocation of some trees that are currently in the NCDOT right of way. We would love to use those trees. We hope we can use those trees. The reason it was adapted as it was by the Planning Commission is because there are a couple factors that are beyond our control as to whether or not we can actually relocate them. First, and most significantly, they belong to the DOT, and nobody here has the right to tell the DOT what they can and can't do with their trees. We hope they'll be cooperative. It is not uncommon for significant utilities to be located along the edge of the road and within the right of way. And so we don't know yet what's in the ground around those tree roots. If there are significant or if there are any utilities that are intertwined with the roots that may inhibit our ability to to relocate those trees. That said, if we can move them and use them, we would like to. Two of them are inconsistent with the right in right out roadway. One of them is inconsistent with the sidewalk in front of the site.

That's why they need to be relocated.

It's our process in the city now that all variances must be obtained prior to seeking rezoning. That's been the case here and has been completed here. There were two. The first required removal of a specimen tree from the long finger section of the property that extends from the primary site over to University Drive. Any specimen tree removal in the city requires a variance from the Board of Adjustment. That was discussed and approved by the Board of Adjustment, I believe in April of this year. The second variance is a little more nuanced. We have a rule in the city that a drive-through facility may not be located within 200 feet of residential property. Residential property including land that is zoned for residential, whether it's utilized for that purpose or not. The property immediately to the west here is zoned for residential. It's MD 17. And so even though it's currently vacant, that rule applies. Part of the Wawa design includes what they call a fly through. It's a pickup window where people either by phone or through an app would place an order. They'd be delivered a pickup time and they would drive through and interact with somebody inside the store through that window to pick up their order. It does not include a lighted menu. It doesn't include a speaker. There's no interaction that would potentially cause nuisance to anybody nearby. Nonetheless, that fly through is consistent with the definition of a drive through in our code. and therefore we needed relief in order for that fly-through to be located less than 200 feet from the boundary with the residentially zoned property. In this case, it's 138 feet away. The Board of Adjustment considered that and granted a variance on that point in April as well. Several proposed conditions. You probably have had a chance to review these. I won't belabor them in detail, especially those that you always see about compliance with the law, consistency with the site plan and the elevations and the like. I already described the changes to condition number five. If you have questions about that, please don't hesitate to ask. Um, condition number six deals with the appearance of the facility from the, from the street. Uh, we've had meaningful discussions with staff to make sure that the elevations as proposed are consistent with the requirements of condition number six. Condition number seven is one that I would like to talk about and one that the neighboring landowner brought to your attention. shortly before this meeting. Bear with me a moment and I'm going to come right back to that. Condition number eight, again, is designed to protect the appearance of the streetscape and in all ways is acceptable, both acceptable to the applicant and consistent with the elevations and site plan that we've shared with you. Condition number seven is about pedestrian interconnectivity between this site, direct pedestrian interconnectivity between this site and the residential property located immediately to the west. And what it says is that that pedestrian connection shall be provided. For the applicant's sake, they're more than comfortable with that. No problem. We don't know where that connection would be along that common property line, but we do know that we wouldn't have a problem putting a gate in the fence to accommodate it whenever the design of that development to the west is completed. But what was raised by the representatives of that piece of property to the west, and which is a very good point, is nothing about the conditions on this approval should bind another property owner. It's not fair for us to agree to a condition that burdens and imposes an imposition on a neighboring property owner. And so for that reason, the neighbor has asked that you approve the, or excuse me, that you strike condition number seven altogether. that's fine with us. If that's the will of the council, that's an acceptable solution to us. If you wanted to see a revision to the condition that required this applicant's cooperation, subject to the agreement of the neighboring landowner, that would be fine with us as well. Please note that there doesn't have to be a condition for there to be pedestrian connectivity. If the two parties decide a year from now that that's beneficial for both, they can do it. It doesn't have to have been a condition as part of this process in order for that to happen. But Good point raised by our neighbor and one that we agree with wholeheartedly. And I've now shared with you my suggested solutions to that problem. I'm gonna pause for a second though and ask, does anybody have any questions about that nuance?

Okay. Sorry, I forgot to push my button.

The pedestrian connection, was that put on by staff or was that put on by the applicant?

So the applicant agreed to it. I believe it was derived from dialogue between staff and the applicant through the design process. And certainly the concept of pedestrian interconnectivity is a good one, a good policy. I don't disagree with that. And in fairness, perhaps we should have, but we didn't recognize until an hour ago that this was gonna impose some burden on our neighbor. It was never the intent to do so.

Thank you. Wanna make sure we're not out of, not approving something out of compliance.

Thank you. Um, there's a... We have another question here.

I guess I want to, uh, build off of Councilmember Lai's question. Um, and staff, I know you already presented this. Can you, can you tell us why this condition was added for this particular case?

Mr. Frank alluded to that staff is always looking for opportunities to have pedestrian connectivity between properties, and this is just another opportunity to do that. There's nothing about this condition that requires the adjacent property owner to connect to this. It just allows for the opportunity in the future if they so choose so.

Okay, so the condition isn't to build connectivity between the property, but to build it in a way that future connectivity is possible?

This property can only be conditioned to what you can have on site. So the condition that we proposed was let's allow for pedestrian connection to the north and at such time that the property to the north is redeveloped, they could choose to connect or not. But we wanted to make sure there was an opportunity for it.

Okay. Thank you.

So Councilmember Santaguida, in our site plan, we've got a significant buffer along that property line. You'll see a hedge line and then also a fence. And so what this practically means is a break in the hedge line somewhere and a gate in the fence somewhere or an opening in the fence somewhere. My understanding is, is that the neighboring property owner objects to us encouraging that pedestrian interconnectivity before they've had an opportunity to design their site and decide for sure or decide whether or not they want their site to have that pedestrian connection to ours. So while we could just say on our property, we'll put a gap in the fence and we'll put a gap in the hedge line that doesn't require the neighboring property owner to do anything. In fairness, if we do that, we're creating the reason and opportunity for people to walk back and forth. And that could be a burden on the neighbor. The neighbor's now communicated to you that that would be a burden on them. And so our posture here is we're certainly willing, we remain very willing to do it, but we don't remain willing to do it at the expense of or over the objection of our neighbor.

Joyner.

Do you have a rendering that includes what that property line would look like under your plans for the site? You mean the location of where that pedestrian... Well, I mean, we can see here like an aerial view, but earlier you showed us front-facing 2D renderings.

Yes, I did. And we have at times had a... No, I don't. I had an image that showed... the side view, cross view of that hedge line. But forgive me, I don't have it with me right now to share with you.

Well, so here's where I'm at on condition number seven. I understand why the adjacent property owner would not want connectivity. If they want to build a residential community and they say, you know, this is actually going to draw pedestrians in from a busy main road on College, they're going to come into your store and then they might try and pass through what is a residential neighborhood on what is not currently designed to be a pedestrian pathway, I can understand why they may say we actually are not looking to encourage that. If people want to come up University, that's a different story, but also that's a private road. So I'm not I appreciate, you know, the concept that you were encouraged to look for pedestrian access because that's just a general principle that we're trying to encourage in all city planning at this point. But I don't have a problem with removing condition seven unless there is somebody on staff who can explain to me that that would in some way be a violation of code as opposed to something that we had just encouraged.

Councilmember Joyner, it would not be a violation of code.

It probably makes sense for me to go ahead and talk now about the other condition that was proposed by our neighbors. And if it's all right with you, I'll engage on that while we're talking about the conditions here. So as I mentioned earlier, um, and as you understand, there is not a direct connection between the Southern end of the finger on this property.

You have a point of where we could, you could point it to us. Yeah. It's right there exactly where it is. Thank you.

You bet. There's not a direct connection between that end of this property and the public right of way that is university drive. The applicant has to do that. This site plan is one of the conditions. And so without question, the applicant is on the hook to establish a connection to the public right of way from this end of the property. If you approve this zoning, you're approving it with two points of access. The neighbor has asked that you include a condition that does two things. One, that requires this applicant to connect, to do whatever's necessary to connect. And when I say whatever's necessary, I mean acquire whatever legal rights are necessary by way of easement or otherwise. and physically construct the connection between this end of the property and the public right-of-way. And then the second thing that the neighbor has proposed that you include in the condition is a requirement that this applicant agree to pay for 50% of the cost of the improvements to that section of the right-of-way. With regard to the first prong of that request, I think it's already there. I think that the site plan and consistency with the site plan requires us to connect. That said, the applicant has no objection at all to including an additional condition that says the applicant shall establish a connection between the southern end of its property and the public section of University Drive. With regard to the details of how the cost of how that road is constructed, the parties are amidst a discussion about that. and what the neighbor has proposed is one of the possibilities, but perhaps more importantly, I don't think it's fair to ask you as the city to dictate what financial terms two developers will agree to with regard to a collaboration on development. And so to that end, I would say in response to that suggestion from our neighbor that we are agreeable, the applicant is agreeable to a condition that requires the applicant to connect the southern end of its property to the public section of University Drive and respectfully request that you decline to get involved in the economic factors that are at discussion between the two developers.

I think that's fair. All the years I've been down here, I don't think I've ever resolved the issue in regards with two private property owners. I'm going to resolve as to what it's going to cost you all. That's not us. I'm sorry. I understand. We can make the connection. We can make it as a condition, but you folks have to work out the financial aspects of your deal.

I should say, absolutely, that is the risk of this applicant. If for some reason this applicant were not able to connect the southern end of this property to University Drive, it would not be able to build the Wawa. The conditional proposal that we put in front of you requires us to do that. We know it requires us to do that. We think the site plan itself requires us to do that and glad to have an additional condition with verbiage that requires it again.

We have two questions here. Sure.

This question is probably for staff. The adjacent property owner, they refer to themselves in the communication that was emailed to council as the Glen G LLC. Have they already started talking with staff about a proposed development for that site?

They've submitted for a pre-TRC. There's a preliminary review and they've gone to design adjustments for some waivers for some technical standards.

Okay, but that property is already zoned such that they're probably not looking for a rezoning, is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay, the only observation I have about the fact that that property owner does not have to come for rezoning, and you do, respectfully, is that I don't think Wilmington is looking to build more gas stations as a community need, versus I think we are looking to build more housing as a community need. And that's just a general observation about this project and the neighbor's procedural stance and yours.

Yes, sir. Two things I'd share in response. I note that in our neighbors' communication to you, for their sake, they communicated plainly that they did not object to this use in this location. And second, as I understand it, the improvement of this road ultimately will be required for and will benefit both developments.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Yeah, I'm looking for a little clarity here. So condition seven is concerning the western portion of the subject property, correct?

Yes, sir. That's right.

And you're currently speaking on the southern entrance of the property that connects to University Drive.

Yes, sir. I put the cursor on that location.

So in the email that you referenced, your neighbor is also talking about the western part, but you're giving us the perspective of the neighbor on the southern part, right? Or does the email include that information as well? I didn't read the email, so I won't pretend like I did. I'll let you know that I did it.

No problem at all. And it is a couple of separate concepts with the same landowner. So where my cursor is located now is what we're referring to as the western side of this site.

Okay.

And this property located immediately to the west of it is the Glen. I'm just going to refer to it as the Glen.

Yeah.

At this end of the site, off the southern end, is a stub of private road that's called University Drive that I believe is also owned by the people who own the Glen. And so, same property owner, two different concepts. On the west side, they would prefer for us not to preemptively put a resident, excuse me, a pedestrian pass through. And on the south side, they are communicating to you the facts that an easement need be established for the benefit of this property and that the two parties are in discussion about how to achieve that.

Okay. All right. So I am following you.

And so earlier when you were talking about

Condition seven, you had two options and your second option was to allow us to postpone it until the neighbors create their site plan, right? Did you say that or did you say something remotely close to that?

Similar, yes, sir. Okay. So as the condition is currently recommended by the Planning Commission, it doesn't have a specific location. The location would be determined when the neighbors design. What I suggested was a possibility was either get rid of it or make it expressly subject to the cooperation and agreement of the neighbor to install it.

Of the neighbor to install it? Well, I thought you said where you two would compromise on installing it.

I did. Yes, sir. I said if it's not a condition at all, if it's not part of this zoning, there's nothing to prevent those two parties from creating the pedestrian connection in the future.

Right. But what I'm saying is we could make that condition that you all create that compromise of that gate, whether it be the western gate or the southern gate.

It wouldn't be at the southern end. The pedestrian access would just be on the west side of the property. What you have today from Planning Commission is basically what you just said. It's a condition that requires us to put it in and therefore requires our neighbor to live with it and the location of it to be in a place that makes sense based on our neighbor's site plan. In fairness, our neighbors said, we're not sure that we want that. In fact, we don't want that. We don't want a connection anywhere between a pedestrian connection anywhere between our property and this one. Um, and that again, in fairness makes complete sense. They haven't designed their site yet. And so they don't know how it's going to lay out and they don't know for sure whether they want people walking back and forth. They don't know if they want their residents to have a direct path to walk to the store, and they don't know if they want the customers of the store to have a direct path to walk into their, into their neighborhood. And so respecting that those details are not yet sorted out, we suggest either getting rid of that condition altogether or making our obligation to create that pedestrian cut through subject to a sign off by the neighbors that they wanted.

Brian, you want to chime in on that? I know you said that you don't feel like it would be a violation of the code, but.

We're going to encourage pedestrian connectivity any way we can. If we can have that opportunity in the future that they can come to terms with a connection, I think we would support that.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. um before i move on from the conditions to other aspects of this is there any any other questions about uh the verbiage connection condition i suggested for requiring connection between the southern end of the property and the uh the public party university drive so the bottom line is we put it as a condition

And for one reason or another, y'all can't come to a meeting of the minds. It doesn't happen.

We can't build a store.

That's the condition that we put on there.

Yes, sir.

So that's a condition of the rezoning. And so if it doesn't happen, it goes away. So it's up to you folks to work that out. That's right. That's fine. That's why we put conditions on properties. I know a lot of people don't understand that at times, but we do. So thank you. Ms. Santaguido.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So as I understand it, the southern end of this property and the connection to University Drive is inherent in condition number one in the document that we've provided. I think I would be interested in explicitly stating this condition since that specific connection to University Drive is not spelled out in number one. I would like to specifically include that as a condition from my perspective.

The applicant's amenable to doing just that. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Mayor Pacheco.

I don't want to prolong this thing, but Councilman Joyner did make a great point about um the need for more housing than the need for for a gas station and you know the area well and you alluded to it in your presentation so there's a bp just past the wells fargo right yes sir and then up the block There's another BP on the other side of the second cookout, right?

Sounds right. I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with it.

And then where? Is there another gas station in that block somewhere? Yeah, just a little further down on that new center, cinema? That's new center. New center. And so, I mean, why do I do the study for just Wilmington is just dying for another gas station? Because I don't know who you talk to or who you're listening to, but We're getting, I know where I'm at. I hear a lot of complaints about, at this point, about cookouts, gas stations, car washes, and storage places. And the storage places and the car washes were, a couple years back, were very high on the list. But cookout is coming in fast. Gas stations are coming in fast. And so just while we got you here, I would love to hear the input as to why Wawa would be needed right there.

And so I'm going to invite either Jeff or Paimon to answer your question after I give a brief response. OK. My brief response is, rest assured that Wawa knows what they're doing when it comes to site selection. And they would not be seeking to put a store here unless they were confident that the demand was there to utilize it. demand equals community interest. And so this is a more full service establishment than the other ones that you identified that are located nearby, provides a much greater range of services and a different a different type or level of service. And beyond that brief answer, let me invite my client to respond as well. This is Payman Nadimi. Excuse me.

Thank you, Frank. Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, Mr. Mayor, council members, I'm Paymon Nadeemi.

I am a project engineer with WAWA.

As Mr. Frank mentioned, we do our due diligence when we do our site selection. And this site we identified as a great site for us and for the community to serve the community with a WAWA. And as Mr. Frank mentioned, The Wawa is a little bit different than some of the gas stations that you mentioned. We have a full offering that differs from them a bit.

Well, I think when we had the Wawa going on 16th Street, that was the same response then. So, I mean, what do you got? Got glitter in the gas, or you got the up-to-date snacks. What does the Wawa have that you can't get between the BP's cookout I mean, what are you offering?

Well, the Wawa, as you mentioned, does offer the fuel offering like the BP does, but we offer also fresh, made-to-order food, which the other gas stations do not offer. We also have cleaner restrooms. We think a much cleaner store, better operation, and of course the convenience store aspect of our operation. Thank you. How many people are you looking to employ at this Wawa? A typical Wawa employs between 35 to 40 associates. That's another difference between a standard gas station like a BP that may employ three to five associates.

Now, are you paying a livable wage?

Yes, sir. All of those 35 to 40 employees will be WAWA employees, so they are part of the WAWA corporation company. They get full benefits, just like corporate staff do.

Thank you. We have a question from Council Member Quintana.

Thank you, Mayor. My question to you is, you stated that you do your due diligence as to where to put a Wawa and community. So I'm curious, do you do a survey of sorts when you're doing your due diligence to say, hey, this community wants this here? I'm just curious.

Our site selection process involves a number of factors. We look at traffic counts. We look at demographics. We look at the community in the area and whether it can support a convenience store with fresh food. So a number of factors that go into it.

but not a survey with communities around that area. So you're not going to apartment complexes or the university and saying, hey, would you like to see a Wawa here? So not a true survey. You're looking at all of those things that you talked about, right? Correct. But not a survey survey.

We do not typically reach out to, do not do a survey as you mentioned.

Right. Okay. Thank you so much.

Council Member Joyner.

And you're going to be adjacent to a university. I assume you sell alcohol?

Beer and wine, correct.

And do you sell nicotine products?

I'm sorry, sir?

Nicotine products, cigarettes? Yes, correct. And do you sell Delta 8, 9, 10, 420 cannabis products?

If it's legal and allowed by law, yes.

Got it. Thanks.

Council Member Clinton Quintana. I did want to offer that as is the case with every conditional zoning, there was a community meeting component to this where everyone within a meaningful radius was invited to attend and participate and share comments. This one was exceptionally lightly attended. The only folks who showed up were representatives of the owner of the BP gas station. and representatives of the development of the Glen property. We did not hear from those folks or from anyone at Planning Commission or otherwise any objection to this use in this location. We heard some specific concerns and questions about traffic and the like, but have yet to hear from anyone to say that they would prefer not to see a Wawa in this location.

Mayor Poitier? I'm sorry, go ahead.

That's a good point. Going through the documents, that public hearing occurred in January or February of 2025?

The community meeting.

Yes, the community meeting was January, February 2025.

The public hearing before the Planning Commission was last month. Yes. You're right. It's been some time involved in getting the site plan the way that we wanted it to be. There's definitely some back and forth about how to work the layout and make it the best that it can be, a number of iterations back and forth with staff. Once we generally settled on those, we had to go through the process of appealing to and obtaining variances from the Board of Adjustment before we could move forward with the Planning Commission and with you. And so, yes, it's a concept that's been on the table for some time.

I mean, sometimes, I mean, I approve some of these things, and then a year and a half later, and it comes to fruition, and I said, oh, wow.

I forgot I even approved that. I was a part of that.

So, I mean, with such a low turnout, and, I mean, I'm not saying, I saw the names that attended. I'm certain that they didn't forget that this was in the works.

But, I mean, not getting a true...

representation from that community kind of, you know, you can, it's fair to say that they're not aware of what's going to happen there. They, they don't see anything at this time. I mean, not until you put a sign out front that says, if we approve it, Wawa's coming and then you may get some, uh, reactive commentary about it. But at this point,

Well, the same people who received notice of the community meeting also would have received notice of the planning commission meeting and of this meeting this evening. And so is that your concern, that they may not be aware?

It's not really a concern. It's just pointing out a fact that, you know, most things that happen are in hindsight. It's a reactive measure, you know. If they do think, wow, Wawa here and a BP here and BP there, if we approve this thing tonight, it'd be too late. And then they'll have the issues with us as a council of too many gas stations, too many cookouts, too many car washes, too many storage facilities.

That's all I'm saying. I understand.

Council Member Lal.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My question is about the site plan. You're proposing 43 parking spaces when the maximum is 22. Tell me about why you believe you need that many parking spaces.

I'm going to invite our engineer, Jeremy Yee, to answer your question. As to the why, I think he can also provide some insight on what goes with that. If there are additional parking spaces, what design parameters have to be incorporated to support them.

Good evening, Jeremy Yi with Kim Lee Hong with Civil Engineering for this project. So Wawa store typically they require about 50 parking spaces plus minus based on the parking study that we have done on the assisting Wawa stores. As Pema had mentioned that they employ roughly 35, 40 employees. So think about it, when you have the shift change, you have employees coming, and then you have another shift of employees coming to work. So you have those parking spaces for employees as well as for the customers. And based on the parking study, it came out about 50 spaces for this site, a little bit smaller. So we're able to come up with 43 spaces.

Okay, because we started putting those maximums on because we didn't want to encourage more and more impervious surfaces. When I see the random six parking spaces out there, I think that would be a great spot for relocating trees or something else.

Yeah one additional thing is we uh for the surplus we call it you know beyond what the required parking spaces we'll be using pervious pavement uh which which allow you know water to infiltrate to the ground and not the normal pavement surface.

That's great, thank you. And also, thank you for explaining your process. I know that you have fulfilled all the requirements that we have for community engagement. And so that is not a concern of mine, but if there is some concern from council, maybe we could go back and look at those requirements because they followed the requirements.

Are the required 22 spaces, is that a minimum or is that a maximum?

I might have looked at my packet too fast, but I'm pretty sure you went over the maximum.

And I know that we incorporated pervious pavement because we had some more than contemplated by the code, but as it was written on the plan here, it wasn't clear to me.

The plan, when we reviewed, they were over the maximum required, and the ordinance states that with a parking study, they can go over the maximum provided they submit the parking study as they did, and all parking spaces over that number are constructed of pervious material.

okay so staff is yeah we reviewed it yes ma'am and and been commented on several times during the revisions yep thanks and i can i can offer also the practical response there that this is a very well studied and practiced model this is not the first wawa that's been that's been built by any stretch. And so the parking needs of the operator are exceptionally precise. And there is no interest on the part of the operator to create more parking spaces that are necessary for their for their day to day operations. And so I don't claim to understand that systems engineering, but I do recognize that over the hundreds and hundreds of stores that have been built, that there's a good recognition there of what's truly needed.

Understood, yeah. When I was on Planning Commission, I used to tell people that these companies wouldn't put tens of millions of dollars into their projects if they didn't understand the demand for the service that they're providing, like storage facilities and car washes and gas stations. People use them, so that's why they're there.

That's a very good point, a very good point.

Mr. Frank, when was the Furniture Fair built?

I'm sorry, Mayor Saffo, I don't know.

Does it currently have stormwater regs on it?

No.

So this is an improvement?

Absolutely. There are several pre-existing non-conforming uses in this bubble of land, but this site is entirely paved. The only portion of this site that is currently pervious is the finger that stretches out to the south.

Good. Thank you.

I would like to leave the topic of conditions and say a few other things about the proposal, but I don't want to do so if there are other questions. All right. Thank you. We did hear through community engagement some questions about traffic, as we always do, right? Our infrastructure in our city is definitely experiencing the reality of a rapidly growing population. And this use is not particularly intense when compared to the uses that would be permitted by right. And that's what this chart is showing you. Again, that furniture fair store hadn't been occupied for some time. We don't compare this to a furniture store. Whatever is going to be developed on this site is going to be something else. And so we compare it to what sort of uses could be permitted under the buy right O&I zoning. And that's what leads to the numbers that you see on the screen and the more comprehensive chart that's included in the staff report. An important component of this, and this Councilman Spears speaks to a comment you made earlier, is the traffic engineers recognize that with this particular use, 75% of the people who go in and out of this store are gonna be people who were driving by anyway. that it's passed by traffic. And so you don't typically get up off the couch, get in the car and drive to the gas station and then go back home, right? It's rarely a one-stop destination or in the traffic engineering parlance, an original trip, something that you would do solely for the sake of going there. And so that's an important piece of the equation as well, but it also speaks to the expectation of demand for the use as one is going, particularly as one is going south down College Road to be able to go right in and right out to a facility like this. This is also from the traffic engineer. The reason I've included this slide is just to give you an idea of what the traffic engineers tell us about the breakdown of how people will likely utilize those two points of access. Because it's a right in right only at the primary access, that will catch the southbound traffic and will be the easy way for people to come in and leave the store coming from the north and going to the south. If anyone wishes to go north on College Road from leaving the site, it will make sense for them to utilize University Drive and go to the traffic signal. Similarly, if someone is coming from the south and working their way north on College Road and wants to visit the site, a logical pattern would be for them to turn left at the light on University Drive and enter that way accordingly. This is consistent with the comprehensive plan. That was well covered by staff and in the staff report. The only thing I really want to specifically address there is there was one noted area of inconsistency and that was related to mixed use of the site. This is a 1.7 acre site and so realistically, while mixed use is absolutely desirable, I encourage you to think about mixed use beyond the boundaries of any one and a half acre lot. It's not realistic to incorporate office, restaurant, and residential space on such a small lot by itself. Think about mixed use instead in the context of this section of the community, which is to say, do we have other uses that complement a food store and fuel sale facility in the immediate vicinity that could be a short car trip away or even a pedestrian walk away? The staff, through much consideration, careful work with the applicant and work through several evolutions of a plan, have reached a recommendation of approval. The Planning Commission recommended unanimously approval when they considered this. I respectfully request that you do as well. I would ask that the conditions that came out of Planning Commission be revised in the manner in which we discussed tonight. And if you'd like me to come back up and talk about this in detail or write them out, of course, I'm glad to do so. Do you have any other questions for me at this time?

There were two driveway cuts on College Road and we're eliminating one of those cuts? Yes, sir. Is that correct? Yes, sir. So there's only one cut in? Yes, sir. Right in, right out?

Yes. I think you can see it on the image that's on your screen now.

I just want to clarify that because it's always been a concern of ours to try to reduce the number of driveways on major thoroughfares and I appreciate you folks do that. So the major egress out of the site will be the condition we will put on that southern end.

Yes, sir. That's right.

To get to the stoplight.

You got it. Okay. Very good. Okay.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

I'll take you up on your offer to whip up a little condition about the, about attaching, connecting to the public portion of University Drive. I did a little amateur. you know, writing, but I think I'd rather have you write that up for, if you don't mind, to propose that condition in the way your client would like to see it, so we can review what would be amenable to them. Yes, ma'am.

I would keep it simple. I would say the applicant is required to establish vehicular connection between the southern end of the property and the University Drive public right-of-way.

Okay, sounds good. And amenable to just keeping it simple and deleting condition number seven.

If I may, maybe I can, Mr. Franke, if you wouldn't mind, you can come over here and I can write that down, but what I've got down so far is to remove Section 7, which is the pedestrian connection, and what I've modified actually instead of under Section 1 would be under Section 4, which says the use and development of subject property shall be in substantial compliance with the site plan and elevations as submitted and accepted by City Council on August 4th, 2026, specifically including but not limited to the connection to the private portion of University Drive. And you can, if you want to amend that and get more specific, I can add to that. But that's, those are the, that was my understanding of what you said you would agree to that Council had mentioned.

Yeah, I think it's certainly fine with me to put that in for as opposed to an independent condition. I do think what you want to require of us is that we connect to the public portion of University Drive.

Through the private port, yes.

Yes, but... Yes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, would you like me to come over there? Yeah.

You got it. Whenever you're done. Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you. I'm nearby. Should any questions arise during your discussion? Very good. Appreciate your consideration.

Thank you. This time I'm going to open up the public hearing and ask if anyone in the public would like to speak on item PH1. Madam Clerk, have you received any additional comments or received anything about PH1? No, sir, I have not.

No, sir.

You have not?

No, sir.

Okay, very good. Are there any other questions from council with respect to the item? Okay. I'm going to also make comment that whoever makes the motion must read a consistent statement for the record. And seeing nobody wants to speak on item PH1, I'm going to close the public hearing and ask for the wishes of council. We have a motion to approve by Councilmember Lyle, second by Councilmember Andrews. Councilmember Lyle, will you please read the consistent statement for the record, please?

I move to approve the proposed amendment to rezone property located at 524 South College Road from O&I Office and Institutional District to CBCD Community Business Conditional District for a convenience store and fuel station and find it to be consistent with the relevant policies and the comprehensive plan based on the application materials and the information provided at the public hearing and in the staff report and to find approval of the rezoning request as and in the public interest for the following reasons. The proposed rezoning is compatible with the existing development pattern and will improve access to goods and services in the area. And I would like to add that we delete condition number seven and revise condition number four to include, to specify.

I've got that language. If you want me to read it, I've got that language now. Condition number four would now read, the use and development of the subject property shall be in substantial compliance with the site plan and elevations as submitted and accepted by City Council on August 4th, 2026, specifically including but not limited to the connection between the southern end of the property and the University Drive public right of way.

Beautiful. Thank you, Madam Attorney.

I'll prepare those revisions and get them to Madam Clerk tomorrow.

All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

I'm opposed. My tablet's not working, but I vote nay.

Okay. We have two nays.

Can I stop working too?

Passes five to two on first reading. Is there a motion to waive second reading? Motion made by Council Member Santaguita, seconded by Council Member Andrews. Any further discussion? All those in favor of that motion please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Item passes unanimously.

Okay. Thank you. That brings us to our next item of business, which is item PH2, which is an ordinance modifying an existing RBCD regional business conditional district located at 1415 and 1417 42nd Street to allow additional commercial uses. Again, I'm going to note that whoever makes the motion must read a consistent statement for the record. And at this time, I'd like to recognize our city manager, Ms. Becky Hogg. Ms. Hogg.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mayor and part-time members of council. This item will be presented by Planner. Excuse me.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of Council. For your review this evening, I present a conditional district modification for the Regional Business Conditional District located at 1415 and 1417 42nd Street. This was the applicant applied for this in May. This has been reviewed by staff. This has been heard by the Planning Commission and now is at the second public hearing. This site is owned RBCD. The existing permitted uses are nightclub, personal services, and retail plant shop. The proposed modification is to allow additional commercial uses including restaurant, food catering services, artisan food and beverage production, small-scale general retail, offices, studio, and recreational facilities. This is the previously approved site plan when this first came before you in, I believe, 2022. There is no changes to the site plan at this time. And any future changes that may come would have to be approved and reviewed by staff. This is located near Trolley Stop Park at Capital Ford of Wilmington and the Audubon Community. Here we have views of the subject property looking north and south of 42nd Street. It's currently zoned RBCD, Regional Business Conditional District. Surrounding this to the south and west, there are commercial businesses. To the north and east, there are single-family residential and single-family dwellings. Staff has reviewed this application's alignment with the Create Wilmington Comprehensive Plan. The plan's growth strategies map identify areas of opportunity with corresponding policies to guide new development. This is located within a suburban commercial retrofit and neighborhood scale infill development and between two mixed use place centers. Staff has assessed this application with these policies and found modest support for the application. Key policies that support the conditional district modification promote compatible infill, commercial development, and a mix of uses that will improve access to good services and amenities. At this time, no comments or testimony have been received in support or opposition of this rezoning, or of this modification, rather. To summarize, this would allow for additional commercial scale, neighborhood scale commercial with minimal adverse impacts on the existing built environment. The proposal would not result in an expansion of the existing building footprint. The comprehensive plan promotes compatible infill, neighborhood commerce, and improving access to goods. Staff finds this application to align with the comprehensive plan, particularly those policies mentioned. Staff finds this request to be reasonable in public interest and consistent with the said policies. Staff and Planning Commission both recommended approval of this. And does Council have any questions?

Do we have any questions of our staff?

Okay. Thank you, sir. And I believe the applicants are here as well. I don't think they have a presentation, but they'd be happy to answer any questions.

The applicants are here?

Yes, sir. Okay, very good. Thank you, sir.

I'd just like to recognize the applicant. Is the applicant here? Come on down.

good evening mr mayor council members my name is matt hearn i'm one of the owners of the property at 1415 and 1417 south 42nd street thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight we've been part of the 42nd street community since 2004. during that time we've worked hard to be good neighbors we've maintained our property and we've operated businesses that contribute in a positive way we feel to the area. This request is simply to create flexibility for future tenants. Um, basically we just like the ability to bring in other compatible uses without having to come back here each time we need, we have a new tenant or a vacancy in our, one of our spots. Um, we'd appreciate the planning commission's recommendation and, uh, respectfully ask for your support this evening. If you have any questions.

Any questions of the applicant?

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

We now open up the public hearing and ask if anybody in the public wishes to speak on item PH2. Thank you so much. Madam Clerk, have you received any additional comments?

Yes, sir, I have received a couple comments. The first one is from Drew Stevens of 4123 Park Avenue. And it reads, I would like to say that I am in full support of the business. I am a homeowner two blocks away from this business, and I could not be happier with the prospect of a locally owned and operated food establishment. I would also like to note that the business owners are also involved with the Sand Spur, which is at Carolina Beach. It's a Carolina Beach restaurant. And they have a fantastic reputation for the fresh food, but more importantly, they have an amazing reputation for treating their kitchen staff and employees very well. I think they will be perfect stewards to operate an eatery in Midtown. Thank you, Drew Stevens. The second one is from Travis Beatty of 1414 42nd Street. and it reads, I own the property directly across the street from Reggie's and fully support their rezoning request. Reggie is a local institution and the current owners have been assets to the neighborhood and community. They are excellent neighbors and I trust whatever they have planned for their new business for it will be great, will be a great addition and I look forward to seeing it come to fruition. Thank you for your time. And the final one is from Elaine Morrison of 1208 42nd Street. And it reads, I support this request. Reggie has been around for a long time. The owners have reached out and formed the surrounding neighbors of their plans. Thank you, Elaine Morrison. And that's it.

Very good.

All right.

Any other questions from council? If not, I'm going to close the public hearing and ask for the wishes of council. We have a motion to approve by Mayor Pro Tem Spears, second by Councilmember Joyner. Mayor Pro Tem, could you please read a consistent statement for the record, sir?

Yes, sir. I move to approve the proposed amendment to rezone property located at 1415 and 1417 42nd Street to modify an existing RBCD regional business conditional district to allow for additional commercial uses and find it to be consistent with the relevant policies in the comprehensive plan based on application materials and the information provided at the public hearing. and in the staff report, and to find approval of the rezoning request is reasonable and in the public interest for the following reasons. The proposed rezoning will allow for additional neighborhood scale commercial uses that are compatible with the area.

Very good.

All right. Ready to vote? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? That item passes unanimously on first reading. Is there a motion to waive second reading? Motion made by Council Member Joyner, second by Mayor Pro Tem Spears. Any further discussion? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Item passes unanimously on first as well, the second reading.

Thank you, and good luck.

Our next item is item PH3, which is an ordinance granting a special use permit for a private recreation facility located at 4950 Holly Tree Road. I think I have a note here that staff has received the request to withdraw from the applicant. So has this been withdrawn?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Do we need to take any kind of formal vote or action on it? No, sir.

That just means the current terms of the SUP are still in place.

Okay. Very good. Thank you. We'll move on to our next item of business. One more. Sorry, Councilmember Joyner.

I just wanted to clarify. So they've abandoned their application for a special use permit. We continued it last time, but they have now abandoned that request.

Correct.

They have abandoned the modification request. Yes, sir.

Got it. Thank you.

So that brings us to our next item of business, which is our ordinances. Item 01A is an ordinance appropriating funds to the Fleet Maintenance slash Replacement Fund in the amount of $1,004,295 for purchase of a 2027 Pierce Enforcer Pumper Engine from Atlantic Emergency Solutions Incorporated of Manassas, Virginia. And then item 01B, which is accompanying this, which is the resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement to purchase the 2027 Pierce Enforcer Pumper Engine from Atlantic Emergency Solutions Incorporated of Manassas, Virginia for $1,004,295. That's a lot of money for a pumper, but I'm going to recognize the City Manager, Ms. Hogg. Ms. Hogg.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Members of Council. This item will be presented by Assistant Fire Chief, Derek Mickler.

Hope you got some pictures.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council. Appreciate the opportunity to come speak to you tonight. Would respectfully ask for your consideration to approve two items tonight. One would be to allow for the appropriation for the fund balance to fund this, and the second would be to allow the city managers to authorize the purchase of this engine. Just a little back history summary. So we work with both fleet as well as with finance for the past several years to have a very robust and organized fleet fund replacement plan that allows for us to plan ahead and try to stay on schedule. Of course, COVID impacted that quite a bit with supply and demand and such. And currently the build time for an engine pumper is about 48 months. So our plan originally was to place that order and to have it for 48 months out. Fortunately for us, the dealer reached out to us recently because they had an order that was canceled and they share with us that if we would like to take that spot in line, we could now receive this as early as May of next year. So that's pretty much the background on it. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

And we're replacing an old pumper that we have, or is this an additional pumper that you focused on?

This will not be an additional pumper. This will be replacing one. So a 2006 model would be surplused, and the current one that this one was replacing is a 2016 that will now go into reserve status.

And where would this be stationed at? What particular station?

Station 8 on Eastwood Road. So this will also cover the UNCW campus, Randall Parkway, South College Road, Market Street area. Okay, very good. Thank you, sir.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Thank you. What are the wishes of council in respect to the ordinance, which I have read into the record? We have a motion to approve by Councilmember Santa Guida, second by Councilmember Andrews. Any further discussion? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? That item passes unanimously on first reading. We need to take a second reading. Is there a motion to waive second reading? on the item. We have a motion by Councilmember Santa Guida, seconded by Councilmember Joyner. Discussion? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? That item passes unanimously on first as well as second reading. Now we go to the resolution, which I've already read into the record. What is the wishes of Council in respect to the resolution? We have a motion to approve by Councilmember Andrews, seconded by Councilmember Santa Guida. Any further discussion? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? That item passes unanimously. That brings us to our next item, excuse me, excuse me, of business, which is item 02A, which is a resolution authorizing the city manager to accept the North Carolina Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Financial Assistance Program grant. That's the resolution. And then we'll go to item 02B, which is the ordinance making supplemental appropriations in the amount of $1,475,982 for the North Carolina Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Financial Assistance Program Grant. Again, I'm going to recognize City Manager, Ms. Becky Hall. Ms. Hall.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of Council. We'll have a few speakers tonight, but we will start with Assistant Director of Asset and Property Management, Sally Thigpen.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council. I'm just going to come down here just a little bit. So for your consideration tonight are two items, the resolution and ordinance to accept this grant and appropriate the $1.4 million in funding. This award represents a major investment in Wilmington's urban forest and gives us the tools to accelerate our proactive management efforts. This is a no match assistance package funded through the Federal Inflation Reduction Act and administered by the North Carolina Forest Service. The work must occur. within the federally assigned Inflation Reduction Act project areas, which covers 36% of the city. The criteria is focused on areas that experience disproportionate environmental impacts, and this grant allows us to invest where improved canopy will have the greatest benefit. We're actively exploring options to fund the remaining 64% of the city's street tree inventory. I'm so excited about the momentum that this grant brings for us. It's going to catapult our program forward, modernizing our data systems, strengthening long term planning and enabling more sophisticated, proactive approach to managing the urban forest. The scope of this project includes the street tree inventory. We don't currently have a completed inventory. And so why is this important? The urban forest master plan identified the inventory as the top priority action because we cannot manage what we cannot measure. A street tree inventory counts every tree and every planting space using GPS. It is performed by professional third party ISA certified arborists. And it includes data about every tree, like species composition, what kind of trees and where, condition assessment, how many of our trees are healthy and which ones are hazardous, and helps us with maintenance needs to prioritize where we focus our resources and energy. so that we can be more proactive to prevent tree failure and damage to public and private property. This inventory gives us a baseline and informs all the other components of the grant. It'll include funding for contracted tree planting, pruning, removals, and stump grinding, a new management software that brings us to the professional standard used by many other municipalities across the country, similar to how we manage streets, lights, sidewalks, stormwater, and other critical infrastructure. Trees are a managed city asset. It also funds the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees for two years for their volunteer planting and maintenance programs. Ultimately, this grant positions Wilmington to manage its urban forests more consistently across all neighborhoods, not just where the complaints are occurring. So over the past few weeks, we've received many questions from the public about how we maintain Wilmington's urban forest. And we're going to give you an update on that. But before we shift gears, I just want to see if there are any questions about the grant itself.

Yes. Council Member Santaguido.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sally, I have a question about how this will be used, because I think you said we can use this in 36% of the city.

Are we purchasing software for the tree inventory, or is that software that we already have? That'll be purchased as part of the grant.

Will we be able to use that same software as part of the inventory for the remaining 64% of the city? My question is, can we use the software for the whole city, or do we just use it for this one portion?

It would be difficult to separate that function. So yes, if we're able to complete the remainder, we would be able to use that

So we can use the software that we purchased with this grant?

Correct.

We just can't specifically inventory the trees outside of that 36% as part of this grant? Exactly. Okay. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. So next we're going to take just a few minutes to walk through several of the key components of our urban forestry program. including what we do, how we prioritize and scheduled tree work, the differences between Laurel Oaks and Live Oaks, how we assess tree health, our stump removal process, how we choose replacement species and communicate with the public. These operational elements are all connected and together they form our citywide strategy for maintaining the urban forest. So we maintain trees on all public property. There is an estimated 40,000 street trees, plus all of our park trees, all of the trees along our Greenway Trail system. Our team's responsible for everyday pruning, responding to more than 500 citizen requests each year, emergency response, coordination with our partners. So for example, anytime we're doing work on a NCDOT road, we are coordinating our schedule and traffic plans. We're also supporting the Planning and Development Department and Assess Design and Construction and their team on our capital project planning. So who's doing all of this important work? You can see our asset and property management director there, Robin Slade. We have nine tree trimmers, our city arborist and assistant city arborist. This is great for us because two of these positions are required to have credentials of ISA certified arborist and ISA tree risk assessment qualifications. We also have an ISA municipal specialist on the team. Having two ensures that we're making informed professional decisions about tree health and safety. And now we have a landscape superintendent who's also a certified arborist. And you may not know, but I have a degree in forestry and previously served as a certified arborist and an urban forester. So my very first job out of college was working for a city as a tree planting coordinator. So you can tell that I care a lot about this work and the positive impact that it makes on the community and working with this team. So what's the big deal about ISA-certified arborists? This is the international gold standard for tree experts, and it's one of the most respected credentials in the tree care industry because it demonstrates expertise, professionalism, and a commitment to best practices that this community expects and deserves. They are required to follow ANSI A300 tree care standards. They're trained to accurately diagnose tree health issues and follow a strict code of ethics to recommend appropriate treatments and avoid unnecessary removals. So what makes this team exceptional is not just their credentials. They're passionate about their jobs and about trees. And this is a tough job. It's not just physically demanding, but it's highly technical. They're working at heights with chainsaws in all kinds of weather. There's very little room for error in an urban situation. So we're very lucky to have this team. So with that, I'm gonna turn this over to Ben Misla, our landscape superintendent and former assistant city arborist, who's gonna walk you through the next section of this presentation. Thank you.

Thanks, Sally. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, council members. So I'm gonna walk you through what Sally just outlined on the previous slide. To start out, there's been a lot of confusion about what we do on the urban forestry team. We service city trees, so largely that is street trees, trees between the sidewalk and the street, as well as city properties. We, on a day-to-day basis, we're out there pruning trees, removing trees, planting trees, things like that. So those all start, the process starts with a service request. There's two basic categories of service requests, reactive and proactive. Our proactive requests come from city arborists who walking around see trees that need attention or other departments who bring those issues to our attention. And then the second category would be public requests. So those are submitted by members of the public who want us to take a look at a tree in front of their house or that they drive by or something like that. Those would be the reactive requests that we're servicing. So from there, we get those requests, we go out and we do a site assessment. So we're going out and we're looking at the trees and assessing what they might need. We will, after we visit, figure out what the tree needs. We'll contact the requester. You know, usually that's a citizen or somebody internally and let them know our outcome, what we decided needs to happen with that tree. Then we'll schedule the tree for work. Generally, we work oldest to newest to just in the interest of being fair to everyone. Of course, that's influenced by how hazardous is the tree. Is it something that's a hazard immediately and we need needs direct attention or can it wait a little while? And then to tie back into what Sally talked about, having our street tree inventory is really going to help us increase efficiency and better prioritize what areas need attention. Because right now we do our best, but we don't have a full view of what's going on with our trees in the city. So the assessment. When we go out to look at trees, like Sally mentioned, the city arborist and assistant city arborist are track. Qualified, meaning they know how to look at trees and identify issues with trees. So they're looking at, is the tree healthy? Are there signs of decay? Are there other hazards or are there other issues with the tree that could cause it to be a hazard? Is it a risk to people or property? A tree in the middle of a field, no matter how and what poor shape it's in, is not a hazard because there's nothing near it that can be hurt. So we're looking, is it next to a playground? Is it over a sidewalk where cars park downtown where people walk? And then is it likely to fail during normal weather conditions? So here that would be any type of weather other than hurricanes or an ice storm or something like that. That is an exceptional event. We can't plan for those. We can't prune trees to account for those. All bets are off in a major storm. And then what is the outcome? Can we prune the tree to reduce the risk of failure if it does have some sort of a hazard? Or is it not possible to to properly prune that tree or take other actions, in which case, unfortunately, we do have to remove it. Contrary to some belief, we do like trees, we want to save trees, we do our best to do so. But at a certain point, we're not able to do that. And we do recommend removal of those trees. So then that's, you know, what action are we taking? We do try to notify adjacent, the property owner, especially if it's a residential area, we will let that property owner know that we plan to prune their tree or remove their tree and notify the neighborhood as well. We've been working with our communications team who will speak after me about our new processes that we're improving. We've always done some communication, but we are trying to be better about communicating with the public to notify them of tree work. To aid in our assessments, we are looking into getting a sonic tomograph, which measures the inside of a tree. We already have a pretty good idea of what's going on inside that tree. but this is to help confirm or disconfirm our ideas of what's happening in there. So this measures, it uses sound waves and it measures the density of the wood and then provides an image of the inside of that tree saying there's a hollow spot here or it's weak wooded here and that can help us make a decision as to what needs to happen with that tree. So not all trees are created equal. This is a slight test here does anybody know which there's two trees here one is a laurel oak and one is a live oak any guesses it's the one on the left is a live oak thank you for playing along because that was perfect They're very difficult to tell apart unless you're a trained arborist or have some experience in forestry. They look very similar. They're both in the oak family. They're both widely planted around the city of Wilmington. The laurel oaks were widely planted many years ago. I do want to take a slight sidebar for any tree nerds. When I say laurel oak, there are two different species that are scientific names, Quercus hemispherica and Quercus laurifolia. I'm referring to them both as laurel oak because for our intents and purposes, they react very similarly in an urban environment. But between the laurel oak and the live oak, they are very different. They're both very large from a distance. They look very, very similar. So to get into some of those differences, this is fairly brief, but laurel oaks are fast growing. That's why they were planted about 100, 50 to 100 years ago, people planted them all over Wilmington because there were very few trees in the city. And these provided a lot of shade very quickly. Trees have a couple different strategies. When they grow fast, they don't put a lot of energy into fighting off disease, pests, insects, fungi, things like that. That's kind of the trade-off there. They also generally have weaker wood, so they're more susceptible to storms. They generally have very big, heavy limbs that can break in storms. And they're shorter-lived. They're generally around 100 years in an urban environment. Compare that with live oak, a little bit slower growing. So you don't get a big canopy that provides shade and the benefits of big trees as quickly. But they are better resistant to disease. They're better storm adapted. The wood in general is stronger. And they're longer lived. They can live hundreds or even 1,000 or more years. So pretty different trees. And I don't want to imply that laurel oaks are bad trees. They're just bad in an urban environment, over a sidewalk, over parking, over a house, over a playground, something like that. When we replace trees, we try to select the right trees. So we are not planting laurel oaks now. We're trying to correct mistakes from the past. So seeing beyond the leaves. Looking at a laurel oak, and this is a picture of a laurel oak, that looks at first glance like a pretty healthy tree, lots of green leaves. That was the main trunk of that tree. So trees can transmit their nutrients and water through just the very outside layer of if you think of it as a straw like that one has been all hollowed out. It only needs that outer layer to continue transporting nutrients and water to those leaves. So the tree does look healthy. Those limbs are very long, they're very heavy, and as you can see just from this picture, there is a lot of decay towards the middle of that tree. All those limbs are a hazard to fall. We don't want them falling on a car, a house, a person walking by. And knowing all that does help us make decisions in terms of the way we look at a laurel oak is not the same way we look at a live oak. When we go out to assess them, a laurel oak we know is more likely to fail during a storm. So we treat those two species very differently as we treat all species differently. Unfortunately, we do have accidents. Accidents happen. In 2025, that's calendar year 2025, we had 142 emergency calls we responded to, the urban forestry team. Most of those are during or after storms, but they can happen at any time, even during calm weather. We have seen six incidents to property damage in the last two years. And the reason we do proactive maintenance, whether that's pruning or removals, is to prevent more of those incidents from happening. We like I said before, we do love trees, we want to keep them, we want to plant more of them. But at the end of the day, a trees the benefits that a tree provides like shade and wildlife habitat is not worth the risk to a life. It's not worth harming somebody who happens to be walking by or driving their car by. So in the removal process, if we do have to remove a tree, stumps have been an issue in the past. After Hurricane Florence, there was quite the backlog up until pretty recently, hundreds of stumps backlogged. We are caught up now. We have just a couple dozen, three dozen, I believe, stumps that are not since Hurricane Florence, much more recent. So that's the good news. I know there's been questions about grinding stumps right after tree removal. We can't do that because of logistics of getting equipment there. We don't know how long these jobs are going to take exactly. And then also we do need to mark utilities. We coordinate with utility companies to make sure we know what's underground when we grind that stump. When we remove a tree, we generally will destroy those markings unintentionally, so we have to get it marked after the tree is removed. Any tree that's removed after the stump goes, we do a replacement. We always try to replace every tree that we remove as a general rule. We do have to do that during the appropriate planting season, which here is generally November through February. And we do like to wait about six months, if possible, to replant trees because it allows the soil to settle, the stump grindings to decompose, and it gives the new tree the best chance at a good start to life. So just a little bit more about tree replacement. Like I said, every tree we take down, we do try to replace with the caveat that we don't want to repeat issues that we've had in the past. We want to make sure we're not putting a big tree directly under power lines. Unfortunately, power lines are here to stay and Duke Energy will prune those trees if they're right under the power lines and they grow up towards the lines. So what we do there is we'll try to replace it with a smaller tree or preferably multiple smaller trees, or we will try to move it to a new location in the same area where it's not affecting utilities. And then we also do offer residents the opportunity, if they would like a tree, any resident of the city is welcome to contact us online through the portal and request a tree. That's a service that we do provide to any resident at any time. If we can put a tree there, we will. And then we do also use a planting contract each year that helps us. We've had over a thousand trees planted in 2025. So we do use the contractor to help us get those trees in the ground. In terms of selecting trees, we do try to not repeat the same issues we had in the past. So we do try to correct the spacing, making sure we're putting the right tree in the right place. If it's a narrow right of way, not a lot of room between sidewalk and street, we're not going to put a big tree there. We're going to put a small tree so that we're not damaging the sidewalk and the street, which we've had issues with in the past. There are also concerns with soil quality, very sandy soils around here, as well as making sure we have room for the canopy above, whether that's utilities or something else. And then making sure we have a diverse forest ecosystem. We don't want all one species. If you have one species in the future, if a pest like an insect comes in and attacks that species, all of a sudden you have no trees left. Whereas if you have a diverse, canopy, there at least some of your canopy is maintained, even if, unfortunately, there is an issue in the future. And then I just want to shout out the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees Tree Steward Program. If anybody wants to volunteer, that's a great way to get involved. We coordinate with them planting trees in public areas as well. So one last point about species selection. There's been confusion about native versus non-native. I like to say we plant native trees where we can and non-native where we must. We love native trees. Native trees are trees that are adapted to the Wilmington area in a natural environment. The urban environment is anything but natural. You have construction debris. You have a street. You have a sidewalk. You have reflected heat from buildings. So the native trees to Wilmington don't necessarily do well in our urban environment. Some do. Live oaks do pretty well. Laurel oaks actually do pretty well. Others do not. So we will also use non-native species. That's anything not from this region, whether it's from elsewhere in the United States or the world. And then we use cultivars and varieties which are bred for specific characteristics like drought tolerance for very dry sites. What we do not plant is invasive trees. That would be something like a Bradford pear or a tree of heaven. Those will seed prolifically and take over natural areas after they're established and we do not do that. That is the end of my section. Any questions?

Yes, we have a question. Council Member Andrews.

So I went to the community meeting Ask an Arborist on Live Oak Parkway a couple weeks ago and one of the things that was pointed out about the laurel oaks that were being removed were significant fungal infections. And you mentioned when you remove a tree and you allow six months to let the soil settle and the tree stump grindings to settle into the soil. And is there a concern about those fungal infections infecting the new trees?

The vast majority of tree decay fungi are attacking dead wood, so they would not affect a live tree, a young healthy tree.

Okay, great, thank you. Okay, Councilmember Clinton Quintana.

So the sonic tomograph, am I saying that right? Yes. Okay, good. So I know that that's not a perfect item. I did a little research while I was up here and you were talking about it. I found it very interesting. Well, you all, you haven't purchased this yet, so one, I'm curious what the price of it is, and two, will you all incorporate a policy into this? Because as I was doing a quick read, it's not a perfect read and you can make mistakes if not doing a visual tree inspection and having something else to go along with this to make sure that you're truly getting the accurate read of there's infection or something like that, so.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember. In terms of the price, I don't have that number in front of me today. I'm sure we could get that for you. With regards to additional information, we already are doing tree risk assessments. So like I said, this is not a substitute for a tree inspection. We will always start with a visual inspection. To be frank, we will need some training on this. I know a little bit about this tool. It would probably be mostly our arborist and assistant arborist who would need some training on that. And I would imagine a policy would be in order for a process to use this tool.

Thank you.

Certainly. So when we do take down a tree that's diseased, and you say that we plant between November and February, the places that we have removed specific trees, Live Oak Parkway being one, I know there's some other ones in North Oleander, we've seen some downtown, Northside, Sunset Park. Do we go back and replace the trees that we have removed with not a Laurel Oak, but let's just say a Live Oak?

In general, yes, Mr. Mayor. Any tree we remove, we try to replace. A lot of the time, that will be in the exact same spot. We remove the tree, we grind the stump, we allow the stump grindings to settle, and we'll put the new tree right there. Whether it's a live oak, or like I said, if it's not appropriate for a large tree like a live oak, we'll replace it with multiple smaller trees. That may mean, in some instances, we put three smaller trees in slightly different locations on the same street frontage in front of that property.

Does that answer your question? And then the size of the tree that you're replacing it with, is it a standard or is it something bigger? I mean, obviously when you're going through a street, let's just say like South Orlando, that particular area, and of course there's a pretty significant canopy there. And I know over the years it's been butchered by Duke Power coming through there, and there's been obviously some trees that have died over the years. Are you trying to emulate that canopy and try to replace that canopy in some way, shape, or form with an oak tree? I mean, because obviously we're not doing laurel oaks anymore, right? Completely? They're all gone?

that's correct we we have very very very limited plantings of laurel oaks there are other similar species that large we would call them large maturing species meaning that when it's fully grown it will be a large tree a shade tree similar to a live oak that's a good example and we will be putting some live oaks back specifically on that street on south live oak parkway on one side of the street there are power lines and on the other they're not Correct. The side where there are not power lines, we will use larger maturing trees. On the side where there are power lines, as I mentioned, we don't want to have the same issues. Part of the issue with trees under power lines, Duke comes in and prunes them, which is unfortunately their right. that pruning, especially on laurel oaks, can lead to decay in the tree itself. And then that just exacerbates a problem of having decay in that tree and leading to a shorter lifespan, even if it's not laurel oak, which is particularly prone to decay. We don't want to repeat that process again, which is why we select small to medium maturing size trees for those locations under power lines.

Can you give me an example of a small maturing tree?

Something like a redbud. We've had pretty good success with Oklahoma redbud, which is a pretty drought-tolerant redbud cultivar. Do you have a picture of it? I don't tonight. I apologize.

And then you were mentioning something in respect to the underground utilities. I would imagine water and sewer lines, maybe gas lines, if gas lines exist there. So do we have an understanding of where those utilities are, or do we have to call them

Yeah, we call the 811 that you hear the ads for. That's kind of a one-stop shop. They're kind of a middleman where we call them, say, we're going to be grinding a stump at this location. They call all utilities who have facilities in that area. Generally, that's gas lines, power lines. fiber optic from various companies, and water, water and sewer.

So there are a lot of utilities underground. That's correct. That we don't see.

That's correct.

Okay.

So that we don't see. And so when you go to replant a tree in that particular area, understand that there's going to be a certain amount of utilities underground. So there's not a conflict. Do you still plant them? Because I would imagine there's trees planted on top of utilities all over this.

That's correct. Yes. Yes, Mr. Mayor. It's generally not an issue is the short answer. If there is something, especially water lines, if there is a water meter, those are a little bit higher. I mean, they are at grade.

So the conflict is not that great.

It is not. That's correct.

Okay.

All right.

And then once we plant, for them to stabilize, obviously you see the five-gallon bags that are wrapped around the trees for watering so you don't have to go water it every day. How long does a tree have to be watered and maintained for it to be taken care of to where it can be kind of on its own? If that's a situation.

It's a hard question because it's dependent on rain. If it rains a lot, they're pretty much good on their own. Our tree contracts, our planting contract, which the same company has done at the past two contracts, those contracts, a new part of that that we had not done historically was to add watering to that contract. So any tree that they plant has an 18-month warranty period. During that 18 months, they are required to water that tree once per week. I apologize, I don't have the exact amount of water they're required to use, but it is once a week unless there is a certain amount of rainfall.

So the distance or the area that you would be planting any tree, do you have a specific type of area that you need? In terms of? Square feet of an area for you to be able to plant a tree. And the reason I'm asking that question specifically, and I shared this, photo with our city manager a couple weeks ago where I was in Charlotte and I saw some significant large trees in downtown Charlotte huge shade trees with very small footprints and I was just wondering how do they accomplish that in such a small place surrounded by asphalt and concrete and you had this small space probably bigger than this right here and just wondering how can they accomplish something that's 35 feet tall tree, and I don't even know what type of tree it was, I'm not an arborist, but how do they accomplish that in those urban settings where they can get the tree canopy that large in that small of a space?

Are you referring, is this a downtown area where there are tree wells?

Yeah, a very small area. In fact, they have a picture of it. But it's just remarkable to me how much canopy they have in that downtown urban area with very tall buildings, and yet we can't accomplish kind of the same thing.

I can't speak to that particular situation, generally how that's accomplished. There are different engineering techniques where you can have more soil essentially hidden under the sidewalk. There are different materials that you can use to create a bigger, it is not what you see above ground, that's part of the soil, and then the roots can go down and out. This would be easier with a graphic, which we could get for you in the future. But it's incorporated into their plans, into engineering plans, development plans, that sort of thing. And that's certainly something we could look at.

And I would imagine that y'all had mentioned, and maybe somebody's gonna come up to talk about that, the education process about educating the public when we go out to have to take down a tree. In particular, and I guess the one that really, I mean, anytime you take down a tree, it riles a lot of people. But the one in particular is the one on Wrightsville Avenue. There, I forget the name of the project now, was a forced annexation on the city from the city of Wrightsville Beach. And in that particular area, I think there were several oak trees that had to be cut down, in particular because of utility conflicts and a deacceleration lane. I would hope that before any one of those troops ever to come down again, that the community and the media is aware of it, so they can come in on the meetings, so they can understand what the heck's going on. Because if you don't, social media will. And unfortunately, there was a lot of misinformation that was spewed about that. And there was a lot of conflicts that required those trees to come down. But that was never told in the narrative. And I just want to make certain that before we cut down any significant trees, that the community and the neighborhood has a right to hear what we may know, but they don't know. And I think it's only fair that we share that information with it, because I think a lot of misnomers and misinformation that is spewed out there can be rebutted by people that do understand what's happening. Thank you.

Yeah, our communications team has, they've got a section as well. I can turn it over to them or unless there are more questions. Any other questions?

Okay, thank you.

Okay, I'll turn it over to Amy Willis.

Okay.

Good evening mayor, mayor pro tem and members of council. My name is Amy Willis. I'm the communications manager with communications and engagement. Um, and I'm, I'm excited to be here today to be part of this conversation, um, to talk about exactly what you were just talking about, Mr. Mayor and, um, combating misinformation. So Ben just shared how it is the city's responsibility to care for our urban forestry. But we, in the same vein, it's also the city's responsibility to keep residents informed about that work and educate them about the work that we're doing. Our department has been working very closely with Ben and his team in the landscape maintenance division in true one city ethos, collaborating on building out a better process for informing residents and correcting misinformation. In the same way that we carefully select the types of trees that we plant and where we plant them, it's the same way that a communications plan is not a one size fits all approach. So we are working on building that and customizing as we go. As you can see on this slide here, there are many tools in our toolkit that we deploy to build awareness and create opportunities for residents to engage and learn more about our urban forestry initiatives. So as I mentioned, when we talk about trees, it really requires a multi-channel and multi-phased approach. In these first two columns here, kind of the before work and during work, these are really for more project-specific communications. So we developed strategic efforts around letting people know what's happening ahead of time. Some of those things can include yard signs like you see listed here on the slide, specific targeted neighborhood notifications via Nextdoor, website updates, email updates. And then when we move into the work actually being done, we shift our focus into the immediate impacts to residents. So that may be more traffic impacts, traffic closures, project updates, if a schedule has to change. So we do share that on social media and our other channels. And when appropriate, we also do bring in our media partners to help us spread that message. This picture here is actually from a media availability we did back in may for third street trees so um but uh the year-round column there is really where we tend to focus our efforts. And that is what you were talking about. This is our educational resources and things that we can deploy to let the public understand our strategic approach to caring for the urban forest. So education is really at the heart of what we do as a communications team to inform people about the work that we're doing and the why. Some of the things you see here are the Ask an Arborist program that Councilmember Andrews was just mentioning that we have recently helped to stand up. Also our partnership with the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees. We help to promote their Tree Steward program and other volunteer opportunities and just send out educational resources and information as best that we can. So to dive just a little bit deeper into the project specific communications, we wanted to point out here that this really takes a scalable approach. So as much as I love a good process and template, what we've learned is that, as I mentioned, it's not a one size fits all approach. And so we really customize and tailor that based on impact. So while we have kind of a baseline for routine projects that we will always share some sort of information, as the impact increases, you'll see that we are adding in additional elements of our communications toolbox to really create a comprehensive strategy to make sure that people are receiving the information. Different projects require different strategies, and we want to make sure that the right people are receiving the right information at the right time. So internally, that requires collaboration on our part as well. We've been meeting regularly with, as I mentioned, the landscape maintenance team to really get ahead of projects and work that's coming down so that we can start to build these customized communications plans as needed. But you'll see education kind of at the bottom of our chart there. Just to reiterate again, that's really at our foundation and that's just like at the heart of what we do. Our hope is that if the community can understand the strategy and see the work in action, they'll remember the bigger picture of caring for our urban forest. And speaking of education, I wanted to highlight one of the key tools that we have here, which is our website. Our website is pretty much our source of truth for most information pertaining to the city and kind of where we are always driving people back to when we're sharing information with the public. We have created a specific tree maintenance webpage, which includes a variety of information, including a lot of the information Ben just discussed tonight about the why, how they do their work, different species. We have some educational videos out there, some FAQs, which we can build out some more. Again, links to our volunteer opportunities. And I want to point out too that we do link to our urban forestry master plan on that web page as well. I think a lot of people don't know that we have that plan and that there is a plan that guides the work that the city is doing for our urban forest. So if you want to learn more, I would encourage the public to check that out. It's a very valuable resource. And the great thing about a webpage is that it is flexible and fluid and easily updated. So to that end, we are in the midst of building that out more to include some more resident focused content, which would include upcoming tree work and schedules. We're working on an interactive project map and some other features where residents can just have more immediate access to work that's coming. And with that being said, people receive information differently and learn differently. So we're hoping that the variety of channels that we're hitting to share our information is really spreading that education. And I believe that there will be additional storytelling opportunities here as the city undertakes this grant. And we are Sorry. And I was just gonna say, if there's one takeaway today from a communications perspective, it would be to watch this space here, this tree maintenance webpage. And as we continue to refine and adapt new methods and new initiatives, and we're always open to ways, innovative ways to connect with residents. So we're always open to suggestions as well. And I know I went through that pretty fast, but I am happy to take any questions if anyone has any.

We have three questions. I just want to ask you one question. Sure. There's a lot of what I call sidewalk arborists. And we have an arborist with degrees and specialties. So what happens if the other side hires an arborist with the same credentials and there's a disagreement, because I've seen this now happening, that we have an arborist here, we have an arborist there, their arborist said the tree can be saved, our arborist says the tree's gotta come down. And I understand there is risk assessment issues that if a tree falls, on a car and hurt somebody, we'll be held responsible if we were aware of it. That's one of the things that's never talked about in the diatribe in respect to why we're having to take a tree down because of the risk issues. And I would imagine that there's no, you know, a lawyer would probably take that case pretty quickly. What happens in that particular situation? I'm happy to answer that.

Becky, can you handle that? We won't make Amy answer that. We hear that all the time. Thank you, Mr. Murray. Really, you were spot on with what you said. At the end of the day, we have trained certified staff that are doing this work day in and day out. We want to trust their opinion on this. We certainly understand that somebody may have an alternative opinion, but at the end of the day, the liability and the risk lies with the city when these are our trees. And so there is no way to transfer that risk to have somebody alleviate that risk. And so, um, we trust the staff, but we certainly also provide them opportunities if they say, hey, we think that a second opinion might be helpful on this or hey, we want to go out. It is why we are looking to invest in additional technology just to help them do their job even better. But at the end of the day, that is the last thing that we want to do is see somebody legitimately hurt or injured or property damage occurring because we knew of an issue and didn't act fast enough when we knew that it was in fact a potential concern. The moment we know that, the liability is ours. If we don't know it, then it can be considered an act of God and it is not something that we would necessarily be responsible for. Certainly we wanna protect the tax dollars and not having to pay out claims because we didn't act on things that we knew about. But more importantly, we want to preserve human health, life, safety, and of course, property damage. I think all of us have had conversations of knowing specific situations that we have seen where a tree that seemed perfectly healthy has fallen, particularly during a storm, and it has actually taken one or more people's lives. And at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to avoid.

Thank you for that clarity. Thank you. We have several questions here. Council Member Santaguido.

Thank you. I have a question and then some comments. My question, Amy, for you. I appreciate that we have all of these channels that we are working through to communicate with the public and educate. Are we tracking engagement there? I like numbers. Are we tracking how many website visits we get, how many people come to events, how many people engage in specific programs?

Yes, that is all information that we do track and can pull. We have website analytics. We track the number of people that show up when we do a community meeting, when we do an ask an arborist. So to the best of our ability, we do try to track that and social media as well.

Yeah, and I don't think it's reasonable to say show me the numbers every single time something happens, but maybe annually we can get a recap of the engagement with these programs and how they're working and the impact that they're having. Absolutely. That would be lovely. Thank you. And then to my comments, if I could summarize Sally, Ben, and Amy, we love trees in Wilmington and we're doing everything we can to not just keep the trees that we have and love, but have more trees add to our tree canopy. That's my high level takeaway. I really appreciate the quiz, Ben. I'm a biology major, so I got to use my degree tonight. Thank you for the scientific names. I also want to share that recently I had a resident reach out. They called me and they told me that they reported what they thought was a dangerous tree on their street, and within two days an arborist came out and assessed it, realized that it was a danger, and had it quickly removed. so i don't know that you all always hear the happy stories for the work that you do so i just wanted to share that that resident was very very grateful that it didn't get worse and i am really excited that we are putting one almost one and a half million dollars of somebody else's money into uh improving our tree canopy so thank you all councilmember clinton quintana

Thank you. Quick question. I love the idea of putting out signs before the work has begun, but my question is how far in advance do we put out the signage that I'm hoping has a QR code, phone number, and email address for potential residents to reach out to you and say, hey, thank you for this information, but I have questions. How far in advance do you all put the signs out?

So it really depends on the project. And I know that the landscaping crew also does door hangers. So sometimes it will be direct door hangers to homeowners that are impacted or postcards. But signage we try to put out at least a week in advance. And a lot of that is just because the work can be scheduled to change pretty frequently that we don't want to put it out too far in advance or not give people enough time. Um, but we're always open to kind of adapting that timeline as needed.

Okay. Thank you.

Sure.

Council Rulao.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, I also was giddy when I saw this on our agenda, so congratulations on the great work. It takes a lot to get some of these grants, I'm sure, so I'm excited with you. My question is the interactive project map. You had me at maps. Is this on the same map as the roadway project so people can go and see everything that's happening, or is it a totally separate map?

So it hasn't been built out yet. So can take feedback on that. But I believe the idea is for it to be a separate map to be able to track where tree work is being done, where trees are being planted. but like I said, it has not been stood up just yet.

Yeah, okay. Great, still in process. And I have a request. The social media post about this grant, I'm not on social media that often, so if you'd send me a link to the Facebook post about the grant, I would love to share it because it's exciting news. Absolutely. And it would help, hopefully, with the public education about what you do. Did you know we had an urban forestry master plan? So thank you.

Yes, thank you. Council Member Andrews?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to address your question about competing experts. And again, from my experience a couple of weeks ago at the Ask an Arborist event, we were very fortunate to have not only our arborist, but also we had Ms. Shepherd there from the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees. And it just so happened that the Duke arborist was on the same street at the same time. And one of the residents called him over And I honestly don't think that there's disagreement among arborists about, I really didn't hear any disagreement amongst the experts that were there regarding which trees. There was a lot of different opinions amongst the residents. including two of the residents in the Andrews household. But I really don't see, and I think you might be thinking of situations where we have developers who are taking down trees, and I think that that's a little bit of a different situation because I think they're taking them down for different reasons. and they may bring in different experts as to how, you know, why these trees need to be removed. But I did not hear any disagreement amongst the tree experts as to whether or not these trees needed to come down, so.

Council Member Joyner?

Yeah, I've not chimed in too much during the totality of this presentation. I just wanted to quickly say thank you. I know that a lot of hard work has gone into this. I know that a lot of hard work has gone into our tree canopy well before this sort of began to come together as an initiative or as a presentation. But I just want to recognize the work that y'all have done. And I think this is a great, great step in the right direction for sharing the positives with our community of the love for our tree canopy and the attention that it's getting and and the fact that you know our community is being heard on this and maybe we were doing a bad job of communicating that out and now i think we are headed in the right direction so thank you all very much thank you very much okay anybody else okay thank you very much thank you

So we'll go ahead and take a vote. Everybody ready to vote on this? Item 02A, which is the resolution, which I've already read through the record. We have a motion to approve by Councilmember Santaguida, seconded by Councilmember Andrews. Any further discussion? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? That item passes unanimously. Now we will go to the We have a unanimous vote here on that. Then we go to item 02B, which is the ordinance that will take two votes. What are the wishes of council in respect to that? We have a motion to approve by council member Joyner, second by council member Santaguida. All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Item passed unanimously on first reading. Is there a motion to waive second reading? Motion made by Councilmember Lyle, seconded by Councilmember Andrews. Any further discussion? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Item passed unanimously on first as well as second reading. That brings us to our next and final act of business, which is item R1, which is a resolution adopting comments on the proposed programmatic agreement between the Federal Highway Administration, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, and the North Carolina Historic Preservation Office regarding the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge project. This time, I'd like to recognize our city manager, Ms. Hogg. Ms. Hogg.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mayor, and members of council. And this item will be handled by Linda Painter, our Director of Planning and Development.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. As the mayor has indicated, what we have before you tonight is formalizing comments to be provided on a proposed programmatic agreement related to the replacement of the Kate Fear Memorial Bridge. What you see on the screen is the timeline that has been provided by NCDOT. And so right now you'll see a red star for EA approval. So that is the environmental assessment. My understanding is that document was approved last week. We have not yet received a copy of it. I have been assured by our WMPO staff as soon as they have a link, they will send that on to us. So I will say we will probably be back here with comments on that environmental assessment in short order. In terms of what is happening right now, that environmental assessment is looking at two alternatives for the bridge. Alternative A is a movable span, so with 135 feet of vertical clearance, same thing that we have today, 65 feet of vertical clearance at other times. Again, that's the same clearance that we have today for the existing Cape Fear Bridge. It would maintain the current on and off ramp locations at Third Street and Worcester and Dawson. Alternative B would be a fixed span alternative. In order to accommodate 135 feet of vertical clearance above the river, that means your span gets longer. The on and off ramps for that fixed span bridge would shift to Fifth Avenue under that proposal. Both alternatives would include six 12-foot-wide travel lanes, three in each direction, a median, and a multi-use path on the north side. So this gives you an idea. These are from NCDOT. They show the two alternatives. So this shows alternative A. It gives you the proposed location, which would be south of the existing bridge. And so you can see it's wider, but it really is maintaining that same height because they would have that movable span to reach that 135 feet of vertical clearance. While there will be some changes to the on and off ramps, again, they continue to be located at 3rd Street. So we are maintaining the same access to downtown in the remainder of the city. So this gives you an idea where they're showing the actual ramp configuration and the black and red striped is the existing bridge which would be demolished. So this is a rendering of the alternative B. So this is the fixed span. And so this actually and I will say this, this drawing makes I'm not sure about it. It makes it look like it's the same height. It is not. It's 135 feet. So that is basically really should be showing you where essentially the top of that structure right now in order to achieve that clearance. So looks like NCDOT has some work to do on their renderings. But as you can see, with this alternative, now those ramps are longer. In order to accommodate that higher vertical clearance, those ramps are now extending to Fifth Avenue. So that's how you would enter and exit the bridge, which would completely change traffic flow downtown, as well as heading south. So what we had put in the Greater Downtown Plan was four principles that the city should advocate for. A bridge design that avoids destruction of historic homes and blocks to the maximum extent possible. Considering design characteristics that would allow the bridge to maintain current intersections with South Third Street. Incorporating aesthetic considerations that maintain the bridge's status as an iconic structure for Wilmington and the region. And making sure that walking, biking, and safe connections are part of the design. So the proposed programmatic agreement has identified a study area and submitted this to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. That study area is outlined in yellow on the map. And what you'll see is it takes in very limited boundaries, and it really focuses just on kind of the blocks east and west of Dawson and Wooster and going to, I believe, Sixth Street on the east side. In terms of historic preservation, when we look at this, the current bridge as well as a lot of downtown and a portion of property on the other side of the river is in what's known as the Wilmington National Historic District. And so as we consider the potential impacts at a staff level, we look at alternative B that would be landing at Fifth Avenue and saying, this has the potential not only to impact structures in terms of actual demolition and having an overpass above it, but also those traffic changes that again, right now, if you think about it, Third Street is that main downtown corridor. changing that main corridor to Fifth Avenue is going to have an impact on that street. It's going to have an impact on those historic homes. And so as we look at this, some of our comments that are on this proposed programmatic agreement get to that idea that we really think there should be a larger study area here and that we really need to be contemplating the true overall impact of that alternative B and that fixed span alternative on historic resources throughout the National Register District, not just the actual structures that would be within the right of way of the bridge. So programmatic agreements. And I have I will say that we have Ben Riggle here, who is our historic preservation manager. So if you have any questions on the Section 106 requirements, I'm going to turn those over to Ben. He is our expert. But essentially, Programmatic agreements are used by a sponsoring agency when they cannot fully determine how a project may affect and adversely impact historic properties prior to approving a project. So in this particular case, a Federal Highway Administration, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office and the Federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation have determined that a programmatic agreement is the best pathway for this replacement project. Because there are two alternatives, because of the potential of toll versus no toll, they don't feel like they can fully identify the impacts on historic resources. before an option is selected. And so this provides that function of saying, okay, once an option is selected, then here's how we are going to go about assessing the impacts and determining mitigation. So the public comment period on the draft agreement is currently open. The other thing that they are asking is whether or not the city wants to be a concurring party. And so that's, I will say I struggle with that term, but being a concurring party basically means it opens the door for us to participate as mitigation, as they're looking at the impacts and as mitigation measures. So that's really what we're talking about. If we opt not to participate in that way, then our participation ends and we are no different than any other member of the public in terms of commenting during open comment periods. So the recommended comments that staff has prepared for you. One thing I will note, I mentioned earlier that an environmental assessment has been prepared. It's been approved. We are waiting to see that draft. But one of the things, and I think you've heard some public comment on this, is a concern that an environmental assessment is not as robust an analysis of potential adverse impacts as an environmental impact statement. One of the reasons that has been given, or I think the primary reason that has been given for pursuing the environmental assessment, to my understanding, is the timeline that is associated with the large bridge grant. So in order to meet that timeline from that grant that the state has received for this project, $242 million, they have certain deadlines they need to meet to keep the project moving forward. So understanding that Federal Highway is the granting agency, one of our recommendations would be that you request that they consider extending that timeline for executing under that grant to allow time for preparation of an environmental impact statement that would evaluate all of the environmental impacts of the projects and the two alternatives. The second recommendation is to authorize the city manager to sign the agreement as a concurring party and recommend that the agreement be revised to address several items. Some of them I will say are, I would call them more administrative. For example, the first one is simply to replace Wilmington Historic Preservation Commission with the City of Wilmington because you are the agency, you are the entity that can speak on behalf of the city. The Historic Preservation Commission cannot. The main substantive comment starting at number two is acknowledging that that fixed span alternative B will have greater adverse impacts on traffic patterns within the district, particularly along Fifth Avenue than the movable span due to the changes in the location of the on and off ramps. We also want to acknowledge that alternative A will also have adverse impacts to contributing resources. So if you read the agreement, you'll see that it really kind of focuses on the adverse impacts associated with alternative B and not so much on alternative A. And so recognizing that yes, alternative A, we expect to have fewer impacts, it doesn't mean it will have no impact. And we want to make sure that they are acknowledging the potential adverse impacts of that, particularly when it comes to vibration monitoring. So for structures that are in that vicinity, understanding that they're monitoring the impacts that the construction is having on those. As I mentioned earlier, we would like them to expand the study area to include, not be limited to just Front Street, Third Street, and Fifth Avenue, but really look more globally at the impacts on the district. And in terms of potential mitigation, if Alternative B is chosen and Fifth Avenue becomes that new north-south corridor, including the development of corridor plans as part of the mitigation efforts to help us identify how we're going to address this as a community, as a city, if that change happens. Providing copies of the documentation created through mitigation measures to both the city and New Hanover County Library. So sometimes as part of mitigation, what the sponsoring agency is required to do is to produce documentation regarding the historic resources that are being impacted. This simply requests that we get a copy of that documentation as well as the library so that we have that for historical records. And then the last two are just trying to be consistent. They are mentioning FEMA in this agreement. We think that that is a holdover probably from another agreement that this was based on. FEMA is not a party to this agreement that we are aware of. And then also being consistent because they use the terms consulting party and concurring party interchangeably. Again, we believe that's a holdover and that in this particular case, they are asking for concurring parties, not consulting parties. With that, I will take any questions you have.

We have several. Council Member Joyner.

Who is our bridge czar?

Our bridge czar?

Who is our bridge czar?

In what sense?

I just feel like there are so many different Decision makers, touch points, non-decision makers, feedback loops, committees. I don't know what the difference between the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the North Carolina Historic Preservation Office, what's the difference?

And this is where I'm gonna turn that question over to Mr. Riggle.

For this project, the lead federal agency is Federal Highways. They're the ones that are responsible for leading the project through the Section 106 process. Well, I'm sorry. Thanks Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and council members for letting me, having me up here to speak a little bit today. The State Historic Preservation Office is the state level. They are As things work now with the Section 106 process, they're basically the lead reviewers of the project. And then the advisory council serves as a preservation backstop. So if there's a disagreement between Federal Highways and the State Historic Preservation Office, then it will arise to the Advisory Council. If the State Preservation Office decides that they don't want to consult anymore, the Advisory Council will take over. The Advisory Council provides recommendations. If the State Preservation Office or the Federal Highways is not sure how to proceed on a specific thing, they could request guidance from the technical service people at the Advisory Council.

So is the Advisory Council a federal, a state, or a local agency?

Federal. Advisory Council is federal.

This is just sort of me opining on this, but we keep getting further away from the locality. We keep getting further away from the people who are going to be using the bridge, from the people who live in the neighborhood that's going to get torn up to build the bridge. It's taken so, and I'm not directing this at you, but it has taken so long that if they're just going to tell us how to do it, can they at least do it timely? That's where I'm at on this. We share those frustrations. recommendation to us as staff is that this is what we need to pass to move this along and to continue to have local input and to get a bridge that is going to be an appropriate span for commerce in our area that is going to protect our river and our environment and is that and that is not going to be told if that is your recommendation then i am prepared to vote yes on this but this is so complex to the point where it's just unreasonable there's so much

bureaucracy here. Preservation is only one part of it, because there's also the environmental review with the mollusks and the in the fish and wildlife stuff like that as well as well as the engineering. So there there is it is a massive project. And as such, Haste makes waste. We want to make sure it's done right. I get the frustration. We don't have much control over the timeline.

Well, and I just want to add, I think a lot of the comments that you brought up are all valid concerns. The only thing that we have before you tonight really deals with the adverse impacts on historic resources. So the environmental assessment document that I mentioned, as I said, we will probably be coming back to you as a staff with additional with additional comments on that. I'm not going to say that we have a bridge czar historic preservation because Ben's team is in my office. We took the lead on preparing these comments. Susan Habina-Woolard and I have already spoken and talked about the fact that when the environmental assessment comes out, we need to be reviewing that in concert with each other and in working together to provide comments on behalf of the city. Because while the MPO is on the merger team, and I am not the expert on that process, but they do handle the large projects in the region. We also understand that the city and the MPO's interests don't always align. So we're going to try and represent the city's interest to the best of our abilities through this process.

Thank you.

councilwoman santa guida thank you mayor pro tim um i guess i'll start council member joiner by saying as one of the city's representatives on the wmpo i have genuinely talked to somebody on our staff or wmpo staff about this project every day for the last week so i am not i am not a self-proclaimed bridge czar but as one of our representatives on the mpo this is an all day, every day topic for me. Which leads me to my question for Linda. With respect to this particular piece, who from our staff is going to have this seat at the table for these discussions as a concurring party?

So I would say Ben as our historic preservation manager. He usually takes the lead in working with the federal agencies, with the State Historic Preservation Office to provide those comments and provide that feedback. He actually has been doing that on some of the other programmatic agreements we've issued comments on, such as the Harbor Dredging Project, and there's the more recent one which, yeah, so NCDOT smaller projects.

Awesome. Thank you for that. And I think, I mean, the magnitude of this project and the impact that it's going to have for generations, I think it's really important that we also have the philosophy that this is kind of an all hands on deck situation. We need expertise from every area. And so I am hopeful that under this one city initiative that we're maintaining communications and that the right hand is talking to the left hand as we move forward with this. I also want to add, I think your comments are pretty spot on. Thank you for putting these together. I appreciate the comments that you've made and I agree with all of them. So thank you.

Councilwoman Lau.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem.

I understand the frustration because every delay just increases the cost of this bridge. It seems like we just get further away, not just from the people, but from it actually being built. I have a question about the expanding the area that would be reviewed. And what that might imply is that, because the city would obviously, if traffic would dump out onto Fifth Street instead of Third, that would cost tens of millions of city dollars to respond to that and accommodate that. Is that what you're talking about when you say doing a stronger, doing the EIS would kind of help understand what mitigation might look like?

So in terms of the EIS, yes. The costs that we would be paying for. The recommendation to see if they would consider doing an environmental impact statement is to really understand the full impact of the two alternatives. Whether it is environmental resources, historic resources, traffic, what that is gonna mean in terms of improvements that the city would need to do. So that's what is behind that request to consider extending the deadline to allow that to happen. In terms of this document and expanding the study area, the focus, again, is really on historic resources. As we look at the environmental assessment document that's coming out, at that point, then we will start looking at, okay, what does this mean for traffic? What does this mean for city streets? What do we need to be looking at there?

Thank you, Ms. Painter.

You know, I was going to, Linda, you're spot on. I mean, right now the bridge is carrying about 65,000 cars a day. The anticipated increases to about 95,000 cars within the next, probably within the next 15 years with the amount of development that's taking place, especially in Brunswick County. You're right, when you have that many cars coming into one location, because remember, we're going to have a southern bridge, and the city was anticipating that. That's why we four-lane independence to Carolina Beach Road in anticipation of that. Unfortunately, we couldn't get no help on the West Bank. And I want to be clear about that because there was a plan to have a southern bridge to alleviate some of the pressures from what this bridge was going to do and why we wanted a southern bridge. But the southern bridge went away for a lot of different reasons, which has never really been investigated, but probably should some point in time. But now we're talking about funneling all this traffic. into this specific area which is really going to have an impact on the historic district the wooster and dawson street area south and and you're right we need to evaluate all of that traffic pattern in addition to this thing could go all the way up to 1617 street where people are making lefts and rights so i applaud the fact that you folks are looking at it this way because it should be evaluated thoroughly and look at it in a global way as to how this is going to impact our community in addition to the amount of traffic that would be mitigating it, depending on what the toll amount is, which we still don't have a firm number on that, and whether it's going to be dynamic tolling, which means that the toll can go up and down based on the time. If it's early in the morning or late in the evening, they'll probably increase the toll, if it goes to a toll process. And I think the company that we talked about, What we worked with in regards to that when the city asked for this was that there would be about a 10% deviation of traffic. When we checked that company out that did the work in Louisville, Kentucky, they missed it by 50%. I would imagine that if the toll goes up to $5, there would be a lot of people running up 3rd Street, 5th Avenue, 17th Street to go to the Isabel Holmes Bridge to go out that way. This is a big impact for the city of Wilmington. We're going to take the brunt of this, and we should thoroughly evaluate it. And those folks, we deserve that as a community, instead of just saying, you got to take it the way it is. And that shouldn't be the case. So I applaud the fact that you folks are doing this. It's about time.

Anybody else?

Okay, thank you, Linda.

You're welcome.

What are the wishes of the council in respect to the resolution? We have a motion to approve by Councilmember Andrews, second by Councilmember Lyle. Any further discussion? All in favor of that motion, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Item passes unanimously. This concludes our regular agenda. Are there any items being brought forward by our city attorney?

I would just like to say happy birthday to Councilmember Andrews. I told her I would not ask everybody to sing for her, but in honor of her birthday, we do not have any closed sessions.

Okay. Our city manager, Ms. Hawk.

Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, if you will indulge me for just a moment, I do want to do a brief show and tell if Mr. Lee is able to pull it up. This is something that has been in the works that council has been interested in. But one of the things that has been missing from our website and for our community is sort of a centralized location. If somebody needs to report an issue, put in a request for service, I know that council members receive requests and emails all of the time, and so this is a place that residents can be referred to to go ahead and submit that request directly. It'll go to the right staff person, but we will have a button on the front page of our website that we're working with our web provider to get that posted. But essentially you'll go to this page if you're looking to report an issue. You'll look at the descriptors of which one seems to fit what your issue is. There is a catchall at the bottom if nothing quite fits and you want to put in a request for something else. And then Dylan, if you could click on one of them. So if, for example, your request has to do with a concern in a park or a public space, you will be taken to this form. You will just type in the brief description of whatever your issue is. We have the ability for you to either type in if you have the address or if you're looking to use your current location, you can select that. So if you're on your cell phone, you don't know exactly where you are, that'll give a GPS coordinate, or you can zoom in and select on the map. And then other comments, if it's, hey, it's across the street from X or whatever, if you just need to give us a little bit more detail. If there's a photo that you want to provide, you are able to do that. And then your contact information is not required, but if you do provide it, then we will be able to follow up with you to let you know the status of your request, or if we need any additional information from you, it does allow us to have better direct contact. On the back end, these are requests that we will be able to track. We can see the status of them. We will be able to make sure that they are followed up on. But each of these will go to the correct department so that we're kind of cutting through sometimes two or three middle people before it gets to that department in order to do that. So we are very excited for this. We do think that at some point, if this is successful, we might move to, there's some very robust programs out there. C-Click Fix is kind of one of the big ones in the industry. But this was built by staff completely. They thought through it and have developed it. And we're really happy to launch this. We'll do a big splash with it in a few days, but we just wanted to bring it to council's attention that this is coming out this week. We want our community to know and we want to be able to know about the issues that are going on and then be able to respond to them just as quickly as possible.

Thank you, very well done.

Madame Clark?

No sir, I don't have anything.

Councilmember Santaguido?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to take a second to thank our staff. This is a little bit later, but towards the end of June, I think, of this year, I sent an email to the city manager and deputy city managers about a number of complaints that I had been receiving from residents in a particular part of town, residents who had come to council to speak to us about it. And on a very hot June afternoon, I went for a walk through this area with many of our senior staff, folks from public safety, transportation, many of the folks you see sitting at the table over there. We took a very hot walk. And I will tell you in this neighborhood, we are already seeing increased traffic enforcement, changes to some of the signage and improvements to the roadways, improvements to clearing out some of the trees and overgrown vegetation. We talked about accessibility and plans for making the area safer for pedestrians. So I wanted to share my gratitude for that because I know it's a lot to bring all of those departments together. the people in that neighborhood are already telling me that they're seeing a difference and they're so excited and they can't believe it so thank you all for um sweating through that with me i appreciate it thank you councilmember andrews

Yes, so August is National Wellness Month, and it's also National Dog Month, and two issues that are very near and dear to my heart. And if they're also near and dear to your heart, I know you're thinking, how am I going to put this together? But August 7th is the last day to comment on our newest park, which is off of Greenville Loop Road. And Dylan, if you could go to the front of the web page, and show people maybe this will work since we had show and tell up no if you go to wilmingtonnc.gov and search on uh greenville greenville loop park project i believe you will be able to uh take the survey and uh the last day is august 7th and we really We really want your input. There we go. So there should be a survey there.

There you go.

Take the survey and let us know what you want to see in that park because we really want public input at this point. So whether you're interested in wellness or walking your dog or anything else, if you love parks and you love trees, let us know about it and let us know what you want to see in that park.

Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Yes, sir. Last time I was here, I talked about the busy birthdays in the Spears household, but I forgot my nephew's birthday. It was that Friday, so happy belated birthday, Noah. Happy birthday, Councilwoman Andrews. Happy belated birthday, Councilwoman Clinton Quintana. And also, I would like to share Chair, congratulations to Councilwoman Clinton Quintana for being elected as a director of the North Carolina Black Elected. I got it, sir. I got it. I've been doing this for quite a while. Thank you. Black Elected Municipal Officials. We celebrated that over a week ago. I was gone for a week, so I'm kind of off. But the weekend before last, the North Carolina black elected municipal officials had their, what did we have? Yeah, the conference was in Wilmington at the, The aloft, there we go. So, yeah, and Councilwoman Clinton Quintana got me lost, and I wasn't at the aloft, I was at the embassy looking for her. And we were on the seventh floor, and she says, I'm over here, but I was in the wrong hotel. But anyway, we had a great time. She was elected as a director, so congratulations to her, and kudos. Do good work.

Councilmember Clinton Quintana?

Uh, thank you. Um, I want to one, thank you Mayor Pro Tem for telling that lie and thank you everyone for the birthday wishes. because I did not get him lost. I kept telling him it was a loft hotel. He was at the Embassy Suites. One of the things that I want to just point out today, first, thank you, staff, for all of your hard work. It does not go unnoticed, although service is sometimes a thankless job. We know this, right? But one of the things I want to point out is that every Friday I have a Rotary Club meeting, and we meet at Jungle Rapids. And we always have awesome speakers, but this particular speaker that came, our speakers that came on last Friday, was near and dear to my heart. And so as a child, I have always said a prayer, and still to this day, before I go to bed, which is to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. And on last Friday, Marie stopped in to speak to us about Sweet Marie's Diner. It's located in Hampstead, and they have this fabulous program which is called Feed a Neighbor. And it's neighbors taking care of neighbors. And for $8, you can feed someone who doesn't have a meal. There's no fuss about it. They get in line just like everybody else, and they just say, you know, I'd like a meal. There's, they're not getting a different meal than what everybody else is getting. They get a real meal. And I thought that was fabulous. And I just told them, I was like, I have to shout you out at my next council meeting because I wish there was more of that in our communities. Neighbors taking care of neighbors. And so I just want you all to take a moment and go to SweetMarie'sDiner.com. Take a look around. They also have a food truck that's going to be online soon. And if you can, donate $8 for a meal for someone who cannot afford one. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Lau.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I'd like to congratulate Ashlyn Eisenhower, who has been spending the past three and a half hours here with us, earning her civic responsibility merit badge. She's a scout, so congratulations. And thanks for hanging in there with us on this long meeting. I also wanted to thank the Wilmington Police Department for arranging a ride along for me to experience the downtown task force on a Friday evening. And I was really impressed with the way our department works with the Sheriff's Department. and to provide safety and the teamwork. And it was especially powerful to see Kraken, the dog, the canine, the drug canine, do his work. So thanks for arranging that. I'm just kidding. He was not arranged for me, but I got to see him from the windshield, through the windshield. But I appreciate all the work, seen and unseen, that the police department does to keep us all safe. And that's it for me.

Council Member Joyner.

I'm going to put the city manager on the spot here in a second. So I'm going to pivot to you, Becky, in one moment. But since we hired Becky, one of the main things that I've brought up at every single one of our one-on-one meetings has been how can we improve the experience at Live Oak Bank Pavilion through the challenge that if you're in the lawn seats and especially if you're on the berm at the back of the stadium, it's very hard to see the stage. And my understanding is that we got some really good news from Live Nation about projectors and screens, but I wanted to have Becky clarify that. I didn't want to say anything that was either not signed on the dotted line yet, but what you can share publicly, I'd ask that you do so.

Sure. Thank you, Councilmember Joyner. So Live Nation has been very receptive to the conversations, understanding that a good concert experience helps get returned concert goers. So they did take the initiative to reach out to all of the acts that have been signed already and check to see if they were planning to have screens and then if they weren't, to let them know that they wanted to make temporary screens available for them. A number of them agreed to that. Some of them were not able to agree, but we want to be very careful in making sure that everybody understands that it's not that they maybe didn't want to, but just with set design already being confirmed for those, in some cases it was just difficult and they just weren't able to accommodate that. But we will be seeing more screens at future concerts, some of them provided by the artists, but then otherwise provided by Live Nation. And then we expect for future conversations for future acts that have not yet signed contracts that will be able to be incorporated into those agreements so that, you know, barring perhaps any special circumstance where perhaps the artist just does not anywhere for whatever reason, but we will be able to see screens at future concerts and haven't worked with staff yet, but would be interested if there's a way that we could maybe denote which ones might have screens so that if somebody knows that they're coming to the lawn, that they will have improved And that is not taking away from the ultimate work, which will be permanent screens. That is still underway just for the benefit of the public. The wind loads on the existing infrastructure, they need to be hurricane rated. And so the current structures are not able to support permanent screens, which makes a permanent fix much more expensive, much more involved with design and engineering. So that is still ultimately the goal. We expect that we will get there at some point, but it's not just as simple as just putting up permanent screens and then we all get to be happy. But that is still in the works and we're working toward that end goal.

Thank you. I just want to again say thank you for all your work on this and the staff members who have touched this. Every chance I get, I compliment the council members who came before me who made that location a reality. I think that our relationship with Live Nation can always be improved, but they are a partner who can bring something that the city cannot bring on our own. And it's a pretty great experience to go out and be in a crowd of 7,000 of our neighbors where everybody is smiling, everybody is singing, everybody is dancing. It reminds you about all the good in the world. So thanks very much.

Thank you.

Well, thank you for taking an interest in your government. We stand adjourned.