Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay.

We're going to bring this agenda briefing order, I mean meeting to order. I'm going to take a roll call at this time. Mayor Pro Tem, are you here? I am, yes. Councilmember Joyner, are you here?

Here.

Councilmember Andrews?

Here.

Councilmember Lowell?

Here.

Councilmember Santaguida?

Here.

Councilmember Clinton Quintana?

Here.

And the chair is here. Everybody's here and accounted for. We have two presentations tomorrow night. First presentation will be a recognition of the Marine Major Capers, who is the Medal of Honor recipient. We'll break after we do that presentation for a reception in the area here outside of city chambers. Then we have, of course, the downtown wayfinding presentation, consent agenda. C1 is a resolution awarding on-call contracts for five firms for professional engineering design services. C2 is a resolution authorizing city manager to enter into an agreement with Leeds Online LLC for the purchase of ballistics IQ equipment and software. C3 is a resolution authorizing city manager to execute a lease amendment with Tova Wealth Management LLC for a portion of the seventh floor of the Skyline Center. C4 is a resolution authorizing city manager to intend to a new lease on the fourth floor of the Skyline Center with the Honorable Ted Budd, the United States Senator's Office. C5 is a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute contract amendment number four with LITG Incorporated for the landscape maintenance of city-owned properties. C6 is a resolution authorizing city manager to enter into a contract with Brady Train Services Incorporated in the amount of $168,400 for HVAC repairs at the Wilmington Convention Center. C7 is a resolution providing approval of multi-family housing facility in the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. and the financing thereof with multifamily housing revenue bonds in an amount not to exceed $20 million. And I think this is a pass-through, correct? Correct.

Yes, sir.

Okay. C8 is an approval of the minutes of the Council's budget work session for May 15, 2026 and May 29, 2026 agenda briefing meetings. from June the 15th, 2026, and the regular council meetings on June the 16th, 2026. Then we'll have public information, then public hearings. PH1 is an ordinance amending the official zoning maps of the city of Wilmington. Yes, sir. Yes, we can. Go ahead, JC.

On the C1 with the RFQs, I love the process and speeding things up. I just wondered if we're not doing three bids, how do we know we're getting the best deal for the city?

Ms. Hawk, you have an answer?

Mr. Carter's going to answer that.

Thank you, Councilwoman, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. So when we go through this process with all of our consultants and it's required by law, we go out and find the most qualified firm and we select that firm. We then enter into negotiations to determine, again, what's the final scope and fee of that. If we do not believe that to be reasonable, we then have to tell that firm we are not interested, and then we move on to the next most qualified firm. that is required by law for us to do that. We do not go out as we do with a construction contract. We don't get bids and then determine the lowest responsible bidder and then take that bid. It's much different for engineering projects. and products where again, we do it based on qualifications. And so this on call allows us to select firms that are qualified in the realm that we're looking for. So, and this would be mainly civil site engineering, transportation, and then we would look through them when we have a project to determine the most qualified of those firms that we've already pre-selected and kind of pre-audited. And then we enter in negotiations with that one firm go through that. If they're not, if we do not believe that to be a good cost and price, then we would go to the next firm on our on-call list. Should we determine that there are none there, nobody qualified, or there is not a good price there, then we can always put it out to the normal RFQ process that we would for much larger projects, which you'll see coming forward for the park project that we're looking for here in the next week or two.

J.C., does that answer your question?

Yeah, it kind of does. I mean, 25 firms applied, and the intent was to just do five? Or is it really just five that were selected based on the criteria?

It's really just five firms that are selected based on the criteria. I'd say all the firms that submit all have different qualifications, are all good in certain different things. The five firms that we selected not only either bring a very, very specific thing that we're looking for along with a broad spectrum, or they just cover the broad spectrum of requirements we're looking for better than the rest of the firms. These are the top five firms that met our criteria. All 25 firms have their own set of qualifications and specialties within that group.

Okay, yeah, I really, again, I like the efficiency of doing that ahead of time. I just wanna make sure we weren't losing any information.

Yes, ma'am. Meredith, do you, what's the, I'm losing, I'm standing up here, the requirement, the law for us to only engage one firm at a time. Do you know off the top of your head by chance?

The citation, no. I'll find it. I'll find it and get it to y'all.

But it is state, it is a requirement for us. So, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Could we go back to PH1? Yeah. PH1 is the ordinance amending the official zoning maps of the City of Wilmington rezoning property containing 6.69 acres located at 320 Military Cut-Off Road from ONI CD, Office and Institutional Conditional District and RB Regional Business District to ONI Office and Institutional District. Is this just to clean this thing up? What, what are we, why is this being done this way?

Ms. Painter will address that.

Because it looks like it's already got an O&I designation CD on it.

The front portion of the property has a conditional district designation for the existing worship facility that is there. However, the rear of the property, which was previously a separate lot that has now been joined, is zoned RB, and so they are asking to take both zones to go to a straight O&I district, which will provide them with the ability to do things in the future without coming back to modify that conditional district.

Understood. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

PH2 is an ordinance granting a modification to the special use permit for a private recreation facility located at 4950 Holly Tree Road and 304 Westchester Road. Item is requested to be continued to a later date, thank goodness. Didn't mean to let wrong this last time, so yeah. Okay, great. I have a question. Yes.

So what was the purpose of the request to continue?

The applicant made that request, I believe it had to do with availability of one of their expert witnesses.

Oh, so we're gonna continue a hearing because the petitioner's witness is not available.

We, when the applicant.

Sir, I'm sorry, that tone was not directed at you, Linda. I apologize. I would, I'd like to know more before I agree to continue that. When we've had all the problems procedurally with these permits. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

And then we have, go back 01, there's an ordinance making a supplemental appropriation in the amount of $1,837 to the Special Purpose Fund for the River to See Bike Ride and Brunswick Heritage Riverside Bike Ride. And then resolutions, R1 is a resolution establishing the Northern Riverfront Development District Committee. And then the items to be brought forward by our city manager. Number one is the budget work session follow-up regarding funding requests for Community Justice Center and the Film Partnership of North Carolina.

I have a question on that item. Yes, sir. I'm just curious about, I don't think that I've seen in my three years up here that we've structured anything this way. And I'm just curious, I know that we've had a lot of discussion about council wanting more information on these two initiatives and funding for them. What procedurally, what are we doing tomorrow with this?

Thank you for the question. This does stem from council's work session discussions around these two different organizations that had submitted unsolicited requests for funding as part of the FY27 budget. During the course of the budget work session, council did not come to any resolution and so we sort of moved it to say that if council so desired, there are some contingency funds in the FY27 budget that you could consider for allocation for these two purposes. But to your point, as was mentioned in the work session, there is not a formal process for this. This is outside the normal scope of how we solicit funding requests or how we process funding requests. So the purpose of the meeting tomorrow will be just to bring it back up for discussion to determine if council would like to formally move forward with any kind of funding allocation. If council opts to do that for one or both, then we would prepare a budget amendment for a future meeting. But the purpose of the conversation tomorrow is just conversational to understand if there is consensus to move forward in any way.

Have the leaders of each of these groups been invited to come and participate?

No, we were simply basing it on the information that we have received regarding the funding amount that they requested. We have had some additional information that is now available in terms of what was included in the state budget for So we're able to have a little bit more of an informed discussion at this point. But we didn't request them to come because I think the purpose of each request is fairly clear or they have responded with the information that council had requested previously. So we'll be able to provide that again. But we didn't think that it was necessary to have a full blown presentation. It was really about the dollars at this point. If council prefers them to be a part of the conversation, we can certainly do that. If they're not available tomorrow, we could continue this to a future meeting.

The film partnership has reached out to me and asked if they should come, and I did not know how to answer that question. So I'm going to relay what was just said and let them decide if they want to be here.

Sure. Okay. Is there anything else? Question.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. Mayor Pater.

So is the budget finalized?

So yes, Mayor Pro Tem, the FY27 budget is finalized, but included within the approved FY27 budget, there were two pots of contingency funds, one being just considered council contingency, and then there's also an economic development contingency fund. Both of those have in excess of $100,000 in each fund. That would be council's discretion if, how, and when you might wish to allocate those funds. So it would be considering potential use of those funds for one or both of these requests, either in whole or in part.

Did we get our economic development person yet?

so they are starting um it's uh what is it the 27th of july um so they have to move from out of state but they are on their way i'll do that yeah thanks thanks for that sure thank you mr mayor yes sir yes um could we also you mentioned the amount of funding that they got from the state budget could you also put in there any funding that they've gotten from the county Yes, that was going to be a part of it as well. Thank you.

I have a question. So tomorrow we're going to, I guess, get some information about what the request is and the other places that these organizations have received funds from. Are we taking a vote on this tomorrow or we're just having a conversation?

It would simply be direction for staff if there is consensus on how to move forward because if there is funding that council ultimately decides to move forward with, we would need to prepare a budget amendment in order to process that, to designate those funds. So that would come back for an actual vote at a future meeting. If you wanted to take a formal vote, you could on this tomorrow, but otherwise it's really just discussion and consensus to know what to prepare for the future.

Thank you.

Anybody else? Okay. Are there any items brought forward, Ms. Hall?

No, Mr. Mayor, there are no presentations, but I did just want to take a moment to introduce our new assistant police chief, Brooke Wright, who is over there.

Why don't you come over here, Brooke, so the community can see you.

I was gonna say, she's the one in the uniform. But Brooke comes to us, if you wanna come right up to the podium there. Brooke comes to us from Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia. She was there for 27 years. She spent her entire career there, worked her way up from a 911 dispatch call taker all the way to assistant chief of administration. She was also the deputy chief of investigations. She has graduated from the FBI National Academy. She has a master of public safety from the University of Virginia. The accomplishments and accolades could go on and on, but she comes to us as the result of a very rigorous national recruitment that we undertook for this position. She went through a competitive process and we had assessors from multiple states, other police chiefs who were a part of that. And I will say that the conversation in the room was if we didn't hire her, they would. They were that impressed with her. But we're very excited to have her. She joins Chief Zutema and the rest of the command staff, Deputy Chief Hargrove, Deputy Chief Sotelo, and then now also Deputy Chief Dawson, who was promoted up from captain. But we're very excited to have her. And so without further ado, that is our assistant chief, Brooke Wright.

Well, Brooke, welcome. Thank you so much. Good group here and good staff and looking forward to some great things and just welcome to Wilmington, North Carolina.

I'm grateful to be here. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Is that all?

That is it. Okay.

With that, we stand adjourned.