County Council - workshop

Thank you.

This time I'll call to order the York County Council Workshop for August 27th, 2024, 2026 to order. The first item on our workshop agenda is to have general discussion regarding ED incentives, ED fund policies, the status of our current projects and and just for purposes of Kind of opening this up one of the issues that council all collectively said they were interested in looking at is How do we find ways to improve this process? How do we find? out what council will support and how do we give some direction and revisit these issues as we move forward and go about doing that. I know that there was some comments that I think, Mitch, that you wanted to provide as the director. Is that something y'all want to lead with?

Yes, Madam Chair, thank you. Yeah, we're prepared to start the conversation, and we're really excited about this evening and the opportunity to hear from everybody. And I think Mitch has some slides that will set the table, and then we have some questions at the end that we think, if y'all share your answers to the questions, it will really help us better understand where each of y'all are and give us the opportunity to improve processes and delivery. So with that, I'm gonna hand off to our Economic Development Director. Mitch Miller.

Thank you, Josh. Thank you, Council, for being here tonight. It's good to see you. Very informal, I would ask that if you have questions, feel free to interrupt me. I won't be offended. I don't have to go line by line on here, but I do think it would be a little beneficial on our end to kind of set the stage, but I also hear directly from you on feedback as we look to move forward. Moving as we look at economic development, I think it's good to kind of get a glimpse into our eyes of how we look at things, but also to the community to see how we look at things and hopefully try to evaluate opportunities. I know we talked back in 2024 and 2025. We did a workshop where we talked about targeted impacts and through that kind of the intent was, what do we want York County to look like in 10 to 20 years? And what are some things that are important to you all and where can we find a line of sight where something, you know, There may be some similarities between Councilman Huckabee and Councilman Atkins and find synergy to really say these are the five, six priorities we really wanna focus on. So I go back to opportunity and really as we look at it and as we've talked about it with you all, why economic development matters is we're all trying to find good jobs and career opportunities for people in your county. That's the primary concern in anything that we do when we evaluate a project. With that too, really looking at tax base, we try to look at investments that help support services and infrastructure needs. Obviously growth is gonna happen with or without economic development, but I do think there's an opportunity that we can help guide with purpose what we go after and what we look at to bring here to York County. And at the end of the day, really trying to improve the overall quality of life. I've been here since 2024. I know some things have happened in the past before that obviously that I hear about at council meetings. But my priority, our team's priority, has really been what do we want to focus on where not only businesses can thrive here, but people can thrive here. And so we've tried to be truly intentional with everything that we bring forward to each and every one of you all here at the council. So I talk about growth happening with or without us. I think there's two ways to look at it. It can be reactive, and to some degree, we have to be. We are the second largest county in the Charlotte region here in York County. We have over 300,000 people that call York County home, and it's probably going to grow. I think the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance did a report looking at the next 20 years, and you're probably going to see an addition of 150,000 people plus to York County. There's not much I can do to stop that. I think just in general, Charlotte is a very desirable market and there's a lot of positives even beyond here that cause people to wanna come here. With that, we're gonna have a strain of housing demand and how do we impact that? How do we deal with things like traffic? I came from Fort Mill. I know all about it. Debbie, Tom, I know that y'all live in that area as well, and y'all deal with it every day. And then coming down Salonese, going by where Tommy is at, it's tough. It's very, very tough to get down here and get through this county at times. Service demands tied to it, the infrastructure pressure, that's all going to happen because of population growth. I think the thing, when we look at projects, we're really trying to be intentional with what we pursue. Go back to OctoPharma. A lot could have went on that site. I think it's a project that ultimately brings high quality jobs, is going to be a positive in terms of tax impact for York County, and really is gonna fit into the fold really nicely here in York County with where we're trying to go over the next 10, 20 years. It's going to allow quality jobs, higher wages. It gives us the ability to possibly look at how do we look at investing in businesses like small businesses because of the revenue that can be generated from it, diversifies our tax base. I think if we were to have a focus and not really have a plan of action of being intentional in letting growth happen, you would probably see a lot more distribution centers lined up by 77. So trying to be intentional where we can and really focus on diversifying our tax base. And then I go back to those targeted impacts that I mentioned as well. So as we evaluate projects, this is how our staff looks at it. Before I ever bring anything to you all, this is how we really look at each and every project. Does it create a quality job here in York County? We're looking at things above the median wage at York County. Trying to find a quality job that really fits and is gonna allow opportunities for citizens here to grow. Does it fit our community? Is it something that we truly want? Is it going to bring a positive impact, not a negative impact to its neighbors? What resources is it gonna consume? Now we talk about some of the water challenges we have, electric grids, impact, things like that. Is it gonna strengthen our tax base in a positive way? What's the infrastructure required and what's it gonna cost us long term? And ultimately, how are our citizens gonna receive benefits from a company coming here to this community? Again, I can't control what has happened in the past, but we can focus on trying to make things better moving forward here in the future. And that's really how we're looking at it. And so I think it's good to kind of understand that and then really look at the tools that we have and the current structure. From a simplistic standpoint, the incentive structure is really how it helps us go after the right types of business. A FILO essentially is going to reduce the assessment percentage. As it stands right now, if a commercial or industrial development comes in here to this community, you're looking at 10.5%. This allows an opportunity to reduce that cost and be more competitive with North Carolina or other communities like Georgia, Virginia, and get at a 6% or a 4% assessment ratio depending on the investment. Special source revenue credit allows really the opportunity to reduce additional tax burden on the company. That's if something that we really see as value, like an Octa-Pharma type project coming in, that we can be more competitive and try to get a higher quality project and jobs here for the community. And then lastly, FLO revenue, it's looking how revenue is distributed. Essentially, we look at like the ED fund taking 10% off the top, they could go back into a pool to help support more projects, or if there was something to look to support schools, support municipalities, support the county, however you wanna divide that up, you have control over that as council. Speaking about the economic development fund, I thought it would be beneficial to really kind of see where we stand to date and get a glimpse into that fund. I think the last estimate that I had on our fund balance in the ED fund is about $5.6 million as it stands today. Maybe off on some change on there, but it's roughly a little over $5 million. What we see in net annual positive growth in there, our economic development department is funded there, but we still see a net growth of about $300,000 annually. And so after our department is funded, you still have some addition in as it currently stands to about $300,000 per year. UTS was a philo project. That's a pretty significant investment of about a billion dollars. We anticipate when that comes online in 2028 and then scales out and gets built out over the next five-ish years, you're probably gonna see that ED fund actually produce about 1.3 to 2.2 million in revenue above the ED operations annually. So you're gonna see that fund increase significantly, probably starting in 2028, 2029. Again, the primary use for that fund right now as it stands is for AD department. We have used some funds there to support some chamber workforce related initiatives, but beyond that, it's not really been used for anything specifically. So I say all that to kind of finish on this part and leave you all with some questions that I think would give us some guidance as y'all get deliberate and get into discussion tonight. What we want as a county, I think that was the intent when we went back in 2024 and 2025 and did a workshop. We came out with targeted impacts like higher wage projects were a priority for each of you all. We wanted to see more community vision and investment together, really looking at some of our allies to say, what are we working towards? Small business support was a key priority. I think PD committee heard a lot of what was going on the small business support side. We've hired a deputy director with a primary focus on small business support with Eduardo. And I feel like we're making good inroads to really supporting small businesses much more than we ever have in the past. workforce development, and lastly, enhanced mobility and quality of life. Debbie, I remember that was a priority of yours, talking about the Greenway and Springs Greenway being really an anchor point for York County and how do we have better connectivity with trails throughout the community. And so trying to look at opportunities to partner with and Springs Greenway, the Carolina Thread Trail and beyond. I think the tools to get there, he was an ssr season really until we're going to help us go after those higher wage projects uh... it's going to generate opportunity for the fund i think more than anything is getting some clarity and focus on what are some key projects that you all really agree upon that you want us to go after is really important and we can push that way. We've talked about mobility with Carolina Thread Show and had a great meeting with them today and the chair of our economic development board. We've had workshops with small businesses. Eduardo did a great job hosting a workshop in Fort Mill last week and And we've done those in York, Rock Hill. We're gonna do one in Lake Wiley coming up in September. Clover's already had one. Definitely wanna do more to incorporate the unincorporated small businesses around York County as well. And then lastly, just focusing on some of our allies. I talk about quality of life and ways that we can support those initiatives. So I think the ED fund can be an engine to do some of those things. Just getting clarity and understanding about what's important to council so we can align those efforts. And I think that direction really kind of listed it up at four questions I think helps us as a staff. And happy to talk through these in more detail with each of you all. But what outcomes do you all want to see that we need to prioritize? If it's more focused on small business, if it's on ag, on quality of life, certainly understand. And we can continue to design some efforts around that. What factors should determine the level of support for incentives? If you want to focus more on wages over job creation, that's something that we can continue to intensify as we look to work with businesses. Could there be some guardrails that guide incentive discussions and decisions? I think hearing that from you all tonight and taking notes as well. And lastly, I think probably the most important of that, because you've got a resource with the ED fund, what do you wanna see that go towards the support? I'm all for that we be good stewards of money, but you're gonna have quite a bit of money that's gonna start to generate in that fund, and I think you've got a great opportunity to influence growth the way that you wanna see that happen through that fund.

Do you know what the historical idea or why the ED fund was implemented?

I wasn't here during that time. My guess was probably to support economic development efforts. It could have been for site acquisition. It could have been for infrastructure.

You weren't left any documents or any direction on what that fund was created for?

We have a resolution where I guess it was established, and it was a development fund.

But that was it?

Yeah. Teresa, I know you're here. You may have some history with that.

So the two, just so I'll make sure that we answer the questions and go through this appropriately, there's two issues here to hear from council. One is how do we go about having... This is a test.

This is only a test. Yeah, y'all are the ones that like trusting this technology, not me.

I don't think it's me. Did you mess with the button?

Just sitting here, minding my own business. So to me, we have two issues. One, I appreciate the questions that y'all put up. And I do appreciate, Mitch, a lot of the issues that we are hearing that we're getting public feedback from deal with projects that were brought before you were here. And so there has been a change at the helm in how do we Number one, how can we improve the process? And number two, where do we want to invest the ED funds, or how do we want to do that? To me, I think those are the two main issues that we're here for. And I'm happy to let you all start, and I can share my comments after that. Okay.

Sounds good. Thanks, Kristen. So, first of all, Mitch, thank you for what you had shown us here, and we appreciate your hard work, so thank you. Couple things. When I look at the ED and the ED group and the opportunities, I also look at the opportunities of us supporting small business. Small business is at a deficit when it comes to challenges they face in South Carolina just because of Act 388. So, again, when Act 388 came out, there was obviously the offset when they created fee and lieu and abatement and some of these other things. The challenge is that these small businesses don't qualify for most or any of these. the ed fund in the opportunity from the ed economic economic development board i think coincides with a great opportunity here i think what we need to look at is how can we structure and with the help of the ed board how can we structure an opportunity to create programs or incentives, et cetera. And again, I'm not going to spell them out tonight, but how we can support small business and help to fill that gap. And again, we talked about some of that stuff when you guys did the survey, whether it's marketing. whether it is SME or entrepreneurship, mentoring, whatever it may be. But I think this is a great opportunity and a great task that we could bring back to the ED board and have them, with their knowledge, bring back some proposals to us. The second point I want to make on this thing is that when we look at, in general, you know, the needs of our community, we also look at the concerns of infrastructure, right? So as we bring in these businesses, et cetera, I think one of the biggest challenges we face from a county perspective is our roads. You know, the impact of our sea funds that are being impacted by a lot of these intersection on the interstates, et cetera, that we have to, again, contribute more to, it really becomes a challenge for us to support our roads. So I think when we look at the mechanisms under a fee and lieu agreement, we've got to make sure that we're covering our needs, especially things such as roads and infrastructure, water, projects that are out there that, again, are going to be a catalyst. If we don't have the roads and infrastructure, we're not going to bring in the businesses. So we really gotta make sure that we're taking care of our needs from a county perspective as we look at this mechanism for distribution. So those are a couple of my broad points. I'm gonna turn it over to the next person, whoever wants to speak next.

I'll jump in. that I thought was going to kind of help cover also was, how do we improve the process of this council going through these fee and lieu agreements? Recently, we heard X was working on a project for two, three years. Well, that got dropped on council, basically the full council, like 30 days before we were voting on it. And we kind of took some heat, saying like, this project's been worked on for almost two years. But we only got it as a council. Maybe it was in a committee that was privy to it, but the full council got this agreement, this proposal, this whatever, I'm saying 30 days, and correct me if I'm wrong, 30 days before we were taking first reading on it. And so that kind of puts us at a disadvantage of knowing all the ins and outs, innuendos, when we're looking to do something different. Because had we known six months ago we had this major project coming through, wheels could have been turning different before it was made public that this thing is sitting in our lap. I think that's one thing. And obviously, you can't divulge too much too soon. But when we have something coming down the pipe, I think it'll be beneficial to all of us to at least know it's coming. Another thing I like to see happen is we start to shape up and give you some directive as to how far, how much, when to pull, when should you pull back. You know, the full money shouldn't be on the table for every company. And when I say the full money, that means cutting everybody's taxes in half 50% across the board. You know, sometimes it may take that. in times when it doesn't or it can lend itself to do less, we need to start looking at those avenues that allows certain entities to give up a little less. Obviously, we do have that 10% that go into the Economic Development Fund. If it calls for one entity to give up less and we take less, to shift some of that money to help make these fee and lose work. That's definitely an option. And I'll be blunt, I'm talking about the biggest pot of money on the table is obviously our school district pot of money. Coming in and looking at giving up 50% of that each and every deal, I think we need to get away from that being a guaranteed portion. Now, if it's a deal that can't survive without going that far, then we have to do it if we really want the deal. But I think we've said it, and this county know it, and this council knows it, we are a hotbed because of our proximity to an international airport, the interstate, so we don't have to always look to give up as much as we've been giving up because let's face it, people want to be here. From our educational opportunities, from our proximity to the airports, interstates, beaches, mountains, quality of life. You know, some other areas may have to give it up, give it all up to get companies, but I don't think we're in this boat. We're a prime location and obviously just because a company researches and wants to be here doesn't mean we have to give it all up to get them. Let's start out as, I don't want to say lowball and lose to anybody, but you've been doing this a long time. You know and use your best judgment. But I think this council needs to kind of set some parameters or some workarounds that are kind of structured from the start. And if you have to go over certain limitations, then that comes to council early on and we know about it and say, hey, I don't think we can make this fly at these levels. We're going to have to go above whatever those percentages that we potentially come up with. And you may have to use it, you may not have to use it. But that was kind of my thinking for tonight. And I do remember in the past, we've I think it maybe was over in Fort Mill when the Daimler was up in Fort Mill. I think we did give some ED funds to improve some road situations out front. I think that was one of the things that we've used ED money for way back when. I can't recall one recently, but those are the type of things that, hey, this company's coming. They need some help making some road improvements. Obviously, we can't dump tens of millions of dollars, but we can chip in if it's a A cell lane or D cell lane that has to go out, they need some help with it. Some of those are some of the things to use the ED fund for. Obviously, paying to run the economic development department, salaries, travel expenses, and everything that goes into that part, we can't just totally cut off not taking the 10%. If we're looking to shift some monies around, we don't always have to have the 10%. We can shift some of that to help make the deal fly and take less from some other entities that are involved. So that was kind of my thought process. And I'll say when we're talking about doing deals that require a less give up, maybe this light should have went off 2016, 2017, when we first started hearing about school impact fees. Because I can assure you, if we would have given up a lot less, going back to when we first got these, the Fort Mill impact fees, if the light would have went off then, we probably could have scaled back some of these deals and put more money towards the schools, and maybe we wouldn't have every school district, well, we wouldn't have three school districts coming for impact fees. But hindsight's 20-20. But I think now's the time to talk about how do we start to be better stewards of the pot of money that we're dealt to be in charge of. And our school districts are screaming and kicking about facilities and every capital project, capital needs. So that's kind of what really sparked me to drop what I was gonna be doing tonight and make this meeting because it's important that we, and we're gonna have a good strong community and county, it starts with our schools. It starts with job recruitment. It starts with economic development. And they're not competing entities. They shouldn't be having to compete for the dollars. Everybody can coexist. The schools can coexist and get what they need. These deals can get a fair amount of what they need. And if it takes the county, take them a little bigger haircut. If it takes a municipality, take some bigger haircut. Those, all those cards have to be on the table. And no two deals probably are gonna look the same at the end of the day. We should have that flexibility to personally craft something that fits what we're bringing here. And jobs are important, wages are important, tax base is important, all of it. I don't wanna put one above the other, but they all are on the table when we're looking to try to take care of so many different pieces of this puzzle.

I'll follow up on that and. You know. We definitely need some to give you some more definitive guidance. I assume that's what the ED committee is for. They should be making those decisions. They should know what councils, you know. Ideas are and what Council kind of wants so. If our committee doesn't know what we want, then maybe we should reevaluate how we're handling that so that the ED committee, because I know they had been working on some of these deals. I know they work on these deals way ahead of the full council getting to see them. So we should empower them to be able to make these decisions or to know what guardrails we want. As for the way that we distribute the funds, there is no chance I would ever agree to taking more of the county's money to give to the school district. I was elected to represent the county, to support the county, to do everything for the county. The school district can go find their own funding if they need it. I will give them the, you know, I think it's fair to take the same percentage deduction from everybody, but if you want to advocate on the account of another entity, maybe that should be the entity that you're representing.

I wouldn't see it that way.

And so I'm not supporting that. We can all take the same. If we need to give up 3%, everybody's going to give up 3%. The ED fund, I could give up, if there's 10%, when we get up above 500 million or a billion dollar projects, I could see letting some of that money go to other things, not necessarily have to be 10% to the ED fund every time. I don't see a point in funding the ED fund if we're not going to use it to do some ED projects. I'd like to see some responses or some projects come from staff and the ED department of what we could get a good ROI on and what could we use to really help our community. I agree that we should fix some roads and stuff, but if we can get more businesses here through, I don't know, I know the industrial, not industrial, international road or international way over in Aspen Park. They asked for some money to fix that road and extend it over to Heckle. That would open up some additional space for more businesses. if we can get them in here. I would prefer for the businesses coming in to extend that road, but if we could extend it, if you think that that would be reasonable and could get us a return, I'm for that. But I don't think we should just be sitting on it. That's definitely not fair to the other communities. If we're just going to sit on it and take 10% off the top, maybe we should use that and split it among all the other agencies and we all get the same overall percentage. But I think we definitely need some levels. I think we should look at lower, like I said, for small businesses. If we can get down to the I don't know, start at $2.5 million or whatever the lowest area we can get to. There are plenty of places around here, plenty of small businesses that could use as much help as possible. for those things, so let's help them out. Let's set some different levels of the projects and how our funding is working on those. And I agree, if we can get by with taking less of a haircut, overall, if we can, get 90% of the tax revenue instead of 80%, I'm all about starting with that, too. And, you know, to really to file on what should get support, you know, I think tax base and jobs, well-paying jobs. We don't need, while we do need entry-level jobs, you know, we've got to have Not every job can be an executive. You know, our students can't just leave straight out of high school or straight out of college and go take an executive job. We need places for them to start, but we also need, you know, get as much upper as we can get.

I don't want to make this a rebuttal situation. Yeah, let's not do that.

Let's let council members go first. Let's let everybody get through first. Mr. Atkins.

which naturally y'all know i'm going to be different than everybody else but i do see it a little bit different though andy because the county is not an entity by itself those people and those kids are the county and so that there and the county is not an entity by itself it's made up of the people I've even made the statements before with the municipalities that they sit inside the county. These schools are inside the county, but they are our county's schools. Now, I'll be the first one to tell you, I think there's a lot that needs to be fixed on the schools in different levels. I think that we need to put the brakes on because we ain't got the infrastructure for what's already here. I also think if we're going to do fee and lose, which a lot of times I feel that ain't nothing but making some entities richer, I also would like to see the fact that if we say we're going to create jobs for York County, are we creating jobs for York County? Are we bringing 700 other people in here that ain't originally from York County? We ain't changing nothing when we do that. I think that whenever businesses and all come in here, that they should handle the burden of all the infrastructure and all that stuff when it does. I mean, I see it a lot of different ways. I mean, everybody up here, they know secret. They know that I'm the one that rates about preservation law. But I will not sell my humanity for a dang dollar thinking a dollar is everything that matters. Because the way I see it right now, the American people could tighten their belt and the municipalities and the county could too. You ain't got to have the best of everything. We got serious water and sewer issues. We got serious road issues. We continue to sit up here and add more, never fixing the pot that's already got a hole in the bottom of it. Well, that's my opinion, but.

Okay. You done?

Yeah, I'm done. Well, not really, but I'm stopping.

You better say it now. You may not get to come back.

There'll be more opportunities.

Okay. So, I questioned... what the money was going to early on when I was on council. And I was told from economic development folks that it was to be used When a business came in and they disrupted the land around them, maybe the roads or sidewalks were needed or something happened like infrastructure, it was to be used for whatever that business needed. was a disruption and needed to be fixed and added. So it would go along with the road situation that was also somebody else brought up. That's what I was told. And it made sense to me because these businesses do come in and they tear up roads, they tear up trees, they tear up land, and they need to fix it. That's what I think. They have plenty of money, and they're getting a deal that is hard for the human mind to comprehend. And I've tried to wrap my head around it, and I cannot wrap my head around it. That's very important to me that I think that they should be responsible for additional things. If there's a park needed nearby, I think they should put a park in. If there needs to be a daycare to help with the workers that are coming there, I think they should build a daycare. Now, The other thing that bugs me about the fin loom is these companies come in and they give us their grand and glorious presentation and it's like so enticing. They're the best sales people in the entire world and it all looks wonderful and you try to ask questions and you try to be diligent in your homework But, and then they start out, they may start out with what they've said. But then once everybody is looking this way, then they completely change what they've come in here, saying that they're gonna do. I feel like that I don't know how the state feels, I don't know what we could do about that, but if they're, if they change, their level of what they have said that they were gonna do for their fee and lieu, then I think they need to come back to council and have a discussion about what they're doing, make sure they're zoned correctly, and that there are other factors that need to be looked at so that we're not in situations that we are currently in. I think that's very important. Thank you.

Dr. Huckabee?

You can go ahead. You can go ahead. OK. I'd like to listen, if that's OK. No problem.

So I'm going to start with a couple of things that I think are important that I agree with. First of all, all of our businesses. Our small businesses, our existing businesses, they pay 6% or more to be here. There's very few businesses that are allowed to get this Filos. And those Filos oftentimes go to 4%, and oftentimes below 4%, they're paying less percentage tax than even residents are under these Filos if SSRCs are given. What I believe is that our county is a great place to be. And I honestly think that most of our problems on this council have come from fellows and I think fellows should be used very sparingly because not all businesses have access to them. It is not allowed to be used for small businesses and picking and choosing winners is a problem. um having said that i do understand that there's a need to look at that and so when we look at how do we prioritize if we're going to give fellows where would i personally want to see them go it would be to businesses that raise the bar that bring quality of life to the community that do not have to rely on any excess use of water, utilities, road infrastructure, because if they are making that impact, those taxes are needed in order to address that impact. So I honestly think we should be very, very selective about businesses that get that because it's not fair to all of the existing businesses. I think it should be in conjunction with what the communities, what York may need and what York is needed in terms of attracting business, maybe something different than what's over on I-77, but we should be very sparing with it and I think we should be very selective and honestly, I don't think we should have many of them at all. When it comes to process, some things that I've heard from our community and from folks in our area, we want increased transparency. We have already worked towards that by building into the agenda, making sure that we talk about these things publicly. But I do think that we need to learn from lessons, which includes all zoning compliance for any business that's requesting incentives or that's gonna ask for incentives. I think that they need to declare their full scope of operations with legal department. I think they need to spell it out at the outset and I think legal department needs to give the approval that they are zoned to do what they are saying they want to do. Before we have any FLO discussions ourselves, I think we all show, so before first reading, any adjacent property owners where there's a FLO that's going there, I think they have the right to know what is going there and to be given notice. I also believe that all of our schools, all of them, apparently some of our schools have been informed, but not all of them. I think all of our schools should be informed of any major EV initiative at the outset before it appears on our agenda. And so I would, I would support Right now, the schools don't have a say in any of those projects. They don't get to vote on this and sometimes they aren't aware of it. I think there's value in them knowing as long as it is subject to an NDA, they need to know what this business is so that they can speak into how this is gonna impact our schools. uh... additionally uh... and i think as long as it's kept tight they need to be aware of it as we move forward because the reality is most of the money that is attracting these businesses here is money that would have gone to the schools to the other entities And speaking to that, I do think that there is real merit, and I think it will require some additional discussion from council, but I do think there is real merit in looking at we shouldn't be asking our school districts to pay a dollar more than what we are willing to pay towards that business coming here. And here's the reason why, and this is why I think the schools are impacted differently. Pursuant to Act 388, their operations really have only two funding sources, that's it. They have commercial property tax and they have state allocation. Whereas the counties and the cities both get residential and commercial property tax for that. You add on to that the fact that when you do a TIF or when you do a FILO, the school district has a double whammy impact so that they only rely on that for their operations, but what ends up happening is once you give one of these TIFs or FILO, their property tax rate reduces the amount they get from the state. So it's a double impact to them because of how it is appraised at the state level. Additionally, the cities and municipalities, they have revenue sources that the schools don't. They have revenue from A tax, H tax, licenses, sales of the property. They also have utility. So how it is not the same to say, hey, you're getting the same percentage. We really need to be looking at dollars. And I support us looking at how do we protect our schools and how do we ensure that they're informed so that we have a good result at the end. I do think that. uh... there's there's definitely merit in us looking at that because they are treated very differently and have very different options uh... i wholeheartedly support the idea that we use some of the ed funds that we have to look at small business. Some of the ideas that you guys brought to the committee two days ago, the rest of the council hasn't had an opportunity to see that. My understanding from what was presented is that $75,000 would go a long way to helping put up some projects that would help be available to all the only concern i have is making sure that we are looking at our unincorporated businesses as well as our incorporated um and and that we're making sure that everyone's on a level playing field as we use that i especially like the idea that we would use those funds to help marketing to help market shop local, shop in York County. Those kind of things I think are important. So I support that. I think council should definitely give some guardrails because if we are going to ask our ED board to look at how do we support our small businesses, we do need to give some funding parameters there. I think you can't just send it off to someone and then they come up with ideas that council's not willing to fund. So I think having a cap on this is where the council is prepared to send that. I think we need to talk about that. And Mitch, I'm relying on you to kind of circle back to the extent that there's majority. At the end of the day, this council, I mean, the question of do we send these questions to the ED committee of all right, are we gonna change how we do or how much money we're gonna give to incentives to the committee? Well, that's the whole point of us being up here. We have got to make sure that at the end of the day we're the ones who are going to have to pass it we're the ones that look at the community when they come here and want to know why are you giving this money to this business how is that going to impact us how is that going to help us and so we have to be comfortable we have to have an understanding of what the majority of this council is going to agree with at the outset before so that the committee is operating in a fashion that we can get to a place that we need to get to. And I think we definitely need to have a discussion that includes folks like growth partners and our schools and our municipalities to identify what are those target businesses that we're going to go after and get an understanding at the outset of what are these priorities and how can we be on the same page from the beginning going forward. I'm trying to look through my notes. As I get old, I have to keep myself on track and make sure that I cover the things that I wanna cover. When it comes to, Let me make sure I hit these. I also think as part of our process, and maybe this would be a great opportunity for the ED board as well, we do comparisons. And we basically say, OK, we want to give this FILO incentive to this company because they could go to Charlotte and get a different tax rate. I think we really need to vet that. We don't need to sell ourselves short. We don't need to give the farm away. I think when we're looking at a company that says, hey, I'm going to come here and I'm going to be on 25 acres of prime land in Rock Hill that's on the interstate, the value of that property alone is going to be probably five times more in Charlotte. And so we really need to be making sure we're looking at apples to apples and don't sell ourselves short when we do that. So I think doing an analysis on how we are really comparing those things so that we are not giving that away.

Actually, I would like 15 and 30. 15 and 30? Yeah, I'd like to have an hour's worth of talking.

Before the meeting?

Yeah. But if it's longer than two minutes of talking, they really should just send us an email.

That's just too much information.

Well, they just need to give us the high points and then send us an email if they've got longer than that and a whole presentation or something. Only three minutes. Three minutes.

I mean, try three for three months and see how it works. And if it doesn't work, the rambling, then let's go back to two.

And at three minutes, there's a lot of people that get up and only talk for a minute or two. So we're cutting out five people that get the opportunity to speak. That's very few that are only going to talk for a minute. I'm just trying to help get as many people as possible to speak. and not limit the numbers. We can do a 30 at one minute if we want to get the quantity, but that's not going to help.

That's not going to help. I like going out front to that area.

I think that's very worthwhile having trained two staff members or whatever to be there to sign up because what that's gonna do is it gets so congested out there when we have a big topic that there is infighting and everything because they're all trying to get in there. Well, if they're signing up after out there, it can be more orderly, and then people, if there's an overflow that they have to go upstairs or whatever, then they sign in and go upstairs, but I think that that is a definite nice thing to happen. And then, I'm not necessarily for the three minute situation, but I'm willing to give it a try. on a temporary basis, see how it goes. I mean, we need to broaden our horizons.

We'll do three in 10 for the next three months unless they're reevaluated.

I think by having that, though, if we're going to be responding back, I think we'd probably have more opportunity to respond better to 10 questions than 15.

I have concerns about the responses.

We're not responding. If we choose to, because we talked about. Who's going to make the decision to respond?

I would support council responding. I would support either county manager or county attorney.

Either way, but the point is, I think we need, if we're going to respond, it needs to be a quality response. So let's decide on two and 15 or three and 10.

I think the only thing that folks need to understand is that this is in an ordinance. So we can't willy-nilly go back and forth. What we can do is we can give more flexibility. We can change the ordinance to, say, 30 minutes, and then that gives us the opportunity to do whatever we want. But I think we have to set some parameters because right now it says 30 minutes, two minutes apiece, and we can't. Deviate from that but we can create some more flexibility in the ordinance if we want to give ourselves flexibility I think the bigger question and and I'd like to go ahead and tackle this piece so as we're talking through issues The thing that that is important to me is I am hearing that folks who come to speak and Greenville does this different and I broached this subject with some council members and and folks didn't like this but I What Greenville does is they do 30 minutes at the outset for anyone who wants to speak about something that's on the agenda, and then they have 30 minutes at the end of their meeting for anyone who wants to talk about something that's not on the agenda. Some folks didn't like folks waiting that long. To me, I think no matter what we do at the outset, I think there should be some priority given to people who are there to speak about something we're actually voting on, because they're only going to have that opportunity, and if they can't speak at a public hearing, uh... they were voting on something and they didn't get a chance to speak so i'd i would suggest that we at least talk about is there a way for us to prioritize the people who sign up for something that is on the agenda for which there is no public hearing so that we have them here and if there are more people that sign up then the slip allows maybe we could If y'all aren't comfortable with splitting them up agenda, non-agenda, then maybe what we end up doing is asking them after the 30 minutes to wait to do that. I'm throwing out this topic because this has come up from the community, so I'd like to hear from y'all to see where we are on that or if you don't think that's an issue.

I would support at the end another 30 minutes for whatever.

Another 30 minutes at the end.

Think about how many items we have on the agenda that's not public hearing. And you're saying reserve that space for people. That's not going to, you're still not going to satisfy everybody. We have to live with what we got and let it work. Because we'll be forever chasing, well, this person didn't get to speak on this item.

I mean, last time we discussed one ordinance for one hour. And then we had the rest of the agenda to go through. I mean.

We're going to be chasing it if we try to do it that way.

So y'all do not want to prioritize? Anyone who signs up, whoever gets there first, we're going to do 130 minutes.

Well, then we really aren't changing anything.

So we can just leave it the way it is.

That's right. We don't have to. Well, again, I think.

But we are kind of, because if they're going to go out front and you've got the folks out there talking to them, and they want to ask questions of somebody. There's people here all the time that have never understood how to sign up. Because like you said, they're signing up to come in here and sit down.

But the sign says what it's for. It doesn't matter. But see, we can't solve that for people who don't want to read a sign that's sitting in front of the list.

I know, but you can if you've got qualified staff and they can ask questions. I mean, we had a whole QTS situation where we had like three or four women that came that had never walked through that door before. They didn't even know what they were supposed to be doing. But if they had had somebody out there to talk to, and ask questions and answer questions, then it would go for a smooth transition.

Well, that doesn't require, I guess that does not require any change in our ordinance to have somebody out there manning the form. I think we all agree that's valuable. Let's do that. The question is, are we going to just keep everything else the way that it is?

What time does the sheet go out?

515? It goes out five now?

But now you have a staff member.

Whatever it is, it needs to be manned. We need to have somebody who mans it. So y'all need to speak into how you do that.

Is that by ordinance?

The thing is about 5 o'clock is you're encouraging people to get here at 5 o'clock for a 6 o'clock meeting to sign up on the sheet. That's why I put 530 down. 530, they stand in line, and 20 minutes later the sheet's picked up or we get 15 names on it, it's picked up. So we don't have a staff member sitting there for an hour before a meeting manning a 15- We just need to make sure that people are going to stand in line and not let people in line and fight to get in line. Well, and that's the other thing. The complaints in the beginning was people were signing up for the people to speak. That's where the sheriff comes in.

You've got to get here at 5 or make sure they line up right. Thank you, Mark. You make sure they line up right.

So that's why I suggested 5.30 until 10 till 6 and pick it up.

So 5.30 in the lobby.

Yeah, I think that's good. That's fine.

5.30? Madam Chair, we do have one small.

I don't know that you're going to be able to get 15 people to sign up in 15 minutes.

Help me. That's why I suggested Sheriff's Day.

Well, I'm not going to be helping you in a positive way, unfortunately. You see, our ordinance is very specific. It says, for the public forum section, This section is available to the first 15 individuals who sign on behalf of themselves or an organization on the sign-up sheet provided in the entry hall outside council chambers. I just wanted to point that out.

Well, that's where it is. I guess I don't understand.

So there's no time frame on it.

Technically, that's the hall.

Why is that? I don't understand why that's a problem. It doesn't put a time. I thought you were going to tell me we went so far as to say a time.

I don't think we'll be, if it's at the front, it's not a concept. So maybe we do, we have it as 530. It's outside our chambers. What do you mean?

I guess I'm confused. Why is the problem?

Is that entry, it says the entryway.

Well, that would be where it is now.

That's where it is now. That's where we're keeping it.

Okay.

Yeah, let's leave it. Oh, we're not sticking it out in the lobby with the. It's right there.

Well, I think, isn't that still considered the.

Yeah, you got to come down the hallway.

Oh, my goodness.

I wish we had meet and limit rules that we can strictly follow. That's the last point on that sheet on the screen. Let me be clear.

The only thing that council is supportive of is getting a sign-up person out there by the sign-up sheets. Let's do it 515 to 545. uh... but what about fifteen minutes fifty people's it's kind of hard to some fifteen people in that sort of time frame if there's a lot of people were asking them a minute speak of the people who take direction there hasn't been a staff member to be out there one of them around for an hour is not the reason i don't want to do a sign up sheet what what what what what what what what what

because uh... uh... all right never know other changes and i don't want any other changes now leave it at the members first whether it's a gender and on a gender you leave out all right i don't have a quick not really cheap she brought up she said sign up a person or organization What is an organization? What if it's a group of people that's going to talk? So can one person sign up multiple people? You can't sign up nobody that's not here.

You're signing up on behalf of an organization. It says organization.

But you can't be part of the organization, I would think.

Yeah, that's what it implies.

Is it defined?

Give us your legal interpretation.

Take an organization to mean an entity.

Yes, sir. Not a group of folks who are there on the same issue. which i don't know if we can do it or not but our actual agenda coming out sooner in the week than latter and the weekend coming in and you can't get in touch with a lot of people and what not on items on there that's another topic for i'm sure is that possible

I think we can talk through that. That's not something we've got on the agenda right now. Let's circle back on that one. We're talking about public comment. We'll come back to it.

Anything else on public comment?

Protocol. Y'all can't make protocol.

15 minutes. That's why. No, just leave it. I guess at 15 minutes. At this point.

About 15 people. The only suggestion that I heard is that since we're leaving it agenda and non-agenda, any of those topics, with agenda comments, we will get an opportunity to address that. So there's really no point in having someone address that because we will have it in the agenda. Not agenda comments would be the only time where there would need to be some response.

Are we talking about the second 30 minutes now?

No, we're not talking, what do you mean? We're not even doing these additional 30 minutes. We're not doing that. We all said, apparently the group says we don't want to do anything but one 30 minute slot like we have.

No, we're talking about a response to what is brought up in the 30 minute, two minute session. And there's not consensus on that yet.

Okay, because we haven't. So the suggestion is from Mr. Huckabee that we keep the 30 minutes for the community and that we then allow another 30 minutes for council to respond or someone else to respond.

will strike down so we think it'd be step up to thirty minutes staff and a representative strike councilman some point and future like and so i can't i i definitely don't think we need thirty minutes no it's to respond to anything it's up to thirty but at a fifteen just come up with something so we can respond to what we're here or or staff can respond to what we're hearing so we can get the truth out on something if in fact it needs to be correct who's going to tell staff to answer a question

I think it's staff discretion. If they hear something that's grossly false, it's on them. If they don't want it, it could be a meeting. They don't respond to anything.

But they're not the ones that have concerns about it. We're up here saying we don't like it.

And we've had council members try to do it and get out in front of it. So at this point... If it's an agenda item, we don't need to do anything about that because it comes up in the agenda. If it is a non-agenda comment, what we're saying is leave it up to management or staff. If they want to respond, that's really not addressing what council's concern was.

So the reason this came up was because when we get to... Well, people are coming to speak on topics that happened months ago sometimes. And so you've had a chance between meetings, the last meeting you heard it, this meeting you heard it, and staff could respond if we chose to so that we're addressing it head on. Because what happens is the citizens leave and they don't hear any discussion later in the meeting typically. They're definitely not going to hear it in non-agenda at the end.

but it's really the will counsel whether you want arrest but that the opportunity to have a response after or not i think you should get the name and email from that person if you want to respond to their problems respond to it after the because here's what's going to have are less than respond one I'm going to go real broad. Please don't hold it against me. Let's say we have one person that tells a lie, and we respond to that particular lie, but then there's another more obscure lie or something, and we don't respond to that one. Does that make that lie now the truth? Because we responded to one, didn't respond to the other.

I want to leave it alone. Why don't we leave it like this? We have a non-agenda comment section that we all have. So why don't we just, if we choose to use that as our non-agenda topic, then that's our choice. So let's just do it.

I can go with that.

All right, so we have not changed anything on public comment other than have someone outside to help them. Watts, you have some other ideas here that council has not considered. Do you want to raise them?

Yeah, sure. Be glad to. I just was mentioning that they have assigned place to sit so that they can come up orderly and quickly and really get it done in 30 minutes. Person speaking, somebody standing behind them. Also, whoever's sitting in the designated seats would know that they're here to talk about an agenda item that can be explained to them. The second section had to do with the response, give it up to 30 minutes for us to respond to something that was said in public comment to kind of give the different perspective so that something doesn't go into the media, but we've already covered that one. Y'all don't want to do that, that's fine. Public hearing, I've just kind of outlined a suggestion on a group that might be coming in to present on behalf of a company, creating some time frames for them, and also creating time frames for the citizens to speak as well in the public hearing for and against.

And real quick, just on public hearings, I do think in talking with staff, there could be potential to improve the public hearing process, if that's something you all want to assign the committee. giving the applicant time to talk earlier in the conversation, giving y'all time to ask the applicants questions before the public talk. We think that there's a good opportunity to improve the flow of information so y'all can make a more informed decision. That might be something we consider if y'all want to at a later date or tonight, but there's room for growth and improvement there.

That'd be good to refer. Last item was Consider holding executive session, if not before every meeting, but maybe one meeting a month from 4.30 to 5.40, and also ending meetings by 9.30. So no matter where we are in a meeting, we end at 9.30. And part of this has to do with our staff being here. We're sometimes here at 11, 11.30 at night. Most of our meetings, we have attorneys that are participating in these meetings, and if our taxpayers knew we were paying these attorneys to be on the clock at 9, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 o'clock traveling back to Columbia, you'd have a heart attack knowing, I would have a heart attack knowing what we were getting charged for that. So there could be a better way for us to put some parameters around what we're getting done and putting a little pressure on us to get in and get out. And there are other school districts, municipalities, and counties that have these types of guardrails for meetings. Might be something we ask staff, like you just suggested a second ago, with public hearing, we ask staff to research this and come back with some suggestions.

I don't like the 530s before because I'm in a rush to get home, to get situated, even get here to the committee meeting at 530. I'm not a fresh woman. I have to be at 6. It's not going to shorten the amount of time that we're going to take because there's no way we're going to get an executive session in 30 minutes. And I don't see starting executive session at 5 o'clock.

That's an hour and 10 minutes, but I hear you, not 30 minutes.

Well, I can't get here at 5.

It may not work. I'm just throwing a suggestion out. I mean, I'm just saying I can't make it at 5.

you know people got that they're trying to get here in that time of day when the most traffic is any other comments on that if there's can if there's i would like to put the uh... public hearing portion maybe go to committee to a committee to discuss whether we can

the opportunity for discussion more efficient, especially with the applicants that are here. Sometimes I feel like they should be speaking ahead of the public here or maybe after the public speaks so that they can kind of answer some questions that were brought up. So I would be interested in seeing maybe some different options. If it's not already written in an ordinance that we have to do a whole lot of changes for.

Yeah, I support that. We already have them speaking in the beginning.

The way we typically do public hearings is to hear from staff. I mean, if what y'all are saying is allow the applicant to be up there to answer questions from council, Fine. If we're adding more presentation, y'all are talking about trying to shorten meetings. The way we shorten meetings is for us to be prepared and for us to cap our talking and be prepared. I don't know that you can just put an end at the meeting and say I'm done at 930 when we haven't completed the business. So I don't know that we can do that. I do think with the public hearing, I don't know that we have to refer that to a committee if the question is the applicant can be up there maybe to answer the questions from counsel.

I think the suggestion to send this to committee and let them present what it is they have interest in, improving the process, makes sense. Which process? I think the process for the public hearing. I think come prepared is a very good point, but the other point is that we really don't have a lot of discussion on issues. We make comments. We really don't have a discussion, right? One person speaks pretty much, and then we try to end it at that point. So it's an unfortunate process that some of the conversations have to take place outside of this building, which means that only a few people are involved and others are not. So I don't know what the solution is, but being here until 11, 11.30 at night, often, It seems to me that, yeah, it's horrible. I agree. We need to work on that, but I don't know that.

How is the public hearing, how is changing the public hearing going to do that? How is that going to fix that?

The last bullet point is irrelevant to the public hearing. The last bullet point just has to do with establishing some guardrails for our meetings.

I'm not interested in that last bullet point at all. The one thing I would be interested in is maybe just having a limited number of items on the agenda. But then we're just not going to get anything done. We're just going to have more meetings.

We'll have more meetings.

Well, we have more. We want to go meet twice a month.

Well, I think that definitely whoever committee that is that looks at public hearings, I don't know what committee that is, that the people that come up to speak, I think there should be a time limit on them. Yeah.

Not two minutes, but.

Greenville does with their public hearings the same way they do with the public hearings. 30 minutes for 30 minutes against. Hmm. We're going to cut public. I'm not supportive of cutting public comment. Well, I think that's a major change. And we're sitting here saying that we. But I don't disagree that when we get to a point where folks are saying things, I guess I have a concern that we would give an applicant more time than an individual in the community. I don't support that, so I want to be clear. If y'all want to refer an item on public hearings to a committee, I think we need to understand where council majority is interested in exploring that, because I don't think we need to give a certain category of folks more time than others.

I think Tommy's suggestion, though, about getting the agenda out sooner would accomplish some of this, because I don't feel good about taking time away from public. I agree with you. But I think if we had the agenda earlier, we may have time to have communications with people in zoning so we can have our questions answered. and not have to extend that time out for us to ask questions of staff or of the zoning group, whoever that's in front of us. So that would help to shorten the time frame.

So is it possible to get the agendas out by Wednesday at lunch?

So look, Karen and I have worked hard to try to get out earlier. I think we've shaved a day or two off of what was typical previously. It's very hard to shave even more time off with the turnaround between meetings. and everybody's schedule we can always work hard to get it out by wednesdays but oftentimes with the complex agendas we're adding things on thursdays still and things are getting added to the agenda we can we can try our i don't know if karen has any ideas but that's something we can shoot for but it depends on the actual agenda and the complexity of it I think y'all's heads are in the right place. The earlier you get it, the better. And I think that's something we can shoot for. So I'm not disagreeing with that, but I don't know how practical it is to shave off two days. Maybe we can shoot for one. But what do you think, Aaron?

I do think being mindful of what's on an agenda and spreading out the public hearings so that we're not loaded up helps more than anything. And that requires folks taking a look ahead of time when things get published in the paper. I mean, I do think that's a key thing.

Can a lot of that stuff that's in the consent agenda, can we somehow make it so that that stuff doesn't have to be on the consent agenda, which would free up some time?

Compiling information? Putting it in consent helps speed things up.

I know, but they have to put all that data together and put it in their package and get it in the agenda. If we pull those things out of that so they don't even have to come to us or something. Like, if it's already in the budget, To do this thing do we have to we still have to vote on it still has to be in there To me that's not really what's making our items longer the consent agenda is a matter of emotion.

I mean it's a matter of

We spend a lot of time on rezoning, but that's just...

There has to be a record of the expenditure.

That's based off of orders we have to bring forward to council.

Our ordinance is very specific on a lot of these things, apparently. We can change the ordinance. Good.

Make it easier on us.

I kind of like it being consent, because then the community sees that, and a budget's too long. They don't see it.

Maybe it could go through the F&O committee for fire truck purchases. Still, the council has to do this. But all that is the consent of the board of trustees.

No, we can't delegate the majority council, majority responsibility to one committee. You can't delegate that.

I think a perfect example of meetings going long is like, well, we just did it last week. I mean, really. Yep. We didn't.

We basically didn't.

It really is. Yep.

Well, we're trying to make them do much.

At least we tried. All right, let's move on. Discussion regarding future workshops. I know that we have to address fire in September. I'll say no more workshops. I'm starting to get there with you.

I don't know how to accomplish anything.

When we talk about things, and we say we want to change it, and then we don't, that's frustrating.

Well, I have a suggestion on workshops. First of all, I think we need to put them on the calendar. Just go ahead and put them on the calendar for the rest of this year, this year through June. And you can always take them off, but you have the workshop on the calendar. At least it's held. I thought they were. They are.

But we added a workshop today.

Well, it's the special call. We've had four or five special call meetings.

Apparently, our workshop in September can't go the date that we put it on there, though, because we have a council meeting. So we did have to change that. All of the rest of them are on the calendar.

And the second thing I was going to suggest is that we talked about executive session. Maybe there are a couple of items that we could cover at a workshop and executive session so we don't have so much on the docket the night of the meeting. Spread it out a little bit. Because we spend a lot of time in executive session. We go in there at 8, and we come out at 10, 10.30, 11 o'clock. It's just going to make workshop go longer. It might.

But at least you spread it out. We get on a piece at times. I like having all mine done at once. Any other? Some of the things I've heard from y'all is trying to be focused on one big item, a workshop. I know we've tried to put multiple items on workshops, and sometimes that doesn't produce further dialogue. I know as staff we want to give you all more opportunity to share feedback in workshops and have conversations. I think the other thing I've heard from you all as we've talked, the earlier you know about a topic that's going to be in a workshop, the more you all can think about it and spend time contemplating it. For example, FIRE, we definitely want to have a workshop in September. David has sent out a survey so that you all can think about it, but he can also prepare to encourage conversation at that workshop. October, we really need to have a conversation about utilities. Our rate study, draft rate study from our consultants should be done by then, and they can come and present, and we can have a deeper conversation about the utilities CIP that we've pulled together for the next 10 years, and we can digest the potential cost, but also the consultant can present. One other topic I've heard you all talk a lot about is roads. We need to find time to talk about roads, our roads plan, and how we utilize the funds we have and some of the impacts of some of the changes we see coming down the pike. So you start to talk about those big issues, And then things come up as you go. So I want to make sure that there's not other topics out there because those topics will keep us busy through October. But what else do y'all want to be talking about and thinking about? And potentially, how do we work some of that into council meetings if it's a lighter agenda? That's an option too, but.

I'd like to see one of those soon. Fire and EMS, I think maybe we could take those two together, even though they're separate. I think we need to really talk, as a council, I think we need to talk about and get some direction on the comp plan that's coming up. We really do need to understand what that's going to require and get that. That's a huge thing that's coming up very soon. Talk through what that looks like and Y'all share with us. Those are two big things that I see coming up. Any other topics?

Our data center moratorium and what we've been doing so far with the additions to the ordinance. And the plan is... to take Tom and Jonathan's work that they've been doing to the Planning and Zoning Committee, another committee meeting. And then after that, any additions you guys have, then bringing it to council, not to vote on, but to discuss all the things that we've put into it. So I don't know where that's gonna fit in.

I don't know. You're looking for a response.

Well, now I'm just saying, I don't know where that's going to fit in.

And I think Council Member Cloninger brings up a good point. So when things come out of committee and there's a desire for the committee to share with the full council, that could happen at a workshop or it can happen maybe more in depth at a council meeting. as a presentation, not just an update at the end of the meeting. What we're trying to solve here is better communication between committees and the full council, and we're open to any ideas, but I think the data center moratorium is a great example of something I know y'all all want to learn about, and how do we have that back and forth, but not for a whole workshop, but regular updates. I think that's what we've got to solve for. I'm not sure we have an answer yet.

I don't know, should that one go to the full council at a workshop instead of just PNZ?

It could.

Well, it's going to. You're talking about...

So we're going to have PNZ and then the workshop and then... I was just asking. I was just making sure.

Well, wouldn't you like to hear some of the things first and kind of mull it over and then we put... take out, put in, then bring it to council. I mean, that's how a workshop works. If you don't want it to work that way, then we need to change workshops.

I think all of the council should be able to hear the whole presentation for that, because it's a big deal. Because we're going to end up rehashing it.

It's going to be the whole presentation, but I was trying to be polite. If you don't want me to be polite, we'll just bring it right on. We're not going to bring it to PNC. What do you want to do, Tom? Do you want it brought to PNC first or do you want to just bring it to council?

I think this thing's going to take a while to figure out. I think we're going to do a lot of talking about it for a second.

That's what I thought. Maybe we hash out a few things in the committee before we bring it to council.

I think that we all need to have the input.

The moratorium's in place for how long? Nine months? Nine months. And the whole point is for the committee to do some work. And then when y'all get to a point where you have some suggestions.

Y'all get y'all's input, we go back to the committee, put some more input.

So I had two items, either share it at a workshop or share it at council, and that's the trail.

I think on a lot of stuff, it's just like, yeah, we've met a lot this past year, but it's not always clear.

Yeah. I think if it's a big item, bringing it through the workshop so we're all informed would be a good idea. I think there's some work to do on that committee. Any other big topics that we need to bring up on our workshop schedule?

updating the trails master plan updating us on the trails master plan and where we are with that because a lot's happened over the last year with the carolina thread trail and the municipalities trail programs understanding what's what progress has been made there and the second would be an update on the small area and corridor plans whether that's a full council or a workshop, either one. I think it would benefit all of council to hear an update on those.

Well, aren't they in the ED board is taking those up? So we don't have an update until they've done something with it, right? I'm asking you. So whenever they get there.

Right. We'll be bringing forward a contract for the I-77 study. There's also a Newport study that will be packaged with the comp plan bid. And so that will also be something the ED committee can speak into as well. But the ED board is, you all have to ask the ED board with the I-77.

So they need an opportunity to do it.

Yeah. All right. about having readouts on RFATS, because RFATS is very, I mean, we go to the meetings, but again, not all the council members are there, and I think it would be important to have a good reading once in a while in the workshops.

I would suggest with RFATS that that be with transportation and that we follow up. My recollection is that these plans that we've already funded, that they were coming through transportation as well. We need to make sure that we keep on that. All right. We do have an executive session briefly.

It won't be brief. It won't be brief. Should have passed the 930.

Yeah, a receipt of legal advice, litigation update.

Should have passed the 930, ended the meeting.

Do we have a second?

Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?

All right. We have come out of executive session. Do we have any motions?

Yes. Motion to authorize the interim county attorney to move forward with the settlement agreement in bankruptcy case number 25-03084 regarding applied machinery rentals. Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye.

Ayes have it.

All right.

Any last comments? No. Motion to...

So I do have one comment to the public in regards to... We have not received a 72-hour notice in regards to SILFAB at this point, and we're looking at every option. And again, we will continue to stand together and work to stand with the committee on this issue.

Thank you.