Name: Board of Commissioners Regular Evening
Uploaded: 2023-05-15T00:00:00Z
Duration: 2 h 35 min 12 s
Description: First off, to talk about property tax, that's the bulk of our revenue, and you can see from current year adopted FY23, we have about $52.1 million in property tax.

[0:01] Okay, welcome to tonight's meeting. This is the May 15, 2023 regular meeting of the Haywood County Board of Commissioners. This is the day after Mother's Day, and I just want to say I thank God for my mother and the Lord gave me a great mother. So I hope everybody had a great one Mother's Day yesterday.

[0:19] So our first order of business will be our pledge of allegiance. And after that, I'm going to ask our pastor Josh Frazier to come forward for the invocation. So if everyone please stand for the pledge.

[0:47] Let us pray.

[0:49] God in heaven, we thank you for this day.

[0:52] We're able to come together and to hear the different things that are being proposed today,

[0:56] to be accepted and to help our local society where we live at.

[1:00] I think about the commandments that you've given to us that are written here on the core house walls,

[1:05] and how each one of those are meant to bring to us as fellow men the things,

[1:10] the rules, the basic order that helps us in our life.

[1:13] I ask and I pray that we would have wisdom and guidance and all that we say and do and think not only here, but even outside of these walls.

[1:21] Thank you for the blessing that it is to live here in Heywood, North Carolina.

[1:24] I pray that everything that we do, we would utilize the tools and the resources that have been given to us to make this a better place.

[1:31] We pray all this in your name. Amen.

[1:37] Thank you, Pastor Josh.

[1:41] Okay, our next order of business will be our public hearing, but we do not have any tonight and then our next order of business will be a public comment session.

[1:50] I need to see if you would just limit your comments to three minutes and Amy will let you know when your time's up.

[1:57] So I have one person signed up to speak Van Walker come forward.

[2:12] I'm Van Walker, Blake, Gene Lusk, and I'm up here to ask for about the sixth time in a row

[2:17] a number of questions, which obviously none of y'all to care to answer for Haywood County

[2:25] citizens. These are things that y'all have done. You've voted on. You seem to think it was

[2:30] a good idea at the time, but tell us what's happened since then. I challenge each of you.

[2:37] Mr. Bush, Mr. Long, Mr. Inslee, Mr. Rodgers, Mr. Rainey, to take the time out to answer

[2:48] the questions.

[2:50] Can you do that?

[2:52] Do you have enough honesty or nerve to face your fellow citizens to answer these really

[2:58] simple questions of which three in the middle of the long, Mr. Inslee, Mr. Rodgers voted

[3:04] for.

[3:04] you must have had a good reason. Let's for you give an $800,000 to the Asheville

[3:14] Chamber or Buncombe County Chambers at Otters France's Asheville Buncombe County Chambers

[3:19] that okay with you. I hope so. I'll continue to ask these questions until one of

[3:26] you got with Wonders has enough nerve to answer them. I don't like calling names but

[3:33] But after six times of being out there, which I don't enjoy by the way, why don't you answer

[3:37] the questions?

[3:38] Chris Longont, you've been there since 1804, your family has.

[3:43] Can you come up with nerve to answer that question?

[3:45] Mr. Inslee, you run this thing like a dictator's ship, were you not allowed your sheepled to

[3:52] answer the questions?

[3:54] 800,000 dollars to those Marxists leftist in Asheville.

[4:01] God, to be conned by those people, there has to be some degree of potent ignorance.

[4:06] To be conned by those leftists, I want each one of you to answer.

[4:12] Now, what's Mr. Innsley holding your head anything?

[4:15] Do you not have a nerve crossing?

[4:18] I'd left to be up there.

[4:19] I crossed in a New York minute.

[4:22] I know Mr. Long is his puppy dog, so he won't cross him.

[4:27] aren't you smiling Mr. Long? You know President Reagan said the nine most

[4:34] terrifying words in English language is I'm from the government and I'm here to

[4:39] help. Is this the help y'all giving us 800 that and a growing by 150,000

[4:47] years you give the hash field? My gosh it's a con. It's if y'all haven't figured that

[4:55] It is a con, and I told you how the con worked.

[4:57] Orlando did seven counties around him.

[5:00] Change millions from those good old boys and local losers to support Orlando. And Asheville,

[5:08] all people is conjoined. It's embarrassing. So, I'm going to ask each one of you personally.

[5:16] I don't know, I only get a, I'm going to get three minutes, although I'm here and play more taxes

[5:20] than most people do. Why don't we receive $18,000 and growing annually? Well, you've had some

[5:28] need an ordinance. I know Mr. Remy doesn't, excuse me, Mr. Remy doesn't want long because

[5:33] it would ruin his low bearing or homeless shelter plans. So he didn't want one. We investigate

[5:39] the pods for the jail. They're custom made, they will work in any configuration. So investigate

[5:47] them. They'll cheaper, they'll save us tax payer money. I don't, if someone is, I've heard rumors

[5:55] that some people are getting are on the take.

[5:59] I don't believe it, but I'm continuing to hear more and more rumors.

[6:03] So, hopefully, one of y'all have a nerve to answer these questions about the jails,

[6:09] the need lords, and keep smiling, Tommy.

[6:12] Your time is coming, buddy.

[6:14] And the $800,000 you're given to Ashton.

[6:23] Okay.

[6:23] Anyone else here to address the board?

[6:26] One up, Dale.

[6:38] Thank you for letting me talk.

[6:40] I'm Dale Glant from Clyde. I'd like to go up here and see what's going on in the county,

[6:46] but some of this junk is getting older and more out. If I didn't love, he would county

[6:53] like some people. Some of us people have moved to Buncombe County where they'd be happy.

[7:00] They shouldn't be able to displace you, and I personally don't care if they like me or not.

[7:05] I hope they don't.

[7:07] Psych.

[7:09] Thank you, Dale.

[7:10] Would anyone else care to address the board?

[7:16] I want to close the public comment session.

[7:18] We'll move to constituent concerns.

[7:21] And I'll see is it.

[7:22] I think it's Terry's turn.

[7:23] Terry.

[7:24] You have any constituent concerns?

[7:26] Do you want to come in?

[7:27] No.

[7:27] Not that, ma'am.

[7:30] Let's see.

[7:31] Jennifer.

[7:32] I have had a few, but I think everything's been addressed so far.

[7:42] Okay, great.

[7:43] Okay, I will mention that most Hayward County offices, including the White O'Clan field,

[7:49] material recovery facility and convenient centers, will be closed on Monday, May 29th,

[7:54] and observance of Memorial Day, and then the regular hours will resume on Tuesday, May 30th.

[8:02] And then also, I want to mention, and I'll probably mention this again when we get adjourned,

[8:07] but we will, I'm gonna announce a special meeting

[8:10] to conduct the public hearing on Tuesday, May 30th at 5.30

[8:14] to receive public comment on the proposed budget

[8:17] for physical year 2024.

[8:19] A public notice hearing will be advertised in the mountaineer

[8:22] on May 21th.

[8:24] That hearing will be conducted in this room,

[8:26] the historic courtroom of the historic courthouse

[8:29] at 2.15 North Main Street, Wayne'sville.

[8:32] Okay, so I'll move on to,

[8:34] if there's any other constituent concerns.

[8:38] I'll move on to administrative and agency reports.

[8:43] And the first will be a presentation

[8:45] of the Haywood County flood print proposal

[8:48] by the NC State University Coastal Dynamics Design Lab,

[8:52] Coastal Dynamics Design Lab, FASLA, PLA, NC State Professor

[8:59] and University Faculty, Scholar and Director, Andy Fox.

[9:02] Thank you for having me, commissioners, conducting.

[9:20] So as you mentioned, I'm with NC State University and through our lab, the Coastal Dynamics

[9:27] Design Lab, we typically work in Eastern North Carolina, but given the issues that were encountered

[9:34] following Hurricane Tropical Storm Fred, we're bringing some of the expertise that I'll share

[9:40] with you tonight to bear working with a lot of the other activities that are going

[9:45] on within the county.

[9:47] So we just had a meeting before this session to be able to walk through a lot of the other

[9:52] projects that are happening so that we can do it in a coordinated fashion.

[9:58] The lab, we know.

[10:00] I know it's a mouthful with the Coastal Dynamics. We call it the CDDL. We lead, we put together teams that can provide community technical assistance around very specific issues. So oftentimes we're not just looking at flooding, but economic development opportunities, recreational opportunities, and trying to basically create betterment out of issues that have come from flooding. So finding opportunity in disaster

[10:29] in many regards. The flood print is a term, think about a blue print for floods, or think about

[10:40] a fingerprint, the way that water works on the land is different everywhere, and so we conduct a

[10:46] lot of technical due diligence and research into the ways that water moves, and really trying to

[10:53] make sure that a healthy relationship between waterways and communities can take place, so we're

[10:58] and of arming ourselves against the water bodies.

[11:02] And again, we're trying to focus on protecting public safety,

[11:08] property, but at the same time also thinking about the environmental aspects

[11:12] of all the water bodies, all the water bodies,

[11:14] and what they provide to our communities.

[11:18] The Haywood County flood print is being funded through the North Carolina Office

[11:24] of recovery and resiliency or in-core and the prime sponsor is US housing and urban development.

[11:32] And so this is community development block grant through Fred. So it's a no cost to the county,

[11:38] no cost to any of the communities in the county. This is part of our land grant mission with the

[11:43] university is to be able to come out and serve North Carolina communities. We'll be working closely

[11:50] with the county, the town of Canton and ourselves, and then we'll be putting together a group

[11:55] of technical advisors that have different elements of technical know-how based on the issues

[12:03] that we encounter, but also place-based, you know, what makes every place special trying

[12:08] to understand what the resident experience was and is desired to be following these flooding

[12:15] events and we'll be running on an 18-month timeline so just started in May 1 through

[12:21] October 31st of 2024 so we consider that to be a pretty healthy timeline to work on

[12:28] the issues with a range of different elements that we'll bring.

[12:33] I won't go through each of the items but we do a number of things within our scope.

[12:41] We strategically write our work to not be a plan on a shelf.

[12:46] We actually write all our documentation to be cut and pasteable into grant opportunities

[12:54] so that we can find and attract those resources, in this case, into Haywood County to be able

[13:01] to cover the costs of different mitigation strategies so that so you can use all you

[13:08] dollars for other opportunities and not necessarily for just on those recovery elements.

[13:15] In this diagram, there's all the pink is basically community engagement, so we engage

[13:20] with the community throughout the process.

[13:22] So we're not working from Raleigh, and then just coming up here and delivering a report

[13:26] will be here often throughout the 18-month process to be ground-true thing and working with

[13:33] local staff and residents through the issues.

[13:38] This is an example of this kind of schematic level of work that comes out of our documentation

[13:45] where we're looking at a series of different mitigation strategies, sometimes it's with

[13:51] voluntary buyouts, in terms of the buyout program or acquisition program that I'm sure you've

[13:56] all heard of and encountered finding good community uses for those properties in which

[14:04] those homeowners choose to opt into that program so that doesn't become nuisance use on

[14:09] those properties but also developing main street opportunities that help to drive economic

[14:17] development, this particular plans in a small town of Pollock'sville and Jones County.

[14:22] and right now we're redoing the Main Street and we're giving them a waterfront

[14:26] park and doing a whole lot of other things that might not look like it's

[14:31] dealing with flood but it all has effect on the town character when we're

[14:35] elevating buildings to make sure that that Main Street still feels like a great

[14:39] Main Street. I'm a landscape architect and environmental planner by training we

[14:44] have architects on the team engineers hydraulic modellers and other built

[14:48] environment specialists. As I said we develop our documentation to craft into a

[14:57] series of grant funded opportunities.

[15:00] So, in many communities, we might have seven, eight, nine different grants, and we'll also help to write those grants. And in some cases, we help to administer them based on the capacity needs of staff and the communities. This is kind of a tally of four of the communities in which we've worked. So, again, all in eastern North Carolina, Lumberton, Whiteville, Princeville, and Polluxville. And so far since 2017, the follow-on to our planning work has brought over $12 million into these communities.

[15:29] At no cost to the communities so we've never taken one penny in our work

[15:34] We go out and we we attract those resources in through grant applications, and that's what we hope to do

[15:39] here

[15:40] And then just really quickly at a high level in

[15:44] Whiteville

[15:46] Mr. Francis had opportunity to travel down to Whiteville and talk to city leadership there about our work

[15:52] And trying to learn more about what we do and how we do it

[15:56] We take a county-wide assessment, we look at watersheds, try to understand who was impacted

[16:04] and how dramatically that each individual homeowner was impacted so that that goes into

[16:11] our thinking.

[16:12] We model those waters, so in this particular graphic, the darker the color, the greater

[16:18] the flooding depth.

[16:20] And so this particular analysis is looking at railroad tracks and road crossings, undersized

[16:25] culverts, undersized bridges, so trying to understand the infrastructure that might be playing

[16:30] apart in the flooding that folks are experiencing.

[16:33] Then we look at clusters of homes and businesses and properties that are impacted related

[16:41] to those flood waters, and this helps us kind of objectively decide where to work.

[16:45] So who are we serving, where are we working?

[16:50] And then we find what we call hotspots, you know, where are those clusters who has been

[16:54] most impacted, where are the resources needed the most?

[16:58] In this case, it was a tributary of Saul Swamp called Molly's Branch, in which we worked

[17:05] all the way up through this neighborhood, working with residents, getting their feedback, understanding

[17:12] the benefits to them, looking at the frequency of flooding and running models to understand

[17:18] what solutions might have what impact, and then what are the trade-offs of those investments?

[17:25] And then, again, working with community the entire time to get feedback, so trying to really

[17:30] understand how is this going to impact those who have to live with it? We know that we don't live

[17:36] here. We're not the ones vulnerable to the risk in this case. I was commenting earlier where we get

[17:42] to return to the relative safety of Raleigh, and it's really working through an understanding

[17:48] how it impacts neighbors.

[17:51] We've worked with a lot of different partners, and in this case this project was working

[17:55] with the school district as well, so they were an active partner in which some of these

[18:01] investments are going to the school district to create flood mitigation, but also outdoor

[18:05] learning, new playground, ball field opportunities, working the whole solution to try to get everyone

[18:11] that touches it.

[18:12] Some of the benefit, I mentioned that we look at different scenarios, different flooding,

[18:18] We run some of the economics on it, it's called benefit cost analysis, BCAs, it's what

[18:25] you have to score out at is what's the return of investment for the grantors, so we're

[18:30] able to do that with our work.

[18:33] And then finding the right kind of funding to be able to build those types of projects,

[18:39] and then kind of stitching them together, a series of small projects to add up to something

[18:44] much bigger that has that cumulative impact of recovery and mitigation, but also long-term

[18:49] benefits back to the community of recreation, just open space with the development pressures

[18:55] that a lot of communities feel trying to make sure that it's the right fit.

[19:01] And then we visualize it to be able to kind of tell the story graphically, most people want

[19:06] to see a picture, not necessarily all the data points, and so we're able to do that as

[19:11] well working with all the different partners.

[19:14] As for the architectural side of things,

[19:17] building elevations, we know that there have been,

[19:19] especially in Canton, significant impacts from Fred.

[19:24] And we're able to look at the building profiles,

[19:27] what would have to happen for those building owners

[19:31] to be able to get flood insurance.

[19:35] And work through that on a case-by-case building,

[19:38] by building property by property level.

[19:41] And so, thank you for your time today.

[19:45] Again, I wanted to provide you that overview.

[19:47] We will definitely be back in front of you.

[19:51] It's a big part of our process is to provide you updates,

[19:53] but also at the end with our work,

[19:57] what makes all the difference in the world is.

[20:00] To work collaboratively along the way, get feedback to make sure we're doing the right things for you so that we can build consensus through the process so that the report can be adopted. Because once it's codified, then that really sets it in motion to be able to use it as an official county document to be able to pursue these grants that can help, again, attract the resources to actually implement the projects. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

[20:30] David has my contact information and again we'll be here for the next 18 months and hopefully

[20:36] longer to be able to work on these issues.

[20:42] I know when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the devastation that occurred there,

[20:49] General Russell Honorary was put in charge of that whole situation given the presidential

[20:55] order.

[20:55] I was privileged to hear him speak concerning that Hurricane Katrina after math, and concerning

[21:03] kind of what to work you do, and I see in your presentation the railroad line there in

[21:08] Whiteville, and he lingered very long time talking about, we're not very smart in places

[21:17] like New Orleans when they build a railroad and elevate it, and it basically creates

[21:23] a man made dam which prohibits the natural flow of water and if you're on the wrong side

[21:29] of that you're going to be flooded because it can't get out and I noticed you had some

[21:35] mitigation proposals there about increasing the culvert size, cleaning culverts out and things

[21:41] that nature. But I guess his solution was to put culverts, put drainage passageways under these

[21:51] these berms under these railroad lines and actually highways, does your work in tail

[21:56] doing any of that?

[21:57] It does.

[21:58] We have hydraulic modelers, so that's not my skillset, but we have engineers at NC State that

[22:05] can run computational models to be able to study various impacts of elevating bridges,

[22:12] removing roadways all together, putting in larger culverts, and so they run a series of

[22:16] models to try to understand where is that tipping point

[22:21] between investment and the flood risk reduction.

[22:26] And so those are the findings that we'll bring back

[22:30] and be able to talk through what is reasonable,

[22:34] what is desired, what is feasible,

[22:36] and based on that level of reduction.

[22:40] Because not everything, of course, is possible.

[22:42] You can't cut folks off in terms of their transportation

[22:44] networks and then it's trying to build the partnerships and the groups to be able to work on those

[22:51] issues working with NC DOT and others in terms of what are the possibilities. Railroads are

[22:57] a whole different challenge when it comes to that but still at least you're armed with information

[23:04] to be able to have a conversation about what kind of difference it makes for the roads and the rail

[23:10] lines that cross through communities.

[23:12] Well, his solution was to make sure that floodway remains open and to put culverts or passageways

[23:18] underneath the rail line so that water can go out because it backs up and floods everybody

[23:23] behind it, ordinarily wouldn't be flooded.

[23:25] So to keep that floodway open and keep in the water running downhill, especially in these

[23:30] mountains, it's pretty creative.

[23:31] Yeah, and a lot of the models that those roadways and railways were engineered on, those models

[23:37] don't take into account these very large rain events and so it's also

[23:41] understanding that we're getting more intense rains more often in many

[23:47] places and that maybe the design model from 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years

[23:54] ago, is no longer the standard as well. So having those conversations about where

[23:59] we are now and what are things going to look like in the future.

[24:06] What kind of impact is it going to have like we're evergreen or

[24:10] packed if every grain shut down and you're doing this work you're going to

[24:13] do is working Canton. What kind of impacts that going to have on it being in

[24:18] that floodway and stuff down there. That's a great question. We're at the very

[24:22] beginning. May 1 was the beginning of our our project period. So working with

[24:29] the town of Canton officials, and trying to understand the longer term impacts of the evergreen announcement.

[24:39] When we first started discussing this project, that news was not known to anybody.

[24:47] So we're going to be working through that, and trying to follow the lead of all the community leadership in Canton, in terms of what their long term visions are.

[24:59] for that air.

[25:00] And then how we can think about, again, helping to improve that, that condition in some way is that flood storage, is it open space, is it new industry? I think there's a lot of different scenarios that might be run, and we'll take our guidance from the town of Canton. With this agreement, there's actually both the county and the town have signed the MOU to be formally a part of this project.

[25:29] So we're very excited by that, it's daunting.

[25:32] But we're very excited to be working also specifically

[25:37] with the town of Canton in this process.

[25:39] If they choose just to leave that set in there,

[25:42] like you're talking about, will that have a big impact

[25:44] on what y'all are doing around it?

[25:47] Yes, in that it's a lot of developed area.

[25:52] And there's a lot of real estate there

[25:55] that maybe could be worked with in certain ways,

[25:58] But it all depends on what the future holds for that site and certainly the waste water treatment and other critical infrastructure to the town has to be thought about very carefully.

[26:10] Okay, so one thing I was wondering, are you just focusing on Canton and Crusoe or because Clyde had a devastating flood in 04 and the reason it wasn't as devastating this time is because that had been mitigated somewhat.

[26:28] Yes sir. But we have a lot of flood properties that the county owns in Clyde. It could be made into something maybe better.

[26:38] Are you looking at that possibly?

[26:40] You were going to take that county level kind of scan.

[26:44] Okay good.

[26:45] And try to see if that's one of the hotspots.

[26:49] Right now we know we came up in February and met with all kinds of town and county staff

[26:56] and did a tour and got to see all the heavily impacted areas.

[27:02] From that, it was clear that there were places in the town of Canton, but also in the county.

[27:11] So non jurisdictional county, that those folks need help too, just because you're not in the town doesn't mean don't need help.

[27:17] So that's why we started there, but it certainly does not exclude Clyde from being part of the initial look.

[27:24] I think because Clyde's the center of the county, it's the heart of the county.

[27:30] And anything we can do to help that community thrive more because they lost a lot of their tax base when that happened.

[27:39] But if we can have, some ideas on how to help that community would be good.

[27:45] And I do know it was brought up in a meeting about a road in Clyde that constantly

[27:54] floods and people can't get out. I think Stompson co-road. So there are some issues still in

[27:59] cloud that we probably need to be trying to, you know, we need to try to mitigate, if you will.

[28:04] And I just, you know, keep out on your radar, if you would. I think it's important.

[28:09] Well, for sure. And this is the kind of feedback that we need. Again, not knowing the areas.

[28:15] Yeah. Okay. It's lot by lot and it's street by street. That's where we start. So we kind of work

[28:20] between that very detailed and then the very broad.

[28:23] And certainly there's all kinds of exciting work

[28:25] that's happening with Heywood Waterways and other entities

[28:30] that are already kind of moving down that path rapidly

[28:33] in terms of the larger scale.

[28:35] And so that's what we were talking about today

[28:37] is where can we fill in the gaps?

[28:39] Where can our work support it instead

[28:41] of trying to retool it or recreate it?

[28:44] We really want to know we can fit into a larger solution

[28:46] of what's already moving here.

[28:50] You mentioned early in your presentation individuals that would have an option to sail.

[28:56] Can you discuss a little bit how that works and where the value determination comes from?

[29:02] I can't, I don't manage the program, definitely a great question is that it's a voluntary program that homeowners can apply to to then basically work on that valuation.

[29:16] the traditional bioprograms are often pre-disaster dollar amounts, but in

[29:26] core they have their own program that they're running which is actually current

[29:30] market value. So there are different options. North Carolina is really on the

[29:37] leading edge of so much of these issues because of all the threats that are

[29:42] faced, so I think that that is a really important point that our work will often times imagine

[29:53] very large things that impact individuals and then it creates a conversation.

[30:00] What is your experience, what is your risk? Are you interested in moving or elevating or just

[30:09] rebuilding like it is? So we don't come in kind of carrying a mandate to have people move.

[30:17] It's really a discussion and then talking about the risks through detailed analysis so

[30:23] that every individual is armed with information related

[30:27] to their issues so they can make the best decision

[30:30] for them and their families.

[30:31] And oftentimes, that's a challenge when you're talking

[30:34] about communities where a lot of folks have been impacted.

[30:37] It can be hard to get to that level.

[30:39] And so we can't do it everywhere.

[30:42] But within these hotspot areas, it allows us to kind

[30:44] of scale it, at least within our lab's capacity,

[30:48] to be able to look at those things on a lot by lot,

[30:52] Yeah, because one side of the block, you might elevate, need to elevate one foot to be where you need to be, which kind of creates a nice place for a porch.

[31:01] Other end of the block, it might be eight feet. And do you want to live in a house that's eight feet there?

[31:05] Those are the conversations about insurance. Can you afford, can you agent this place? What are the dollars and cents of it, too?

[31:14] So hard discussions, but ones that need to be had.

[31:26] Thank you, and we look forward to the next presentation.

[31:29] Thank you very much.

[31:30] Thank you for allowing us to come and be a part of your community.

[31:33] Yeah, and thanks for coming up.

[31:34] Thanks for leaving Raleigh and coming west.

[31:37] I wish I could stay longer.

[31:39] Yeah, especially since summer's getting here.

[31:41] You don't want to be in Raleigh in the summer.

[31:43] Agreed.

[31:44] All right, great.

[31:46] Thank you.

[31:51] The next item under administrative agency reports and presentations

[31:56] will be the presentation of the manager's recommended budget for fiscal year 2023-2024.

[32:02] And we have our county manager, Brian, more ahead.

[32:05] Welcome, Brian.

[32:19] Thank you, Mr. Chairman, commissioners.

[32:22] I'm happy to present the recommended budget for FY 24 to the night.

[32:28] It's prepared along the guidelines established by the local government budget and

[32:32] fiscal control act.

[32:34] It's balanced and will spend a few minutes coming through it.

[32:38] I would like this to be more conversational, so if you have any questions, just please stop me and I'll answer them or just let me know.

[32:52] First off, to talk about property tax, that's the bulk of our revenue, and you can see from current year adopted FY23, we have about $52.1 million in property tax.

[33:05] I'm sorry, you should have a handout of this in front of you, smaller, some notes pages if you need that.

[33:16] FY24, keeping the tax rate at 53.5 cents would generate about 53.6 million or an increase of 1.45 million.

[33:27] But I'm recommending a tax increase of 1.5 cents.

[33:31] And we'll get to that, but typically the things that are driving this are all related to expanding the school resource officer program,

[33:42] making sure that all of our schools are covered with an SRO.

[33:47] But we'll spend some time talking about revenues and we get to the expenditures, I'll take a deeper dive into the school resource officer program.

[34:01] With natural growth, we have about that 1.453 million increase.

[34:07] Real property is our largest component of that.

[34:10] It's increasing $727,000, vehicle tax increasing about $222,000, personal property, $440,000 in corporate or utility or SBA depends on how you want to talk about it.

[34:26] It's $44,000.

[34:28] That's at the natural growth.

[34:34] With the tax increase of 1.5 cents, real property is actually increasing 1.95 million motor vehicle tax,

[34:42] 340,000 personal property, 543,000, and corporate utility tax is increasing 94,000.

[34:55] Sales tax is also a major revenue from

[35:00] The current year of 21.9 million, we expected growth to 24 million, $26,765, a pretty large increase. But the current year, FY23, estimates are very conservative. So we looked at our end of year expected and increased next year's sales tax in that three to three and a half percent range.

[35:26] This gives you a little bit more feel for how the sales tax is divided up.

[35:33] Remember there are a local designation for Haywood Community College.

[35:40] That's the blue bar.

[35:43] The orange bar is actually those designations for sales tax by the State Statute.

[35:48] And then the green bar is, are the funds that you have available to fund projects at your discretion.

[35:57] So when you see that, the county's portion of 15.88 is increasing by 1.38 million.

[36:08] Community college is up $467,000, and I'm sorry, the school system's up 467 and the community college is up 261,000.

[36:20] Other taxes in licensing or licenses is showing a decrease.

[36:27] The adopted FY23 of 4.149 million actually includes the TDA tax.

[36:35] And because TDA or the occupancy tax however you want to talk about it is designated by state statute.

[36:42] We talked to the auditors about pulling that out.

[36:44] And so going forward, it will not be in the general fund.

[36:48] we're going to put it in a special revenue fund, and I think because those are designated

[36:52] funds that are actually outside of the control of this board, I think having those in a special

[36:58] revenue fund makes sense. It looks like a huge drop, but when you control for that, it's an actual

[37:05] increase of about $38,000 for next year. The TDA tax is $1.9 million of the 4.149 of current year.

[37:18] Any questions on that?

[37:24] Pilled payment and lieu of taxes in our beer and wine, we put together, it's staying flat, of $592,000.

[37:32] You can see the actuals for the last two years are in the range, so we're comfortable leaving that flat for next year.

[37:39] Restricting intergovernmental is a lot of different accounts, but

[37:44] But basically the majority of it is related to health and human services, funds that come

[37:50] in for either DSS or health department functions.

[37:53] It's a decrease of $195,000.

[37:56] Actually, there were some increases in this category, but we've got two major decreases.

[38:01] The dental clinic revenue is down $391,000.

[38:05] We aren't seeing the number of patients that we had planned this year.

[38:09] But on the other side of that, the expenditures aren't quite as much either.

[38:13] And for next year, we actually see a decrease in boarding home payments related to foster care.

[38:21] It's a decrease of $103,000.

[38:24] So if we weren't for those two, those total $495,000 together, we wouldn't have a decrease.

[38:30] But those two are major decreases that we're having to absorb elsewhere.

[38:39] Permits and fees.

[38:40] This is up $325,000, and it's basically all for development services or inspection fees.

[38:51] Later on the engine, you'll have a fee schedule, so we've went ahead and put those fees in for

[39:00] next year, reflecting an increase of $325,000 for inspections.

[39:04] We did have a slight drop in pistol permits.

[39:08] You may have heard a few weeks ago the General Assembly did away with that pistol permit fee.

[39:13] That was $9,000 in revenue, but it was in this category.

[39:26] Sills and services is up slightly at $158,800.

[39:31] The bulk of that is ambulance fees.

[39:33] They are up $125,000.

[39:36] And we also have about $75,000 new money in North Carolina, Medicaid managed care.

[39:41] It's a new revenue source for us.

[39:45] So those two have added some new revenue to sales and service.

[39:53] One of the largest and I guess everyone knows that interest rates are up.

[39:57] That's bad when you're borrowing money.

[40:00] But because we invest our auto cash, we have an increase of $750,000 next year. Just to give you some context, a one-day yield last May 9th of 2022, we were getting about 0.57% interest. Same day, May 9th of 2023, we're getting 4.99% interest. So, as the rates are up, the amount of interest that we receive is up.

[40:29] Ms. Linius revenue shows a decrease of just over $37,000.

[40:33] This is sort of a catch-all account.

[40:36] The largest drops we're seeing are related to donations.

[40:41] Meals on wheels receives donations.

[40:43] They alone are down in about $16,000.

[40:46] So maybe the donations come in, but right now we don't feel comfortable budgeting and

[40:52] increase or even flat.

[40:55] That's sort of a summary of the revenues.

[40:59] Are there any questions before we start talking about the expenditures?

[41:04] Okay?

[41:06] So the School Resource Officer Program, we currently have eight schools that do not have a school resource officer as I've worked with the sheriff and the board to come up with a plan to see if we could provide coverage for all of those schools.

[41:25] that do not have an officer.

[41:27] So this budget does fund eight positions, that salaries, benefits, operating, and significant capital costs.

[41:35] The budget also funds the pay plan, a merit in cola, everyone knows we're in a really tough spot to attract and keep good employees.

[41:46] So in this budget we have an ink of a 4% cola and up to a 2% merit, that's roughly 6% combined.

[41:54] When you look at February's cost of living or the CPI consumer price index,

[42:01] it was at 6.19% over the prior February, so I think 6% keeps us and keeps our employees at market.

[42:10] We do lose some employees, but we aren't losing many employees for pay.

[42:16] And I think keeping this at 6% is a way that we keep folks able to serve the public.

[42:23] One other thing that I do want to mention that's in there, we have funds when we implement the Cola and Merit, if the board approves it, we also have funds to make sure that all of our employees, full-time employees with benefits will be all at $15 or better.

[42:40] That's something that we've worked at over the last couple of years, but this gets them to $15 an hour.

[42:47] We also have some increases related to the local government retirement system.

[42:52] The state changes that employer contribution every year.

[42:56] That's costing us about $531,000 more next year.

[43:00] And health insurance for existing and retiree insurance employees is about $658,000.

[43:08] We also have some increases in foster care that continues to increase.

[43:14] We have an increase of a little over $330,000 for foster care next year.

[43:23] So, mentioned earlier, a penny and a half on the tax rate brings in about $1.475 million.

[43:31] The expenditure side is a little over $763,000 for eight positions.

[43:38] Operating of 112,000 in vehicles and equipment is estimated at $600,000.

[43:45] of the vehicle prices continue to increase all of the equipment that goes in them from light bars and radios and everything like that is driving it.

[43:54] So you can see we've tried to designate the full 1.5 cents for this program.

[44:02] there.

[44:07] Brown, how many positions was that?

[44:09] Was it on?

[44:10] It's eight.

[44:11] Okay.

[44:12] I also, do you have a breakdown of that, of what that calls the average household?

[44:18] I know we talked about that.

[44:20] Do you have that handy?

[44:21] Yes, sir.

[44:21] So, just using a $250,000 house, the 1.5 cents equates to $37.50 a year per year.

[44:33] That's an easy math, about $3 a month, so

[44:47] that's correct, to expand the SRO program because we already fund several school resource officers differently.

[44:57] That would give us full coverage.

[45:02] Yes.

[45:06] I think right now we've got some part time coverage.

[45:12] Don't we have to middle schools? I'm not exactly sure how it's divided up. I can get that information from, you know,

[45:25] I just know we don't have full-time coverage at every school, and we have a lot of schools that are very rural, out of the way, and it would take law enforcement several minutes to get there.

[45:41] On the employee compensation, and we budget these funds centrally, you'll see that later on in a non-departmental account.

[45:50] We have 2% merit, 2% cola, a little over 2.7 million, and that also has the funds to bring everyone up to $15 minimum pay.

[46:02] We did preserve the Christmas bonus, $175,000, fully funds longevity, and 3% 401K.

[46:10] One of the big drivers, medical insurance, our health plan continues to form better than national average.

[46:17] But it's still going up $1,000 per employee per year to 19-5.

[46:24] Then just touch back onto the elders or the local government retirement system.

[46:29] General employees, we're increasing again from 11.4% to 12.89% and

[46:35] the law enforcement officers are going up a full percentage from 13 to 14.10.

[46:43] We'll say the cola, if the board approves it, the 4% cola would go into effect the first full pay

[46:49] In July, that pay period starts on July 3rd, so employees would see that in their take-home pay on the check they received on July 21st.

[47:05] We had a total of 28 positions requested for current year.

[47:10] You can see only eight are actually included in the budget.

[47:14] The total cost of those positions would be a little over $2.7 million.

[47:18] And just the position costs and operating for the SROs is 875, 315.

[47:35] Active employees, when you separate the cost, it's going up about $752,000, where retirees, much smaller group, only $67,000, a total increase of $819,000.

[47:49] dollars. You've seen this graph several times. I do just like to keep it on your radar screen

[47:59] that it continues to go up. You know, from fiscal year 19 to 20, we actually changed

[48:05] providers. We left Crescent and went to Edna. You can see we had a dip in its increase in

[48:12] fairly rapidly, but at a much lower rate than if we hadn't taken action in that fiscal year

[48:18] under 19 to 20 change.

[48:23] Operating overall, the general fund is only up $1.5 million.

[48:28] When you start dicing that up by 1.5, 703,000 or just under half is for the schools and the college, 591,291.

[48:41] Keep in mind that's based off of the new funding formula that the board approved a few weeks ago.

[48:47] HCC is an increase of $112,015.

[48:51] This equates to a 3.5% increase, much lower than what Dr. White presented at the last

[48:59] board meeting.

[49:00] She and I talked several times.

[49:02] She understands the constraints that we're faced with, and she's going to make it work,

[49:08] but it's not without paying, that's for sure.

[49:11] I already mentioned foster care increases. Recovery court is in there, 230,000. That's offset

[49:18] 100% by state grant, but it does contribute to the increase of 1.5. Disposable medical

[49:25] supplies, Travis is here. The cost of medical supplies continues to increase, and I believe

[49:33] almost all of that is related to the cost of oxygen. Some of the things we've faced, patients

[49:40] to stay on the vehicles longer waiting to offload, so we've had cost increases for oxygen

[49:45] over using more operationally. Utilities, we've planned on an increase based off of what

[49:53] do energy is requesting so an increase of 53,000 and then juvenile detention fees.

[50:00] Those are the fees the state charges us to house juveniles that are from Haywood County, and that number continues to increase. What they charge is up, and actually the users are increasing too.

[50:20] So the operating for the school system is up $591,000. Capital shows $1.25 million. That's an increase of $350,000. I think Superintendent Putnam talked about the ability for him to

[50:35] to use some of their capital funds to replace devices when he presented his budget.

[50:40] And this is an increase of $350,000.

[50:44] And the debt service payments for next year total a little over $3.7 million.

[50:50] Both capital and debt come from the school's earmark on sales tax.

[50:56] They're presented here, but they actually are not in the general fund.

[51:01] Sort of similar to the community college's operating is up $112,000 to $3.312 million that represents a 3.5% increase capital we're leaving flat at $750,000 and the debts of $253,800.

[51:23] Vehicles, always a major budget driver.

[51:27] For current year, we spent a little over $2.1 million on vehicles.

[51:32] 1.3 was just ambulances alone.

[51:38] This board has been very proactive in ordering ambulances ahead of time.

[51:43] So one of the reasons that we were able to show a decrease for

[51:47] next year is we already have on order ambulances.

[51:53] It's a much different story on when they will get delivered.

[51:56] They have significant supply chain issues, but that's one of the reasons that we are

[52:02] getting to drop this year is all the ambulances have been ordered.

[52:06] So for next year, we have 28 vehicles totaling $1.8 million overall a decrease of $355,000.

[52:13] But all of these meet the requirements for replacement from the garage and

[52:19] Hopefully we can get those ordered and and take delivery sooner than later

[52:28] Capital projects we have some HVAC work. We have a hundred and eighty six thousand dollars budgeted there

[52:34] The Canton library bathrooms need renovation. We have sixty thousand there

[52:41] Peragon Parkway, we have $45,000 budgeted for higher suppression and lighting upgrades.

[52:48] And then we have 50,000 in for the armory.

[52:51] This is outside of the cost that we're working on, the project David got through the CDBG program.

[52:58] It seems like it's the longest project known to man, but we do have $50,000 more in there so we can get that racked up, hopefully, and FY24.

[53:08] So, I said hopefully, gel expansion, even though the bids we received and rejected were much higher,

[53:20] that does not overcome that the gel population continues to hit that 109 capacity.

[53:27] So I think it's next week that we are interviewing construction manager at risk,

[53:33] This C-MAR project or construction firms, it's my hope that in June we bring back one that we feel that can bring in the jail as designed at a price that we can afford.

[53:51] And then because we've had delays, we probably have an interest-only payment and FY24, but a full year of principle and interest in FY25.

[54:02] Just

[54:06] to put it in front of you again, you've seen our debt profile, I think it's been

[54:11] official to keep track of it.

[54:13] It's a very healthy debt profile.

[54:16] I think this year it drops $390,000 on our side on the school system.

[54:22] You'll see we're still a couple years away from that balloon payment.

[54:26] You can see it at $2.3 million in outline years.

[54:31] And then it drops off significantly.

[54:32] And the community college, really all of the profiles except for a few peaks are very, very well managed.

[54:43] Those are great slides.

[54:46] For out?

[54:47] Yeah.

[54:49] Some of the things we want to talk about now at line years, besides the jail debt, is the operating and staffing costs.

[54:56] It will be phrased in because

[55:00] Because we don't think that, you know, when you build 154 beds, that it will be all full on the first day, hopefully not. This is supposed to be in our needs for 25 years. But we will have to have additional costs for inmates, operating insurance, all of those things. Employee increases, this continues to drive our needs. Like I said, finding good employees is difficult. So we want to keep the ones that we have.

[55:29] Each one percent increases about $400,000.

[55:33] Health insurance, I'm not sure what we can do other than we're investing in our wellness

[55:38] programs trying to contain costs, but as the costs increase, we're faced with those.

[55:45] And then the retirement system continues to be increases.

[55:52] HCC, we know that they will have to have some, as they modernize, they open that human services or health sciences building.

[56:03] They'll have costs associated with that coming to us.

[56:06] We also have the school system funding formula.

[56:10] If the student enrollment increases, we'll have to increase that per pupil funding 3.25% for

[56:18] next two years, after this year, inflation continues to be just an obstacle for us.

[56:27] We're faced with the same thing that everybody that lives here is.

[56:32] We moved some money around today for the Sheriff's Office for Fuel.

[56:36] They're spending $19,000 a month on fuel.

[56:39] So the pain at the pump, we feel it just like everyone else.

[56:43] And foster care, I'm not sure exactly what we can do to curb that, children that need placement.

[56:51] It's our requirement from the state to house them and find them places that they'll be safe.

[56:58] So, and the cost just continues to go up.

[57:00] And I just wanted to circle back to the library renovation.

[57:05] If it's a renovation or new construction, we're still talking probably eight to ten.

[57:10] And it may be even $12 million, but that's got to be an outline year consideration.

[57:17] If a full blown renovation doesn't occur, we'll have to talk about replacing the HVAC system.

[57:24] And I've chatted privately with all of you about the issues we have with that HVAC system.

[57:30] And we'll figure that out.

[57:33] But I'm sure that it will go out on a hot July or August day.

[57:37] and then Tam will be yelling at me.

[57:43] Just to give you some context, I thought this was interesting.

[57:47] So payroll and benefits, I went back through 2013 through FY22.

[57:53] Payroll and benefits have increased from 28.03 million to 44.6 million.

[57:59] That equates to an average yearly increase of 5.38%.

[58:03] The cost of employees just continues to increase.

[58:06] When you look at the value of opinion on the tax rate, from the same time period, it went from $693,000 to a little over $950,000.

[58:16] That's basically an average increase of 3.8%, except if you pull out the reval in FY22, because that was a 24% increase.

[58:29] If you pull that out, the value of opinion is only increasing at 1.24% a year.

[58:34] So while we're glad to get natural growth, one and a quarter percent is much less than 5.38 percent, just so you had that information.

[58:53] Okay, so the expenditure size actually increased in $3.2 million from $96.9 to $100.1, or as recommended.

[59:03] I think when you look at public safety, health and human services, and I'm going to skip over non-departmental to education,

[59:11] Those two totaled $3.55 million, or 111% of the growth.

[59:17] Reason I pulled out non-departmental is that's where we budget centrally the salary merit and

[59:23] coals.

[59:24] So we actually will spread that before the end of the fiscal year.

[59:27] And it largely will follow the lines of public safety and human services because that's the bulk of our employees.

[59:36] You can see a drop in economic and physical development.

[59:39] That's where we had.

[59:40] That's the category or function that we had the tourism development authority in so now that we've moved that to a separate fund, it's

[59:48] No longer there and then like I said our debt dropped off almost 400,000 390,000 this year

[1:00:00] When you look at the increases overall, to the general fund, 4.1 million in salaries and benefits. This is the goal of the merit and the eight positions operating. We dropped 434,000 capital, down 100,000 and debt service, 3.9. So you can see basically, if it weren't for the cost of employees, the budget would be pretty flat.

[1:00:31] Even with opinion, a half tax increase, we need some fund balance to balance or at least start the year.

[1:00:40] But this is the fourth or third year in a row that we are dropping our appropriation.

[1:00:46] I think this shows that we're trying to get leaner as we move.

[1:00:51] Keep in mind, in FY22, we did hit fund balance for about $2.7 million.

[1:00:57] million dollars, but that was largely moving school and college funds out of the general fund to their own funds.

[1:01:05] So this is not a trend I like to see, but our revenues are coming in over budget, our expenditures under budget.

[1:01:15] So I feel like this is a good approach for the upcoming fiscal year.

[1:01:24] Okay, I'm going to spend more time than anybody cares talking about these other funds.

[1:01:28] but they are part of the net budget and we need to review them.

[1:01:33] Fund 15 is our health insurance fund.

[1:01:36] It's an increase of a little over a million dollars.

[1:01:39] Fund 16 is our workers' comp fund.

[1:01:41] It's a decrease of $999,99 or $99,999 will like to be very specific, maybe just round it to $100, but

[1:01:54] And fun 16 is our workers comp fund and we've had really good experience this year, so we think we can back off of what we need to fund.

[1:02:03] Fund 20 is the separation allowances for retired law enforcement officers, it's remaining flat.

[1:02:09] The emergency 911 fund, that's the funds that we get from the state to run 911.

[1:02:15] It's an actual decrease of $192,000.

[1:02:18] dollars, and Solid Waste is coming in at $5,765,784, it's down a dollar from current fiscal year.

[1:02:29] Fund 29 is the Genoluska sanitary district total of $331,000. That's an increase of $13,877.

[1:02:39] Fund 31 is the school systems debt service fund at $4.957. That's an increase of $467,190.

[1:02:48] And Fund 33 is the community college debt service fund, total of $3.5 million, an increase of $253,800.

[1:02:59] You may remember these three funds were set up mid-year, this year or last year, I can't remember.

[1:03:05] There are no changes to any of these funds, previously, they were not even kept on our books.

[1:03:14] but one of the gas fees changed it so now we have to account for it and they remain flat at 61,350,000 and 910,000 respectively.

[1:03:26] We have the new fund, the occupancy tax fund, 2.962. That's an increase of an even million dollars.

[1:03:33] Tourism or the occupancy tax continues to perform very well and so it's on its own fund and it's up a million dollars.

[1:03:41] Fund 27 is a road district fund.

[1:03:44] It's a total of 311,000.

[1:03:46] You can see here there are three road districts that are requesting an increase.

[1:03:53] Maggie Valley, 15 to 19 cents, that's Maggie Valley Country Club.

[1:03:58] Upper Chestnut, six cents to 20 cents.

[1:04:00] It's a large increase, but current year, there was a little bit of miscommunication with our spreadsheet that we sent out to them.

[1:04:08] So they went from FY22 to from 20 down to 6 cents and now they want to go back up to 20 cents and give you some perspective.

[1:04:19] Upper Chestnut is an increase of $10,000 current year, they are $4,311 and they're going to $14,874.

[1:04:30] So I don't think they intended on taking that cut current year and we cleared that up.

[1:04:35] And then Tuscala Park is an increase of only $1,330 an increase from 10,513 to 11,0843.

[1:04:47] We have asked representatives from these three road districts to be here for the public hearing.

[1:04:52] In case there are people that have questions about the increases, they can actually answer those.

[1:04:58] That was the increases coming from that.

[1:05:00] The homeowner's association themselves, is that correct? For most part of think they act like HOAs, but they're the road districts, but yes. It's just passed through funds. We just handle money. We just collect it. We levy and collect the taxes for them. Yes, sir.

[1:05:30] So they're capped at 20 unless you all actually go over 20 or allow them to go over 20, I should say.

[1:05:38] And then the Fire District Fund, totals a little over $6 million, there are three districts requesting increases.

[1:05:46] June, Alaska, from 7.5 to 10, that actually increases June, Alaska by $197,067.

[1:05:55] $1,000, Maggie Valley going from 6 to 8, that increases their revenue by $338,743.

[1:06:05] And Wayne's going from 6 to 8 increases their revenue $179,855.

[1:06:12] And like I said, with road districts, we've asked those fire districts to be here in case

[1:06:18] there are questions about the increase.

[1:06:20] The

[1:06:25] budget will be available in inspection, Amy will have a copy.

[1:06:29] I think Will's already given a Kathy Vossler copy to have it the library and Joey is going to have it published.

[1:06:36] First thing in the morning on our website, the next steps.

[1:06:43] Mr. Chairman, you already talked about a public hearing that we'll have that public hearing at 5.30 here in this room on the 30th.

[1:06:51] That's the Tuesday after memorial day.

[1:06:54] and we'll get an ad to the mountaineer to announce that public hearing and then at the June 5th meeting, hopefully the Board of Commissioners considers adoption.

[1:07:06] That's all I have, Mr. Chairman. I'll be glad to answer any questions or set up work sessions, whatever this Board would like to see.

[1:07:15] Right, I know, I know what's on everybody's mind closing the fact of evergreen.

[1:07:23] What kind of a projection do you have moving forward as far as loss of tax revenue?

[1:07:30] We received the letter I guess three or four weeks ago where the company actually asked

[1:07:38] That's for us to write off 90% of the value, and Judy declined that, so I'm not sure the next steps how far they'll pursue it, but we know there's going to be significant decreases.

[1:07:53] And this budget has been very cautious in that.

[1:07:56] The natural growth we're holding our breath on, sales tax, that's why we aren't pushing the envelope because this is huge and we're being very careful.

[1:08:14] I think it will be next year that we fill the biggest burdens of that hit to the tax base.

[1:08:25] When I see next year, I'm talking about FY25, not FY25.

[1:08:30] We can have that.

[1:08:31] What were our fund balance currently?

[1:08:35] We're very healthy.

[1:08:37] I'm,

[1:08:40] I'm, of course, we only report that as of 6th 30.

[1:08:44] So the, the, the, you don't know it?

[1:08:46] Oh, if we, Chris with, yeah, we, we, it only comes once a year at midnight on June 30th.

[1:08:51] But we, we try

[1:08:57] not to, to, to, to overstate anything, revenues are coming in very well.

[1:09:03] We're comfortable that that slide I showed you where we use $5 million to help balance for current year

[1:09:12] We feel like if we have to hit that it will not be much more than a million or two

[1:09:18] It's nice knowing that we've got a comfortable fun balance. You know especially with what commissioner long brought up because we don't know what the future holds

[1:09:25] So that's why you have those

[1:09:29] And, you know, it's been with us longer, we've fronted some funds.

[1:09:35] We're still fronting funds for clean up of the Tropical Storm Fred.

[1:09:40] So we've just recently started the EWP program.

[1:09:44] This board awarded the contract to SDR for the temporary debris management site.

[1:09:49] So some of those things are, that's sort of why I'm hedging a little bit, is because we have a lot of outstanding, you know, seven figure.

[1:09:57] projects that we're working on and

[1:10:00] But I think all those will be reimbursed as well. But I know we've got to, we're looking through this presentation. I mean, we've got to take care of our employees, which is what you've done, you know, with the 4%, and the 2%, I mean, that's something I'll always been, been big on. You've got to take care of them. They're going to go somewhere else. That's going to cost us money. The other big, big item, I say, is the SRO officers, you know, the penny on the half. And I hate, I hate talking about an increase.

[1:10:30] more than anything, but also hate not protecting our kids as well.

[1:10:35] You know, we've got to take care of our kids and watch after them.

[1:10:38] And take the steps that we can take to be sure they're protected.

[1:10:43] So knowing that that's roughly on a $250,000 home $37

[1:10:51] for the year is not too bad.

[1:10:54] Even though I don't like it still, but like I said, I don't like not taking care of our kids as well.

[1:10:59] So overall looks like a pretty good tight budget and a good presentation.

[1:11:06] Thank you, and a lot of credit goes to our department heads.

[1:11:11] We did, we cut about $4.8 million out of the requests, and

[1:11:16] that wasn't in that's positions in operating those things.

[1:11:21] And it's not, it wasn't an easy budget to put together.

[1:11:25] There are a lot of tough decisions, but not what you said, to take care of our employees.

[1:11:33] So much of what we do are people in cars taking care of the public, and this budget reflects that, it really does.

[1:11:42] We can have this already, do you have a timeline on land if this budget is approved?

[1:11:49] I know we've been talking with the sheriff, and we've all talked individually with you about all the estimates.

[1:11:54] But just looking at a timeline, I was curious how soon would get that going?

[1:11:59] Getting to eight, and I don't want to speak for the sheriff, but getting to eight for the start of the school year would be tough.

[1:12:05] But if we can work with a guy with a gun behind me.

[1:12:11] There's a hard door stand.

[1:12:13] We're going to have a man in the address.

[1:12:18] I just said we made a lot of cuts, so I know there's somebody behind me.

[1:12:22] As a, he was standing back here smiling.

[1:12:27] I think initially what we're looking at is a phased approach.

[1:12:35] I have enough school resource officers now to maybe hit four at the beginning of the

[1:12:41] next school year, but what we're also doing is holding a school in July that I intend to

[1:12:45] send six or eight deputies to that will also qualify them to be SRO so that we can actually

[1:12:51] move forward from July, and hopefully by the end of the school year, have all eight positions filled.

[1:12:59] But understand that we have to recruit and get folks into the agency in doing that.

[1:13:07] If we just take what we have in patrol and operations now, we leave a great gap in our ability to respond to calls for service.

[1:13:13] So it's going to require some balance.

[1:13:15] It's also important to understand that a school resource officer requires by state training and

[1:13:21] standards, at least one year of having served on the Sheriff's Department, having 40 hours

[1:13:26] of specialized training is in us RO, and then we put them into the school.

[1:13:33] One of the things to really understand about what a school resource officer does today,

[1:13:39] and these are not easy things for me to share with you, and I will just be as honest as I can.

[1:13:46] There's a great challenge in this for me because typically school resource officers have

[1:13:51] We had some experience, we're probably close to retirement.

[1:13:55] They had great communication skills, new the families, and we're integrated into the community in a way that most deputies or police officers weren't.

[1:14:06] We still need that, but we also need is a combat soldier.

[1:14:11] We need someone that's capable of responding to a shooting incident and

[1:14:15] being willing to look at another human being and in the defense of six to 12 year old kids

[1:14:19] shoot that person dead. That's not easy for me to tell you. I've spent some time in

[1:14:27] combat and it's tough, but these are the types of people that I have to build within our

[1:14:31] agency and ensure that our families have a confidence in the men and women that choose

[1:14:37] to do this and being able to keep their children safe but also have what we call the soft skills

[1:14:42] to guide their families through life challenges that they experience in school.

[1:14:47] And the other side to this is to have, we really want to work towards building the image of law enforcement.

[1:14:56] And in a lot of the studies that I've looked and even through some of them.

[1:15:00] My class is with the Sheriff's Association. It really begins at that elementary school level and the eight schools that we're talking about are all elementary schools. We've got them in the high schools and we've got them in the middle schools, but the elementary schools are where we really get in to building that image, starting that education and building those community partnerships between our public servants and the families here. So this, when you consider this and you look

[1:15:29] to understand that it's a very deep, my intent is to build a very deep and

[1:15:35] an ingrained community-based program that goes far beyond what we typically

[1:15:40] understood or necessary to be. So this really is an investment, it's an investment in

[1:15:45] our youth, our children, our schools, and it's frankly going to be a significant

[1:15:52] challenge for the sheriff's office, but I think we can meet it. I'm sorry to get my

[1:15:55] three minutes Amy didn't it does me okay all right so you almost need to be a

[1:15:59] little bit of a guidance counselor too and that's it and there are a number of

[1:16:04] programs that we have now and there's a lot of talk about having conversations

[1:16:10] you build those relationships the key is really not in the response we used to have

[1:16:15] a saying in the army that the battles won in the preparation not necessarily on the

[1:16:19] field and I'm applying that philosophy here within the schools if we know and we

[1:16:24] We understand those that may be at risk.

[1:16:27] We see behaviors that are suspect we start working on developing those relationships.

[1:16:32] We want to prevent it before it even happens.

[1:16:35] And that's the key to having those officers and deputies in elementary schools.

[1:16:40] And also understand that this is a partnership outside of just the Sheriff's Office.

[1:16:45] I've talked with Chief Adams, I've talked with Chief Sluder, and the folks at Mac Valley.

[1:16:51] and we're working to move forward together with this.

[1:16:55] So it's going to be a coordinated effort.

[1:16:57] It's we're not going to be operating in silos.

[1:16:59] And again, it's an investment.

[1:17:00] So that's what I would share.

[1:17:02] That's probably a very long answer to your question.

[1:17:05] But Bill, do you think you can per lack of a better work?

[1:17:09] Can you poach some deputies from other counties maybe to come here?

[1:17:12] That's a difficult challenge because they're faced with staffing challenges.

[1:17:16] And I'll tell you, we have some staffing challenges,

[1:17:19] But our surrounding counties, just looking at them seem to have more significant challenges in the staffing area than we do.

[1:17:26] It will be tough to bring them in.

[1:17:28] You mentioned earlier about part-time deputies, and we use part-time deputies sometimes to fill when we have a full-time deputy that has to be out, sick, or there's something that affects them where they need to be out of work.

[1:17:42] My hope is, a lot of this can change, the legislature is considering a number of bills.

[1:17:47] One right now would be, give us the ability to bring retired law enforcement officers back while they collect retirement.

[1:17:54] But they can actually come back and continue to work full time right now, they're limited in scope in doing that.

[1:18:00] And if that opens up, my hope is we will be able to bring some folks in immediately, but again, that's-

[1:18:06] Is that a way to explain the decision?

[1:18:07] Yes, sir, it's actually, if I remember correctly, from the report I read from the Sheriff's Association,

[1:18:13] that actually goes to the Senate when they come back in the session.

[1:18:16] There's a very good chance of that passing.

[1:18:19] I don't know, Sean, okay, he wasn't following it.

[1:18:22] But some of us are following that, but I'm sorry to mean to put you on the spot.

[1:18:26] I was just wondering if they had any further information, because you know,

[1:18:29] the legislature things are constantly changing.

[1:18:32] And so, and I haven't checked in on that in a couple days, but I'm very hopeful that that

[1:18:34] That will help us, and there's some folks that will be willing to come in and do that.

[1:18:39] I can say I'll that will pass because it's hard to find help now.

[1:18:42] I mean, it is, you know, it is, it is, it is, and so.

[1:18:46] And there's a lot of support for it.

[1:18:49] I hope that it passes if it does, it could significantly change or short in the timeline

[1:18:55] that we could actually get deputies and officers into the schools.

[1:18:59] So that's my hope, but I will keep you informed as this goes if this budget passes

[1:19:04] And as approved, the good thing is we was working very closely with the county manager.

[1:19:10] For the first time in the history of the sheriff's office, we're actually paying,

[1:19:15] we're hiring and paying recruits to go through basic law enforcement training to fill our slots.

[1:19:22] That's an important aspect because a lot of folks, all three were from the mill.

[1:19:26] All folks, all three of those folks can't afford to go to school on their own,

[1:19:30] take time off and then come and apply the Sheriff's Office. So what we did is we

[1:19:33] frontloaded all that. We're actually paying them a salary while they go to school

[1:19:37] with the understanding that they will be working for us for at least three

[1:19:41] years following that. Queen's been very helpful with ensuring that we get all

[1:19:45] that documentation together and so they have signed a contract to work for us for

[1:19:50] three years. The good thing about that as well is we're building them within the

[1:19:54] culture of our Sheriff's Office and we're more likely to retain them because

[1:19:58] This retention is...

[1:20:00] This is, in my view, one of the biggest and most important things to saving us money because it costs money to retrain folks, but to kind of bring them into the family of the sheriff's office. And hopefully they come, they join and they stay for an extended period. I know a lot of other counties have done that for quite some time, so it's good to see we're doing that. Good way to recruit and retain them as well. So I appreciate you work taking care of that and getting that done because that's something I feel like a huge benefit.

[1:20:28] And Mr. Morehead has been very helpful and guided me through that process to make it

[1:20:34] sure that we're doing in accordance with training standards and of course all the legal

[1:20:38] requirements.

[1:20:39] I'm very confident that going forward within the next year or two, we're going to see

[1:20:43] staffing levels at the very top, hopefully be able to fill this if the budget is approved

[1:20:48] for RSROs and continue that way forward.

[1:20:52] So it's from overhead as far as I know we mentioned the towns and I'm helping out are they talking like they have

[1:21:02] South from a vehicle standpoint or even a sorry standpoint. I know we we discuss some of that.

[1:21:08] Nothing official. I did receive some proposals from Wayne's and and Canton. And if we go that route to

[1:21:18] where the positions were funded as a blend of sheriff's office and a couple of the towns.

[1:21:25] We could bring down that price a little bit on the equipment, but not to use in a county term.

[1:21:33] I don't think it would be material as far as the savings.

[1:21:37] It would just be a way to probably staff quicker or more quickly.

[1:21:45] No, from a administrative standpoint or a management standpoint, it's probably better to have it under one umbrella as far as having it all under the sheriff's office.

[1:21:55] Anyway,

[1:21:58] you talked about that partner with the police departments and stuff, the municipality.

[1:22:04] Do they have any trained SOARps?

[1:22:08] They're not using it. We could use until we get these trained.

[1:22:10] I can't speak for them, I can tell you that there's an effort amongst all of us law enforcement leaders within the county to train together, get as many trained as possible.

[1:22:24] I would also invite that the chiefs of police to send as many as they can to the school that's being held at HEC in July so that we have a pool of ready available and trained folks.

[1:22:33] And again, it's very specialized, and it's going to be very specialized going forward.

[1:22:41] I know that doesn't necessarily answer your question, but our intent would certainly be to share in the training and have those folks available.

[1:22:47] I see some of them like at Canton Middle School where they've got local police that, you know, as SROs, I just didn't know if they had two or three trained that you could work together with until we could get some more trained or something to get SROs in earth quicker.

[1:23:00] So training is ongoing all the time.

[1:23:03] This is, you know, the training plan is not new.

[1:23:06] And our trainers have been working together.

[1:23:08] We've just kind of stepped that up.

[1:23:10] We're going to be doing things when the schools are closed

[1:23:12] for the summer, where we're actually going to be going

[1:23:14] to the schools and the budget contains some specialized things

[1:23:17] that will help us, some equipment that will help us train

[1:23:21] something called Simmunitions is what we're looking at.

[1:23:26] And without getting into all the details of that,

[1:23:28] But that's the key to making sure that if we have to respond, training and speed are critical.

[1:23:39] And the Nashville set the standard.

[1:23:45] And Nashville did everything that protocols require them to do, and I would sadly remind you,

[1:23:53] they still lost six individuals there.

[1:23:55] time and training equals life saved. Unfortunately, when we get to that point,

[1:24:00] lives will be lost. The question is, how many can we save by getting there quickly

[1:24:03] and having the training and the equipment necessary to prevent further damage?

[1:24:08] It's a terrible thing to think about. It's hard for me to stand here and talk about it,

[1:24:11] but that's what we're faced with.

[1:24:13] That's what we're dealing with.

[1:24:14] I was reading an article and it was talking about the shooter went to that school

[1:24:18] because the other school correct. Yeah, that they had picked was armed.

[1:24:22] And I have to say that Dr. Putnam and I have been in open communication.

[1:24:26] There's some things that we have to do to make the school targets undesirable, and not only do we want to harden those targets, but we want to make sure and send the message very clearly that if you intend to come do harm to our children, we're going to take you out.

[1:24:40] That's just, I mean, that's what we're going to do, and that's part of it.

[1:24:47] So, the training aspect of that and the plan and the vision going forward, I'm confident

[1:24:52] that we're going to be a lot better place within a year and particularly if this has passed.

[1:24:56] And again, any questions?

[1:25:00] I'm available at any time.

[1:25:05] Thank you. Stay close, Bill. I'm going to have you read that. Okay.

[1:25:13] I just want to make comment, and I usually don't make these national comments, but, you know, this health insurance is just, it's, it's, when you want to look at the graphs, it's, I mean, in 2014, it was six million, and now it's,

[1:25:31] 13 million. And I remember in 2020, about that time they passed the Obamacare and we were

[1:25:39] supposed to have lower health premium and we were supposed to, everything was supposed

[1:25:42] to be cheaper. You know, healthcare costs were going to go down and they didn't. If

[1:25:46] anything, they went more. So we had to took the pathway dead by swapping. And you could

[1:25:56] Let's see that graph.

[1:25:57] I mean, it was a shooting straight up on my side.

[1:26:00] The substantial we did, it'd be even higher.

[1:26:03] And I know our wellness clinic keeps costs down because,

[1:26:06] you know, it's there.

[1:26:09] We've got some big drivers to our health plan.

[1:26:17] And some of the things that are controllable,

[1:26:21] and that's what we're trying to work on, as some of its lifestyle,

[1:26:25] Some of it, for instance, we've got a large number of employees with diabetes and insulin costs have risen the last few years like you wouldn't believe that we've got heart disease and diabetes.

[1:26:41] It's those things, but we actually are trying to implement and later on in June, we're actually going to do some biometric screenings, make it voluntary for our employees.

[1:26:53] We've got an incentive there to get folks the blood draws so they know their numbers, they meet with a counselor.

[1:27:01] If they go through that program, we're going to use the hospital for meeting with a nutritionist.

[1:27:07] So, there are some things that we're trying to do, so we can keep our costs from rising as steeply.

[1:27:13] I don't think we're never going to flatten it or see it decrease, but if we can just slow that growth,

[1:27:19] then, and we're up about 7.2% and national average is over 10.

[1:27:24] So, while it's a big budget consideration, I feel like we're performing fairly well, but I think we can get better.

[1:27:37] I'd like to thank you for the time and effort you put in on this and just for everybody

[1:27:41] else's information that's looking, watching this on the YouTube or in the audience.

[1:27:48] Bryant and Will and staff have been very good to college, one of us in individually.

[1:27:53] We've sat down and went over this line item, my line item, to try to expedite this public

[1:27:59] presentation that County Manager has given us.

[1:28:02] So we were all scheduled and sat down and quietly in the session is going over this budget and we'll continue to and so thank you, Brian.

[1:28:12] Well, thank you.

[1:28:13] And each of you invested two hours individually into this to work together to get something that meets the needs of the community.

[1:28:23] But also is keeps us fiscally sound is a tough balance or getting more tough to.

[1:28:30] I can remember from our auditors presentation, the last presentation that we got.

[1:28:36] Speaking of the fund balance, I know Commissioner Rogers brought that up.

[1:28:40] We continue, even with the projections of the jail project and so on and so forth,

[1:28:45] we continue to be in the upper percentile across the state as far as our fund balance.

[1:28:51] And that's where we need to stay.

[1:28:54] It's that rainy day fund, it's there for rainy days and with inflation, and with things

[1:29:00] going on on national scale, we're seeing right now.

[1:29:03] It didn't go unnoticed that you said that you had to make some appropriations for fuel

[1:29:07] for the Sheriff's Department.

[1:29:09] You know, it's just like everybody's household across America, the infrastructure going up,

[1:29:14] inflation is going up, the cost of employees, and I can tell you that the employee retention

[1:29:19] is huge across the state and I think you've done a good job of trying to keep our public

[1:29:25] served and to keep our employees here. So the challenges that we're facing with the

[1:29:32] mill closure and that ripple effect worries me. It worries me over the next 18 months.

[1:29:37] So we'll see where it goes, but I think we're really going to have to look really close in

[1:29:44] In the next phase school year, we're pretty good right now, but we'll just see and hope

[1:29:50] for the best.

[1:29:54] Thank you, Brian.

[1:29:55] I do appreciate all the staff that's working on this.

[1:29:58] I would like to invite everybody.

[1:30:00] To take the opportunity to review the budget, I think you said it would be posted online in the morning. And I'm sure if there's any questions, all of us will do our best to find the answer. It is challenging and to not make a political statement in any way. It is definitely challenging to be faced with making a decision on a tax increase. But I feel very strongly about how we protect the most innocent of our citizens. And it has now become the norm.

[1:30:28] it is we turn on the news or get notifications on our phone that it is almost daily occurrence

[1:30:35] and from my seat and likely from the gentleman that I serve with, I think it would live with

[1:30:40] us forever if we did not make the right decision trying to fund that SRO program.

[1:30:47] So I think it's vital to, I really believe it's vital to our community, I'd rather have

[1:30:53] it and never use it, then they did not have it.

[1:31:00] I face using and Commissioner Hanzley spoke about the targeted school in Nashville, it

[1:31:04] was like no gun, gun-free zone, the active shooter drove right by two places, had signs

[1:31:12] up saying that these people are armed on this facility and went to a gun-free zone.

[1:31:18] So, I know the state of Ohio has been working toward enabling teachers and some administrative

[1:31:24] staff to have guns. I think we're head of the curve on that. I think Sheriff Wilkins can attest to that and I

[1:31:32] I appreciate his stand

[1:31:34] Concerning our most vulnerable, you know, we need to let people know that

[1:31:38] We've got their back and if you try to cause harm to our children

[1:31:43] You're gonna pay and I appreciate the stand he's he's to come that and

[1:31:48] But as things change, you know, I think moving forward we need to be you know, we need to be quick on

[1:31:54] our feet. If legislative decisions are made where things change, and it's more economical

[1:32:00] to do another route, I don't think we should back off on safety. Something that's more

[1:32:06] efficient, quicker, keeping our kids safer. I think we should certainly not turn the deaf

[1:32:12] ear blind eye to any changing events at the state legislature or on the federal level.

[1:32:17] And I know there are a lot of proactive steps being taken in other states, so I'll just

[1:32:23] throw that out there.

[1:32:28] I want to thank you for setting down each

[1:32:30] finding all that stuff to me. This has been my first one. And this

[1:32:34] being anyway, but I appreciate you explaining everything to me.

[1:32:37] That helps me to when the people ask me something that I can give

[1:32:42] me more solid nature, you know, when they're asking me something

[1:32:45] about this. I agree with the rest of them here about the nobody likes

[1:32:50] a tax increase. And I sure don't like tax increase. And I, but if

[1:32:55] I think there's anything that we need it for it would be for the kids and I don't think

[1:33:01] there's too many people that would complain about a tax increase knowing where it's going

[1:33:06] and that's what I say when you explain it to us I believe that'll help a lot of people

[1:33:09] understand why if we have to do that we're going to have to do it and that you know it'd

[1:33:14] be for a good college instead of just something you know we don't have to have like that because

[1:33:19] one incident and it's too late I mean you don't get two changes at it you know but we appreciate

[1:33:25] and the whole staff at work time.

[1:33:26] We really appreciate it, because I know it's

[1:33:28] what an easy job.

[1:33:30] Thank you.

[1:33:31] Thank you.

[1:33:34] Thanks, Brown.

[1:33:36] Okay, we'll move on to the discussion of adjustments

[1:33:38] of the agenda, but I do not have anything.

[1:33:39] Does anyone else have anything?

[1:33:42] Okay, we'll move on to the consent agenda.

[1:33:45] We have eight items on the consent agenda.

[1:33:48] I want to have Sheriff Bill Wilkie come up and read number four

[1:33:52] because it needs to be said.

[1:33:55] And I also want to remind everybody that we will be having

[1:33:57] a following officer's memorial in this room on Thursday, May the 18th, 530.

[1:34:06] And we'll be honoring those who have lost their life in law enforcement in the line of duty.

[1:34:12] Thank you, thank you, Bill.

[1:34:14] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[1:34:17] Proclamation recognizing May 14th through May 20th, 2023 is National Police Week.

[1:34:24] Whereas the Congress and the President of the United States have designated that there

[1:34:30] be a National Peace Officers Memorial Day, and whereas the members of the Haywood County

[1:34:36] Sheriff's Office, Haywood County Police Departments, and Highway Patrol serve an essential role

[1:34:41] in safeguarding the rights and freedom of the citizens of Haywood County, and whereas it

[1:34:48] is important to recognize the duties and responsibilities of law enforcement officers and agencies

[1:34:52] and to express appreciation for the contributions made by law enforcement officers.

[1:34:58] Now, therefore,

[1:35:00] Be it resolved that the Board of County Commissioners of Haywood County, North Carolina, does hereby call upon all citizens to observe May 14th through May 20th, 2023, as National Police Week in Haywood County, with a ceremony honoring our fallen officers on Thursday, May 18th, and publicly salutes the service of law enforcement officers in our community and in communities across the nation.

[1:35:29] adopted this 15th day of May, 2023 signed.

[1:35:33] L. Kevin Inzley-Cherman, Haywood County Board of Commissioners.

[1:35:37] Thank you.

[1:35:38] Thank you.

[1:35:39] And I appreciate you explaining the complicated SRO officer.

[1:35:46] And I'll be available for more questions.

[1:35:48] And I understand that it's a program that's that we're building from the bottom up.

[1:35:52] There may be some changes and I'm happy to talk about those as they come about.

[1:35:56] All right.

[1:35:57] You kind of along the lines of National Police Week, you kind of have a celebrity on your

[1:36:02] staff here.

[1:36:04] Is that correct?

[1:36:05] Many celebrities.

[1:36:05] Which one must you refer to?

[1:36:07] I believe she's in attendance.

[1:36:10] Could you kind of speak to what happened to Miss Morgan at the state level recently?

[1:36:14] Yeah.

[1:36:15] Actually.

[1:36:16] Okay.

[1:36:16] I'm not going to look at her in embarrassment, so maybe let's have her come over.

[1:36:21] Okay.

[1:36:22] All right.

[1:36:22] I did not plan that step around.

[1:36:24] Thank you for doing this, Tommy.

[1:36:27] I'll take the credit forward, Jan, if you're embarrassed.

[1:36:30] I'll thank the blame.

[1:36:33] I wish I had the narrative that she had actually one of her employees submit her for

[1:36:41] the North Carolina Association of Public Safety Communications Officials, which is the Association

[1:36:48] for 9-1-1 personnel across the state, submit her for 9-1-1-1 center director of the year.

[1:36:54] She was chosen across a hundred counties in North Carolina for that award, for the year.

[1:36:59] Got to go to Wilmington, take her family for a few days down there, accept the award,

[1:37:04] get some additional training and do some really cool things.

[1:37:06] But I will tell you in the short time that I've been sheriff,

[1:37:09] I can't imagine there's anybody who can run a 9-1-1 center in like Santa Morgan.

[1:37:14] And I don't say that lightly.

[1:37:16] Because every time I'm in there, her people are working very hard.

[1:37:20] They have a great attitude, and they don't have anything but good things to say about Ms. Morgan and their job.

[1:37:26] And as a manager, one of the most challenging things that I have found is setting the work environment in the midst of a challenging vision and challenges.

[1:37:34] And she has led that agency through, or that center, through floods, through all kinds of things that have happened in Haywood County.

[1:37:43] and she's done it by actually picking up a headset,

[1:37:47] answering calls for service, and she just didn't show the way.

[1:37:52] She actually went the way and got down there with her employees.

[1:37:57] And so, very, very happy to have her.

[1:38:01] I can't imagine anybody could do anything different,

[1:38:02] Shonda, I know you probably want to say something.

[1:38:04] Oh, yeah.

[1:38:05] This.

[1:38:07] Thank you.

[1:38:08] I'm actually very honored and just thankful to everyone that's had a part of my journey.

[1:38:32] I know your mom would be very proud.

[1:38:38] Okay, so something

[1:38:45] else I was wanting to mention.

[1:38:46] Does anyone have any questions about any of the items on the

[1:38:50] Consumption? Just to come in about item number six.

[1:38:54] If you guys looked at the packet, there was a couple in

[1:38:57] Heywood County donated $500 to our senior center for

[1:39:01] gaming equipment and things to help our senior adults.

[1:39:05] And I don't know who you are, you want to remain anonymous, but I want to give you a shout out publicly here in the meeting that you contribute $500 and we've got to run it through this grant process.

[1:39:15] So whoever you are, thank you for making a positive difference in the county.

[1:39:19] I actually served on that board and when I was first chosen to serve on that board, I was amazed at what that senior center does.

[1:39:28] I mean, they do a lot for our seniors in the county, and it's very much appreciated.

[1:39:35] I know I told them last week, and the meeting we had, they don't tell their story enough.

[1:39:40] You know, they do a whole lot for our folks, and they need to be recognized for it.

[1:39:44] While I'm talking, I guess, some item number eight, right, I don't know if you could speak

[1:39:50] to that.

[1:39:51] I know that's an important line item as well for our bridges and road repairs.

[1:39:56] You care to comment on that.

[1:40:03] This was some work that the state budget office has already completed. And I think state emergency management actually was able to help in funding, my understanding is they can't pass those funds from emergency management straight to the budget office. So they're sending those funds to us to in turn give them back to state budget office. So their funds stretch a little bit further.

[1:40:33] to do more bridges and road work.

[1:40:37] Yes, that's a little more not as I was asking.

[1:40:39] I guess the biggest thing, that's good,

[1:40:41] or not asking, but just one of the folks

[1:40:43] to know that we're still doing some of that work.

[1:40:46] So I know that there was a lot of folks

[1:40:48] that didn't get qualified or not qualified

[1:40:51] but chosen to have their bridges repired.

[1:40:54] That was a big need here in the spot.

[1:40:55] It's a big need and the meeting that we had

[1:40:59] Bethel, I guess, three weeks ago

[1:41:01] So we talked to several, and I've worked with Kristen at State budget on trying to see if we can get funds in place to help.

[1:41:14] Jake, Mr. Stanton and his assistant from Transvany County all the way over here tonight, so we thank you for being in attendance.

[1:41:25] Any other comments or questions on the consent agenda?

[1:41:29] If not on the intent of motion, we approve the consent agenda's presented.

[1:41:32] Thank you.

[1:41:32] Like a motion to approve the consent agenda is presented.

[1:41:36] Thank you.

[1:41:37] Okay.

[1:41:38] Any other discussion?

[1:41:40] All those in favor say aye.

[1:41:41] Aye.

[1:41:42] Anyone opposed?

[1:41:43] That's your names.

[1:41:44] We'll move on to the regular agenda.

[1:41:46] I didn't want to make a comment that I should have made in constituent concerns.

[1:41:50] And Tommy sent this to me.

[1:41:52] Thank you, Tommy.

[1:41:52] So on Sunday, May 21st, which is this Sunday, there'll be the third annual WNC drug awareness

[1:41:59] at 3 o'clock it'll go from 3 to 5 and it'll be at the open air gym at Lake

[1:42:04] Genoluska. So I would invite the public to attend and this event so I do want

[1:42:13] to give that shout out. Michelle Rogers is part of that and she's very much

[1:42:18] involved in trying to help families who have lost a loved one's addiction. Okay,

[1:42:26] Okay, I'll move on to the regular agenda.

[1:42:28] The first item is to request approval to purchase one KME

[1:42:33] sever side mount service bumper truck in the amount of $850,000

[1:42:38] $3,000 by the Crabtree Iron Death Fire Department.

[1:42:41] We have the captain of a Crabtree Iron Death volunteer

[1:42:44] part of Parliament, Chad Moody, is he here?

[1:42:47] Okay, Chad.

[1:42:48] And Chad, I think you've got a lot of your members.

[1:42:51] We're bored here, maybe.

[1:42:52] Okay.

[1:42:53] Okay.

[1:42:58] They're all smiling back there.

[1:43:06] So we have requested the purchase of 1K and me fire truck.

[1:43:12] We started this process back in January, December, timeframe looking into this.

[1:43:17] It's a two and a half to three year lead time on getting a truck right now.

[1:43:21] Much like the ambulance is the county's dealing with.

[1:43:23] So, we started the process ahead of time that need for the truck.

[1:43:31] We've got one truck that will be 21, 22 years old when this truck arrives to be replaced

[1:43:38] and OSFM requires a first out engine to be less than 20 years old.

[1:43:43] So, this truck will serve that purpose.

[1:43:46] The deal purpose truck will hold all the rescue plus firefighting equipment

[1:43:50] to handle the majority of the calls that our guys need on a daily basis on one

[1:43:56] truck. So you

[1:44:01] might have been have you had your public meetings? Yeah, last Thursday.

[1:44:06] So, last Thursday. Did you have anybody there about this? Okay, did you

[1:44:15] might

[1:44:15] have any questions? Okay, I just drunk last as long as the other one did.

[1:44:21] So you're

[1:44:23] your board of directors like all of them prove this and your finance officer

[1:44:29] as far as your finances I guess you'll get with with Kristen everything's good

[1:44:35] and your board of directors are they they in favor of this move this truck

[1:44:39] yeah I

[1:44:46] guess what I was wondering so when did you order the truck that's why we

[1:44:50] don't order yet okay so you're after this meeting contracts will be column in the

[1:44:54] morning right yeah column in the morning so you're looking at two and a half to

[1:44:59] Yeah.

[1:45:00] The other saying, two to two and a half years, but we're kind of planning three years. That way, we don't get a hoax. Do you think your truck will be okay in the meantime that you have? Okay. Okay. Okay. All right.

[1:45:14] Okay. I'm going to take a motion for item one. If there's no other questions, I might take motion. Okay. Okay.

[1:45:25] Any other discussion?

[1:45:26] question.

[1:45:26] Sorry.

[1:45:27] That's okay.

[1:45:27] All those in favor say aye.

[1:45:29] Aye.

[1:45:29] We want to post.

[1:45:30] Okay.

[1:45:31] You know what?

[1:45:32] I'll thank you all for coming out.

[1:45:33] He's got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

[1:45:36] From the Fire Department here.

[1:45:37] So appreciate y'all coming out and hanging in there.

[1:45:41] Okay.

[1:45:42] Item two of the regular agenda is to request to execute memorandum agreement with the North Carolina

[1:45:47] Office of State Budget and Management for a flood warning notification project in the amount

[1:45:52] amount of $1 million and to award a water level censored that gauge bid to distinctive AFW's design incorporated in the amount of $197,965 and approve approval for the county manager to execute related contract documents and emergency services directors Travis Donaldson's here today.

[1:46:17] Thank you, Travis.

[1:46:20] Good, Chairman.

[1:46:22] And that was a mouthful.

[1:46:25] Good afternoon and good afternoon commissioners.

[1:46:28] What I've got for you this afternoon is approval of M.O.A.

[1:46:35] for the $1 million for the siren, flood siren, rain gauge,

[1:46:42] and river gauge project previously

[1:46:45] We've done this on a different grant, this money is being repurposed and we're going into an actual different part of money to execute the same project with hence the new MOA and then the bid award is for nine river gauges, river monitoring gauges, just like the ones that you see along the rivers, typically mounted on the bridges with a LiDAR system.

[1:47:15] that shoots a laser beam down toward the river bounces back,

[1:47:18] determines level and flow and then two additional rain gauges

[1:47:25] in areas that we've determined would be beneficial to know

[1:47:29] what kind of water is falling in the head water.

[1:47:33] So during the flood one of our biggest

[1:47:38] issues was not knowing what was happening out there

[1:47:40] with what was actually falling and what was going on in the rivers so this

[1:47:45] project takes us many leaps and bounds forward in having early notification

[1:47:51] that something is going on that we need to warn our citizens of once this

[1:47:57] project is complete it's going to be tied in to a upcoming project to be able to

[1:48:02] do the sirens for the early notification in the morning for folks in flood

[1:48:08] the prone areas. So these are going to tie together nicely and hopefully service

[1:48:13] well and build a warner citizens if they need to get out of the way.

[1:48:20] So Travis, how long, so once the sirens go off, how long do they have to, I guess, go

[1:48:28] to higher ground? Is that what that would be for?

[1:48:31] Yeah, it's going to depend on the notification based on getting those out. And the siren

[1:48:37] One project is going to be a different project that we're getting ready to step into.

[1:48:42] The project tonight is mainly the river gauges and the rain gauges placed in the headwater areas.

[1:48:51] I was wondering when you collect this data or this information, where does that go to?

[1:48:56] Did you go to you guys?

[1:48:57] It actually goes to several outlets.

[1:49:01] There's state monitoring systems.

[1:49:03] They're tied in throughout the state through emergency management, as well as us having access to it, USGS, everybody for the most part, if you've got a gauge, somebody sharing that information, so it gets shared with multiple, multiple entities.

[1:49:18] I guess it takes everything in the consideration of the weather forecast is for more rain

[1:49:26] coming.

[1:49:28] Yep.

[1:49:29] Yeah.

[1:49:30] One of the very key to the cruiser area, River Gage is actually going to be there on

[1:49:38] the tunnel at Big East Fort Trail, so we actually know what it's doing up there.

[1:49:44] on that side of the river. Our first gauge isn't until the the big eagles

[1:49:49] forecratch. That's a lot of distance that we don't know what's going on.

[1:49:54] Where that started?

[1:49:55] So if we know what it's doing at the tunnel, we have a whole lot more...

[1:50:08] I just spoke to the vendor. He's saying five to six months, barring any issues, but he felt comfortable in saying five to six months from the time we issue contract. Do these operate on cell phone signal or on electric or telephone? They're a combination between past and past.

[1:50:29] power, solar, and then cell phone, and then actually radio frequency. All the

[1:50:38] rain gauges themselves operate off of radio frequency. I think I believe a

[1:50:43] UHF system or VHS system. So they'll they will. That cuts out.

[1:50:53] Would there be

[1:50:54] like battery packs there? Okay. Yes. There will be redundant power systems and

[1:50:59] communication systems.

[1:51:01] Because if self-towers go out, maybe jumping again a little bit, but as far as warning

[1:51:09] folks from the siren standpoint, will it be audible as well as a notification on

[1:51:16] that?

[1:51:17] Yeah.

[1:51:18] These will be the siren system itself.

[1:51:20] It will be audible sirens, no different, very similar than to what Clyde has, but obviously

[1:51:27] in your technology to build and give people that audible signal to see

[1:51:32] chiro ground strategically placed based on the needs.

[1:51:40] I've been said many times, fat flood event had occurred at 4.30 in the morning and

[1:51:44] instead of 4.30 in the afternoon, it would have been terrible, right.

[1:51:51] So these sirens and educating people on what the purpose are, I mean, I can see where

[1:51:57] where this could possibly say 50 to 75 lives in the event in the middle of the night.

[1:52:02] Very easily.

[1:52:04] And you mentioned there the educational, educational piece.

[1:52:11] We've got funds factored into that.

[1:52:13] So that once we get these projects, this siren project out there that we're able to educate

[1:52:18] the public on what their response is if these sirens go off in the middle of the night.

[1:52:26] It's going to be much quicker. I mean now Travis knows I mean the sheriff as well that when we have

[1:52:32] these situations not only will we have to drive out and look at it but then we have to drive the folks

[1:52:37] homes and tell them to seek higher shelter and so a lot of time lost here so like Commissioner Long

[1:52:44] pointed out if this happened overnight that could have been a whole lot worse. So having this in

[1:52:49] places huge. I know when I went to a meet and am round up crew so with Senator Corbin several

[1:52:55] of the folks asked about some kind of an alarm system. So I think they

[1:53:01] have one in Clyde because

[1:53:04] I have some friends that live there when they heard the siren they knew they had to leave.

[1:53:08] Yeah. Yeah.

[1:53:09] Clyde.

[1:53:09] Um, um, Town of Clyde has one that's based there at the fire department. It's a manually engaged siren

[1:53:15] and I think we're going to make an attempt at trying to incorporate updating that siren there to be able to be remotely activated versus having to actually be there at the fire department to be able to turn it on.

[1:53:31] That was how long will it take for this to be implemented?

[1:53:35] Do you think?

[1:53:36] The rain and river gauges five to six months.

[1:53:39] It's the siren system obviously we still got to go to bed and go through all the contracting processes.

[1:53:47] I think that realistically the siren project itself is probably hopefully maybe looking at completion sometime toward middle to end the next year.

[1:53:58] Okay.

[1:54:00] Well, it seems like hurricane season is worse than the mountains and it is in the oceans anymore.

[1:54:04] So, I just, you know, so, I wish she, I was hoping she was going to say bye, say bye to her.

[1:54:10] We can always hope that sooner or the better, but I think realistically, I think we're looking

[1:54:18] at probably a year out on getting that fully operational.

[1:54:23] Yeah, and these funds are complements of the state budget management office, so thank you.

[1:54:30] I'm opening up to remember, I know there are several people in them, maybe not several,

[1:54:34] they might just be a few people here can remember when there was some fatalities in a flood,

[1:54:38] similar flood of any of what in this body is drop stormed Fred, but back in the 70s.

[1:54:43] You remember that, the young girl, there was a tremendous flood hit just to my girl burst.

[1:54:50] I'd say that if those alarms had been in place in that day, that would save those lives as well.

[1:54:58] And our folks...

[1:55:09] We've been making really good strides and getting a lot of those that had needed some work for a long time, and getting those back to where they need to be. Again, if we know what it's doing on the mountain tops, we have a really good idea what it's going to do in the valleys afterwards. So, being able to get that rain falling.

[1:55:30] all data on the head water areas is very, very key in all of this.

[1:55:41] You have other questions?

[1:55:43] Okay, can we have a motion to approve item two, the regular agenda?

[1:55:47] I can motion to approve item two.

[1:55:49] They're second.

[1:55:50] Second.

[1:55:51] Any more discussion?

[1:55:53] All those in favor say aye.

[1:55:54] Aye.

[1:55:55] Anyone opposed?

[1:55:56] Okay, so you know, Ms. Lanky Travis.

[1:55:57] Thank you.

[1:55:58] Okay, the next item three is the request approval to accept the bid in the amount of $24,900

[1:56:03] for electric cleanup.

[1:56:05] Electrical cleanup, electrical demolition of all unused equipment, installation of new distribution panels, and connections for a new, uninterrupted power supply, by Latham Electric Incorporated and approval for the county manager to execute all documents related to the back up 9-1-1 renovation project.

[1:56:30] and our Haywood County Facilities Director, Tim Siskis, here to talk about that.

[1:56:34] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[1:56:35] Thank you.

[1:56:35] Good evening, commissioners.

[1:56:37] I've asked Joey and Shannon to kind of be with me here at the same time we met.

[1:56:42] Some time back, I started talking about renovating the Backup 911 Center.

[1:56:49] When we started talking about this, it was very clear to me and Joey can speak to this,

[1:56:55] at least I hope he will.

[1:56:56] So that the electrical equipment that's in this space is, it needs cleaning up in a big way.

[1:57:06] We've got unused EPS equipment, we've got unused junction boxes, large service junction

[1:57:12] boxes.

[1:57:13] We've got unused disconnects, distribution panels that simply need to be removed.

[1:57:20] In order to get to a new connections for new EPS, we need a new distribution panel.

[1:57:25] we need a new panel for branch circuits to be cleaned up and that's what this whole

[1:57:31] project is about.

[1:57:35] Outside of that that's what this project is. It's the kind of the

[1:57:39] stepping stone to get started on the back up 911. I certainly entertain any questions

[1:57:46] about the cleanup process of this project and we can entertain any questions about the back

[1:57:52] at 911 center with Mrs. Morgan.

[1:57:58] I've talked with the team about this in depth and that's

[1:58:02] certainly a needed thing to get prepped up and getting ready for that.

[1:58:07] Okay.

[1:58:11] This sound like concern is nearing this clean up as far as interruption.

[1:58:17] I guess we'll work through that as we do.

[1:58:19] There will be an interruption.

[1:58:21] There's no question.

[1:58:22] It is our plan to mitigate some of that through some temporary

[1:58:27] electrical work that we can do in-house. I think we've got a couple of recreational

[1:58:33] staff and some officers downstairs that will be interrupted, you know, during

[1:58:40] that time, but we've talked to all parties involved, minimal at best, but yeah.

[1:58:50] We'll also have an interruption because we'll be replacing a lot of the

[1:58:53] equipment there. So, Chanda's worked with another county and we've got a good

[1:58:58] contingency plan in place so we still have a backup while that equipment's being replaced

[1:59:02] in the works being done.

[1:59:05] That's my next question.

[1:59:06] We can talk to any other county.

[1:59:09] I figured no one's going to be probably on top of that.

[1:59:11] It's stainless transfer.

[1:59:12] That's what we're looking for.

[1:59:13] Yes.

[1:59:14] And when you're talking, when you're talking almost $1 million of emergency equipment, power

[1:59:19] is the one thing that can absolutely, as Tommy knows, it can cause electronics if that

[1:59:24] power's not clean.

[1:59:25] Your electronics are not going to last.

[1:59:27] So when we are investing that much money from the non-on-one fund into that equipment, we want to make sure that power is as clean as it can be and basically you've got a building that's been used for decades for lots of different purposes and there's different people have been in and out. It's just kind of been added to an attitude to meet the needs.

[1:59:46] So this will get us back to a good standard of where we should be.

[1:59:54] You want the same thing, Chen?

[1:59:57] No?

[1:59:57] Unless you have any questions?

[1:59:58] Oh, OK.

[2:00:00] No, I think we have a good plan and I think we'll have no interruption at all, so we should be good.

[2:00:09] Okay, so I'll entertain a motion. We approve item three of the regular agenda. Second, second. Thank you. Any discussion? Anybody think of anything? All those in favor say aye. We want to pose. Okay. It's unanimous. And then number four is the request approval of the additional repairs to Dacon H.

[2:00:32] back system at our Paragon Parkway facilities.

[2:00:35] Go ahead, Tim.

[2:00:36] Okay.

[2:00:37] This one is a continuation of the contract

[2:00:40] that this board approved on 2623 with Bolton construction.

[2:00:47] This was the repair component.

[2:00:50] The original assessment, if you will,

[2:00:54] was performed on 410 of 22 by Hoffman Mechanical

[2:00:58] and Hoffman will be the contractor

[2:01:00] that we will be engaging in this approval.

[2:01:06] Once they got on side and started making some

[2:01:09] repairs, they simply found additional components. And we were able to move a few things around

[2:01:15] to fund this in this year's budget. So I don't want to lose my grip on Hoffman while I have

[2:01:22] him and get these additional components fixed, frankly. And this list is, I mean, this

[2:01:31] It's compressors and condenser fan motors and pulling the system down and waiting overnight.

[2:01:37] And I don't like to tell Tommy what that consists of in decision labor.

[2:01:44] And the die-consystem is extremely specific to Hoffman Mechanical.

[2:01:49] That's the only company that's really ready to look after this equipment.

[2:01:54] Okay.

[2:01:55] You know, there's questions on that.

[2:01:57] Even the name sounds foreign.

[2:02:01] and they can de-

[2:02:02] I think it's House of Finance, Mr. Chairman.

[2:02:05] What is that?

[2:02:06] Korean or something?

[2:02:08] Okay.

[2:02:09] This is what we got.

[2:02:11] Okay.

[2:02:12] I'll entertain the motion.

[2:02:13] We approve item four.

[2:02:15] Mr. Chairman, one second.

[2:02:17] In this, the language four, I want to also make sure

[2:02:21] that we add the approval for the county manager

[2:02:23] to engage or to execute the documents.

[2:02:27] It was in my presentation to you, but not in this.

[2:02:30] Okay.

[2:02:30] 25,000.

[2:02:32] 25,000, 957, and 64 cents.

[2:02:39] Okay.

[2:02:40] Do we?

[2:02:40] Is that okay, Amy?

[2:02:42] Okay.

[2:02:43] All right.

[2:02:44] So the motion will include what's written an item for along with approval for county manager to execute all documents.

[2:02:52] Yes sir.

[2:02:53] Okay.

[2:02:54] In the amount of 25,000.

[2:02:58] In the amount of $25,957 in 64 cents to Hoffman mechanical solutions.

[2:03:05] Okay, all right, that's the motion, will you make that motion?

[2:03:12] I make a motion to prove item four or as amended.

[2:03:15] Okay, zero, okay, is that good, Amy?

[2:03:19] Okay, okay, all those in favor say aye, okay, that's approved, okay, thank you.

[2:03:24] Thank you, appreciate it.

[2:03:27] Okay, item six is the request approval of a consolidated fee schedule and we have our

[2:03:31] management analyst, Will Scarborough.

[2:03:36] How would do?

[2:03:37] Did I miss one?

[2:03:38] Oh, I'm sorry.

[2:03:39] I'm sorry.

[2:03:41] Okay.

[2:03:42] The horse is well.

[2:03:43] How would you horses?

[2:03:45] Will what?

[2:03:45] I looked at him and he wasn't coming up because he knew I was wrong.

[2:03:50] That's the first time that's happened all day.

[2:03:52] Okay, item five is to request approval to award bid to Jackie Jones.

[2:03:56] Cross our Dodge Jeep Ram as the lowest responsible responsive bidder for the purchase of 10, 20, 23 Dodge Chargers police package in the amount of $387,000 and to authorize the county manager to execute all necessary documents.

[2:04:16] Chris, thank you Mr. Chair and Commissioners, I'm sure each of you are saying here we go again, Chris is chasing his tail on vehicles.

[2:04:23] It does feel that way.

[2:04:25] It feels like we've chased a lot.

[2:04:27] But these are there, right?

[2:04:28] Good meeting.

[2:04:28] Just a little background information that Stellantis, who owns Dodge,

[2:04:34] is discontinuing the charger after Model Year 2023.

[2:04:39] So next year, the only thing we have to purchase and proceed rated is a mid-size or

[2:04:44] full-size SUV.

[2:04:45] Either an Explorer, a Tahoe, or a Durango.

[2:04:49] ago. We got some information that there was some 2023 charges sitting on a lot, so we

[2:04:56] posted a bid. Quickly, we had one bid from Jackson.

[2:05:00] Thank you, Jones. They bid $37,378 for a proceed-rated charger that would meet our needs. They have ten of those on the lot ready for delivery this week if this is approved to not. So as much as we seem to have been chasing police cars, regular vehicles, ambulances, this time we finally maybe have found something that is going to be significant benefit to us. So the difference that I want

[2:05:29] I want to share with you in purchasing needs, current year, a

[2:05:34] proceed rated Durango is about $9,000 more than his bid on these chargers.

[2:05:42] We've seen an escalation of $3,000 to $4,000 in price per vehicle with the new model years coming.

[2:05:49] So it's easy to say by purchasing these now instead of waiting next year to purchase some type of SUV,

[2:05:55] We can save about $10,000 per unit, which saves us about $100,000.

[2:06:02] Don't want to speak necessarily for the sheriff, but that is just about enough funds to upfit all TN chargers with light sirens, radios.

[2:06:12] We were running about 12, 5 or 13, I think, in current year.

[2:06:17] So that just about gives us all of our upfit for free by acting early on a tip we got that there were some chargers sitting around.

[2:06:25] in the far west of the state.

[2:06:28] I happen to have a business with the county manager that day when I had a career, he had

[2:06:32] a day off and this came up where he needed to put the bed in and he delayed his plans

[2:06:41] for his day off to come and help save the county tax payer $90-$100,000 and I appreciate

[2:06:45] that.

[2:06:47] He rushed over here and done the paperwork so that speaks well and I'm glad we've got

[2:06:58] I'm asking you to award the bid to Jackie Jones.

[2:07:01] As the only bidder, because in our bid document, we had a request that these vehicles could be delivered to us within 30 days.

[2:07:08] We had contact from other folks that said, well, we may have some coming, we have maybe one or two on the lot.

[2:07:14] But this was the only group that could meet the guidelines of delivering all 10 within 30 days.

[2:07:19] So we're good with the finance.

[2:07:22] Okay,

[2:07:26] I entertain the motion. We approve item five of the record agenda.

[2:07:31] Okay, third of second. Second. Any other discussion? Okay, all of them is the

[2:07:36] favor indicate the same. I. Anyone opposed? Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate

[2:07:42] everybody's being proactive on that. Okay, item six is the request approval of

[2:07:48] consolidate of a consolidated fee schedule. Now it's your turn. Will, so we have

[2:07:53] We're managing management analyst Will Scarborough to present that.

[2:08:06] Good evening commissioners.

[2:08:08] I'm here to discuss the fee schedule consolidation again, and request the approval of that fee schedule.

[2:08:19] So as we talked about last time, the real problem we were running into with the different fees is that they were all decentralized within the different departments.

[2:08:29] Not definitely cause some problems.

[2:08:31] One example is some of the departments would charge credit card fees, some would not.

[2:08:38] Usually when people were looking for fees, they had to reach out to the department specifically because there was no central hub where all of them were contained.

[2:08:47] And when making the budget, it's hard to budget correctly the fees if they change mid-year and

[2:08:54] And usually when people would bring fee changes to you, it was whenever they re-did their fees

[2:08:59] not necessarily at one central time period.

[2:09:04] So what we think will solve this problem is consolidating the fee schedule into one

[2:09:10] fee schedule that's centrally located.

[2:09:12] And there are some benefits that come with that.

[2:09:16] Those are one that is convenient because it's widely available.

[2:09:19] And what we plan to do is get a page on the website that contains all the fees without having to have it separately contained to all the different departments.

[2:09:30] So when you go on the website you can just find all of these in one place.

[2:09:35] It's efficient because ideally what we'll do is during the budget process each year we'll come before you all, usually before the, well it will be before the recommended budget.

[2:09:46] bring any fee changes, and then once a year you'll be able to change them, unless there's some outstanding circumstance that we can't control.

[2:09:55] And then also it's accurate, and that really has a lot to do with the budget.

[2:10:00] Make sure that before we recommend a budget to you, we know what the fees will be to be able

[2:10:05] to make accurate projections.

[2:10:10] So in the fee schedule that you all have, basically, there

[2:10:14] are four different types of, I guess, changes that you'll see. The first is an update,

[2:10:20] and basically all that is, is it showing if the fee changed either up or down or say the

[2:10:25] same. The second one is basically we're incorporating new fees and that's usually denoted by the

[2:10:33] new notation under the change. We've got a consolidation and basically what happens there is we

[2:10:43] had multiple fees that we consolidated into one fee to make it easier for both the departments and

[2:10:50] citizens to be able to understand what those fees are.

[2:10:54] And then we also eliminated fees that were no longer necessary or basically were covered

[2:11:00] by other fees, so those were no longer necessary.

[2:11:06] So departments fell under three different categories, one were changes were requested, two were changes

[2:11:12] were not requested, and then special cases.

[2:11:15] With the changes requested, basically we created a quote unquote department, but really it's

[2:11:22] the whole county will have certain fees that apply to everyone unless there's like a statute

[2:11:29] or something that says that it doesn't, but the highlight of that is the three percent credit

[2:11:35] card fee. And I know last time we talked about signage if this were to be approved and our plan

[2:11:42] is to be able to make not just like a piece of paper we stick up but an actual nice sign to be able

[2:11:46] to make sure people know that that is a fee that we're going to have if this is approved.

[2:11:50] I think most people expect that.

[2:11:53] Yeah.

[2:11:54] If you use a card.

[2:11:55] Yeah.

[2:11:56] So, the next one is development services.

[2:12:00] And this is where most of the changes occurred.

[2:12:03] And basically what was going on was they surveyed a lot of the surrounding counties

[2:12:08] to find out what their fees were.

[2:12:10] And like inspections specifically, those had not been updated since 2008.

[2:12:16] So we wanted to make sure that those fees were accurately aligned to what other counties were charging so that we weren't selling ourselves short.

[2:12:27] For GIS land records, basically that was a massive consolidation.

[2:12:34] It went from 57 fees down to 11 and a lot of that has to do with different mapping types and Joey worked really hard to make sure that it was pretty straightforward and simple.

[2:12:45] within the fee schedule so that people would understand what they actually needed.

[2:12:51] The second grouping of departments is animal services, library, DSS,

[2:12:57] under NATO changes requested.

[2:12:59] Animal services, they updated theirs in 2020.

[2:13:04] And since this was first presented, we actually do have a couple of changes,

[2:13:08] but we'll talk about that on the next slide.

[2:13:10] The library is an alignment with its neighbors and its fees, but on the last fee schedule,

[2:13:18] you all saw there are a few admitted.

[2:13:20] So we'll talk about that, but overall, those fees are not actually changing.

[2:13:24] They just need to be added to the fee schedule.

[2:13:26] And then DSS, none of their fees change, but just a note, clinic fees, very specifically,

[2:13:33] the health department.

[2:13:34] We kept those separately because those are really governed by the state.

[2:13:37] So we don't have any say on them and they should probably be kept separate.

[2:13:42] And then the last category is special cases.

[2:13:46] The first one is EMS and basically their rates, we already have basically a contract approved where every year it rolls where their fees are based on the center for Medicare and Medicaid services billing rate and basically what they do is they capture all available insurance money.

[2:14:07] V of those fees so that we already do and we'll continue doing it so that's a special case.

[2:14:13] The next one is Register of Deeds and that one is governed by General Statute.

[2:14:19] So although it's on the fee schedule technically we don't have anything to do with it.

[2:14:25] Next we have the Sheriff's Office and the only change they had was the Pistol Permit fee and

[2:14:32] And that was eliminated by the state, so we just no longer charge for that.

[2:14:36] And then solid waste, we have in the budget ordinance that you all received earlier.

[2:14:41] And there's have to be located in there.

[2:14:46] It's still permit fee was $5, $5, $5.

[2:14:49] Yeah, it was $5.

[2:14:52] So update since the last time I was in front of you, the first one was the library late fees.

[2:14:57] And those were just accidentally omitted.

[2:14:59] So we added.

[2:15:00] Those to make sure that they were on there. Animal services got rid of three different fees. One was heartworm tests. The next was feline, amino deficiency virus slash feline leukemia virus. And then the last one was a cat trap deposit. And then register of deeds, we had a few changes. And really it was just clarifying some language and making sure that we delineated what fees went where. So some fees, some of the

[2:15:29] the money goes to the register of deeds and some goes to the vinyl records.

[2:15:36] So really what that was is just making sure those were delineated correctly.

[2:15:41] And then planning we clarified the manufactured home definition and basically our b's were

[2:15:47] a part of that original denotation and they do not fall under the manufactured homes.

[2:15:55] So we took just that two words out.

[2:15:58] And then inspections, there are a couple of things in that that really we discovered through the ordinance project that Amy's finishing up.

[2:16:06] And one of them was the adult establishment business license.

[2:16:11] No one's ever applied for one here, but we technically have a fee in the ordinance, so we wanted to make sure that we added that to inspections to cover that fee.

[2:16:22] And then we also apply our prevention fees and we wanted to basically move the fees from

[2:16:28] that into the fee schedule so that when you change the fees if necessary in the future,

[2:16:36] it won't be located in the ordinance where you have to change the whole ordinance, it

[2:16:40] will just be in the fee schedule and then the ordinance will reference the fee schedule.

[2:16:45] So that's why we did that and those were added.

[2:16:49] So, I can take any questions, but just a note, if approved, this will go into effect on July 1, 2023 with the new fiscal year.

[2:17:00] All those EMS changes with Medicare expansion and everything, that's a set fee that's reimbursed to the person needing care, so it's just keeping up with what the set standard fee is.

[2:17:14] I noticed a lot of changes in that section, so yeah, just Medicaid reimbursement

[2:17:20] holidays.

[2:17:24] That's who we build Medicaid.

[2:17:33] That's about it. The fee on this public

[2:17:36] information request, things on the statute on that public information joy will

[2:17:41] know about it. That it says in the statute if I understand and correct it, if

[2:17:48] somebody don't actually front specific, then we can charge them for it if I get

[2:17:52] It's really exorbitant, it takes a lot of manpower and a lot of hours to do it.

[2:17:56] There is a provision in General Statute 132, 6.2, that does say if a request requires extensive use of information technology resources,

[2:18:08] or extensive use of clerical or supervisory resources, that the county can charge for

[2:18:14] those resources up to and including labor, where normally we are only allowed to charge for

[2:18:20] the materials that are used and not the labor, the law does not define what the extensive

[2:18:27] use would be. So we would need a policy in Haywood County that would define that in order

[2:18:34] for us to charge that so we could do that uniformly across the board. If that's something you guys

[2:18:39] were interested in, we could put something together and bring it back to you.

[2:18:42] That being up to a certain amount, do we have that work? Who would be the divine line on that?

[2:18:48] That would be up to the policy that's not being created currently.

[2:18:53] We would have to draw a line in the sand basically that said at this point when we consume this amount of staff time or this amount of resources, we would begin to charge.

[2:19:03] The statute does allow to charge for labor if that's staff resources or for any cost we incurred from a technology standpoint, if that's technology resources.

[2:19:13] Some may say somebody asked for something that they're just on a witch and I can't tell

[2:19:18] you what they're hunting for and this won't exorbitant amount of information and stuff

[2:19:23] like that.

[2:19:23] Would that follow in that category?

[2:19:25] It would depend on the amount of resources that were used.

[2:19:28] We get a tremendous amount of public record requests.

[2:19:31] Some of those are very specific and those we can handle very quickly and very efficiently.

[2:19:37] If somebody comes up and says I'm looking for this particular contract, for example,

[2:19:42] that can be turned around in minutes, not a big deal.

[2:19:45] Those things we deal with on a daily basis.

[2:19:48] We do get an increasing number of more broad requests

[2:19:53] where we may have, and I've used this example recently,

[2:19:57] we had a request where some-

[2:20:00] Somebody had requested, I think, 15 months worth of emails from three different staff members, which would require someone to go through and review about, I think it was 60,000 emails or something to that effect. This particular person was very easy to work with. We let them know, you know, we'll be glad to do whatever we need to do, but this is going to take months to complete this. And we gave them some options. We can refine this by keywords. We can refine this by timeline.

[2:20:29] line to bring that down to a level that would be quicker, and they were able to do that

[2:20:35] into a much smaller scope, but we do have some requests that we receive from lots of

[2:20:42] different places that are more open-ended, and with those it does consume a considerable

[2:20:47] amount of staff time, so depending on where that line would be, those would fall into

[2:20:51] a billable category.

[2:20:53] The pretty exorbitant amount of money, but what would you just, I guess,

[2:20:58] I don't know what that one you're talking about would cost the one that said 15 months or whatever.

[2:21:03] Well, I don't really know.

[2:21:05] I can tell you we had one during the pandemic with the health director,

[2:21:09] and it took trying to balance going through those,

[2:21:13] because when you're dealing with the health director's email,

[2:21:16] a lot of the information that she receives is protected by HIPAA

[2:21:20] and different privacy statutes.

[2:21:22] I know that that one in particular took six months

[2:21:26] for her to sort through all those emails,

[2:21:29] and balance sorting through all those emails

[2:21:31] with her regular duties in the middle of a pandemic.

[2:21:35] So it was the perfect storm it took six months.

[2:21:38] I don't know exactly how many man hours that was,

[2:21:40] but it was considerable.

[2:21:42] And that's probably the largest one we've actually produced

[2:21:45] in recent history, but we've had several requests

[2:21:48] Yes, that are large and could assume a lot of staff time.

[2:22:04] All of the staff you can do, you know, because we get several.

[2:22:07] I know one of them, I believe you told me, took 40 hours and eight people, wasn't it?

[2:22:13] Yes.

[2:22:13] That's a whole lot of money that the county's people and taxpayers money are paying for nothing.

[2:22:17] When there wasn't nothing there, and then there's, we're paying that kind of money for nothing.

[2:22:23] We've done that for about 15 years with one person here, so.

[2:22:26] Yes, and Dr. Williams.

[2:22:27] Yeah,

[2:22:31] they're usually isn't anything, so go ahead, man.

[2:22:37] Mr. Chairman, if that's something you'd like us to look into, we can spin the next 30, 60 days looking at it.

[2:22:45] That law isn't real specific, so we want to make sure that if we go down that road, that we get it right.

[2:22:51] You're probably going to have to charge any public request that, because if you don't, it might be easy.

[2:22:57] But easy employees, we just approved a budget and hourly rate.

[2:23:04] So if it takes an employee an hour, that's $15, but if Joey's doing it, it's probably a lot more than that.

[2:23:13] So the statute is really drafted and

[2:23:18] Joey points it out and he actually read the part of it.

[2:23:21] But the statute is very vague and it anticipates that the examples that Joey mentioned of just popping up a copy of a contract or a dozen contracts or something is very easy to do and very cut and dried.

[2:23:39] The statute seems to anticipate that all of those public records or responses will be at just the cost of reproduction, just the cost of copies, okay.

[2:23:50] But the statute also says that if it takes this extraordinary amount of time of folks,

[2:23:58] not just in other resources, then you can set it up.

[2:24:03] But without a policy, we need to establish a policy so that we can apply that correctly.

[2:24:09] And uniformly, again, uniformly, so that there's no allegation that it's somebody's being punished or something.

[2:24:16] It also gives you a negotiation issue with the requestor because sometimes the requesters don't realize how complex the information is embedded in things that have to be sorted out.

[2:24:34] That's what Joe was talking about.

[2:24:36] that we also have some software coming, I think.

[2:24:40] Is that right, Julie?

[2:24:41] Yeah, we've got some software coming that will handle some

[2:24:45] of that kind of processing large quantities of emails, documents,

[2:24:50] and things like that to pluck out the information you need

[2:24:54] by date subject matter, that kind of thing.

[2:24:58] That's good.

[2:25:00] And to simplify, in many cases, these routine requests that come from a lot of different sources for a lot of aggregated information, rather than just a copy of a thing. So, there be a lot of moving parts on this particular policy, the business of responses to public records requests that's going to impact how we do our business. We also are not far away probably from a public information officer.

[2:25:29] being hard. And that and you shuffle some of those duties into into that office if

[2:25:36] if that gets done. Somebody request for you for example to go over it actor go

[2:25:44] he went out in the county manager to go through it and you go through it with that

[2:25:47] statute covered. Y'all please. They need to they need to they need to seriously

[2:25:52] consider what my fees might be in that situation and we don't we don't actually

[2:25:58] have a schedule for my fees for that kind of situation but we could look into it and I think

[2:26:03] something ought to be looked into absolutely. And I will say Frank mentioned about a little bit

[2:26:10] about that but the about being able to negotiate the scope of the public records request the really

[2:26:17] unfortunate part in the example that I mentioned with the health director is she put six hours or six

[2:26:22] months worth of labor into producing that request and when she reached back out to the media outlet

[2:26:28] that had made the request initially to see how they wanted delivered they said oh we don't

[2:26:33] need that anymore. So that entire amount of labor really was just wasted where if we had

[2:26:42] been able to let them know how long it would have taken and provided some kind of estimate

[2:26:45] maybe that would have allowed us to negotiate something there.

[2:26:54] Getting back to the big picture the feast rupture is basically just keeping up with times.

[2:26:59] had someone hadn't been updated in 15 years that correct since 2008.

[2:27:04] The inspections were not updated since 2008 and then let me make sure but

[2:27:11] environmental health was 2002 and then Gary and you might know, Gary might

[2:27:16] know more. I don't have how long planning was but inspections alone.

[2:27:21] Raise the more customary as what we're looking for. Malcolm Bred's gone up in 15 years.

[2:27:26] One

[2:27:29] thing that's interesting on the land records piece, like Will said, we dropped it from

[2:27:34] 57 different charges to 11.

[2:27:36] You'll actually see a reduction in a lot of those fees or they've stayed the same.

[2:27:41] Part of that is because as technology has improved, the cost of the materials has reduced.

[2:27:48] So wherein the past, the cost of printing a three by four foot map might be $40 or $50.

[2:27:56] dollars and now that cost has reduced greatly as we've gotten better

[2:27:59] technology so that's another another benefit of re-evaluating the fee

[2:28:04] schedules is being able to line those up with the cost.

[2:28:07] Several of them had went down.

[2:28:11] I'd be a good idea to get on some kind of a schedule if it's ever four years

[2:28:15] just like a re-evaluation or we look at this ever three or four years so

[2:28:20] maybe someone had questions

[2:28:27] or comments.

[2:28:33] Yeah, we got to prove it.

[2:28:34] Yeah.

[2:28:35] Yeah.

[2:28:35] Item 6.

[2:28:36] Yeah.

[2:28:38] At your hard work on that, that's going to help us and help other people too.

[2:28:46] Okay.

[2:28:47] So why don't we approve Item 6 and then we'll talk about Terry's point there.

[2:28:53] So I'll entertain a motion.

[2:28:55] We approve Item 6.

[2:29:02] You hear the discussion?

[2:29:04] Others in favor say aye.

[2:29:05] Aye.

[2:29:06] You want to post.

[2:29:07] Okay.

[2:29:10] So we're going to hire a public information officer, a PIO, and we're looking at doing that soon.

[2:29:20] They're paid a salary, I guess, and this program that y'all are going to buy, how much is it?

[2:29:26] It's about $6,000 annually.

[2:29:29] annually so to me just to me if okay that's $6,000 annual that's a cost so we need

[2:29:39] to probably have a cost built in even though it might be easy for that to for that

[2:29:50] also I'm just talking you know because are we using that justification to hire a PIO

[2:29:54] No, no, no, no, you're just saying that we possibly need to go that direction.

[2:30:00] Correct. I would like to have a few weeks to reach out to the school of government and research this, see if there's other counties or municipalities that have come down this through that because.

[2:30:16] They just keep getting worse and worse and worse, and people's out here tax money is going

[2:30:21] for foolishness gains, and on some, some of them are legit, there's a lot of them are

[2:30:26] legit, but there's some of it, it won't ask for nothing specific, and they're just hunting

[2:30:32] something.

[2:30:32] I mean, it had made it, they just hunt something.

[2:30:34] And when you got two, three said it's out here, just hunting something like that, they're

[2:30:38] I'm taking up tons of the county's time

[2:30:41] plus the taxpayer's money.

[2:30:43] I agree with that.

[2:30:44] Very few of them are legit, believe me.

[2:30:46] So I agree with you.

[2:30:47] I think there's other jobs out here

[2:30:48] that would help the county instead

[2:30:50] of wasting time on stuff like this.

[2:30:52] I think that's just my opinion.

[2:30:54] No, you're right, you're right.

[2:30:58] Okay, so why don't you check into that front

[2:31:00] with the school government

[2:31:01] and find out what they say and kind of get back to us?

[2:31:04] I'll try to have something to report back June 5th.

[2:31:08] Okay, okay, great.

[2:31:09] Okay. Okay. All right. So that concludes the regular agenda. Right. Amy, we're doing

[2:31:17] good. Okay. All right. Next is appointments, request approval appointment of one position

[2:31:23] by vote to the Hayward County Community Board College Board of Trustees. We interview, so

[2:31:28] we lose two candidates, very good candidates, Danny Wingate and Ed Brown. It's submitted

[2:31:34] applications and we had great candidates for this one position unfortunately.

[2:31:38] You

[2:32:18] voted to appoint Danny Wingett to term on the Haywood County, the Haywood Community College Board of Trustees.

[2:32:33] Okay, that concludes the agenda.

[2:32:36] We do not have a closed session, does anyone have any other business to bring before the board?

[2:32:42] Well, I do, Mr. Chair, I'd like to wish all the mothers, I think you can install some of that with bragging on your mother.

[2:32:50] of my mother's in the rest home, care facility. She raised five children, her and my father.

[2:32:57] We actually had a milk cow. We had fresh milk and butter growing up through high schools. She

[2:33:02] actually sewed our clothes for the store-bought clothes about seventh grade, I remember correctly.

[2:33:09] I was looking her hands. I went down to the federal breakfast yesterday morning. I was looking her

[2:33:13] hands and I thought, well if those hands could talk, all the work she did and to help other people

[2:33:19] grew a big garden had enough for us and then gave enough the way to needy families

[2:33:23] that needed it. I feel fortunate to have a mother like a dead and I just want to wish all

[2:33:29] the mothers out there around the county and happy mother's day, belated one day.

[2:33:37] So, I do want to say that the friends of the NRA, Blue Ridge Friends of the NRA will be having

[2:33:46] in their banquet on May 25th at the fairgrounds.

[2:33:51] That's on a Thursday night and the money goes

[2:33:54] to the shooting clubs at the high school,

[2:33:58] teaches young people how to handle firearms.

[2:34:01] So, somebody's interested in that,

[2:34:03] that'll be, you can call me a brand,

[2:34:05] if they're interested in that,

[2:34:06] we can get you in touch with somebody.

[2:34:08] We'll say, Bethel Middle School won the State Championship

[2:34:12] and I can't remember what Brandon Sutton told me

[2:34:16] that Pizgan Tesco did, but I think they tied in their competition, but there were several

[2:34:22] competitions.

[2:34:23] Yeah, they did.

[2:34:23] They did very well.

[2:34:25] Excellent program.

[2:34:26] Yeah, it is.

[2:34:27] So, and this helps keep young people.

[2:34:31] This is, you know, not everybody's going to play ball.

[2:34:33] Not everybody's going to do certain things, but some people are more interested.

[2:34:38] Like I was when I was a young person in hunting and stuff, so.

[2:34:42] but and I do want to say again that I appreciate that I had a godly mother and she

[2:34:45] taught me taught me well and I was I've been very blessed with my parents so

[2:34:54] Zimba you have anything else I'll entertain a motion we

[2:35:00] I see. I think I got everything. Is that everything, Amy? Okay. I'll entertain a motion. We adjourn. Okay. All in favor say aye. Okay. We're adjourned. Everybody have good evening.

[2:35:11] Thank you.

Board of Commissioners Regular Evening

Agenda

Transcript