[1:01] Good evening, everyone, and thank you for being here tonight. I am interim town manager, Russ Overton, and with me tonight is Mayor Harold Onebreck. Mayor Pro Tem and at large council member, Lori Bush. At large council member, Chris Akon Johnson. District A, council member, Brittany Richards. District D, council member, Michelle Craig. B, council member, Michelle Craig. And D, council member, Serica Banzo. And I'll mention that council member, Bella Wong, is out of the country.

[1:31] could not be here tonight. I want to thank the media for being with us tonight on short notice.

[1:36] And as you know, the State Auditor and his team released a report on Kerry earlier today.

[1:41] We appreciate all the hard work that is going into it and felt it was important to have a new

[1:46] conference to answer your questions about our response, which we'll do in just a bit.

[1:52] We also have copies of another report from outside law firm Womble Bond Dickinson,

[1:56] which Council Commission to conduct a separate investigation back in January.

[2:00] representatives from Womblebond Dickinson will be at our July 23rd, town council meeting

[2:05] to make a formal presentation of their report and you can grab those copies if you don't

[2:10] already have them at the front desk as you leave. As a reminder, this conference is being live

[2:15] streamed and recorded and since its new conference will be taking questions directly from the media.

[2:21] Thank you to all the residents and staff who are here to observe and support the meeting as well

[2:26] and I would encourage you all to contact Kerry's 311 any time with questions you have regarding

[2:32] this report and our response. I'd like to give a brief summary of the events that brought

[2:38] us to this point, so we're working from a common foundation. In 2016, Sean Steegel was hired as

[2:45] Kerry's town manager. In over the next 10 years and to this day, Kerry continued to receive

[2:50] national awards and recognition in finance, safety, and quality of life.

[2:55] Many international events have made their home and carry, including the soccer tournament

[2:59] and the Chinese Leonard Fest.

[3:02] And we've opened an award-winning park that contributed significantly to the thriving downtown

[3:07] economy.

[3:08] But towards the end of Sean's tenure, staff began noticing questionable decisions and behaviors

[3:14] from our former manager.

[3:15] For example, he eliminated most of all budget positions and deportized key finance department roles such as the internal auditor position.

[3:25] He often encouraged staff to ignore policies and procedures and did so himself.

[3:30] And he had discontinued exit interviews and the employees satisfaction survey which had previously given staff a safe way to report issues.

[3:39] Because Shon's actions had occurred over time, it was difficult to see what was happening

[3:43] in the moment, but late last year, a clear picture came into focus as a small group

[3:48] of staff brought their concerns to the Kerry Town Council.

[3:51] Immediately, on November 20, 2025, town council voted unanimously to place Shon on administrative

[3:58] leave.

[3:59] Just a few days later, the North Carolina Office of State Auditor, OSA, arrived at Town Hall

[4:04] to announce the start of their investigation.

[4:06] Sean resigned on December 13th and two days later the Council appointed me as the interim

[4:11] tell manager.

[4:13] Over the last eight months, we've supported the OSA's investigation by providing hundreds

[4:17] of and even thousands of documents to fully cooperate with the interviews they've requested.

[4:23] We appreciate their work in helping us identify the gaps and oversight and process and culture,

[4:29] and I'm glad that the state auditor mentioned that cooperation in this news conference

[4:32] earlier today.

[4:33] This investigation is largely rooted in the former town man's actions, but as an organization

[4:39] we recognize that our responsibility to understand what happened, learn how we can help

[4:44] prevent it from happening again and make sure our operations and culture meet the expectations

[4:49] of our staff and our community. The recommendations from the OSA's report will help us do

[4:55] exactly that. Carry remains a strong organization with amazing staff, financially stable, safe,

[5:01] and offering our residents and visitors an exceptional place to live and visit.

[5:06] We are moving forward, rethinking how things are done, rebuilding from what was dismantled

[5:11] and taking steps to strengthen transparency and oversight.

[5:15] As part of this effort, we've developed a public dashboard to track our progress and recommendations

[5:21] from the OSA and others, and I invite you all to visit and book more at carryinc.gov slash

[5:27] moving forward to follow along.

[5:29] And with that, we'll open it up for any media questions.

[5:35] Yes.

[5:38] The former town manager in the report is noted as refusing to comply with the terms of a deal for his severance.

[5:48] Notably, it seems like he may not have given over his phone.

[5:53] Is the town pursuing that either getting the property back or pursuing criminal charges against him?

[6:02] I'm not aware we have, I'm looking for a attorney, I'm not aware we have authority to pursue.

[6:09] All we can do is hold the severance, I don't know if you guys know any more than that.

[6:15] But it's up to the DA and the SPI to pursue criminal charges against things.

[6:20] We have no authority to do that.

[6:22] However, we do have authority to withhold his severance if he doesn't comply by all of the conditions which he has not.

[6:31] Could you talk about some material differences between the OSA report and the Womble Bond

[6:36] Dickinson report and what new information or recommendation the Womble report introduced?

[6:42] So I can give you my opinion. I'll ask my colleagues to jump in after I'm done.

[6:47] I thought the state auditor didn't excellent job on the what?

[6:52] Here's all the things that happened. Really bad, really bad.

[6:56] that. The auditor did a fantastic job over the months really digging in deep and finding stuff that

[7:03] honestly I had no idea what's going on. So it's very important for us as a council to hear

[7:09] these things and see these things. Lomble Bond Dickinson is into the what and I mean the why and

[7:15] the how and that's very important especially if you're trying to fix problems and situations

[7:22] you need to understand the whole picture and the whole picture is the what why and the

[7:27] how and so that's why both of them together will help us move forward.

[7:34] I'd also like to share I believe something that both of those resources did which was

[7:40] important was to illustrate what I would call an implementation gap so we do and we've talked

[7:47] about this as a body fairly frequently we have a lot of policy and a lot of those policies

[7:52] just weren't followed. And that is, you know, often with any governmental body, you can have

[7:58] the policy, but we also need to have the mechanisms in place to make sure that those policies

[8:03] were followed. And, you know, anecdotally, I always think of it sort of like, you can have a really

[8:08] great drawing and sketch of a building and you can have the best architectural plans. But if the

[8:14] building inspector isn't on the job and making sure that corners aren't cut and, you know, there's

[8:19] not, you know, a misinterpretation of the plans, then you're not going to get an ideal

[8:25] final product.

[8:26] So I feel as though the Womble report really to me was an expansion on the work the state

[8:32] audited, as the mayor said, identifying, here's the problems, and I feel like our commissioned

[8:39] report with Womble really did a great job of identifying those gaps that we need to close

[8:45] to make sure that our policies are pretty uniformly and always adhered to.

[8:51] And then I would, one more item since we all have read the report and you get an opportunity

[8:57] to do it in a bit, is it really talked about the operational issues and challenges that we have,

[9:03] not just with a council manager form of government, but when you have a large organization

[9:07] with part-time leaders and a professional town manager who's leading the organization.

[9:16] And I'd also like to chime in on the mayor's why part of the Womble report.

[9:22] I thought it was very helpful to talk very specifically of the why.

[9:27] What are the vulnerabilities associated with a council manager form of government?

[9:31] What are the safeguards that you need?

[9:34] How can you increase transparency?

[9:35] the how and or the why and then the how really dovetail nicely together because the

[9:42] wobble report also gave us pieces of the puzzle to put together so that we can make

[9:48] sure that this doesn't happen again.

[9:51] Let me add that the wobble report had 21 recommendations and the OSA report has 13, all of

[9:57] those recommendations will be on the moving forward web page.

[9:59] And you guys mentioned in your comments in the State Auditor's report as well, that people didn't see notice this quicker because it was a lot of different things over time.

[10:14] And there are a lot of recommendations in that auditor's report.

[10:17] But how do you now go about what if somebody making up and just hypothetically, what if somebody does something in one month?

[10:26] And then six months later, they'd do something again.

[10:29] Like, how do you not see that if it's happening at all?

[10:33] So I'll start by saying a lot of the problems in my mind were controlling information.

[10:41] He was a master at making sure he had information from staff.

[10:45] And he had information from Council.

[10:48] And he determined who got what information.

[10:50] That was a big problem.

[10:52] And that was correct in on day one,

[10:53] when we swore in Russ Overton as the intermanager.

[10:57] We no longer have that 101,

[10:59] where one person controls that information.

[11:02] So we meet in three by fours, which means

[11:05] the mayor and two council members and the intermanager,

[11:10] the attorney, the clerk, and other senior staff members

[11:13] are there as well.

[11:14] So we're all sharing information at the same time

[11:17] to prevent that kind of thing from happening again.

[11:20] I don't know if you guys have anything to add to that.

[11:22] For me, it would be two words, culture, and transparency.

[11:27] And on day one, the mayor put forward a process and a request for us

[11:32] to stream everything we do.

[11:34] Exactly.

[11:34] Day zero.

[11:35] That was a zero.

[11:38] And so everything we do is transparent.

[11:41] And we also made a commitment to each other that any information that we have,

[11:47] we share with the broader group, which I think is also indicative of this body,

[11:51] wanting to move forward together, so that's the transparency.

[11:55] The culture part is ensuring that those guardrails are there,

[12:02] so that staff feels comfortable to share with us should there be an issue.

[12:09] So putting forward an anti-rotalliation program, putting forward a whistleblower, a tip line,

[12:15] those types of things are important to make sure that our staff feel comfortable,

[12:19] so they don't feel bullied, so they feel like they can share that information with us.

[12:24] And that will be taken as a policy to council at next Thursday's meeting.

[12:30] Yes, sir.

[12:31] I know one thing that came on in the report is that 62% of people of the staff had

[12:37] car into credit cards, access credit cards, so I know in Raleigh, they said they have

[12:42] 60% and Charlotte 10% are you cutting that down since that report is coming out?

[12:47] I'll start with that.

[12:48] But we've already taken steps to cut it, we'll continue to look at that and make further

[12:52] steps to cut it down, and that's something we'll be looking at moving forward.

[12:57] All while knowing that the town has to make purchases, and we'll look at how to do that

[13:02] differently.

[13:03] And I'm just saying when I interviewed with the town auditor, I did it for two hours

[13:08] and 40 minutes, and it was, did you know this?

[13:11] And there are 800 peak cards, and I'm like, well, is that normal or not normal?

[13:18] Well, Charlotte has about that many.

[13:20] Well, how many do they have?

[13:21] So they looked up all that information after we asked questions back because we didn't know.

[13:26] And I can tell you, re-inner manager does not have a peak card.

[13:31] Our town clerk does not have a peak card.

[13:33] So they're already, by example, reducing the number of peak cards because that was a problem.

[13:39] that was a cultural issue that is being addressed.

[13:44] None of us have any cards.

[13:47] With one of the recommendations to make Peacard transactions more transparent as well to the public.

[13:54] And I wanted to comment on that because I think a really important thing to note is the form of payment doesn't illustrate whether or not a transaction or a payment is acceptable or not.

[14:05] So there's problematic parts of any kind of form of payment

[14:11] we like checks as we all know you can't just pop a check in the mail anymore

[14:15] and feel really confident that it's going to safely arrive at its destination.

[14:19] So one of the things I've been doing is really trying to look at this

[14:22] and say, okay, well if we don't pursue payments via credit card,

[14:29] what is the best practice?

[14:30] And what is the ideal payment?

[14:33] I had a discussion with a colleague about this just today.

[14:35] it's not necessarily a bad thing that credit cards are being used to make a lot of the purchases

[14:43] that are necessary and it doesn't illustrate fraud on the behalf of the staff broadly. What it is

[14:50] is a standard way of purchasing things that we need to examine like so many things we're doing right

[14:58] And examine it.

[15:00] And make sure that that's the best way to go about it. And if we're going to continue with primarily

[15:05] peacard purchases for a lot of things, how do we do that do it well and do it safely and

[15:10] make sure the money is safeguarded?

[15:12] And the elaborate spending that the auditor talked about, there will be checks and balances

[15:16] to prevent that from happening. And we're working on a plan for that.

[15:21] And one of those plans was we added two positions in the finance. One is a auditor for the

[15:29] One more thing that was noted was I'm not sure exactly how it was described, but something

[15:38] about the former town manager making last-minute decisions about things which cause some

[15:46] of those P card purchases to have unnecessary fees and or cancellations to venues and things

[15:54] like that. So, as we're looking at policies, making sure we're being

[15:59] plantful would be among the things that we will continue to do.

[16:07] I know there's been a lot of talks towards the town manager, but under this, the

[16:12] auditor, describing this is really a culture of extravagant spending, not just by the town manager,

[16:18] how did that culture develop without the town council recognizing its sooner? And I know we've

[16:24] here in a lot of, we didn't know, but everybody knows how much money is in their bank account

[16:29] and what that spending looks like with your own budget and at stewards of the taxpayer's

[16:35] dollars, how do you miss it?

[16:38] Well, I think there's, there's a lot of complexity there.

[16:43] These staff makes hundreds of thousands of decisions, we make thousands of decisions, we're

[16:48] a thousand decisions.

[16:49] So they bowled down summaries is what we see.

[16:53] I'll tell a story, which I think is very important.

[16:57] While we might have seen bits and pieces over the last few months,

[17:04] I didn't know what was going on with them.

[17:08] And then early November of last year,

[17:11] staff member came up and told me, these things are happening,

[17:15] which was shocking and I'm like disgruntled employee maybe, then another one.

[17:21] That's not right, and then on November 13th he lied in front of the council about fund balance.

[17:30] By November 20th he was gone.

[17:34] The problem was it was all based on that one fund balance issue until we got four staff members

[17:41] to come in to close session.

[17:43] We usually don't talk about what happened in close session,

[17:46] but I got permission to.

[17:48] They came in close session risked their careers

[17:51] and told us, here's everything that's going on.

[17:54] We were in there for hours and hours.

[17:57] I don't tell you who those people were.

[17:58] It wasn't random staff.

[18:00] It was the interim manager.

[18:02] It was the town clerk.

[18:03] It was the chief strategy officer.

[18:06] And it was the assistant town manager.

[18:08] top-level people in the organization went way to

[18:12] minute, these things, these bad things are happening,

[18:16] and Council doesn't know, they need to know this now,

[18:20] and they risked it all just so we can know.

[18:23] And we heard it, and I can tell you that close session,

[18:26] not a dry eye was in there.

[18:28] It was heartbreaking, but we immediately made the

[18:31] hard decision, and he was gone.

[18:34] He was locked out of his accounts, he was locked out

[18:36] building and he never returned.

[18:40] I would, I want to add something there.

[18:43] I feel like the accountability and the oversight was definitely low because of the trust

[18:51] that the council had in the manager.

[18:54] And I feel when, I mean, this is my first time.

[18:58] I was new back then.

[18:59] But I felt like a lot of people who have been with the organization for very long

[19:05] of time, they felt very torn and shattered and, to an extent, they felt cheated and in

[19:15] mere swords.

[19:17] So I feel like, at some point, there was a realization that this is bad for the organization

[19:23] and we need to move forward, but as soon as the realization came and we had the facts, the

[19:35] It was, we stayed in close session for six, seven hours that night and we took the decision.

[19:41] So I understand that, you know, these issues that we're talking about, they were not.

[19:47] They did not develop like overnight.

[19:50] They were there for many, many years.

[19:54] And as in last May, you have mentioned this, that towards the end of the tenure,

[20:01] or I feel like people started observing these issues more prominently.

[20:06] And that's when the realization started popping in that, hey, we need to have checks and balances.

[20:11] What is happening here?

[20:12] There were questions that were being asked, and there were no answers.

[20:16] At least that's my version of understanding.

[20:19] And the fun balance question happened at a quarterly meeting, and by that time, we had

[20:25] two or three council members that were going, what's going on with the fun balance.

[20:29] This doesn't add up.

[20:30] I remember thinking, why did somebody ask that same question

[20:33] three different ways?

[20:35] Like he already said no.

[20:39] So that was the defining moment.

[20:43] At that moment, I said, this guy's got to go.

[20:46] And so now I'm gathering information from that third day

[20:49] to the following third day, the make sure he was gone.

[20:53] So I know that to get to your culture question, a little bit,

[20:57] is culture entrusted a road at a way in the organization.

[21:00] When the manager doesn't follow the same rules

[21:02] that everyone else has to and so we want to write that ship.

[21:07] Yeah, I want to share that I don't believe that it's accurate to classify the culture of our staff as one of extravagant spending.

[21:16] I believe that what we had was pockets of poor decisions and poor money management that we need to address.

[21:23] But I would stand by the fact that our staff works diligently to deliver the best product, the best services possible.

[21:31] And to do that at the most reasonable cost they can without compromising safety or quality.

[21:38] So I don't think broadly a wide culture of extravagance is completely accurate as a way to describe the culture with the staff here at the town of Carey.

[21:48] And if someone could correct me if I miss what the number but I believe I had been ten years since we did an employee survey.

[21:54] Yes.

[21:55] And in our former town manager about that length of time since he had been.

[22:00] So, obviously, hindsight is 2020, but looking back, why would staff trust to come to, to, to, to, whoever, when we had not been coming to them and saying how are things going?

[22:16] And then I can only speak for myself, but in my 101 conversations of saying to the former town manager, are you sure the staff is okay if we cut that potential for mayor increase back?

[22:28] and him saying things like, well, look, they're also happy, and he said it, and I remember

[22:36] at least one public meeting, you know, like, they're also happy, why do we need to ask them?

[22:44] And so, you know, we were not, we're moving forward at this point, and we're making the opportunity,

[22:54] and hopefully continuing to build trust with staff as well as the public.

[22:59] But I think we've tried really hard to make the point over and over again, and not since November.

[23:07] I believe I've heard lots of this, my two and a half years on council, how much we, how we know we could not be all the wonderful accolades that we haven't carry if it weren't for our staff.

[23:20] And so continue to build that culture of making sure that staff know and putting the things in place to make it where they can come to us.

[23:29] So we can do better moving point.

[23:32] Yeah, I'll add as well real quick.

[23:35] A long answer to your question is, you know,

[23:39] counsel for many months now has been awaiting the results

[23:43] of many of these simultaneous investigations.

[23:46] And so we now have many data points to help give us

[23:49] a fuller picture of what happened.

[23:51] And so to answer your question, I think, two of,

[23:53] we have our annual audit that noted that one of the deficiencies

[23:57] was tone at the top, and so that really did originate from the town manager, and you combine

[24:05] that with what the state auditor found, which was a culture of workplace intimidation,

[24:11] and retaliation.

[24:12] And so I think those two data points combined to say that we really had a top-down problem,

[24:20] And a culture problem explains how some of that that those issues arose and the origin of a lot of those problems and how removing the town manager while we have a lot of policies and procedures to review, but addressing the tone at the top will address many of those issues that happened because of the culture that existed when he was here.

[24:45] Did anyone else get let go or be removed because of this or is there one person to blame?

[24:53] Dan Alt was also he resigned.

[24:56] He resigned.

[24:57] He came with Sean from Elgent.

[25:02] Don't know any connection other than that.

[25:04] He resigned.

[25:05] He was gone.

[25:10] Yes.

[25:10] Okay, if you guys said, you can push back a little bit on the culture of extravagant spending,

[25:17] but it was flagged for a $733 executive van used to transport attendees, 12 miles to a holiday dinner.

[25:27] It ordered an outline, $1,600 for Ray van's sunglasses.

[25:31] A lot of these things appear to be extravagant spending.

[25:36] So to put you back against that one, we're also talking raising taxpayer property rates and all of those things is really hard to understand how you find that not to be extravagant spending.

[25:50] Why is $733 to go 12 miles, not considered extravagant spending?

[25:56] I didn't defend every single expense.

[25:58] I defended the broad and majority of those expenses.

[26:04] Those costs outlined in the auditors report and also in our

[26:08] Womble report, Thurfsert, hard stop.

[26:12] I make no excuses for those expenses, that spending pattern was unacceptable.

[26:20] Also, that is not reflective of the habits of the broader staff.

[26:24] So what I really take issue with is only the culture of inappropriate spending.

[26:31] I think that is broadly not applicable.

[26:34] I work with a lot of the staff day in a day out.

[26:37] And we also, I think it's also important to know that we can sit here as a council and ask for policy changes

[26:44] or ask for changes in, you know, try to change the culture and such.

[26:49] But the ones that are actually implementing the changes, implementing the controls and getting

[26:54] things under control will be the staff. So they can't be both things at the same time. They can't

[27:01] be out of control spending all the time across the board and individuals that can help

[27:07] us write the ship. So that's my point. It's right there in the middle. I think is an accurate

[27:13] way to portray the situation right now. So I add to that as well. I had an email today saying

[27:20] those expenses explained by the auditor who are horrifying. I agree. We were notified. We knew

[27:28] we got rape and sunglasses. I didn't think they were 100 or whatever it was they cost and

[27:34] I was told as part of marketing because we rebranded it and it had our new brand on there.

[27:40] These expense to the holiday dinner by the way everybody paid their own way at the holiday

[27:46] dinner, but I didn't know that costment. We're going to fix all that. That's not a problem,

[27:52] but I wanted to address the tax increase. All the damage that has been done with the extravagant

[27:59] expenses has minimal impact on the tax rate. Those expenditures, the extravagant expenses,

[28:08] what has a bigger impact was the information he withheld from us. We haven't hired a police officer

[28:15] 10 years, and he kept telling us, we are fine, we are fine.

[28:21] We haven't built a new fire station, we are fine, we are fine, and now we find out, instead

[28:26] of a five-minute response time, we have a 12-minute response time out west, that's the problem,

[28:31] and that's what we got to dig ourselves out of, and that's how he impacted the tax rate,

[28:36] not with the extravagant expenses, but I totally agree it was horrifying.

[28:42] Yes. In the report, the town clerk recalls a quote and I'll read it that Mr. Skull said,

[28:55] if Council Member Bush ever gets upset at me, I'll let everybody know about the tuition.

[29:00] Do you ever overtly or otherwise threaten any of you with consequences for things like that?

[29:07] not me. I can tell you my story of the tuition, and then Laurie can explain it. She's

[29:15] explained it a million times, but he called me and said, you know, Laurie's doing

[29:24] professional development and told me what the tuition was and he said like $6,000 at

[29:30] the time, I don't think that's a good idea. And I said she would probably see that and

[29:34] campaign if they found out she spent $6,000 on the education.

[29:39] I disagree.

[29:40] I totally backed her as professional development.

[29:42] That was our conversation.

[29:44] And then I thought about it and I go, you know, the council needs to see this or know this.

[29:50] I don't know if they do and I send an email and that's part of public record you can go find it

[29:55] where I question him.

[29:56] And that's when it all started and then Lorry can explain.

[30:00] I'm going to explain which she has, how her end of that played out.

[30:05] So in 2023, I started looking for a way to increase my skills as a public servant.

[30:13] It started thinking about going to law school or public policy.

[30:18] So I met with UNC School of Government Dean, I met with other academics, and decided to go after a master's

[30:25] public policy and administration.

[30:28] There's no North Carolina State School that does that.

[30:32] Here that allows you to do it if you don't already have

[30:34] an undergraduate degree.

[30:36] That was a 2023, 2024.

[30:39] I was interviewing for an enrollment program in Northwestern.

[30:45] Had already started looking at meetings

[30:47] and the town manager said, you know the town will pay for that.

[30:51] So really, okay, I'll check with HR.

[30:56] So I contacted HR and all of those are in the public record.

[31:01] HR said, yeah, absolutely.

[31:03] We'll pay for this.

[31:04] We had multiple emails back and forth about the process and how do you do this?

[31:09] I said, hey, I got it.

[31:10] I think it's time for me to, I think I should let the rest of Council.

[31:14] No, no, don't worry, I'll do that.

[31:16] I see them all on every Council week.

[31:19] He sees all of us.

[31:20] I said, all right.

[31:21] So I know he told half of the council members, but he didn't tell everyone, and unbeknownst to me when I asked him hey does everyone know, he said oh yeah, I got that cover, no problem.

[31:32] So that was in 2024 when that happened. So come 2025 and 25 when the mayor sent the email, that's when I found out that he didn't know.

[31:44] and soon after that, even though I'm still in school and still going after my masters, I didn't think that it was right for me to do that.

[31:57] And so I took ownership and responsibility and paid it back immediately.

[32:03] But I do not know. I take answer your original question. Did he do that with anyone else? I couldn't speak to that.

[32:08] I can say he never once, overtly, threatened me in any way, just to answer your question directly.

[32:15] And I've never been, obviously, in y'all's position, but I just, I spoke to a lot of people in

[32:22] carry today.

[32:23] There were no alarm bells from you guys when there was the staff of then-everyways restaurant,

[32:29] the fine dining steak house.

[32:30] There was the Ray Bands, which you said maybe was a marketing thing, but Ray Bands everybody knows

[32:36] I feel like our extensive sunglasses.

[32:38] The book, the Dancing Queen video,

[32:40] I mean, this all happened in front of everybody's faces.

[32:44] Like, does that seem to be an appropriate use of tax dollars?

[32:48] I know that everybody is probably going to say no.

[32:51] But how does that happen in front of everybody's face

[32:54] and nobody questions it when it's happening?

[32:57] I mean, that's a good question because I like the analogy

[33:01] of oiling a frog and water slowly, this kind of way it was, for six years, this guy was

[33:09] outstanding. We were named the number one government in the United States in his tenure.

[33:14] So there was a lot of that we were getting, last year we got 40 national awards. Everything

[33:19] is going great. All our indicators were outstanding, bond rating agencies, highest rating,

[33:26] All these things are positive.

[33:29] So when things are going on, you think that, wait a minute,

[33:34] it's, you don't question, we know now, we should have.

[33:38] How much of that cost?

[33:40] So yeah, we're going to definitely address, well,

[33:44] we already have been addressing any cost.

[33:48] But we didn't know about the cost of the Dancing Queen video.

[33:52] I had no idea.

[33:52] Of course, I would have said, whoa, timeout.

[33:55] That's way too much, that's crazy.

[33:57] We didn't know it existed.

[33:58] Yeah, didn't know it existed.

[34:01] We thought staff on their own time created the stance

[34:06] for our entertainment to open up our quarterly meeting

[34:10] to set the tone of the quarterly annual meeting,

[34:14] to set the tone, that's what I thought.

[34:17] And it was their time and their effort.

[34:19] I had no idea we were spending thousands of dollars

[34:21] video taping that.

[34:23] And why would we do that?

[34:25] I didn't know that, but, you know, I can say I don't know.

[34:28] People don't believe it, that's fine.

[34:30] But we'll make sure that we know everything moving forward.

[34:35] And I think that's a key point, as Chris has said, moving forward.

[34:39] Can taxpayers get their money back?

[34:42] How does that, I mean, that was taxpayer dollars,

[34:45] that were spent.

[34:46] How can they feel, how, they can't get their money back,

[34:50] what can they do?

[34:51] But you've heard the expression when you know better you do better, and I can tell you personally, I know better now.

[34:57] And, you know, looking back, I feel as though it's important for you to take responsibility for seeing it and not acting on it as, I don't want to say aggressively, but as adamantly as I should have.

[35:12] The reband sunglasses are an excellent example.

[35:16] The park open here is something for council.

[35:20] No thank you, right?

[35:22] That wasn't enough when I said no thank you.

[35:24] What I should have said is, what the hell are we doing?

[35:26] Putting our brand on reband sunglasses and giving them out at no cost.

[35:30] That is the response that I failed to make at the time.

[35:34] There is no explaining that away as, you know,

[35:38] but it's what I should have done.

[35:40] going forward, you can rest assured that we will be reacting that way if that were to happen.

[35:48] But I think that kind of behavior is going to be exceptionally unlikely in the future.

[35:55] So that's just me speaking for myself and accepting the responsibility in that situation where my reaction wasn't to the level of I think what I was seeing as far as the way money was being spent in isolated cases.

[36:10] I would like to add something about that retreat.

[36:17] That was the first year that was right when we took the oath, Michel and me.

[36:26] It was two-month into the office when we went there.

[36:30] We were blown away by the professionalism of the staff.

[36:36] We were too new. We were trying to soak in the following year. I started questioning a little bit.

[36:44] Why is council going for dinner? Why are we not cutting this like something on those lines?

[36:53] So I think it kind of started coming naturally to answer your question.

[36:57] It was a slow process.

[36:59] Being only, like, way, short period of time in the office.

[37:03] And, like, but the others are saying, I would echo the same message.

[37:07] We're looking forward.

[37:08] But we also have to remember that we do not lose sight of what happened in the past.

[37:13] Because that's critical.

[37:14] We have to take accountability.

[37:16] We have to take mistakes we're made.

[37:18] And we have to make sure that, as we're moving forward,

[37:21] we keep those learnings within our site.

[37:26] I can offer the perspective as one of the two newest council members to say the culture that's

[37:32] described in this report is one I don't recognize so it already no longer exist in my seven

[37:40] months now in office. I can see the effects of the changes that Russ and my colleagues have made

[37:48] immediately that none of what is described there is familiar to me in my term so far.

[37:56] One thing that stood out to me that the auditor said in our exit conference, but as

[38:00] well as I think in his remarks today, was about being more transparent and maybe if you

[38:05] have sometimes things that you all will agree or taxpayers may different on is doing an

[38:12] session. Be transparent about those decisions as you make those decisions. So I think we're doing that and

[38:18] will continue to do more of it.

[38:26] Yes. The Council, as it was noted in the report also has a fairly

[38:30] significant budget for cars and that's something that's pretty unusual in the entire area. Never heard

[38:39] of a Council member getting a specific allocation for car maintenance or whatever else. Can you

[38:58] I'll just say that you can take my entire paycheck, and it doesn't add up to minimum wage with the hours I put in.

[39:06] So if you want to fault me for that, go ahead.

[39:09] I get paid $29,000 a year, probably work 60 hours a week.

[39:17] And it's basically a stipend.

[39:21] And so I don't even remember how we set that.

[39:25] I think we tried to take the politics out.

[39:28] And that's probably why we need to put it back somewhere where people can see it.

[39:33] Because it got where we went over 10 years without an increase in salary.

[39:38] And we go, well that's not right, and we don't want to make it political, it shouldn't be a campaign item.

[39:44] But if people, and actually when we made the change, I know we made it after the next election.

[39:50] So if you didn't like it, you could vote us out and then it came into play.

[39:54] So that's how it was created.

[39:57] It wasn't designed for us to make money.

[39:59] God knows we don't make money.

[40:01] And it's not a cost of living.

[40:04] It's nothing near that.

[40:05] It's just a stipend.

[40:06] And, like I said, it doesn't even add up to minimum wage, Chris, I don't know.

[40:10] Okay, and when Harold is saying I make $29,000 a year, that includes his car stipend.

[40:16] Yes, that's all in.

[40:18] I shared on some social media outlets last year, my W2, for 2024, was $27,000, $50,000.

[40:27] That was everything, that was before $4,000 in taxes, right?

[40:31] And that is driving around a 60 square mile town in my own car, on my own dime, on my own gas, with my own insurance, with my own cell phone, with my own electronics, on my own internet.

[40:44] We don't have offices here.

[40:46] So, I don't think that that stipend is unreasonable.

[40:51] There's minimal compensation offered to council, and that's one of the other things I was really surprised during the entire process.

[41:00] So how many people did not understand that we're part timers?

[41:04] So often when I share a full-time job during the day, people are surprised, and that's

[41:09] one of the challenges also when it comes to oversight in general, because we are part-time

[41:14] body and not here full-time.

[41:17] It would be very difficult, even if I did want to be here full-time, because we could work

[41:21] full-time even at our current salary, but I wouldn't be able to keep a roof over my head,

[41:25] and particularly wouldn't be able to afford to live here

[41:27] and carry on $27,000 in $50.

[41:31] I think it's a little bit more now.

[41:32] We get what three?

[41:33] I have no idea.

[41:34] I think there's a flat raise and increase to our base salary,

[41:39] which I think is pushing $14,000 now.

[41:42] And we get a flat raise.

[41:44] All of us the same amount.

[41:46] I think it's 3% each year.

[41:49] So that's why when I saw that inclusion of the car stipend,

[41:54] I mean, if people think it's fair, it could be reduced by a couple hundred dollars, maybe,

[41:59] because I think the majority of us drive Hyundai's, do I remember that correctly?

[42:04] Yeah, the majority.

[42:05] So, you know, it would be an accurate sort of probably accounting for the expense I actually

[42:10] have in my car, my wear and tear, and that kind of thing.

[42:14] But I don't think the car stipend is unreasonable at all.

[42:18] you mentioned something I thought was good. I'm the only mayor in Wake County with that in office.

[42:24] I'm probably the only mayor out of the top 50 municipalities in the state without an office.

[42:31] We didn't think that was important. We thought that was a waste taxpayer money.

[42:34] And we gave it up many years ago.

[42:39] So it's not like we're trying to throw money around waste money and build salaries.

[42:44] I mean, that's not what it's about at all.

[42:45] I would like to add something for the car allowance and in this, I feel like everybody has their own decision that they have to make.

[42:55] As a console body and I had a conversation with Auditor Balik about this and he made a statement or his comment was that I don't mind you having that money allocated for the car given to allowances for the console.

[43:12] but go word in front of public, let people know.

[43:16] Be transparent about this information.

[43:19] And I think that's fair.

[43:21] I think if this council wants to keep that allowance

[43:23] and people know about this and they're ready to pay for this,

[43:27] then so be it.

[43:30] I think in my individual capacity,

[43:31] I just want to share since you probably referring

[43:33] to the report you will see, I declined some of the benefits.

[43:38] And that's only because my husband had his benefits

[43:41] and we were as a family using his benefits, and I didn't feel necessary to take those.

[43:47] It's nothing against a particular policy, but it's more about I just didn't feel that

[43:52] I needed, and that's why I declined it.

[43:56] I'm a weight counting public school employee, and I made more family and I made the choice

[44:02] for me to work half time when I was running for office, and it's fortunate that we were able

[44:07] to make that choice because the average resident cannot afford to run for office, no matter what

[44:12] office it is. Because first of all, even with a PhD as a public school educator, I could

[44:19] not afford to live and carry by myself. I depend on my husband's salary. And of course,

[44:24] I did going half time and cutting my salary in half. But for the hours that I put in, I make

[44:29] a whole lot more as a public school teacher than I do as a town council member. So I took

[44:35] significant decrease to become a council member, but if we decided and we should revisit all of these policies.

[44:46] Most of these policies were made before most of us were in office, and so like so many things were revisiting everything it seems like.

[44:55] And so that's among the things we should talk about. And if we decide that the car...

[45:01] I'm going to respectfully ask that our stipend is increased because I have a kit going to college

[45:09] in two years, and another one behind that, and it would be difficult for my family to cut back the amount of money that we have coming in.

[45:19] But I do recognize that she has correct that the auditor did say it's an utter transparency.

[45:24] So who is to blame for this?

[45:27] Like I feel like from the auditors or your response

[45:32] and the auditors report, basically,

[45:36] SQL was very much named and I feel like

[45:39] got a lot of the blame, but now you guys are saying

[45:42] that you're taking accountability,

[45:44] I don't want to put words in your mouth,

[45:45] taking accountability, trying to learn from this

[45:48] and move forward.

[45:50] So, would you blame staff a little bit, would you guys blame yourselves for not stepping up?

[45:58] Who is really to blame for all of this going on?

[46:01] I think people want to pin blame on somebody and I'm getting a lot of it,

[46:06] but I can tell you that a lot of it has to do with the vulnerabilities

[46:10] of the health council manager form of government, which is all the municipalities in North Carolina,

[46:15] Carolina must mid-sized cities in the nation, and that vulnerability exists in all of our brothers

[46:21] and sisters in Wake County.

[46:23] If it could happen to them tomorrow, so I hope they will model themselves after the changes

[46:29] we make.

[46:31] Pollock Mountain saw this, Rocky Mountain saw this.

[46:34] These vulnerabilities will continue to be exploited until people put an infrastructure to stop

[46:41] it.

[46:41] And so we did not have the infrastructure in place, and we suffered from the vulnerabilities

[46:47] of Council Manager of our government.

[46:50] So if you want to blame us, blame me, that's fine, but really it's the Council Manager

[46:56] of Foreigner of Governments.

[46:57] And it's important to understand what a Council Manager of Foreigner of Government was designed

[47:01] to do.

[47:02] It was designed to create a wall from the elected officials and operations because when

[47:09] You break down that wall, now you have corruption with elected officials and the operations.

[47:15] However, what it doesn't take into account is your professional, not the professional.

[47:20] And that's what happened to Kerry, Rocky Mount, Pollock Mountain, and others.

[47:25] So we're determined as we move forward, put the infrastructure in place so that this doesn't

[47:29] happen again.

[47:31] And will the infrastructure cost taxpayers more money for safeguards that you're talking

[47:36] about?

[47:37] Well, the great thing about the Womble report and haven't taken a moment when you leave to look at it, it actually talks about what are the things you can do with at a low cost that are more aligned with putting in the safeguards, all the way up to hiring consultants, right, that would actually cost more money, implementing tiplines, obviously, would have some cost.

[48:00] So depending on the recommendation, I think there were 21 from Womble, it depends on the type

[48:07] of recommendation and whether or not there would be a cost associated with it.

[48:10] Some of them are not.

[48:11] Some of them are policies, procedures, oversight.

[48:16] Obviously, one of the biggest recommendations in the Womble report is the resumption of the internal

[48:22] auditor position, which we already approved in this last budget.

[48:27] So the loss of that position, by the way, which was not known to any of us, but putting that position back in place, getting someone here, who can start doing all of the reviews, the clear-eyed review of every single department, and giving us recommendations on what we should do, that's a really key position to help us move forward.

[48:52] And I hate to say it, but in every crisis there is an opportunity.

[48:57] And maybe what we are here is an opportunity for our regional partners and our regional

[49:03] municipalities, the 550 municipalities, I think in North Carolina, to use us as a case of what

[49:10] they can do to strengthen their own government.

[49:13] The transparency implementation, the policies and procedures, looking deeply into your culture,

[49:21] taking the temperature of your staff and not relying on a single point of communication through

[49:30] the town manager that conchiers type of service where we all thought it was working was actually

[49:37] not working and really creating a lot of problems. So I think we're a cautionary tale and

[49:44] some respect, but for us it's an opportunity to take everything we've learned and move forward

[49:49] together. Yeah, I'd like to echo what the mayor and mayor

[49:52] Protem just said that the wobble report in particular doesn't

[49:56] excellent job of looking at those systemic failures and the systemic

[50:01] fixes. And I think what the auditor's report points to is one person

[50:07] might have exposed those vulnerabilities, but the responsibility for fixing it

[50:12] will lie with all of us with the seven of us and the rest of staff to make those

[50:16] systemic changes to reinforce those guardrails to make sure it doesn't happen again.

[50:22] I would just add one more thing here, my apologies.

[50:26] I just add one more thing.

[50:27] I've heard and I want to address this big elephant in the room.

[50:31] A lot of people have seen like on social media in some places.

[50:35] They say, why aren't you just doing it quickly?

[50:36] Now you know this.

[50:38] It's not that quick fix.

[50:41] There's policy recommendation.

[50:43] There will be discussion, public hearing.

[50:45] And there's a whole process for the council before the policy gets adopted.

[50:51] Russ, am I right?

[50:52] Yes.

[50:53] And I just point out all of that will be online so the public can follow it on our website.

[50:58] We have time for one more question.

[51:00] I think you may have had one.

[51:20] So my understanding is our authority comes from the legislature and we do not have authority

[51:25] to change the council manager form of government without going to that.

[51:34] I would just say that, you know, you mentioned that the council is part time and that's an issue.

[51:41] I don't think that was an issue. I don't know what other thing, but I feel like the issue was more

[51:47] off that a person was very successful in his role and he was able to see a lot of information

[51:52] from the council for the very longest period of time. And there was trust that was built

[51:56] over the period of time because of the successes that down has seen.

[52:01] I think I know that some of the council members in mayor has mentioned that he works

[52:08] 60 hours and we all, even though this is a part-time rule, a lot of us have put a lot

[52:13] of time into this position and it's definitely more than part-time I would think.

[52:20] I want to share one of the benefits of not having a full-time council, somebody like me,

[52:24] There's nothing in this for me, I always joke, right?

[52:27] It's not that I don't care deeply

[52:29] and wanna do this job and do it well,

[52:31] but there's not financial gain here, right?

[52:34] So it really does attract a certain type of individual

[52:38] that's looking to lead,

[52:40] but I feel is though any of those sort of fundamental changes,

[52:44] they would have to be, I think, probably a statewide change

[52:48] realistically, but with us examining

[52:52] where our responsibilities lie. I do feel as though I wouldn't necessarily use the word

[52:58] blame but the responsibility for fixing this does fall on us on this on the body of which I belong and we're

[53:05] taking it extremely seriously. I mean this is I can speak for I think my colleagues and I rarely do that

[53:12] but I can tell you this kept us up at night. I've so it's been really challenging and one of the other

[53:17] bigger challenges for us now is to answer that question directly about how will these fundamental

[53:23] changes affect taxes? One of the things that were included in this past budget is a correcting

[53:29] of that lack of staff that allowed a lot of the stuff to not be seen, to not be noted,

[53:35] to not have a treasure position those things. So that was included in the budget that we just

[53:40] passed. So there are, of course, tax-inplific implications to those decisions. They were previously

[53:46] by and large, not the police officers, but a lot of the other positions were previously funded

[53:51] and then unfunded positions. So there is that tax implication that that was just passed

[53:58] as part of our budget and I hope that anybody has an interest in how that came about. There's

[54:03] a lot of recorded work sessions and a lot of recorded meetings where we discuss this quite thoroughly

[54:10] if anybody wants to dig into that. Yeah, the last thing I would add is the virtue of moving

[54:15] not slowly but deliberately is we don't have to guess what the fixes are. We have 13 recommendations

[54:22] from the auditor that we will take seriously and plan to address and we have 21 recommendations

[54:30] from the wobble law firm and so because we have so thoughtfully investigated what transpired

[54:40] to know how to move forward, we know what the fixes are now and so we know what the work ahead

[54:47] of us looks like.

[54:48] And they're public.

[54:48] They're public now.

[54:49] They're still well.

[54:50] I think what I was trying to say is it's not like I know what the issue is and next one hour

[54:57] I can go and make a decision and move the needle.

[55:00] I think there's a process that we have to follow which is which definitely requires several

[55:05] steps and it's time consuming and that is where I said it's slow.

[55:09] especially with transparency, because we have to schedule these meetings and that's what makes it take longer.

[55:17] And just to close this out, I think it's an important message for our residents to hear.

[55:22] Carey is still carey. Carey is still one of the most desirable places to be.

[55:27] Live work, play, run a business. We're a safe community. We're a thriving community. That has not changed.

[55:33] We're a good value for the dollar. We have the second lowest tax rate in White County.

[55:38] and the highest quality of life. So, carry is still carry. We will start to move forward and this

[55:45] Council is committed to doing that. Yes, thank you for being here. Thank you for your

[55:49] questions.

Cary Council Emergency Meeting – July 16, 2026

Transcript