Of the Moore County commissioners, thanks everyone for coming out this evening.
The invocation will be done by Reverend Theron Willis from Carthage United Methodist Church.
He will offer the invocation, and it will be followed by Tammy Golden, who will lead us
in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand if you're able.
Let us pray. Gracious and loving God, we give you thanks and praise for these dedicated
public servants who you have answered your call to serve as this County's Board of Commissioners.
Please be present in this meeting through the work of your Holy Spirit. Grant these
commissioners divine wisdom to be faithful shepherds of the resources and people entrusted
into their care. Grant them clarity of mind to weigh complex issues, patience to listen
to all voices and unity of purpose to serve all citizens well.
May all that is spoken and
dedicated here today bring honor and glory to your name. And as in Jesus' holy and precious
name we pray, amen.
Are
there any additional agenda items for consideration this evening?
Yes, sir. I'd like to add under new business item a contract amendment number two with United Reynolds for the water pollution control plant
That is in the form of a motion
Okay, we have a motion by
Chairman for Cerno
Kurt will be our second
All right, just all in favor all in favor
The eyes have it 3-0
Does any commissioner have a conflict of interest concern in any agenda items on the board will address in this meeting?
None noted. All items listed below are considered routine and will be enacted by one motion. No separate discussion will be held except on the request of a member of the board.
Motion to approve consent.
Okay, I've got a motion by Chairman Pocerno and Commissioner Cook.
The vote is 3-0.
Excuse me.
Well, you need to ask for the vote.
Okay.
Oh, excuse me.
Bear with me, gentlemen and ladies.
We're-
Training.
Trial under fire this evening.
Okay.
All right.
Do I have a vote?
All in favor.
Aye.
Does have it 3-0.
So we
have nothing under recognitions, presentations.
I'll now turn it over to our county manager.
Thank you, Vice-Chairman Bunkenon.
We do have one item under our public hearings.
This is for the board to consider a call to for a public hearing
to update our road naming and addressing ordinance.
And for this item, we'll recognize our GIS coordinator,
Rachel Smith.
Good evening.
The request is hereby made for the board of commissioners
to call a public hearing for Tuesday, August 18th, 2026 at 5.30 p.m. to consider an amendment
to the mortar county road name and addressing ordinance to add one road to the ordinance.
The background is section three of the ordinance states no new roads outside the municipal
limits of the county of Moore, whether part of the state secondary road system or private
that shall be named without the approval
of the Board of Commissioners.
The road listed here is for initial naming
and will be privately maintained.
Ashton Lane,
pause for any comments.
Do I have a motion?
Yes, Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion
that the Board of Commissioners have a call
to public hearing for August 18, 2026 at 5.30
to consider amendments to more county road name,
addressing ordinance to have one road to the ordinance adding Ashton Lane.
I have a motion by Chairman Pizarro and a second by Commissioner Cook. Any discussion?
All in favor say aye. No. All opposed say no.
We have the ayes have it 3-0.
Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Vice Chairman.
There are no items under our quasi-judicial. There are no items under old business.
We do have one item that was added as an additional agenda item on the new business and this is
for the board to consider a contract amendment to with United Rentals and we'll recognize
our public works director Brian Patnode to introduce this item.
Good evening commissioners.
Thank you for the late addition.
If you remember last meeting we were excited about the aeration blowers finally being
delivered from Belgium.
Unfortunately, they sent the wrong size connection piece.
The new blowers are 16-inch, the old are 14.
They were supposed to convert it during the manufacturing process, but they did not.
So we're still in a holding pattern.
We're working with the supplier hoping they can help us out, get it here quickly and
help us absorb some of these costs.
this amendment is to extend the rental in case we need it in an extended period
of time and increase the dollar amount by roughly 103,000 to cover potential
cost of that rental. Are there any questions or would you like for me to
what was the amount again? 103,000?
That takes the new not to
to exceed amount to the 451.422.30.
All right.
Okay, do I have a motion?
Yeah, I'll make a motion to approve amendment number two
with the United Rentals to extend the contract
through September 30, 2026.
Increase the, do not exceed amount to 451,422.30 cents.
Authorize the chairman to sign.
Second.
Okay, I have a motion by Chairman Paterno
and a second by Commissioner Cook.
Any discussion?
Yes, Mr. Chair, I would ask that our attorneys prepare and send a letter to the manufacturer
requesting a rebate of $103,000 so that we can send this money to United Rentals, not
for the ratepayers in Warl County, to fix their mistake.
Thank you.
Thank you, Brian.
All in favor say aye.
Are we doing that?
Okay.
All right.
Discussion?
Yeah.
Thank you.
All right.
Yeah, what do you write a couple you call for the boat? Okay all in favor say aye. They
ice have it three to zero. Thank you. Thank you Brian. Thank you Vice-Chairman
Von Cannon. That's all the items under new business. There is one item under
appointments and we'll turn it over to our Assistant Manager Laura Williams who
is filling in for our clerk Jenny Parks who is in a class this week. Thank
Thank you.
So there are no actions requested on the appointments tonight.
This is just review for your next meeting in August for appointments to be made to the
airport authority for Eugene Horn's seat, board of health for Nick Ellis's seat and
Benjamin Wacker's seat, planning board Tucker McKenzie and the Sandhills Regional
Library System, board of trustees Joanne King.
So I think Jenny has provided to you the applications and background on those
Desiring additional terms of service
Nick Alice was he was particular was he a particular position you know some have to be he was at large. He was at large, okay? Yes, and
Then Dr. Wacker is optometrist. Yeah,
all right. Thank you
All right at this time. We're going to open the public comment period
This will be three minutes per person, and or when you hear the buzzer, if you're at the end of a thought or the beginning of a thought, go ahead and draw it to a close, and we'll get started.
Our first, please stand up to the podium and give your name and where you're from.
We're going to start off with Debra.
Is this McAllen?
McGovern.
Alrighty.
I'm Debra McGovern.
I live in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
I'm here to discuss, think about what surveillance is like in our county.
We have flock machines going up.
We do not think that surveilling our community is a good thing for the community.
There are plenty of studies that we can see that show that flock does not make our community
safer. And I think we should all be willing to talk about and think about where we go with this
because I do not think it's the right thing for us. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next speaker, John Maziac.
Comissors, I'm John Maziac, and I'm from Woodlake. During your July 21 meeting, we heard from two representatives
from the nursing and adult care home community advocacy committee. During their presentation
they noted how North Carolina has an aging population. More specifically, they mentioned
more county is near the top of the list of counties with aging populations and the problems
and costs that brings with it. How do we reduce the average age here in more county
and the certain increased cost to come.
As a result, I suggest we need to find a way to induce younger people to move or locate
here permanently. How does that get done? I suggest we need to find a way to bring high
paying jobs to more county. During the meeting there was also a discussion about the land
use plan. I suggest a portion of our approximately 450,000 acres of land be made available
for companies that can provide high paying jobs that will be necessary to attract those
was younger workers.
That would necessitate extending necessary infrastructure
to any potentially newly identified appropriate sites.
The clock is ticking.
Imagine more.
Also during that last meeting, school
disrepresentative is reported on future capital requirements.
It was reported that being a tier three county essentially
makes more county ineligible for state funding.
My recommendation is change the state structure.
North Carolina has physically the 27th largest state by land area in the U.S.
We have 100 counties. Only six states have more counties than does North Carolina.
Five of those states are physically larger than North Carolina. Only one is smaller.
My suggestion is to reduce the number of counties the state has.
I've attached an estimate of the cost savings for the state and local governments if this
were to be done, which I've given to your clerk.
The number estimated is $20 billion per year.
That's savings of nearly $1,850 per year per North Carolina resident.
Every man, woman, and child.
For comparison, every one cent in property tax reduction here in Moore County saves every man, woman, and child in Moore County approximately $24.
Thank you.
Thank you, John.
Megan Spearing.
Hello, my name is Megan Spearing.
I live in Southern.
Can you hear me now?
Okay.
I live in Southern Pines.
My name is Megan Spearing.
I am an Air Force veteran.
When I was in the military, I was military intelligence, specifically an imagery analyst.
I'm giving you this information because I have a unique insight into why more counties should
not have flock cameras, and that reason is being national security.
I know that sounds alarmist and dare I say crazy, however, part of my duties were to
identify track and neutralize targets.
But when I was in, this was done with drones, CTT footage, phones, and any other resource
we had available to us.
If Flock had been in those countries, specifically OEF, OIF, that would have made my life, my
job a million times easier.
It literally made the, gave me all of the information that I needed.
It would have made our lives so easy.
Flock has notoriously weak cybersecurity.
The enemy has amazing hackers.
They have hacked public works and even the FBI, so Flock would be child's play for them.
Now you may be thinking why would the enemy be interested in Moore County? Moore County
is home to many special forces members as well as other military personnel. It is also
home to many contractors that also do a large portion of the intel work for the special
forces. Flock cameras in Moore County are creating a pattern of life intel that can
being used against our own warfighters.
And it is not even secured properly.
It isn't secret that Moore County
is home to special operators.
I was scrolling on Facebook last night
and I saw a meme about special ops
and it's specifically named Southern Pines, North Carolina.
I took a screenshot so if you guys wanna see it,
I can show it to you.
I contend that we have a duty
not to make the enemy's job easier
and not to place our service members at risk.
I just want to finish up with two points.
The first is our government has banned cars from China
due to the slight risk and concern that cameras in the cars may be spying.
Sorry.
The second is that Flock is a money grab.
They get contracts from town, cities, and even private corporations.
They collect and own the data that they receive from our roads.
They then sell the data that we are paying them because we rent out their equipment.
And they sell that data to other companies to include insurance companies,
which in fact will raise our premiums.
That's neither here nor there.
So, sorry. But basically, I'm just going to finish on something that I learned all too
well when I was in the military. And that is the intended target is rarely the only thing
hit in a strike. You may not be the target, but you could be collateral damage. Thank
you.
Thank you.
All right. If you'll hold for your clapping, we don't allow that in public
speaking and we'll try to get through this. Ellis Dominic.
Hey, Ellis Dominic from Pine Bluff. Nice to see you again, commissioners. You've heard
me talk about Flock and its dangers and problems for the last two months. I'm not going to
talk about that this time. I'm just going to say thank you to all my fellow Moore County
citizens for coming out. We are a growing group of people. We are bipartisan and
we are not going to go away until we ensure that our Fourth Amendment rights are secure
from warrantless seizures. Thank you. Thank you Alice. Linda Hoover.
I'm Linda
Hoover. I live in Sanford and according to your rules because I pay sales tax in
Moore County that I'm allowed to speak. I lived in Moore County for 25 years
until a few years ago I moved to Tramway and but I 90% of the time I work in
this county and probably at least 90% of the time I do all my shopping in
this county. So I still consider myself to be very close to more county. I do have concerns
about the flock cameras or what are called automatic license plate readers. And my concern
is certainly with those is that when we talk about if you're doing nothing wrong, then
why is it an issue? But who's going to consider what's wrong, right? That definition can
always be expanded. Recently in Texas, a police department checked 83,000 cameras over 6,700
networks trying to track a woman who did nothing illegal. So that becomes, you know, a violation
of our Fourth Amendment rights. And I realize that you have the weighty responsibility between
keeping your people safe, but also maintaining our freedoms. And so there's also the cases
of people's stock of officers. Unfortunately, we know that there are many, many, many good
law enforcement. But then there's that handful that are now using these to stalk people.
So now, as you become concerned about that as well, and like it has been said, that the
cameras have been shown not to really increase the safety of our communities. And so they
also say, believe the software. But now there have been false arrests. And now it's
upon the individual to prove you're innocent,
so you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent,
rather than you're innocent until proven guilty.
So there's those.
So it becomes, again, how far is enough
with our, I realize there's a lot of surveillance,
but how far is enough?
Is it, are we finally gonna end it
with it being like George Orwell's 1984
and we've got cameras in our houses?
So thank you for your time.
Thank you, Linda.
Our last speaker at the scene will be Jim Peterson.
Hello everyone, I'll be real fast.
I've been researching about these flock cameras and like municipal cops and sheriff deputies
I know they all love them and I get it why because it makes their jobs a lot easier and
they're having good success using them.
But I do have some fourth amendment concerns and one arguments I heard people saying well
if you're not doing anything wrong or illegal you have nothing to worry about.
Something that popped in my head was sometimes right or wrong can be subjective and I'm
thinking about J6 looks what happened to people that just wanted to peacefully listen
and to their president speak.
What happened to me, J6, I wasn't even there.
I get blamed for everything all the time.
2021, DOJ put out a letter,
pretty much labeling grandma speaking at school boards
as extremists and domestic terrorists.
2023, it was found out that FBI was surveilling Catholics
as some kind of domestic extremists.
So, yeah, it can be subjective, right and wrong.
And then I'm thinking like,
look, 10, 15, 20 years down the road from now,
God forbid, like the DSA took over, would if they labeled Jews and Catholics, I mean Jews
and Christians as extremists and used flock crammers, or how much they improved upon them
then to round up Jews and Christians.
Thank you.
That's all I have to say about that.
No, no, let's go ahead and hold it, guys.
All right, we'll go to Wayne for our manager's report this evening.
Thank you, Vice Chairman Bunkenin.
I have nothing additional to provide.
Thank you.
Okay.
Commissioner's comments.
We'll start up first. Have you got anything?
No, I just understand that we do hear everything we know,
and because we don't say anything in our response,
because we don't during public speaking.
We have our opinions on it.
But each one of us is going to do their own due diligence
and go through everything.
So it's not going to be, we're not just listening to someone
with their thoughts.
We're going to add those to our research, what we know,
And guess what I used to do?
Yeah.
Well, I was one of those green berets that you talked about.
So all my neighborhood is SF and other people.
So I understand it's not falling on deaf ears.
We're going to have a work session next week, two weeks.
And then we'll hammer out a lot of things from there
and then we'll come to our conclusion.
But understand it's not falling on deaf ears
and you're not being ignored.
Thank you.
Thanks. First of all, thank you for your service to our country. I have utmost respect for all veterans.
We did. Ellis, he had sent me a couple of emails. As you can see, summer schedules are weird.
We got two commissioners not here tonight. It's hard to get everybody together.
But as soon as we got the feeling that this was happening as far as the flock
and a lot of concerns, a lot of good information, but also misinformation. There's always all
that. And so I, as the chairman, I had a work session scheduled with the law enforcement
in the Ryan Center August 17th, 4 p.m. That's on a Monday. August 17th, 4 p.m., the public
is invited. At this time, we'll be requesting him to answer a lot of these questions
that you have presented so that we can understand the way this works I know you
most of you don't come to most of our meetings and I get that when I was not a
commissioner I didn't come either I depended on these guys that were sitting
up here to do what was right when we had the flock contract main mainly what we
do we had discussion with the sheriff he had pretty much said it was a good
tool our legal part of it is to make sure our attorney goes through the contract
to make sure there's no loopholes or whatever and it fits all legal
requirements and then we vote on it. We didn't vote on it as to its effectiveness
or that we depended on another elected official to actually implement this.
So I think it's very important given the concern of our folks and we do
work for you that you have that opportunity on August 17th to come and hear
answers to these questions that you have. As a matter of fact I have one too
because when I hear somebody like say makes a statement I won't know where the
proof is or is it just hearsay. And unfortunately in our world with all the
YouTube's and the Facebook's and everything there's more misinformation
out there than there's actual fact. So we'll depend on our elected
to the sheriff and his crew to give us the answers straight from those that use it.
And then we'll see what we actually end up doing once we get that information.
And but yeah, yes ma'am.
But
you know what my questions are?
Sure.
If you want to send them to the clerk, absolutely send them.
I think that would be very helpful.
A lot of them already have come to us, but sure, if you can get them to us, we surely
get them to them and have them answer those questions you deserve than answer.
Yes ma'am. That's all I have. Thanks. That was good. Thank you for doing that.
First of all, thank you all for coming out tonight and voice your
opinion and everything and there always is two sides to the story and we try
to get the groups together and make the best decision we can up here. Not
going to make everybody happy. What I would challenge you to do this
evening though is to go home and call a family member or a friend that
you haven't seen in ages and it's getting older and whatever because you know
once they get in the paper it's too late and I'm sure everybody out there has
one person they've been meaning to call for the last month or six months or
whatever so other than that that's all I've got this
I need a motion to adjourn.
A motion to adjourn the meeting?
Second.
Okay.
All right.
All in favor?
Aye.
The ayes have it.
The motion carries unanimously.
Y'all have a good safe evening.