City Council - Regular Meeting

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I'm Alan Joins Mayor Winston say and I call to order this meeting of Winston Southern City Council acting as a committee of the whole and ask the city clerk to call the role please. Council member Joiner present. Council member Clark here. Council member Andrew Bowen here. Council member Cypio present. Mayor Pro Tim Adams here. Council member Taylor present. Council member Hall present. And council member Burke here. Thank you very much. Our first item on the agenda today is a presentation by Greater Winston Salem Inc. And I'd recognize the president, Mr. Mark Owens, president of the number one chamber in the United States. You still say that, right?

Absolutely. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Can you all hear me? Mr. Mayor, Madam Prom, thank you, council members, for having us today. I'm going to do a very quick update. I know you have a very busy agenda and most of you have seen most much much of this already, but like to just give you a great update. Before I start, I'd like to recognize JT Warren and Trey Blackwood who's on our team from economic development side sitting with Ken. And Ken has been so fantastic working with us. He is an allstar. Absolutely is. Aaron hit me on the pause. So, you want me to go? Great. I'll go without slides. Let's just go for it. How's that sound? We can get We have

You have them on. All right. Let's see if I can do this by memory. Are you ready for this? Okay. Thanks, Scott. Um so obviously just we always like to start with everything. Oh thank you that is see fantastic rescue.

Um by 2030 our goals are to be the top midsize city in the southeast to be a more equitable community and to be the best place to raise a family and everything we do as it relates to Greater Winston Salem Inc. is around those three goals and that's what we're really focused on. A quick little highlight as you go through you can see where we are since 2020 when greater Winston Salem Inc. uh started. We've had 3,039 jobs announced and $831 million in capital investment. And that's because of your leadership investing in our utilities, our sites, and of course incentives if needed as we continue to grow right here. Just for perspective, as we finished 2025 at 2,966 jobs, we were about a thousand more than the previous 10 years combined. And so we've been able to really uh look forward and and and elevate and accelerate that growth that we're looking at. So just overall activity, the pie chart graph. Oh, now now we got it working now. So let's see. Well, there's a pie chart graph that talks about overall activity for 2025. And you can see there that about 78% is manufacturing and assembly. So we continue to be a manufacturing community. We know that. We know that well. and manufacturing still is such a large piece of that because we are also within 500 miles in one half day in one day's drive to half the United States. So people are looking in North Carolina looking at the number one state for doing business and Winston Salem is right in the middle of that Carolina core region and that's why that continues to be high. I want to call out food and beverage on that briefly at 8% as well as healthcare and life sciences. Those are continuing to grow. We'll talk about uh food and beverage just in a second, but healthcare and life sciences. Some really new innovative things we have going on. Our biioness fund, which is private investment dollars to help seed early on stage biotech and life sciences, continuing in innovation quarter and beyond. Had over seven of those companies already receive

funds that we were able to raise $200,000 for in this year. Uh these are these are slides you can go through later, but I just want to really show the data that we track. And you can see this is 152 manufacturing projects that we responded to in 2025. And you can see the different square footage sizes and they're a little bit all over the board, but our sweet spot is that between 50 and probably up to 500,000 square feet. We a million square feet and more of these large projects. They're harder to find on land and in different sites, but we are well equipped for large pretty large size projects that look that look at our space. Between 50 and 100 acres continues to be the leader in terms of the acreage that companies are looking for. Uh really want to shout out the city county utilities commission, our planning department that do such a great job of helping us be really proactive and ready. We meet monthly to be able to make sure we're all on the same page of where we're going, what projects we see in the pipeline, and any potential challenges. It allows us to stay ahead. What I will say on the site readiness piece though as well is that we're not the largest county, not the largest geographical space. We're welldeveloped. We have a great history of economic growth here. So, there's not a lot of farmland that's just ready to go as some of our neighbors have. So, we've got to be really thoughtful about bringing new uh older buildings back to life, such as the Winston Salem Journal building uh as an idea that we just had in their printing facility for that. So, this is uh our current pipeline. We've had uh 109 active projects. Uh we've had double digit new projects each month. We've already hosted four insight uh in town sites visits. We have another one coming up, I believe, either this Friday or next Friday. um continuing to see those same industry standards um in and areas as the keys. 109 is a lot of projects. That means we have something

that they want and we respond back to them and they have interest in our site. That's not just how many inquiries we receive. So when just as a point of reference in 2021 after COVID kind of in 2022 we had about 14 when we took economic development on. So the number of projects has really grown and that's really exciting as an opportunity. Here are just some trends. You can see over uh the years we've had new average 39 average is our average of new projects per quarter. Something really interesting uh almost 50% of our sites visits were from international projects. We have a lot of individuals looking to come back to the United States or to start in in North America. for example, Zilbeg for uh as one a couple years ago. Their North American headquarters is here. They just announced they're growing, looking to expand potentially a whole another building already in just their brief two and a half years. And then you can see the size of these projects. These projects continue to grow and get bigger and bigger and more expensive. So that's something to think about as we look at our trends. They're using more water, definitely asking for more power, and they're investing more, which is great for the tax base as we continue to try to grow that. So, two very quick callouts. You saw the increase in food and beverage just ranked as the number four best place for food manufacturing um in the country by global location services GLS which is a leading site consultant agency. So, we have to of course give some recognition to Texas Pete and their growth that continues to happen here in Winston Salem. But that is one of the main reasons for that is the quality of the water supply and the water that goes into most food and beverage manufacturing spaces. So, thank you for your continued investment in our utilities and our clean water. And then lastly, something fun um and that is economic development, community development is the hosting of Germany here for the World Cup this summer 2026. There's Mayor Joins. We got him out

early on a very cold morning. This this was before we even knew they were coming because of the draw, but we've been working with our friends from the German men's national soccer team that will be arriving in June. They've already credentialed over 150 media members to fly here with them from around the world to cover our beautiful city. We'll be taking their team, the media around and showing off Winston Salem. Uh so if you have a restaurant or you know one of your favorite restaurants, tell them to to crank up some schnitle and broughtwur and some other German items uh to really jump in and celebrate as part of this. as it relates to economic development. Germany, German owned companies, there are 333 of them in the state of North Carolina already. It's one of the key areas of economic recruitment. So, not only is this a great way to showcase our community from a a sporting hospitality side and our partnerships, but also from an economic development lens. We have uh the CEO of Zilab coming, the CEO of Deutschbank coming over from Germany. Many of those leaders are going to be coming to Winston Salem because of this and it's going to be able something we can leverage to create some new relationships. So, Mr. Mayor, I know I went very fast. If there um the one thing that's not on the slide I just want to highlight is our entrepreneurship efforts continuing to really be a great place to start and grow a business trying to make sure that we connect the entirety of our community to those opportunities. I know we've got the shared kitchen coming online at the enterprise center soon which we're really excited about. So, we thank you for your continued support of economic development. are always here to help. Um, and it's nice to come and not just have a project, but just to share an update.

Any questions for Mr. Scott? Andre Bowen. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mark, thanks very much for this. Um, I love the pie the pie chart you guys have there. Um, the 2% for um, aviation. Do you guys have any plans moving forward to work with the growth that's going to be happening in Greensboro of getting anything from that that stuff that's going there?

Thank you so much for calling that out. So that is specifically to Smith Reynolds Airport, but I do want to highlight uh PTI and which is fantastic. Mayor Joint serves on their board. The board chair PTI currently Grant Bennett from Winston Salem. Uh we were very actively involved in the Jet Zero recruitment. They visited Winston Salem four times during that. We hosted them for a lunch overlooking Innovation Quarter. We had breakfast with their CEO just two weeks ago. that while it doesn't sit in for Scythe County or the city of Winston Salem, you know, they expect about half of their 14,000 new employees to to live in Winston Salem. So, we are very connected as it relates to that workforce and economic development sector. Our regional airport is PTI. Our local airport, Smith Reynolds, just doesn't have the land capacity to do that. And even some of that land that's by the airport is a a landfill or have other challenges economic development wise also have neighborhoods that you want to make sure you have the relationships with from a noise perspective. But we are very connected with PTI uh thanks to our mayor's commitment to that board as well as others. Mayor

yes,

do you run into housing issues when people come and look? It is housing has definitely become once we get to the utilities, the site, the water, the power, uh, workforce, and then if they're bringing more people to the community. I mean, it was definitely a question with Jet Zero is the housing inventory. Um what's really interesting is there's um a demand for executive level housing and there's also a strong demand for what I would call the firsttime home buyers market which I know is something that you as council have been talking about and um we we rate really well percentage-wise on home ownership in Winston Salem for Scythe County but we don't have a lot of opportunities to move from the apartment space into your firsttime home buyer that's a gap for us right now and so it is harder to get uh some of those new workforce element members to come to our community that are starting wanting to buy their home and build build family wealth.

Thank you, Mayor. Prom. Yeah. Welcome. Thank you.

Um, in your presentation, you mentioned that the food industry loves our water and other businesses. of Winston Salem has a long history of having great water, but I also know that data centers are becoming uh a very hot topic for communities all over the country and how much water and utilities and power they consume. Are you know are you and your organization looking at this because again municipal government uh county uh water we will be keeping an eye on it because we don't want to end up as one of those areas in the country that we get this influx of data centers and others but then our water becomes a major issue for us.

It's a great question. The answer is yes. We have had data center visits. We've had data center inquiries. The majority of those have been outside of city limits, but still would use the water system. Um, some of these uh companies have closed water circuits so that they can recycle the own water and not have to have it go back into the system. There's also been advancements in cooling to where water may not have to be used at the same rate. You know, Winston Salem, we've had some data centers in the city through the Wells Fargo period that haven't had the machines get to that level and needing that water for cooling at that same piece. But we are looking at it. I don't see foresee any sites necessarily in the city of Winston Salem that would uh fit for that. The power need is so high that there's very few opportunities for that. And it is a tough conversation because they bring significant capital investment most of the time with a B in the capital investment for opportunities for tax growth. But you have to weigh how much of the water usage it would require. We don't have a project at this very moment to bring forth for consideration, but they are looking around and they have looked throughout for Scythe County, but not I don't believe we've had a a specific large data center use in the or inquiry in the city of Winston Salem yet.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. WS. Keep keep up the good work. Keep bringing us projects and we're ready to do Great. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for leading in this space. I know we get to do that that front facing, but it would wouldn't be possible without your investments into this and you do have great staff members across the departments that we we meet weekly and monthly together with that are fantastic. So, Mr. Mayor, thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Owens.

All right. I I did forget to recognize our sergeant-at-arms, Corporal Curtis Dawkins. Corporal, thank you for being with us today as well. Um we'll go to the consent agenda which is comprised of items um of all four uh committees. Items that are pulled from the consent agenda today will be presented during that section of our discussion today. There'll be no discussion of the these items unless a council member so request. Uh I know council member Taylor wishes to pull item C2. Are there any other items? Move for approval of the consent agenda.

Second. Thank you. Motion by Mayor Pro Tim, second by council member Hall. All those in favor of the consent agenda, please say I. Anyone opposed? No. And that is unanimous. All right. Now, we will go to the individual um items and we'll go to the general committee first. And I assume we'll take that consent item that we just pulled off. So, go ahead to first items. Item C2, request for a public hearing on an ordinance ordering the demolition and removal of a structure at 11:35 Argon Boulevard located in the southeast ward. Council member Taylor.

Thank you, Mayor, Mayor Pro, members of the council. We have an opportunity here to uh for purchase and a rehab. It' be my motion today just to delay this item for 30 days uh to allow this process to take place and then we'll revisit at that time. Very good. I move for approval. Second. Before you vote on that, if I could ask Councilman Taylor if he would just do that to April 13th, which is the next general government committee. That I would definitely include that in ask that it be included in Okay. The motion is to continue this to April 13th to the next general government committee. Next general government committee and second. Council member Cypio seconded to that. Seconded.

All those in favor of that motion to continue this item, please. Um, we voting electronically, electronically. Uh, yes. Anyone opposed? No. And that is unanimous. Thank you, Council Taylor. All right. I'll turn the meeting now over to our general government committee chair, uh, Mayor Pro Madams. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, we have three items on the general government committee, uh, agenda, and will the clerk please call for the first item? Update on Winston Lake golf course renovation and improvements.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Proton Adams, members of city council. Afternoon. Uh, in 2023, uh, Mr. Royson, would you give your name and title, please? Yes. Uh, William Royston, recreation and parks director for the city of Winston Salem. Uh in 2023, the uh recreation parks department contracted with Richard Mandel Golf Course Golf Architecture to perform a to perform a uh a business plan, put together a business plan um an approach to making improvements at Winston Lake Golf Course. Uh this item is for uh Richard Mandel to present those items to you and we'll accept any questions um at the conclusion. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Richard Mandel. I'm a president of Richard Mandel Golf Architecture. Um, and I present to you not necessarily the full uh report, the results of our report that we did a few years ago, but the most pressing needs that we've all witnessed on the golf course. U, we've done course walkthroughs with golfers, non-golfers, city staff. Uh, Missipio and I rode the cart together a while back. It was a little colder then than it was today. So, that's nice that it's not as cold today. Um, want to get right into the greens. The greens at Winston Lake Golf Course um are the number one problem at Winston Lake Golf Course and they have been for many many years. And uh my my cover sheet, my cover picture there just shows you the quality of those greens. Um a little history about the greens, about the golf course. The first nine holes at Winston Lake were built in 1956 and the second nine were built in 1964. The greens themselves are built of what we call pushup construction, which is literally existing soil, uh, literally pushed up and formed into putting surfaces. That existing soil is red clay, as I'm sure you guys are all aware in Winston Salem. These greens have survived for 60 plus years despite being composed of heavy soils that are just not conducive to quality putting green services. So from day one, Winston Lake was behind the eightball just because of the soils. No other reason. The four primary things that greens need for survival or for for to to thrive. Air circulation, sunlight, water, and drainage. Now, what's out at Winston Lake? Air circulation. It was built on a completely wooded piece of property. Lack of air on day one. Sunlight. Built on a completely wooded piece of property. Lack of sunlight as well. So, when the woods are there, the air can't

flow and obviously no sun. water. Red clay retains water. Now, greens need water for survival, but too much water will drown grassroots, and so that red clay retains too much water for successful grass to grow. Uh creating poor growing conditions from the start. And then finally, drainage. Uh it they need water, but they also need to drain. And that same red clay that retains the water obviously isn't draining either. So, four strikes against the greens at Winston Lake primarily because of the site that it sits on. Now, about 15 to 20 years ago now, the Allied Associations of Golf, the uh Golf Course Builders Association, the Golf Course Superintendent Association, United States Golf Association, etc., all did a study to determine how long golf course features can last. And it's a very a very objective number that we could put on things. And what we have here are the age of the golf course features at Winston Lake Golf Course. Uh the middle column is how old these features are. And the right side column in parenthesis are the years that the study showed how long these features last. In this case, red is not good. So you can see a lot of those features have far outlasted their life cycles. um tea boxes, sand bunkers, uh and putting greens are anywhere from 60 to 70 years for the putting greens. That should only last about 15 to 30 years. So, they're almost twice as long as their life uh expecties. Now, I mentioned to you earlier that the greens are push-up greens. What we recommend for the greens at Winston Lake Golf Course is what we call a modified USGA green. And that's a a quick uh sort

of a u a detail of what that is. And so what that is is the in the subsurface we put drain tile in and we put gravel on top of that and then 12 in of greens mix for optimal growing conditions and even distribution of irrigation and drainage. Uh it's much different than the um clay soils that they sit on right now. So the reason we like to use modified USJ greens is two things. Um even irrigate even watering and even drainage. So there aren't hot spots or wet spots on the greens. Okay? And so how you determine that is percolation rate. And the percolation rate, and this is as technical as I'm going to get, I promise. Percolation rate is the rate at which water moves through the green from top to bottom passing through the greens mix, which is a sandy soil. the gravel and the drainage down to the ground. Now, properly built greens require a percolation rate of between 10 to 20 inches per hour in order to a keep water from getting stuck in the green profile and resulting in grassroots not sitting in wet conditions. When grassroots are forced to live in constantly wet conditions, they sort of rely on them and they can't really thrive on their own. And so the moment uh drought happens those green are those green grasses and roots aren't capable of survival. So we want 10 to 20 inches of percolation rate. The greens at Winston Lake are at 5 in of percolation rate. So that's a a big challenge and that all and that really describes to you why the greens at Winston Lake have suffered from its inception really. No matter how much how talented your golf course superintendent and his staff are, and they are good, they can

overcome certain natural things. So, when I was first hired, we did a a what William mentioned, a renovation business plan. And the first thing I said to everyone was it it's a waste of everybody's time and money to do anything on the golf course before we improve the tree situation. And everybody bought into that and we cleared about 50 acres of trees. And you can see up here on this slide the before and afters of a couple holes and how much more open the golf course is. And I really applaud the city and everyone involved in that decision because that's the right thing to do before you spend any other money on it. So how did that do? That gave us two greens. Now we only have two reds. air circulation much better because it's wide open. Sunlight much better because it's not wooded anymore, but we still have the red clay and the and the water and drainage issues still exist. So, we recommend that you rebuild all of your greens con greens and we have uh updated a cost estimate. our our original renovation business plan report was done back in late 2024 and um we've in the last few weeks updated our cost estimates and to rebuild all 19 grains you have 18 plus a practice grain it will cost roughly $3.8 million. So, that's the the number one reason why we're here, just to update you on what my opinion of the next best step for Winston Lake Golf Course is. For those that you're interested, total construction cost for the whole golf course is $11.5 million. Um, this is not the most recent

um presentation that we have. Do you have the uh

Yeah. So, there's more to my presentation um that's not showing up here. Um but so let me just catch up here and say we've got a $3.8 million project for all the greens. We have an 11.5 million cost for the whole golf course. So, what does that get you? You you you get the greens. You also get new tea complexes, new cart path, new irrigation system, new grasses throughout the whole golf course. And so, um, it's up to how the city wants to move forward with things. Um, let me, uh, let me just back up. And I had a feeling that presentation was a little old, so I apologize for that. Um, just a second to catch up and make sure I haven't missed anything. Okay, so I showed you the greens. I'll back up and just go to the the greens at 3.8 million. So, as you think about the golf course and Winston Lake golf course and what to do next, um I want to the question should be asked. What are the goals of the city for Winston Lake Golf Course? And the team we we talked about that and discussed that over and over the last few years through our renovation business plan process and in recent meetings. And here are the five goals that I see would be great for the city as it relates to Winston Lake Golf Course. Number one, preserve the heritage and legacy of Winston Lake Golf Course. It's an integral part of your city. Improve the playability of the golf course. Stop repetitive maintenance repairs and start golf course management. The grains have been bandated for years and you have spent money bandating those grains for years knowing that they're not going

to solve everything. And so your maintenance staff is stuck playing survival mode more more so than actually managing your golf course. Um and then another goal should be updated infrastructure that lasts for decades. If I show you that slide that had all of those golf course features and how the age of those golf course features, there was a lot of red and in this case red is bad. I say that because I'm a Georgia Bulldog, so red is always good. That's another story. But red is bad, right? um a lot of your features are far past the life expectancy. So that's goal number four. Goal number five is the ability to compete with golf courses on a level playing field. Um here we are. Let me here we are right up here. Um the city's been challenged with trying to provide a great amenity for all its citizens at Winston Lake, but without putting any of the investment into it that it requires. So, it's always at a it's always at a deficit and fighting with other golf courses that have more money already put into them. So, I showed you the the $3.8 million for the greens and now I'm going to say ask the question. The next question is um are rebuilding the greens enough? What does the city get with an entire new golf course? Number one, number one is that fifth goal, the ability to thrive on an even playing field. You get new putting greens, new grasses that are more disease resistant, pest resistant, and heat tolerant. Improved range throughout the golf course, not just with the greens, new wall-to-all cart paths, new irrigation system, and T-shot distance equity with bigger TE's to spread out wear and tear. Relocating TE's on each hole will allow all golfers of all talent levels to experience golf the same way. So, um, so

that's why when I bring up uh, and show you this number here of 11.5 million, you get obviously it's a lot more than the 3.8 for the greens, but you also get a lot more for your golf course. and you put yourself in a position to compete not just on a local level or even a regional level but a national level as well and make Winston Lake Golf Course a destination for golfers. Uh we uh my firm I have worked on projects just like Winston Lake and golf courses that were in equal shape to Winston Lake for the cities of Sarasota, Florida, Savannah, Georgia, um uh Dina, Minnesota, Denver, Colorado, a long list of golf courses where we've been in the same situation and we've completely redesigned it, improved the in infrastructure, rebuilt the golf courses, and they've made they're making money and paying off whatever costs they had to incur for those golf courses. And I know you can do that at this do that here as well. So, um that's uh my brief quick um introduction to what we see at Winston Lake right now.

Thank you, Mr. Mandel. Again, this is for information. uh if you have not taken the time to read uh all of the attachments, which I did more than two or three times. I was even sending emails to staff over the weekend. Um it's a lot. Uh I tell people I don't just play at golf, I play golf. Uh I love Winston Lake. I've been working on Winston Lake or advocating for it uh since 1995. And when I got on the city council, it became one of my passions. Uh when you talk about the tree removal, you have no idea how much grief I got for wanting to remove the trees. Uh it's because I understood airflow and its importance because I'm a gardener also uh to growing. Uh the the price tag, I already figured that would be like what it is. Uh, golf courses are expensive, especially when you're trying to preserve a course as old as Winston Lake. Uh, I don't know. I'm going to take a few comments from this committee and the council. But again, this is information and I would hope that you would pass on whatever your requests or whatever the staff because we only got two hours and we already in a half hour even though the mayor and you guys got my time on the intro of the committee of the whole but uh questions and comments. I'mma take the mayor.

This question is from Mr. King actually. Mr. King wants to know what kind of grass you'll put back on the greens. Bermuda. Well, for Mr. King's knowledge, we'll just leave it at green grass. It'll be a a Bermuda hybrid. Um either Champion Bermuda or Tiff Eagle. You've made great progress and it's good to have another bulldog in the room, too. All right. Good. Speak for yourself. Council member Cypio, and then Council Member Joiner.

Thank you uh for this report. Um Mr. Mandel, I was the one that needed to be convinced cuz um I don't play golf, but the golf course had been part of my existence since I was a child. And the golfers had told me about the trees. They loved them. And I did not uh I I resisted taking the trees down until our ride until you showed me what that golf course looked like in 1956 with the aerial view. And it really showed me how negligent our city had been with that golf course over the many years it's been there. And now the trees are gone. And what a spectacular golf course it looks like. Um it is so beautiful now that we see the green the fairways coming back and it looks like a golf course and not a beautiful park uh which it was getting to look like with all the trees. Um I just want to commend um Mr. Rost and his vision and its leadership in getting through the tree removal, but more importantly having someone who's managing that park with such enthusiasm. Um that's Mr. Fletcher. um he's done a remarkable job with the staff and keeping it going with just the changes with the uh trees as well as some of the other things he's brought to it. Uh and I want us to recognize that

when you neglect things for over 50 years, you get what you get. And uh somehow we really need to make a commitment to Winston Lake Golf Course to bring it up to the caliber of course that it needs to be and should be and should have been. Um there are many people who still love it dearly and I know it has great potential to be an asset to our community as well as a revenue generator. Thank you again,

Council Joiner. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. The golf course looks amazing from where it came from. Um, just from pictures and that kind of thing. And I know that there were lots of different components to the plan to get us to where we are now. One of them being the driving range. Where are we on that part? So, um, I'm not actually that project is not part of my purview, but they call and talk to me about it. So, I can't really specifically say where we are, but I'll let William give you an update on that.

Good afternoon, Council Member Jordan. I can provide an update on the driving range, uh, which is a great this is a great time to do so. Um, we currently have funding uh to replace the there's one pole on the driving range net that needs to be replaced. Um, and we have the funding to replace that pole as well as the driving range net. Um, we also have a ball dispenser that will be uh rolling out sometime in April once we get Caitlin back and we find an adequate place for it. Um, but there were some issues with uh sprigging the driving range last summer. Um, the contractor wasn't performing the work to our standards and work with my assistant director uh Miss Owens uh as well as myself. Uh she put together a plan to get the project to complete the work using our staff uh which we did. And so we're hopeful that and believe that the golf course will open um as soon as we're able to get the get the net um installed. So it should be this year.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mandel. Looking forward to more updates from Parks and Rex. Uh I can say that Mr. Royson, and I'm doing it publicly, I need to be kept updated because this is showing up on the agenda. We needed it. I kept asking, you cannot have a project like this and the committee that it comes to only gets it again, Mr. uh Pate, when it's time to come. I need to be meeting with you regularly on anything. Like I tell people, council members don't like to be blindsided. And uh I again, I'd want to thank Mr. King who had to take this project under his wing a few years ago just to get it moving because we were not making any money, Mr. Manny. We weren't making anything. We were losing money,

right?

And the the the condition of the golf course needed somebody to own it. And I I believe that if you don't own whatever your real estate or your business or your process, then what are you doing? because now you don't you're not managing it and it's just kind of hanging on and that's what was happening at Weston Lake. So, Mr. King, uh I want to thank you and your staff uh for bringing it uh everything kind of to fruition, whether it was when we were meeting about the trees, when we were meeting about the golf course and security, meeting about the staff, meeting about the cars, uh there were meetings going on all along. And I asked Mr. King, I need a PGA professional, you know, one that's trained under the compliance of the USGAA. We also needed some other things to happen. But I do feel like management is at the top of the the chart. You cannot have a successful anything if the project is not managed. So, I thank Kayn for coming. Uh I thank all the new employees that's out there who are giving their all and all. But again, there is much still to be done with this. Uh I always ventured it into seeing it like uh Augusta, you know, with the dog woods and all of the the different trees and things we had. And Mr. Mandel, I know you know this course was a jewel back in the day, but it was built for African-Americans during a time when segregation was king. and therefore a lot of it that it didn't get that Reynolds Park got. So, it's going to be an uphill battle because right now municipalities across the country, we are not being funded at most levels for anything like this because this is not considered a

necessity. But we also know, as you said and I've said, destination locations are the key now to tourism and people coming to your city. So to have a jewel like this, I see it as we're building to the future to create a golf course along with Reynolds Park that are municipally owned that we can can market and bring people here to our city along with all the other variables that we have. Again, thank you. I look forward to to talking with you in the future. And Mr. Royson, thank you so much.

Thank you. And you all contact me anytime you want with any questions. And I appreciate your time. And and just in closing, you do have a fantastic piece of property and the city, we're you're either going to be in the golf business at Winston Lake or not, and now's the time to to move forward with something. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Uh would the clerk call the next item two, information regarding proposed issuance of requests for proposals for the disposition of four city-owned multif family properties?

Mr. Blair. Good afternoon, Mayor Joins, Mayor Pro Tim Madams. Um, hey, council members. Uh, this is just aformational item for some city-owned rental properties that we would like to put out for a request for qualifications. It's not really a request for proposals, but um those properties are Plaza Apartments uh 800 North Spring, 1,200 Willie Davis Drive, 1635 Cleveland Avenue. And just to give you an idea, 1,200 uh Willie Davis Drive, and 800 North Spring Street are currently part of the current RFP process that that was due uh yes last Friday at 5:00 PM. So, these may not end up on the RFQ that we put out, but I I think from what I've seen, I think we'll include these these four properties totaling about 95 units. Um, they would all be subject to your Affordable Housing Act 2-9, the ordinance. Um, but I think that because of the um, uh, populations that they serve and currently serve, there would be a process that we'd go through to make sure that no one is displaced and somebody else taking ownership of the properties over a period of time. So, um, if anybody has any questions about that or why we're doing this, um, I'd be happy to try to address that.

I believe there are a lot of questions. Fantastic. But again, this was brought uh as to let everybody know what's going on.

Uh I'm going to take a few questions, but this is information of a what we need to be looking at. Uh the city, as much as people would like to think that we have these bottomless pits of money buckets everywhere, we don't. And uh we got into this business even back in the 90s, early 80s maybe uh to help foster some things that weren't happening again in African-American community. I'm going to go ahead and and uh Council Member Burke uh has a question. Council member Bowen next.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. Uh, this question is for the city manager and I've already asked it privately and I've already made phone calls. I uh heard that the city had put out a RFP to sell 1,200 Willie Davis Drive. When I got that call, I told the person, "No, that can't be. We're not selling that property." And when I called, I found out that we had put out an RFP. And and so how did that happen without council having that conversation and uh voting that we wanted to put a RFP out to sell Willie Davis? That's that's the first question.

I I'll take this for for Michael on on this one. All the project, all the properties that the city has that's a set that's set aside for affordable housing is a part of the program that y'all have established to put those out to other uh entities to try to preserve those as affordable housing sites. So, this uh presentation was supposed to take place before uh anybody was out there and so we did get the cart before the horse a little bit on that one, but uh it is coming back to council now to look at these parcels. Um, we've had individual conversations on a variety of these uh parcels in the past and have talked about having the the necessity to find someone that can take on management and hopefully ownership of these properties to maintain them in a way that council wants them to be maintained. So, the uh and and again, we talked a lot more about Plaza Apartments and Spring Street as ones that we were putting out there. Uh Willie Davis Drive and Cleveland Avenue are the two other projects that the city owns. So the the intent is to put out all of those. We'll get back potentially request from individuals of their qualifications. We'll review those. They will come back to council. This is a preliminary. Nothing that the city owns can be sold without council approval of those. So again, we're following a process going through as we've established for our affordable housing program that allows individuals to express interest and to put a prop proposal together back to council on these properties like they would any of the other properties that we currently own and you've designated as affordable housing.

Uh thank you for that response. Again, just like Mayor Pro Tim said earlier, uh council members don't like to be blindsided, and I was blindsided when I was approached uh with that uh information. Um I just want to be clear on a statement that you made uh when you uh initially started, you said, "We have not put a RFP out on these properties. This is a request for qualifications." There there was an RFP put out on Willie Davis.

Oh, no. What what I was referring to is these properties going forward. Um, and any property that would be sold would be, especially if it's an affordable property, would be a request for qualifications. It would not be a request for proposals. I mean, we want to have entities that know how to manage affordable housing, and that's a specialty. That's not your typical property management. I'm sure you're probably aware of the different groups that can do that sort of work, but also that can know how to refinance and to u rehabilitate, bring up and keep to a good standard for the 30-year period. So, um again, it's it's for for the existing properties, it's more of a request for qualifications. And actually, what we put out was a notice of funding um opportunity and an RFQ uh for city properties at the time, which was done at the beginning of the month. The last thing I want to say is I've made a lot of phone calls, had a lot of conversations, especially with the manager, and I've expressed my concerns. My number one concern goes back to what we all, as council members said, uh was a priority for us are unhoused. And I don't want us to make a decision or to vote to do something with the properties that we own that might cause the tenants, the current tenants to become part of the unhoused. Thank you,

Council Member Andre Scott Bowen. Thank you, Madam Mayor PM. Um, so you you kind of hinted at it a few times um about the reasons why. I've had conversations with city staff of the reasons why, but I think the public needs to know have an understanding of the reason why. Could you just share why we're looking at these properties and the moving forward for what we're looking to do?

Well, I don't want to speak for the manager, but I think the general idea is that that the city is not really uh well equipped to be a property owner like that. Um the property management groups that we have working on these properties um aren't necessarily interested in taking over these properties. So, um, one of the things I was certainly looking at is making it a portfolio to try to encourage again large affordable housing groups that know how to manage these types of properties to bring them in for some sort of transition or of that property. Thank you.

And and let me add just a little bit to that. as as we've talked about from count to I've talked to you individually about the plaza apartments are currently managed by Aspire our housing authority that's being managed at a loss and they have told me since I've been here that they cannot continue to do that so the housing authority is a separate entity from the city but this one was is wrapped in in them doing the we still have ownership but are managing it. So, we we have to come up with a solution to deal with uh those that property. The Spring Street property was always supposed to be sold to a third party. We were only supposed to be the intermediaries that were helping out the initial owners that were trying to get out of that property to for cash flow purposes and then it was going to be turned over. So that did not happen and but that's always been there's been continuous efforts to do that uh on those properties. Again, Willie Davis and Cleveland Avenue are properties that we have owned for a long time. I think there was some issues in terms of transition with uh some of our staff and and housing in other places. And so, but those are also properties that are owned by the city and now have been completely renovated by the city by council approval of funds to do so. So, now is the best opportunity to look at having them put in a place with a professional management company that can take care of the uh leases in those facilities. Councilmania Um, Madame Chair, city manager, maybe u

Mr. Ktos, legally um it just dawned on me when we as a council approved to sell all of our city properties for affordable housing. I know I was thinking of just single single lots, but does that mean these four multif family units fall into that policy that we agreed to sell city-owned properties for affordable housing? I would think that would that ultimate decision would be would be council's decision. Um so in terms of each property it's disposition is voted on um or is determined individually. So whether or not you would like to place them into a particular pot um

I'll defer to the manager. I and I'll help the city attorney out a little bit on this one as well. For disposition of property, you actually you have two there's one basic option. The city the state charter talks about how to dispose of property as council. And so you can sell any property that we have, including what we're sitting in today. That's the right of city council as a part of your responsibilities. So, but if you do those on a typical basis, you they're subject to upset bids. you have to get the best price so that it's not there's not a collusion of somebody coming in and under bidding and buying that. So there's a typical process that goes out for selling properties and we can follow that process with any property that the city has and have done that in many occasions. The county is doing that on a variety of properties right at the moment. Uh you also sought state legislation with the affordable housing act to give you a second option in terms of selling property which basically is a non-negotiated or it's ne negotiated but not subject to upset bid. So if you designate properties to be a part of our affordable housing program, then that gives you the opportunity to get a request back and then to look at that request and determine whether you think that's in the best interest of the community. And if you deem it's in the best interest of the community, then you can negotiate or or ask staff to negotiate with the that particular uh developer, owner, property manager and sell that property without going through an upset bid process. So that was to lessen the burdens of those folks doing that and the time frame to actually in this case to get property that was not being used by the city back into the hands of a private individual that could build affordable housing on it so that people in our community would could have those units to live in. Does

that help? It does. But I'm asking when we had that policy uh granted to us from our legislature, did these four multif family units automatically fall under that umbrella and therefore we have already agreed to treat them as such?

No, my understanding is that uh all of the properties that were designated as affordable housing have typically been designated by council for that. There was a whole process that you went through and um Aaron might be able to describe that better than I can of going through that and identifying which properties would be available and that you felt would make the most sense to to do that. So again, we didn't put parkland on the list. We own a lot of parkland, but the assumption was we wanted to keep that as parks. Erin, anything else you want to

Yeah, I I'll try to offer a little bit of context on that. Council recip I think the issue was when we brought that initial map book to council the first time those were vacant parcels and the whole purpose of that was essentially those are vacant parcels and the idea was to create a um some capacity to build new affordable housing on since they were vacant and it freed up some barriers to get those back into productive use for affordable housing. The very first map book packets had some city-owned houses like Graham um some of the ones we've actually sold recently. So, it included some existing structures, not many, but it included some existing structures. I I'll be frank with you, these were not included at that time. They weren't on the radar because essentially they already were affordable housing to to some degree that was owned by the city. So, it was really two different purposes there, if that makes any sense.

Yes. So moving forward is it nec it is necessary for the city council to give direction that these multif family units would be sold under affordable housing or or not. Is that something we That's correct. Council member Cipia the issue is you've got two options there.

Yeah. Um, and quite honestly, when you did the original one, the Spring Streets weren't even owned by the city at that point in time. Plaza Apartments was being managed by Aspire with the assumption that they were going to take ownership of those properties, which they have told us now that they are not going to do. So, in in this case, it is a it is we can put those out just as typical uh as Michael said as as an RFQ for qualifications and people can submit things to us. We can bring you back the best offer. Then you can put that out for the community to say, "Here's the best offer. Does somebody want to come in and and provide a better what they think's a better offer?" Or you define what a better offer is. If you want to go the route of affordable housing and then put these out and then negotiate with who you think is the best party to take over this, then you would I would suggest that you add those to your affordable housing list and that we do that as a part of that affordable housing um process.

Thank you. I think that again uh because this is information, this gives staff an opportunity uh Mr. Pate uh Miss Angel Wright Laneir to bring us back what it would look like if we edited or amended the previous affordable housing plan that we voted on to add something like this. because when we did it, we weren't thinking about this scenario. It was not on our radar. But one thing again, I I want the public to know. Uh I know there is no right way to do this. Uh what we're trying to do uh we're trying to do like any other business of trying to ensure whatever assets or properties or people's lives that we impact that we think this through because we would want the properties that we own to be able to go to people or businesses or organizations that the community also know would approve of in retrospect because again when we got in the business of this I was on the housing authority commission as the chair uh in the 90s very early 90s and we did this because we thought Hood at the time wanted us to do this. They wanted us to be landlords. They wanted us to get and accumulate relative, you know, properties and bring it under the umbrella of HUD, of the housing authorities. And therefore, the commission I was on,

uh, I helped lead the charge on the plaza apartments. Uh, I led the charge on a lot of these properties because this is what the mission was at the time that Hood saw the housing authority becoming. Then it shifted and we all know when that happened, HUD decided it did not want any more properties. It did not want to continue uh the mission as it was 50, 60, 70 years ago. They wanted out. They were not any longer wanting to fund municipalities, housing authorities to do this sort of housing. That's where Crystal Towers, Sunrise, University, all of that started to change. Cleveland, Pedmont, all of it. Winston Salem was in the top 25 housing authorities in the country for how many properties we had, Mr. Clark. And now we can't afford it. So what do we do? We don't have the the resources to support and preserve what was a good idea. So, I think the council, well, the staff, Dr. Council, I think it would be great again if staff brought us some options and choices of how to do this. I think I've mentioned this. What are other cities doing? Because we weren't the only ones buying up property. There were other cities doing it as well here in North Carolina and all over. Uh, so the community can have a chance to be educated as well as the council. Again, I need the council to keep in mind, we don't have the resources to preserve, to sustain it, to keep it up. We don't have it. And I would rather, for me, rather us attempt to do something to make sure that it's of the quality that

we envision for the the people that live there, our citizens, the residents, versus letting it fall into disarray and nothing happening. We have some great organizations here in town that are willing to step up just like they did for the school board. And I think with the community again, the community and the people that live in these these homes need to be a part of the discussion. And if that is that, Mr. City Manager, Mr. Blair, we thank you for the information, but we look forward to more information and again keeping this council updated on where we are and again not hopefully seeing it come to the agenda and nobody knows it's coming until it shows up on this and we get the email from the clerk that is now on our agenda on our iPad. Thank you so much. Will the clerk call the next item, please? Can I make a comment, Mr. Clark? I'm sorry.

Just make a couple of disjointed comments. First off, I do think these are different than the than the blank property, obviously, because yeah,

the blank pro the empty property doesn't have houses on it. And as we know, we have hundreds of pieces of little pieces of land. Most of them are not buildable, but a lot of them are. And I I will say so far, I've been uh impressed with who has stepped forward. Um, I just got an invitation in the mail the other day for some uh, they don't call it groundbreaking. I think they're calling it a nailing party over at Happy Hills to start putting some boards up, but but that land has been empty since I have been on the council and we're making progress there. These are very different. These are actually properties that have houses on or apartments on them. Uh, and how we I know how we acquired the Spring Street because I was here when that took place. the others I think we've kind of accumulated over time. I would simply caution and say let's just wait and see what happens. I don't think there's a long list of folks that that are specialist in lowincome apartment management, but we'll see. Uh, as we know, the the largest manager of low-income housing, I think, is probably the housing authority, and they don't want Plaza because it's it's not their what they do anymore. Uh, but we'll see what happens there. But I would let's don't get the cart for the horse. Let's just see what see who calls you back on this and then we'll go forward from there.

Thank you. Thank you very much. City clerk, please call the next item. Item three, resolution amending article two of the city of Winston Salem personnel resolution for certified fire personnel based on results of the market study. Good. Oh, sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I was going to say who was speaking, but go ahead. You can do that.

Sorry about that. So, good afternoon, Sharon Void, assistant city manager. When Kina is on her way up, um, and Scott, this is going to be a tag team joint presentation. Just a little background and context. Uh, we brought the updated fire plan information to you all back in December at committee. Um the couple outstanding items at that time. We had a recommended pay plan, but we were waiting for our consultant that consult conducted the uh compensation study um Pedmont Triad Regional Council PTRC. They were going to be compiling the results of a benefits study and then we were waiting on implementation recommendations from them. We just received those last month. So the majority of what uh Kina will go through in the presentation, a lot of it is recap. We haven't um we're recommending the same pay plan paygrades that we presented back in December with just now more updated information on summary of the benefits study and recommended implementation. So Kina will talk about this as we said in December kind of updating pay grades and updating employee pay are two different things. So now we've got both pieces of that puzzle. Um you'll see we are re staff is recommending that we implement this in the current fiscal year prior to July 1, but are looking for some discussion and direction from you all on exactly when that implementation is effective. So wanted you to have that kind of background before Kina went into the results of the study.

Dr. Koffield Jones, if you will introduce which we know, but your title as well.

Thank you. Dr. Dr. Kina Koffield Jones, human resources director for the city of Winston Salem. So this afternoon, I'll be going through the presentation. You've heard the opening comments from ACM Voida. So that kinds of um just brings us to this point. All right. So this presentation I'll cover the overview components of the analysis, findings, and observations. Scott uh in conjunction with me with me will go through the budget analysis and then the recommendations. Pedmont Triad Regional Council PTRC was um conduct had conducted the study and as ACM voida shared have come back with their recommendations etc. So we have gone through that um and the results of the benefit survey. The labor market included 19 cities counties across North Carolina. Well, in the Raleigh, Greensboro, um, Winston Salem area. So, you'll see that and those are listed there. The components of the analysis are the salary range analysis, the actual salary analysis, and then the results of the benefits survey. The findings and observations. So before you is the current pay plan for the city of Winston Salem fire um pay plan. PTRC's findings. How we break this pay plan out with military and education. You see there are three tiers if you will that that is unique across um the entities that were surveyed and across the state where we break this out like this. um the range to the minimum and the maximum of the of the salaries. Each pay grade was more constrained, meaning it took longer for Winston Salem

employees in these particular positions to reach uh the max of those pay plan of the of the pay range and then there was larger discrepancies in the salary ranges versus the actual salaries themselves. findings in our hiring practice in our hiring practices was that Winston Salem's practice of recognizing education and military was unique from others that were surveyed in the three tier um plan that we have. Also, our education incentive for associate and bachelor's degree was at least two times higher than what the market than the majority of our market peers. They range um half of those numbers. And then most employers administer educational attainment at the hiring process and some of them had a one-time pay for military where ours is added to their base. The market analysis you'll see on this chart the firefighter one engineer captain battalion chief the minimum max of the range and then the percent spread of the range with the market. Well Winston Salem's in blue our current and then the market and then the recommendation and the column to the far right are the results compared to market com um of the minimum and the maximum of the range. So the average of firefighter one, the actual salaries were 4% below the actual market average. The average salaries for the engineer 2% below the market average. Captains 1% below the market average. The the for actual salaries and then the BC's battalion chiefs are 5% above actual market average.

In the last column on that chart, you'll see that the ranges were well, I don't necessarily think I need to walk through all of them, but the firefighter one the range minimum uh is one of what is being recommended 1% above the market and then on the minimum and 6% above the market on the max. And you'll see that the current range is 7% below the market. So each of those um spells out how we compare to the market with our current range and then the recommended ranges. The summary which I've just alluded to um the current minimum you'll see those percentages of where we are as of the market and then the proposed range minimum. So for instance, fire captain was 94% compared to the market and with um the recommendation the minimum would be 102% which is 2% above the market minimum. So that's basically how you read that chart. The average actual salaries for fire are 2.2% 2% below average salaries for market comparables and with the largest variance at the entry level firefighter rank. The results of the benefit survey out of the 19 we had a quite lengthy benefit survey. So it took a little while to get the responses and out of the responses five of 19 uh responded. So you'll see those five localities listed at that top row. On the next one are our non-competitive benefits. Compared to these five respondents, they have a standalone bereavement policy. The city does not. Uh we have we were the only respondent with a 60-mile residency requirement.

And then no contributions to the 401k and 457 plans um for non-law enforcement employees. Where we are competitive is the employee employer monthly contributions to our uh medical insurance. The city provides 2% um 401A for the employer contribution. Our group life um up to three three times their salaries. the 529 college savings plan, a retention bonus, and then also our tuition reimbursement was about 42% above the market average. We give 4,000 uh a year for our tuition reimbursement. So, those were where we were very competitive or outpaced the market. And now for the budget analysis, I'm going to have Scott present this slide.

Thank you, Dr. Kino. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Prom, and members of the city council. So, we do have one slide here we'll walk you through. Obviously, as you're making changes to the pay plan, and then subsequently also uh to the individuals who are in those, there will be a cost associated with that. The total annualized cost is just under $2 million, $1.96 million. I will tell you that is using an estimated benefits rate for next year so that you are aware of what next year's annualized cost is. A little bit of budget baseball up front. we are having some increases potentially in in benefits costs. So wanted to show you what that would look like uh for next year. That represents about a 4 and a.5% increase to the total general fund budget for fire personnel as currently shown in the adopted 26 budget document. And you will see individual salary increases for firefighter level all the way up through battalion chief increasing uh between 4.32 and 9.53% to keep them at the range of midpoint that they are. The table that you see there simply shows how many employees are in each classification, the total adjustments, and then off to the side, the average adjustment. You DC uh see there the addition of benefits. So about $1.18 million worth of salary, another $534,000 worth of benefits. And then buried with an asterisk into that bottom is also a little bit of an increase to the overtime budget as a result of increasing salaries. Overtime will thereby increase if you use the same number of hours. Um so depending on when you were to uh implement this in the current year would be how much of a budget amendment you would need for the current year. There was nothing uh adopted in the 26 budget for implementation of this. So depending on when you wanted to implement it and how many months, we would need to bring you forward a budget amendment for the fire department for that. Um, originally tied to this, if we were looking at uh an April 1st type uh implementation with the first full pay period in April, that number was roughly a half a million. That would make sense. If we're looking

at um uh $2 million annually, a quarter of a year would be about $500,000. So happy to take any questions you have on the budget side there. This is the slide I have for you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. So, the proposed fire pay plan is the same that you saw in December. Um, so the only change here, well, let me just read through these assumptions. 5% increase between the pay grades. The range maximums are 55% higher than the range minimum. So, that's the spread for the range. And then with the exception of the battalion chiefs, all positions remain in their current grade. The battalion chiefs have been recommended to they are at a grade 112. Uh we're recommending that they go to grade 113. You see a about three I believe placeholder four placeholders in the um pay plan. And that is to keep the integrity of the pay plan to move those battalion chiefs up a grade and to keep everyone where they are. So that is the purpose of that. The current pay plan. This is an example of the earning potential. In the current pay plan, you see those three columns. A captain and this was just a simple example hopefully um for everyone to understand. The captain with high school degree with or without military experience. You see um in that first tier the max salary potential earning potential is $14,112. In the proposed plan without that kind of tiered scheduling the maximum earnings for the same condition, a captain with high school no um with or without military the max earning potential would be 116793. And so our recommendations are to implement the proposed pay plan where the employees will receive a salary increase to raise their salary to the minimum of the new pay plan or or

maintain their ratio to the midpoint. uh remove that subclass system, that tiered system um for education and military from the uh from the current pay plan and implement the proposed also to adjust the education incentive to align with the majority of the our market peers. Um with this well, let me just go through the example. We're recommending that it be adjusted to currently we have 5% for associates degree max and 10% for bachelors with the market we're more than two times or at least two times above the market averages and so our recommendation is to change or adjust those for the associates degree to 2 and a half% and the bachelor's to 5%. While this adjustment, while we're recommending this adjustment, it is still a little bit above the market average within and above the market average. And current employees would continue to receive the increases or the incentives that we have now, the five and 10% until for a degrees awarded um prior to June 30th, 2032. So that gives any current employee six years to obtain the associates or bachelor's degree. And we're recommending uh I believe in the resolution that that be the change for anyone hired July 6 and beyond would receive the 2 and a half and the 5% maxes um for associates and the bachelor's degree. We're also recommending to adjust the military incentive from 5% to 3 and a.5% and then to revisit the residency requirement at a future date.

Excuse me. Yes, ma'am. Why? give a why for the residency possible change because we did something a few years ago uh because we weren't we weren't at the again everybody needed employees and Winston we saw had the most restrictive uh when it comes to residency requirements. So we removed them so we could attract uh more candidates. So what are what are we asking to do here

for the residency requirement? We are not making a recommendation to make a change right now. So for that would remain the same. We would look at that as a whole because as you know we will be doing the third studies. Police also has a res residency requirement. So we'll be looking at that as a whole. Um so that's the reason why we have to revisit that at a future date but we're not recommending any changes. It would stay as it is.

Thank you. Let let me I I think based on your question, Mayor Prom, the the the resident requirement, we only have a residency requirement for for public safety officers to live within a certain distance of their reporting location. For other general employees, we don't have that. And in this case, what they found in the study is that most of our competitive agencies are not doing that. So that's the the the issue to look at would be actually in removing potentially that residency requirement from our public safety folks. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. uh the cost implications as you heard from Scott Tesh uh 1.9 million for salary and benefits that's going forward and depending on what the recommended implementation date would um then require the budget amendment for that amount and also just for future consideration what is uh approved here also sets a precedent for our future classification studies which will be starting fairly soon. Thank you. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Any questions, comments? Again, this is a resolution just in case you all had noticed. Council member Hall,

thank you. Uh, Mayor Pro Tim, uh, I do have a few questions. Um, I jott it down. um the future uh one-third study that you talked about. Do you know about when I mean obviously appreciate this and we were looking for this with fire, but do you know about when you all would be looking to do that one-third study and maybe who's up next for that? Um do you all have a timeline for that yet? We have our kickoff meeting with the contract um with the consulting um vendor later this month and at that time we will be finalizing the first third. You know we are doing a third over the next three years. So we have preliminarily identified about 45 maybe 50 positions in that first third. Um we will finalize that list and we will also publish that when it is finalized and then the second third and the third third. So the second third will be starting sometime after July and then the third third year.

Okay. Does that answer your question?

It does. Okay. Thank you. Um and then uh the respondents and this is uh for you or either to you manager pay. So when we were looking at the summary of benefits survey slide, I saw that only five out of 19 um respondents. Um so was that that it was sent to 19 and only five responded or this you're just showing us. Okay. Um I could have interpreted that a little differently. We had talked about this, I think manager P, when we were talking about different ways that we could get um feedback, analysis, information of what other municipalities were doing regarding pay. And um I think one of the things you had talked about was that the school of government often would maybe um encourage other municipalities to speak with other municipalities, take part in surveys. I wanted to but you didn't always get the best response. This appears to be the example of this. Um although Morrisfield's close to Charlotte, you got Wake Forest close to Raleigh, the Apex close to Raleigh, and then we got High Point, which is great. The High Point I shout out to these five, right? So, we appreciate that. But this this essentially what you were speaking of.

Yes, ma'am. curious to see why we didn't um get more, but I do appreciate the um 19 that did respond. I mean the five of the 19 that did respond. Um council member Hall, may I add one thing? Sure.

In the third study, we also have a um benefit survey component to look at it more broadly across the our organization. So we will be looking at that again with this particular vendor. So hopefully we'll get more responses at that particular time. Okay. Um, and one of the other things I think that I had mentioned before on the mic was when we do go out, so it's always good to have these sorts of comparisons um, versus trying to see when we are paying firms to do studies for us, then comparing that with what the a payout is to staff. like if we're paying a firm, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, right, to do a study versus the actual payout that does go to staff in any sort of um pay analysis that we're trying to do. Um but I do appreciate when you are able to speak with and get information from other municipalities which hopefully are not charging us in the same way um that another firm would do. So, thank you for that.

You're welcome. Thank you, Council Member Andre Bowen. Thank you, Mayor Perim. Um, so we we've heard a lot about when we would like to start this and I'm going to put forth my my thoughts on when I would like to see it. So, um, we voted on this in August of 2025 and in that proposal, um, there was wording that the the the would go into or this would be done before the um the uh the time off um would would be done. Um the what's the word what I'm looking for the um man the benefits the benefits the benefit cuts before the benefit cuts came into a place that that took place in January is that correct the

the cruel the cruel rate checks that took place in January correct so I um for me personally I would like to see um this go be retroactive back to January of 20 26 when that acrruel rate took place. Mayor Pro Tim. Yes, Council Member Hall.

Um, I was going to I was going to interject a question based off of that. I don't want it to go too far if that's okay. If if that was the case, are there any budget implications to that because I I I the only thing that we heard was um 1.96 million from Mr. Tesh. And so I I don't want us to go too far from that of talking about that or anything until we hear from Mr. Tesh if that's okay. And and that's why I brought it up to hear what he Okay. Thank you.

Thank you for the question. In terms of rounded numbers and implementation, call it the first full pay period in January. And not knowing everything that would happen with those calculations would be roughly a million dollars in the current year that is not budgeted. You would be looking potentially to use general fund balance to do that. So we would be going to essentially the savings account for that. We do not have revenues that are trending uh above what we have projected them where we have additional revenues, operating revenues to cover that. So I would have have recommended to the city manager that if you're looking to do that, it would be a fund balance appropriation and a half a year would be roughly a million dollars. We could get you more accurate calculations with the exact pay periods. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

Thank you,

Council Member Clark. Two comments. First off, I would offer a comment to be cautious about comparisons on benefits. And I'll take simply health benefits as an example. Well, one CDA may charge an employee $50 a month. The other one charges 50. Well, they're the same. No, they're not. What's their maximum out of pocket? What's their deductible? What's their drug card? What's the emergency room charge? There are literally dozens and dozens of variables just in health insurance. Dental, do they pay for one or two teeth cleanings a year? I mean, benefits are very complex and they're very difficult to do uh comparisons because there's so so so many variables. Uh and I think that's why out of 19 people only five of them filled the form out because it is very very difficult uh much more so than uh salaries. As chairman of the finance is my job to take away the punch bowl just before the party starts. We have to be careful. We've already had a presentation on $11 million for Winston Lake. This is a $2 million a year increase in salaries for roughly 20% of our employees. Uh Mr. Tesh, I'll ask you to come back of a number. Did you do you know did you make any adjustment when we changed the benefits? Was there salary savings there? And I don't think we budgeted any salary savings from changing the benefits.

No. Uh so the point is we have to pay for all this and it's my job to remind everybody of that and every time we turn around it's just kachchunk kachchunk kachchunk. We got to come up with the money uh and understand we had a 9% tax increase last fall that the average homeowner saw was about a 35% increase because of some other numbers in play. And that has prompted both the state house and the state senate to form ad hoc committees to look at putting restrictions on city's abilities to raise property taxes. We need to be sensitive to what we spend money on and how we do it. So I just caution everybody to think through all this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Clark. Um, again, we got uh fast trains coming down the track or municipalities of things that we may not have any control. But the one thing that I think most of you that know me have heard me say, you have to pay people. You have to pay people. If you want to appreciate, engage, whatever, you have to pay people. They have to have benefits. And in doing this, if we as a city, just like with the golf course, which is really not apples to apples, if we had managed our project better, if we had taken more responsibility to know that if we were raising our taxes according to other cities when they were raising theirs, why they were able to keep employees, attract the better employees, we wouldn't and and Mr. King, you've shaking your head. You know I'm telling the truth. This is what has happened to us. We're now at a point where we can't even turn back. We got to keep going ahead. We got to figure out how to impay our employees. Now, if citizens decide that and and Mr. Clark know I've said it, taxes are going up. They're going to always go up and they're going to go up more than what we've ever seen them. But the citizens need to understand if you don't want to pay employees of the city, then you need to tell us what you want to cut. Do you want to cut public safety? Do you want to cut sanitation? Do you want to cut utilities? Do you want to cut reduce all the parks and wrecks that we got? We got more parks and wrecks and

Carter got liver. Do we really? All of this requires money as our finance chair tells us. I need people uh city manager P and staff to start getting our minds right for what this budget is going to look like. Mr. Tesh in simple language that everybody could understand because people know their taxes went up last year. Oh, they're not going to raise the taxes this year. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. I would be s I mean, I'm just saying that the others may vote they don't want to raise, but I'm gonna let Mr. Clark, our finance chair, deal with that fallout that we won't raise the taxes, which means we won't be able to do a lot of other stuff. I'm putting it on you, Mr. Clark. Tell them the truth about that one handle of faucet you you talked about in the press. We got that one knob. We got to turn.

That's right. If we still have that knob, If the state decides and then you Mr. Mayor, if the state decides that they are going to continue to investigate the path that they're going, that they promised during the election cycle that people are mad about their property taxes. Candidates are promising them that I'm going to fix it. So, we going to create these committees to stop people from having to pay property taxes, higher property. Let's say you get locked in where you are now. What are we going to do? What are we going to do, Mr. Pay?

We can only do what the state allows us to do. And in this case, the only thing we other option we have is to look at additional user fees. Mr. Mayor,

thank you. And certainly support customers. When we met with the firefighters here, we talked about the change to the cruel policies. I said I would support a pay increase, you know, if the numbers justified it, and they clearly justify it. So, I'm very much in support of the resolution here. I do believe the April time frame is a fair one. Uh not not understanding what you're saying, council member, retroactive pay increases be very difficult to do just u within the systems, if you will. So I think I think an April one time frame is is a very very fair starting point.

I need a motion recognizing council member Andre Bowen. Thank you madam u mayor prom. I have one thing. Uh we had our strategic plan meeting in January and we were showed the um the the public satisfaction survey and we were shown a graph and the number one priority the as as top far as you can go for the biggest priority and the biggest satisfaction was our firefighters. So um that is why I'd like to make that that that move forward. Mayor,

I have a motion. Do I have a second? I have a I will second so we can talk. Uhuh. I'll second it. I'll second. Oh, I think she's thinking I'm not making a motion. I know. I know that. I will. Sure. Can we Can we get a motion on the floor? I make I can make a motion that we uh pass what is before us and have it the start date be in January of 2026. Could I make one clarification? When we talk about implementation dates, if we could say the first full pay per like first full pay period in fill in the blank months, then I that would help us on the

then I make a motion which I imagine is going to lose. I make a motion that we begin this this we approve this what is before us for the first pay period of 2026. Full pay period. There we go. I would second that. U mad madam chair city manager

um I if it pleases council I I would I would ask you to give us direction if if you're going to change what the resolution is in front of you. I would ask that y'all uh vote to give us direction so that we can bring you back specifics on that. I I can tell you it's going to be roughly a million dollars to do to do it longer to do it for six months out of the year. uh to the question that was asked earlier, $2 million is roughly a half cent on the tax rate. So what you're if you approve this going forward, you're a you're approving another half cent to the tax rate. But the but when we implement it there there's a lot of problems in going back and trying to do retroactive pay. So if y'all decide what it is that you want to do, let me bring you back options on how we implement that. the the really the first if you move forward in a as we've got it laid out really the first pay period that we could really put this in place is in uh in the first full pay period in April. And so if we're going to do anything beyond that for employees, we'd like to bring you back an alternative as opposed to doing retropay.

I have a motion on the floor. It's been moved and properly seconded. Uh, we need to vote discussion on this is to retroact January the 1st versus April. That's what Mr. Bowen's motion is. Can we have discussion on that with with a and I like the idea of it having being paid out in April? Yes. Excuse me. No, no, no. Never mind. Never mind. The current Can you repeat the current motion? Madam Chair, may I ask a question?

Yes. Go ahead. Mr. Bowen, Mr. Tash, come up, please. Go ahead. Council member Jo. Uh, Council Member, uh, Andreas Bowen, are you asking to remove the motion that you previously put forth? No, I I was I am I am not. I'm just I'm reiterating that I want to back in April or what was what did I say January for the first first pole pay period you wanted it to be effective effective the first full period so paying that out when it is available. So my question then would be if we held this to the NAKES meeting

then we'd push back April to May possibly. Is that correct? So I if we're not going to do a a retro but to the I think the real the real issue for us is depending on when council makes a decision we can tell you what pay period we can actually pay out that amount. But if we hold this trying to get to a retro, it makes it more difficult to get a current pay period done. That that is correct. Thank you. Can I make a comment? Madam Chair, may I make a comment? Council Clark, then council member Hall.

First off, this is a committee meeting. We're not a We're simply recommending this to the next full meeting when we'll make the decision. What I think the city manager is alluding to as opposed to going back for 400 employees and hand calculating the pay, he might be able to come up with a lump sum number that you make it effective uh or with the first pay period and he'll say and we might be able to come up I did some quick math on I know what the average firefighter was paid last year a month is one 12th of that. We're talking about three months. You could the math's not the math that gets you 90% of the way there pretty quick, but he's got to hand calculate this for every employee, every fireman for every pay period. And I think what he's suggesting is give him an opportunity to come back with a something that'll get us there without uh bankrupting the the personnel department and and and coming up with enough labor,

right? the payroll the division is very busy as it is and if we have to give them all this to do they may not be able to get payroll out council member hall council member Andre boy

thank you mayor pro Tim just a couple of things that um I want to talk about and get clarity after which um may want to do a substitute motion um you mentioned calculated um calculations uh council member Clark um manager pay I think you mentioned some calculations and the hardship that this could place on payroll. So, I'm hearing a couple different things. One, I'm looking at a HR director. I'm looking at our budget director. You've mentioned payroll that's out of finance that I can't remember whether I see or not in here. And I don't even know if it comes in. Is Kelly here? She's here.

Okay. Hi. So, we got a few different departments that I think probably will have their hand in any decision that this body may make. I'm curious as to and and once people start doing hand calculations, that's manual stuff and sometimes mistakes happen and god forbid we mess up somebody's pay even if we were trying to do the right thing. Um so if you got manual processes, you got digital processes going on at the same time. Um that can be a little scary if we start operating out of haste. So if we could meet in the middle of an April first period pay period in April, that'd be great. I want to make sure that staff is confident between HR and payroll that that even seems um doable. And and that keeps us, Mr. Budget Director, within the same calculations that we just saw and it does not of the 1.96 million, correct? Because we would not be going into January. Would would April keep us in the same period or would it take us over?

The $ 1.96 million number is an annualized number. So, as the city manager was saying, one point if you approve those changes, it's $ 1.96 million in next year's budget. July one, July one. And you would be prrating that essentially backwards for however many months, okay, you were doing. All right. Thank you for that. Um, I want to wait and then possibly substitute motion so we can get April back unless you have to do a vote on the current motion. Like a substitute. Okay. You recommend substitute motion

once I get her response then I will. Yes. Council member Hall, we have talked to Wayne, our payroll supervisor, u about implementing whatever is approved by council, and we both departments are in agreement that April would be the best. The first paycheck pay period, first full pay period in April, it would be effective. So then it would be seen on the second check in April. I'd like to introduce a substitute motion which is

which is to um approve a resolution amending article 2 of the city of Winston Salem personnel resolution for certified fire personnel based on results of market study payable the first full pay period in April of 2026. effective the first effective the first full pay period in 2026. Can I get a second? I'll second that. But I would like to Can I offer a friendly amendment to that

potentially? and that we direct staff to city manager to come back with a recommendation for the pay periods January, February, and March, some type of lumpsum payment that would approximate what a retroactive pay would be. And I I think that's very different from our motion because I did I think the motion on the table now or the substitute motion is for April. I'm not changing that.

Well, if you I think the motion is to start in April, which is basically a half million dollars of additional funds that we'd have to bring. If we do retroactive, then you're asking me to find a million dollars out of fund balance. Yes. Will you accept that as a friendly motion? No, I will not. Okay. Is there a second to that motion? You didn't. I didn't. Oh, you didn't. You did. I haven't seconded the motion. Okay. I need a second for council member Hall's substitute motion. I I thought you seconded and then did a and then said I'll second it with I removed my second. Yeah. So I need a second to the substitute motion by council member Hall.

Second. Okay. Need to call for the vote. All those in favor of the substitute motion by council member Hall. Can you rephrase that again or can city clerk rephrase it? Sure. I see the attorney over there grabbing the mic. Go ahead. I believe the motion is to uh approve the resolution with an effective date uh of the first full pay period in April. All those in favor, let it be known by voting yes. All those opposed, vote no. A hole everybody. A hold is everyone.

Mine didn't pop up, but I'm in favor. Make a motion. And the motion passes. I wanted Thank you very much. So when we bring this back to the full committee, the full council for adoption in April, we'll also have the budget adjustment ordinance um along with that that was not presented tonight. Yes. Because at that time, Mr. Tesh and Mr. P, we would be roll be in budget basically going in and the council needs to be aware of any and all implications of what we need to know in order to keep moving forward on the budget session. Okay. Yes.

All right. Thank Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. A lot of hard work in that committee. We now turn to the public works committee and Mr. Mayor, I was requested to see if you wanted to take a five minute break. Yeah, five minute break.

um increasing some frequency on eight of our current routes, making some routes more direct, introducing a microtransit zone and as well as uh to support those changes, discontinuing some uh less uh uh popular routes as well as in introducing some uh two new cross towns um to the network. Um the the goal again I stated before was to increase connectivity um uh help um individuals get to uh destinations a little bit faster and um just uh by by using those things then improving economic mobility. And so I I'll I'll briefly remind you of this slide that you saw in January, which was uh the service standards that city council adopted that allows staff to be able to really evaluate the routes and make decisions on or made recommendations on uh based on which routes are high performing and and low performing looking specifically at passenger per revenue hour. So how many passengers do we get on a route per hour? Um again, I showed just this slide um in January. This uh specific slide has to do with some of the implemented changes that we did in March on three routes where we saw already some increase in ridership. So if you take some time and look at that slide, you'll see that the green chart uh indicates just an increase in wrership on the three routes where we um increased frequency which is the routes went from 60 minutes to to 30 minutes giving us then the confirmation that this is sort of the the right direction for us to be to be. So in more details the service changes this is a a uh map of what the the WISA network will would look like should these changes be approved. Um the increased frequency really increases the uh overall performance of a system. Currently we are a system where 72% of network is about 60 minutes. So every hour frequency would with these change

should these changes be approved the network would go to over 70% of them being 30 minute frequency which is increases the attractiveness of the system for people that use it um which is sort of the goal also. So I talked about some um cross town. We've we've called them we've labeled them the WISA X the premier job line because that is the overall goal of the the study was to connect individuals directly to uh job centers in the community. Um and so the the the services that we're proposing would be 30 minute frequency. We're proposing two uh cross towns. The first one is the X South connecting southeast Winston at Salem Garden to Hannes Mall, which is a job cluster in the city of Winston Salem. The um important important thing to note here is that this route, these uh cross towns, these job lines do not go to downtown. They connect outside of downtown with other routes that give opportunity for individuals that are trying to make their way downtown to do so. but they take take you directly from uh in this particular case a residential area to a job cluster um in the city. The next uh cross town, the next job line here is Worester X North connecting Hannes Mill Road at the Walmart to the Atrium Health area. Again, the same idea, 30 minute frequency route, uh connecting individuals here in this case to actually two uh job clusters in the city of Winston Salem, giving them opportunities to to get there more directly than having to go to downtown and then back out. Um so in order for us to be able to implement some of these changes, we have to propose some service elimination in order for us to maintain remain within the existing budget and u uh utilize the current assets that we have. And so we'll we'll talk through some of the change changes sort of in areas because it's easier for us to group them by areas. U the northeast area, we're not

really making more a lot of changes to that area. It's already a high performing area in our system. The only change that we're proposing that's sign that may be a little significant is the adjustment of a of route 93. As you can see the dash line in any of these areas that I'm going to show are where services are proposed to be eliminated um in in in general. So when you see a dash line you can assume that there's a proposal for service elimination. Uh in the southeast area there are some uh additional uh proposals there. the elimination of routes 101 and 108 are proposed. You will see that some of those routes are already also being covered. You can see that with the X South in that brown line, I'm sorry, that brown line that starts Salem Garden, if I could point, you probably can't see my my my cursor, but at Salem Garden and makes its way all the way to Hannesmore Mall Boulevard. And so some of those routes are being replaced by uh a new service and some will lose service and um again increase frequency in that area as well. Uh southwest area same uh same uh kind of situation here. Some service elimination is proposed for route 82 and route 102. Um and then increased frequency for route 81. And again, that's that cross town we've been mentioning that that's the Worester X South, the the job line connecting H Mall Boulevard to Salem Garden in this particular case. In the northwest area, the changes are also a little bit more comprehensive. There are some service elimination proposed, route 88, 97, and 109. But again, similar to the southeast, you can see that some of those routes are also being replaced by either um are covered by either existing routes or by new routes that we're proposing uh to put in their in their places. Um we're also increasing frequency and we're at we're adding in this area the microtransit

zone. that shade that yellow shaded area that you see is the microtransit zone that we had discussed uh prior uh during your uh January meeting. So a little bit about how that microtransit zone would interact with our uh current fixed route system. The way it would work is, for example, if you were a resident that lived um on Luther Green Road, you might uh call the microransit service by, you know, dialing on an app or calling WISA itself and the vehicle would come and pick you up at your address and then you would be able to the the vehicle would take you directly to uh the next corresponding fixed route bus. You could make your connection then and then head to downtown if that is your destination. um not shown on this slide is if you lived if the destination you're trying to get to within the zone is is within is where you live as well, you could just use microransit to maneuver within that zone as well. Uh just a summary again of the changes uh a significant increase in uh the the productivity of the system, more 30 minute frequency routes. Uh we hope to yield more anra more attractive service here. And so I want to spend some time next year talk about about our community engagement. We are proposing a a really a really comprehensive suite of changes and it was important for us to get out into the community and talk to them about what those changes are, engage them, help them understand sort of what what we're trying to accomplish and also see where there might be gaps in what we are proposing. And so in order to do that, we spent some time hosting several meetings. We held a a virtual meeting um and then we had a couple of in-person meetings in various locations. We tried to have one in the center so that at the library library downtown and we had two other ones that were in the north of town and in southeast Winston to reach

communities that we thought might need additional support in sort of walking them through these changes. We made sure that people were aware of the the meetings. We we handed out flyers on the bus. We also had an an uh a pop-up table all day at the transit center where we interacted directly with riders and spent some time sort of walking them through the changes and then helping them understand where they might be able to catch a ride if the the current route their current stop is proposed for elimination. There's a survey going on right now. Survey is still live. Um individuals can fill that survey up until March 24th. So this is just again some footage of of what we we did and we had a lot of comm a lot of engagement from folks especially at the TC and at that first meeting at the library we did see a lot of of people come to those meetings and so what was the response I'll highlight that in as part of your packet there is a more comprehensive summary of what uh the responses has been but I'll give you sort of the high notes of what we we can tell from the information that we've gathered so far keeping in mind that the survey is still ongoing on the survey data and because there's two kinds of responses that we got from the surveys and they were dependent on a few factors. If the route that the survey respondent was was uh if the route that the surveyor was taken if their route was proposed for elimination they responded negatively to those changes because they were losing access to the service which is a normal response what what we anticipated. And the other metric that was kind of interesting is if the individual taking the survey on p on paper, you know, their response was different than those that were taking the survey online. And the reason we think for that is because in the people that took surveys on paper had an opportunity to interact directly with us and for us to walk them through those changes because we are we we're we're putting out a lot and so it's kind of

overwhelming. And so some of the the key key things that we we gathered is that as of March 3rd, we've we had received 87 total surveys. Um the paper surveys generated significantly more positive responses than the online surveys. And in general, just across the board, those individuals who retained service were in favor of the changes as expected. Those who lost access were to the network were opposed to the changes. And of all the eliminations that were proposed, of course, 108 generated the most concern um from from all the the the the eliminations that were proposed. So in conclusion, we do uh understand that uh from the survey from the survey data and this communication with the community that the majority of the existing whisters will see a positive impact from the recommendations that we're we're placing before you today. Um the proposed service changes have a potential to attract new rider. We're making a service that is more attractive to the community. And then the additional uh the there will there will be a need should this be approved there will be a need for additional education. We will need to really boots on the ground continue to reach the communities between the time that if city council approves this between that time and the time we actually launch to help give folks an opportunity to understand how this this is going to sort of impact their life because it's a huge change and they will need some of our existing writers have done the same thing for a very long time. So they will need some handholding. We do have another public hearing scheduled for March 23rd to uh in order to gather additional feedback and we welcome those and then city council consideration on April 6th. With that um I'll take any questions that you have.

Any questions for Miss Garvin a mayor? Thank you. Uh very impressive and I'm so excited about particularly well a lot of it but particularly the two cross city routes there relative to one of those the Wista X North. Uh what's the head time on that uh from and how many stops along the way approximately? Uh we don't exactly have a number of stops yet that's still in development. However, the frequency of the bus would be every 30 minutes. But for some of those route because there were long routes. So if you're on the bus, you'd be on the bus probably for an hour without, you know, having to go downtown because it's just from one side of town to the other. But the bus would be coming every 30 minutes.

Thank you. Thank you. Um, Council Member Cypio, thank you. Um, looking forward to these changes. Uh, but I had a concern about 108. Uh, my memory might be a little foggy, but I thought we were thinking about doing a microtransit down in that area, but then I see it's in the northern area. That was up for consideration. I don't think we actually ever got a formal uh recommendation from city council to move forward, but that is certainly within your purview to make that recommendation.

That's right, councelor recip. I think what we were working with with the existing budget basically after after last year's conversation around the budget, we took that number and that's what we're working with. I think if you were we did talk about in January, you know, if you wanted to consider um an additional microransit zone, it would cost you more money and we could bring back a number for that if you wanted to consider that for the southeast area. But but basically the existing budget covers the microtransit zone in the north part of the city. Anything in addition to that would be an addition additional budget for WISA. So I'm just assuming there was more interest in a micro transit in the northern part than in the southeast part. Not not well I'm not going to say there was more interest riders.

There was more riders. And then I would also say that if you see the way that the microtransit is shaded, it supports a number of routes in that area. And so if you remove that microtransit, you're you're kind of leaving those routes hanging without really connections. So that's what that micro train zone is supposed to do. Whereas in the south part of southeast part of town, you're not really connecting to as many routes as you are um up there. Thank you, Council Member Andre Bowen. Thank you very much. Um, so I know that when we first discussed this there was um no added cost to the budget. Is that still in the case?

Thank you, Kelly. Council member Andre Bowen, if I may. Um, so the overall wa budget for FY27 will increase, but that's largely to the appropriation of federal allocation correctly. And but to answer your question specifically, what we refer to is that uh outside of just some inflationary adjustments, the the property tax subsidy will remain consistent as it is in this current fiscal year with these recommended changes. Thank you. Um so this is something that I've been advocating for. I'm very excited by the potential of having this. Um uh the work that I do outside of city council is looking at food and security and there are parts of our our community where food is not going into food food retail is not going into. So, the the best way we can get people to other places faster, I'm all for it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Council Member Joiner.

Thank you, Chair. Um, I thank you for this presentation today and for the work that you and staff did over the last several weeks to try and educate and get outreach to um the citizens about this. I had the privilege to uh attend two of the uh uh sessions, information sessions, and listening to citizens ask the question and the way that staff was able to really dig in and explain it. Um however many questions they asked to until they got that that citizen was clear on what it was. And for the most I I got a takeaway from is the takeaway from citizens. Well, okay, I'm gonna lose that, but I'mma be okay. The the greater majority of folks that attended um and they were the everyday people who use it every single day. We talked to one a mother and son, an older couple who um their route was going away, but and they used it every day and the son was like, "Okay, mom, we're going to be okay because we can do this that because he got that information from you all." So, thank you to all the staff that are here as well as those that are at the uh transportation station. Um I support this wholeheartedly.

Council member Taylor. Thank you, Madam Chair. Miss Garvin, thank you for the presentation. Um, I'm looking forward to seeing some of the changes, um, particularly in the southeastern portion of the city. Um, speaking of that, I think I agree with Council Member Cypio. Um, I'm not saying that this is something that we should implement, but we have had discussions around microtransit in that particular area. So, Mr. King, I just ask um, just for our information, if you could just do some research, get us some numbers and some costs. I know we've got lots to consider this budget cycle, but it's certainly something we're willing to consider. So, thanks again, Miss Garvin, and if you get those numbers for me, I'd appreciate it. Yes, sir. Council member Hall.

Thank you, Council Member Burke. Thank you for the presentation. Um, two things. One, uh, I appreciate the animation on the slides. Thought that was really cool and we could really use it right now. Um, so thank so thanks for that. Um the other part to that and I really appreciate you honing in about um the community engagement and then I guess one other session that you all may implement. Can you please give me the date again? That's March 23rd. March 23rd. There will be a public hearing here at

Oh, the public hearing. Okay. All right. Um but one thing and I can talk to you all offline. I want to talk about um March 5th at Hannes Hosery in particular. So I can talk offline. We don't have to use that on the mic. But thank you all again and thank you for your work that you do. Any other questions? Uh Miss Garvin, I just wanted to ask for the microtransit pickup. What is the wait time when uh calls are made for pickup?

So for most of those systems when it's at peak time, it might be up to 30 minutes. That's that's as high as we want to go. And so we will be working with our partners at RAPDEV to kind of figure out when our peak times are. And right now we have an idea of how many vehicles we might assign to that zone. But as the we launch and we see sort of how it evolves, we would have to adjust to make sure we remain within that threshold.

And one other question um for the northeast area, uh the route 93 will be eliminated. Am I reading it wrong? Oh uh I don't think it is being eliminated. Just a portion of it that um if you see the 10th street 12th street yes just that dotted part is going to be eliminated and that will increase sort of the the frequency there from 60 to 30 minutes. So what will how how are we addressing the individuals who normally pick up and drop off at at those locations?

So the the solution to that the actual walk to be able to reach either of those route whether it's 96 or 93 it's a quarter mile walk and so most individuals will have to walk that quarter mile distance and if somebody's eligible for transit and they're unable to walk then they can schedule trans aid. Okay. Thank you, Miss Scarvin. And just like uh Council Member Hall, I appreciate the animation. Uh we need to take a vote. Um can I get a motion to approve this uh item? Second. We're ready to vote.

Okay, that item passes. Uh, city clerk, can you read the uh, second item, please? Item five, resolution amending the Winston Salem Transit Authority Fair Policy to establish a microransit rate. Okay, Mr. Fansler, you're up.

Uh, thank you, Madam Chair, Mayor Joints, members of the committee and council. I appreciate your time this afternoon. I just knew this would come up in our last discussion, but I just wanted to highlight uh how appreciative I am of of staff uh, bringing these items for you for these comprehensive changes. But to do that, you heard a lot about microtransit. Well, we have to establish a fair for microtransit. So, the item before you very plainly is a resolution to uh uh adopt an revision and amendment to our wish to fair policy to add microransit fair. And that's what's before you. So, well, in in strong good government fashion, we had to go figure out what we do with peer cities and also what how this fits into our current fair policy. So, I'm glad you asked that. Here's our current fair policy. uh for those that uh want to uh take a look at that. Uh as you as you know we're a dollar for fixed route and translate is the same. We have of course 10 rod and 30 30-day or 30 ride passes the same. We do offer half fair. So obviously as the name indicates it is half fair priced. But then notice we are recommending a $2 general fair for our proposed microtransit zone. And so well why why two? Why $2? Why not $5? Why not $1? Well another great question. I'm glad you asked. So we benchmark peer cities as well, peer agencies in this space to figure out what they charge. And so the bottom line really is uh this is going to be a subsidized service, right? All all of our public transit is. And so we wanted to see where we are in the market. And so we are recommending really especially for our pilot where where we need to be. We're going to be analyzing this as we launch pretty comprehensively, but we're recommending $2. And you can see how it lines up with other microtransit services in the area. Greensboro has not announced theirs completely yet. Of course, their go burrow program recommends it hardly and they are going to be considering that in subsequent budget years. I would expect to see that very soon and we'll be monitoring that as they roll their service out as well. But the bottom line and the item before you is a consideration to establish a $2 fair for microtransit for uh the proposed changes that you just heard Miss Garvin talk

about. And I'm happy to take any questions. Council member Cypio, are we going to ever propose a higher rate for the rest of our um ridership? Because we haven't increased that $1 in a long time. And my my initial reaction is if you start microtransit at $2, it's going to disincentivize people from riding it. Well,

I just wondered because they're so used to $1. Great question and and certainly we can have a conversation and council could consider that right and we can figure out we're going to subsidize it even further. Let let me make this comment because on a fixed route bus you're carrying typically a lot more people and so we look at this from a cost per passenger perspective. The microtransit is very it costs a lot more per passenger. So the reason we're trying to say let's distinguish that and prioritize that above a fixed route fee is because the cost per ride unique to a rider and their scheduled trip is significantly higher than a fixed route bus. And so that's a policy decision we can have, you know, at length, but we're trying to show the distinction between that cost per hour discrepancy because we're going to be heavily subsidizing that per hour ride, I mean per trip, excuse me.

I understand that. So, let's give you give me a uh here's a scenario. I need to go to catch your express route. Do I pay $2 for the microtransit and then pay the express route or do I do a transfer?

Good question. So in the item we are re recommending that for your consideration that that first transfer is free. So to get from the microtransit zone to the fixed route, it's free transfer and the same on the return. So, if you take that bus back, you would want to go from a fixed route to a microtransit. You would have to pay that $1 discrepancy because it's only $1 to get on the the fixed route, but it's a $2 ride. So, you're going to pay that $1 gap to get to that $2. So, essentially fixed route and uh per uh man microtransit for one trip scheduled trip would be $2 summary. Yep. But if I want to come back, I have to pay the dollar for the

remember it's a dollar for the fixed route and then a dollar for the two microtransit. So, a total of $2 for that trip. I just think that just disincent disincentivizes people. Um just the way it just sounds to me knowing bus riders and you know I'm just used to a dollar. I'm used to that. Can you use your 30-day pass on the microtransit? Go ahead. Go ahead.

No. And the the reason we came up with those numbers is we looked at largely how all the peer cities that Jeff mentioned how they're handling their microtransit and it's the same it's they're handled the same way. So you have a fee for your fixed route and you have a separate fee for your microtransit and most of them if not all um when you transfer from fixed route to micro you pay that difference to to catch up to what the micro fee microtransit fee is. So it was consistent to what with what our peer agencies were doing. I think we ought to track that learning curve and see how how people adapt to that because that's such a big difference in how they use our bus service now. You just get really used to the dollar. You get used to the 30-day pass. So, I just And it's all cashless, right? Or not.

It will be. It will be. The microtransit piece certainly will be cash. Uhhuh. Now, however, remember when we when we launch Yumo, individual will have the opportunity to load up their card. They can pay cash at the transit center and eventually at Walmart and CVS and other places. Um, but you will have to use your Yumo card to pay if you do not want to use the app. And that card is good for both fix route and for micro transmit. Council member Andrew Bowen.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Speaking of UMO, when is that going to be come online? I'm so glad you asked. Actually, please download the Yumo app. Please download the Yumo app. The trip planning uh portion of the app is already live. You should be able to plan your trip. Currently, we're working through some finer details that has to do with payment processing in order for us to launch the payment part of the app, but you can start trip planning and let me know if if you see clons in the app. I'm we're in the soft soft launch. Don't tell anybody. So, test it for us, but it's already live. We're marketing that um pretty hardcore right now. Council member Taylor,

Mr. Fansler, um I am perfectly okay with the uh $2 microtransit fee. Um I know the answer to this, but would we apply the same fee to any future mic micro microtransit zones? I know we just had a brief discussion about some possibilities. Is this a one-time flat fee for all and current and future zones? Let us know. Council member Taylor, it will be a microtransit zone for the city of Winston Salem, not specific to a certain pilot. Thank you, Council Member Hall.

Thank you, Council Member Burke. Uh, Director Fansler, thank you. Um, I had a question. Um, which might require tag team. I'm sorry you have to keep getting up. But to Council Member Cypio's question about whether or not you could use the 30-day pass, the answer, I believe, was no. Is that because with microtransit is that because when you purchase the 30-day pass, it is essentially equated to $1 per trip. And so, you can't use two trips for one microtransit um ride, I guess.

Exactly. So, okay. The the 30-day pass. So, and we will we have different kinds of products that we sell. The 30-day pass is essentially I have this pass for 30 days, but I can use it as often as I want to during those 30 days. It's not really your 30 trip pass. It's a 30-day pass. And so that's applicable only to your fixed route system. You It's not really good practice to to merge that over to your microtransit system.

And and one other question, do do you all foresee or have you seen other jurisdictions to do two different types of the 30-day pass that have a microtransit systems? Um, when I was looking into our PR agency, I didn't really see a 30-day pass program um, for other communities that that had a microtransit. Not yet, anyway. And remember, a lot of these communities that are launching microtransit are fairly new. High Point just came out with theirs. I think CATS also is fairly recent within the last year. So, we're still sort of in the testing out phases of those of us that are comingling microtransit and fixed route unlike Wilson who only has microtransit. Mhm. Thank you,

Council Member Andrew Bowen. Thank you. I have one more question. So, I remember we approved recently that there would be a $2 a day cap on all fixed routes. Is this going is is using the microtransit? Is that going to apply here as well? No, the cap is only applicable to your fixed route because it work kind of like a 30-day pass. Okay. Thank you. Any other question? Council member CIA,

it's this is not a question. It's just something to consider. In um the Bay Area, they have a transit pass and you put as much money on it as you want and you can use it on anything, the buses, the fairies, the trains. Um, at some point I think we ought to think about trying to make riding the bus easier for our residents by having them have something just one something. Yeah.

Um, to be able to use that option will be available actually when we launch Yumo the the payment processing part. You can load as much money on the card as you want to and you can use it. We call it cash value. You can use it just to cash value and you don't have any trips. You just use the cash that you have on it. Thank you, Miss Scarvin. Thank you, Mr. Fansler. Uh, is there a motion to approve this item? So, move. Second.

Okay, we're ready to vote. It passes. Uh, that concludes our public works agenda. Mr. Mayor, I turn it back over to you. Thank you, council member. We saved the best for last. Mr. Clark's going to deal with about $128 million worth of monies there. Do this. Do a good job there.

We have two items on finance. I would like to talk about them both together. We will vote on them separately, but they both have to do with refinancing some bonds. Miss Laam, can you come up? I'm assuming you're presenting and you present then.

I item six, consideration of actions regarding the issuance of 10.4 million23 general obligation bonds series 2026A and B as well as the issuance of general obligation refunding bonds in the amount of 37.8 million. Good afternoon, Chair Clark, Mayor Joins, Mayor Pro Tim Adams, and members of council. Um, this item um allows staff to start the process of issuing 10.4 millions of 2/3 bonds. These are general obligation bonds that are nonvoted that we are statutoily allowed to issue um in the amount of 2/3 of the amount of the principal on our geo debt that we paid off in the prior fiscal year. This is a practice um that we have routinely issued around every two years. However, we really just monitor the projects to see how quickly they're moving uh to determine the right time to issue the debt. And so at this time, we do have $10.4 million of projects that are moving forward. Um we would have the 70% bids in hand as required by the LGC. Um and some of the projects have already started spending. Some of the projects are recently completed. So the it's the right time at this point to issue those twothirds bonds.

And these are the projects that are listed in the handout. Yes. On your exhibit. For example, uh sidewalk bonds and then there's some park bonds, public safety bonds, etc., etc. Yeah. Thank you. Continue.

Okay. Um so the other item that comes with this is that there is an opportunity to refinance the uh 2016 GEO bonds. they've reached their 10-year um call date where we are allowed to refinance them um if the rates are favorable. Um the 2012A and the 2014 GO bonds may also be favorable for refinancing. So approval for this item would give staff the ability to refinance these bonds if the market conditions are favorable on the day of the bond sale. The local government commission would handle the bond sale for both of the issues. Um based on the current numbers, we would be looking to save um $1.6 million net present value on the refinancing of the geo bonds, which is around a 4% savings. Um our policy allows to refinance if we can get at least 3% savings. Do

you know what? Not the net present, but the actual dollar savings is um 1.7 million is the gross amount of the savings. Okay. All right. And if you could, while you're up there, talk about the number seven, if you'll read that one. The U revenue bond.

Item seven, consideration of actions regarding the issuance of 80 million in water and sewer refunding bonds series 2026. Um, so at this point in time, the 2016 bonds have again, they've reached their 10-year call period where we are allowed to refinance these. Um the market conditions right now are very favorable for that and our net savings would be around $6 million. Um the gross savings there would be around $7 million over the next 14 years. Um and that would be a 7.2% savings versus our policy of 3%. So uh the rates have moved um in a positive direction for refinancing recently. This is um $1 million higher than it was a couple of months ago. Okay. Thank you. U any questions from anyone? By the way, for the new folks, we do this periodically. I won't say regularly because we don't sell bonds every year, but periodically if the stars are aligned, we will refinance the bonds and save money. And I would be point out that's roughly a $9 million savings that the finance committee try to cover some of the spring thrift from some of the other committees, Mr. Mayor. But uh with that uh

Mr. Clark on six Oh, excuse me. I do have a question. Go right ahead. Um just for clarification and um the twothirds projects are projects that I know we have either started or have approved. Yes.

Okay. Um, my question is when we get our facility assessment study done and we have these huge millions of dollars for buildings, um, will the twothirds bonds or any other bonds be available for us to tackle any of that or have will we have exhausted our ability to do bonds because we're using it here.

Uh no, we can issue 2/3 bonds basically every 13 months. Um as we pay down the debt, we we then can reissue 2/3 of what we paid off. Um and we also currently have capacity as well to um to issue other types of debt. as far as which projects might be financed by which type of debt. Um, part of that's driven by the timing of the spending of the projects as well as um the city manager um in terms of I know we're sort of changing our philosophy as far as which projects we may fund in the future by cash versus which we might borrow money for. But we have options including both debt and cash. And and I do have a question. I see there's a million dollars for Salem Gardens. Was that the million dollar that we spent for renovating Salem Gardens 2 years ago? And that Okay. That was from bonds that um that was approved in 2018, I think. Those projects, that's what that is.

That's correct. So when we're putting together a package, we look at all the projects that council has approved that be funded by debt and which ones are are moving forward to put together a full package. Okay. Thank you. Uh with that, if I can get a motion for approval. Second. I'll do six uh number six first. We have a motion. Second. Second. I mean, I did the motion. Excuse me. Council member Clark. Yes, ma'am. We're going to do this, but I we don't have to read the um reading the bond order that can take place at the March 23rd meeting. Good usually.

And then there'll also be a public hearing on the geo debt on April 6th. Okay, we have a motion to second. Rabbi, please vote. By the way, there there is a fixed cost to issuing bonds, and that's why we don't issue them all every month. We wait till we have enough because the fixed cost is kind of the same whether or not you're selling one or 100 bonds. You still got to uh do certain paperwork and file certain things, go up with a local government commission, things of that sort. Okay, we now do number seven. If I get a motion to approve number seven. So move for

motion and a second. If we'll please vote everybody please vote. Thank you very much. That concludes finance. Thank you Mr. Chairman. We do have a one other item. Mr. Tash is going to briefly uh hit on the community agency's funding process. Oh wow.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pot, and members of the city council. I know we have been here for a few minutes. I will make this as quick as I possibly can. It's part of the community agency's process. We are asking for your input. So, I spoke a couple of weeks ago about the process under which we would get that from you. Jamie has shared on the screen a little bit later today. You will receive an email from me that looks very much like this. It is going to have three links in it. The first two are right there under application materials. And if Jamie has one of those already up. When you click on it, it will lead you directly to a consolidated PDF of all of the community agency's applications. If you go over to the um table of contents on the left, the navigation pane, they are in alphabetical order. You can simply click on one. Uh if you are in the table of contents, you can actually click on it from there. It will take you directly to the application so that you can review the application if you would like. There are two links in the email. One is, as we've indicated before, only the applications. That PDF is roughly 800 pages long. Mhm.

The second link is with the supporting materials. That one is nearly 7,000 pages long. How many? 7,000. That's three zeros. Yes, ma'am. It's about 6,649.

Um, there are a lot of things that community agencies submit, some required, and some not required. Many of them put letters of interest and things of that nature. So, you may see what they have um submitted to us. Many of those documents also don't get reviewed until if they are accepted as part of a contracting phase. We review those to make sure that they are uh eligible for funding through the city attorney's office. So, you may use either one of those documents. It links directly to the city's website. They are posted publicly. If Jamie will go back to the um well, you can go there. That's fine. The email the second or the third link right there uh is a scoring sheet and it will populate something that looks like this. I am going to tell you this is done in a Microsoft product and it does not like Apple iPads. So I strongly recommend you use a desktop or laptop computer to fill this out. There are two tabs you see at the bottom. One says general fund and one says occupancy tax fund. We are asking you to do two things only. In the column on the left, simply put a one through five for your high five highest priority agencies. as Jamie is doing there. One, enter, two, enter, three, enter, whichever your top five, tell us what your top five are. The next column is the org name. So that is the organization itself. We have the case name, which tells you basically what the project or program is. The next column shows you the average staff score. I will tell you a lot of these scored very closely together, somewhere between the 10 and 14 range. And so if you see something that's a 12 and something that's an 11, there's not really a substantive difference from that. Staff is looking at is it a complete application? Have they filled out what is supposed to be there? Is there strategic plan alignment? The things I've shown you before. Um, but I would tell you the standard deviation rounded up is two. So plus or minus two is four points. There's not a lot of

difference. 70% of them are going to fall in that four-point range. The E column is to show you what they have requested via the application process. Column F tells you what they are currently funded at in 26. All of those are locked so that you don't have to touch them. And that final column is yours to tell us how much you would recommend uh for funding for that organization. Well, the top five.

Do the top five on the right on the left. on the right. Jaime's gonna scroll down just a hair. There is a number down there at the bottom that tells you the exact number we are trying to come to. If you do it in this online format, the number highlighted in green will actually change as you enter data to show you how much money is left. I do have paper copies if someone would prefer to do it via paper. That requires you to use a calculator. Uh but it's easy to see all on one page that way. This one requires some scrolling. Um, I will tell you when I send you the link, the link is unique to you. Please do not share it with anyone else. Uh, if you do, they would be able to manipulate data just as you would be able to potentially. Um, we have tried to keep it so that that won't happen. Um, but keep the link to yourself once for general fund and then she'll click the occupancy tax fund piece. There are significantly fewer of those. Sorry, it's got to go to the left. Um, same thing. Tell me which are your top five, although there's only eight of them. And then over to the right, you have $425,000 to allocate. Those are the increased amounts based on the inflation that we talked about in January and last month. Um, but we're essentially we want to know how you would allocate the money, which is the right column. the left side, the one through five, just tells us which ones you provide the most importance or prominence to so that we can see um where there's coherence. If you have any questions at all, contact me directly or Dana. Uh we will get you squared away on how to use this. Hopefully, this is pretty simple uh and easy, but if you have any questions, let me know. Again, I have paper copies of both of these if you'd prefer that method. And that's all I've got for you. when you need it back.

Two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks. Good. You got to read the 7,000 pages. Mayor, we normally have the newer council members. Well, we're we're going to ask for next Friday. So, two business meetings. All right. Any other questions for Mr. Tash? Thank you, Mr. Tash. I think you're welcome. I think we asked for it. I know. All right, council members. Uh, is there a motion to adjurnn? So, moved. Second. Motion second to journ. All in favor of journing please say I. I. We are adjourned.