Good evening everyone, and welcome to the June 10th meeting of the Chapel Hill Town Council. We're very glad to have you join us.
As a note to the clerk council member, Sharp will not be joining us tonight. This evening we have two items on our agenda for discussion or action. The first is to consider adoption of the final 2026-2027 budget and related items.
The second is to hold a public hearing related to the downtown municipal services district contracted services.
To get us started this evening we have two proclamations to announce. The first is for Pride Month.
And I'd like to invite members of the town's LGBTQ plus employee resource group and members of the LGBT plus community to please join me up front for the announcement and to receive this year's proclamation.
Each June we join communities across the nation in celebrating Pride Month. A time to honor the courage, resilience and contributions of LGBTQ plus people reflect on the progress made since the Stonewall uprising of
69 and recommit ourselves to the work that remains. Chapel Hill has long been committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive community where all people are treated with dignity, respect and belonging.
We're proud of our efforts to support LGBTQ plus residents, employees and visitors and we remain steadfast in our opposition to discrimination, prejudice, homophobia and transphobia.
This year we are pleased to join with our neighbors in Carborough to celebrate small town pride and the vibrant LGBTQ plus community that helps make our town stronger, more diverse and more welcoming places to live.
Therefore we are proud to proclaim June 2026 as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer plus pride month in the town of Chapel Hill.
We encourage all residents to celebrate, learn and continue to work toward a future where everyone is welcomed, embraced and protected. Happy Pride.
Thank you.
All right. Good evening everyone. Tonight we'd like to take a moment to recognize June as immigrant heritage month in Chapel Hill.
Our community is enriched by residents from many different countries, cultures and backgrounds.
Immigrants, refugees and newcomers contribute every day to our schools, businesses, healthcare systems, neighborhoods and civic life.
Helping make Chapel Hill the vibrant and welcoming community it is. This month is an opportunity to celebrate their contributions, honor their resilience and reaffirm our commitment to inclusion, dignity and belonging for all residents.
As such we encourage everyone to join in recognizing and celebrating the rich heritage and lasting impact of immigrant communities in Chapel Hill.
Now if our immigrant neighbors and friends and supporters want to come up here we will read a proclamation making June immigrant heritage month.
Where as the town of Chapel Hill recognizes that immigrants and the descendants of contributed significantly to the cultural, civic, economic and social fabric of our community.
Bringing diverse languages, cultures, skills, perspectives and traditions that enrich our shared identity and whereas immigrant communities have helped shape and sustain local institutions, including schools, universities, businesses, healthcare systems and civic organizations.
Here as refugees, asylum seekers and other newcomers who have come to the United States in search of safety, freedom and opportunity, embody resilience and determination and contribute meaningfully to the life of our community and whereas immigrant heritage month provides an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the journey's resilience and enduring impact of immigrants.
Reaffirming our commitment to inclusion, dignity and belonging for all residents and whereas the town of Chapel Hill remains committed to fostering a welcoming community that values equity, mutual respect and cultural diversity.
Now therefore we, the Chapel Hill Mayor and town council do hereby proclaim June 2026 as immigrant heritage month and encourage everyone to recognize and celebrate the rich heritage experiences and lasting impact of immigrants in our community.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all for joining us tonight and you are such an important part of our community we are grateful you are here and we are very proud to celebrate with you.
Up next, that brings us to announcements.
I have three quick things to share. First is that the town will be holding two stormwater open houses next Tuesday, June 16th at the Chapel Hill Library.
This is an opportunity to learn about our stormwater management plan, find out what stormwater projects are happening around town and share your ideas.
Building resilience starts with community involvement so we encourage residents businesses and neighborhood leaders to attend share their experiences and help guide efforts to mitigate future flooding throughout Chapel Hill.
Please check out our weekly our town e-newsletter or the town calendar for more information.
Second is an invitation to join us for June 10th, which is a celebration on Friday, June 19th from 4 to 8 at the Hargraves Community Center.
This year's event will feature live performances, history exhibits, local food, art vendors, music, dancing and activities for children.
Please come out to honor Black History, culture and freedom while celebrating the spirit and diversity of our community.
And third, our next town council meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, June 17th, here in town hall at 6 p.m.
This will be our last council meeting of the spring session. We will be discussing our complete community implementation along with the land use management ordinance rewrite.
Both will shape how the town grows and changes in the future.
And we encourage members of the community to join us in person or virtually and to be engaged in these important conversations.
Council members, does anyone else have something to share?
Mayor Potemberry.
Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to do an underscore for June 10th. It is not just Black History. It is our history.
It is when the enslaved folks in Texas finally learned that they were indeed free and we'll take that meeting loosely there.
But I want to underscore that that is all of our history and we share it just as we share today's proclamation for LGBTQ month and also for immigrant month.
We are really proud to be a part of this community. Thank you.
Anybody else? Okay. Next up, we invite members of the public to comment on items not on the printed agenda.
For members of the public in attendance and wishing to speak, please sign up with the town clerk at the table on the left side of the chamber toward the front of the room.
If you're here to speak on a specific agenda item, there will be a presentation on the item followed by council clarifying questions and then public comment.
To help keep things running smoothly, Mayor Potemberry will call two names at a time.
The first should come on down to the podium and the second if you'll please come down to the front and sit and wait up there on deck.
Finally, public input is important to us and I just want to remind our audience as always that we want everyone to be heard and we want to hear you most of all.
So please refrain from commenting or clapping when folks are speaking.
All right. We'll get it started with Jasmine Catharia and also followed by Tisha Abdul.
Welcome.
Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for having me and for giving me the opportunity to speak with you all today.
My name is Jasmine Catharia and I am Miss Chapel Hill's team under the Miss America Opportunity.
The Miss America Opportunity is one of the nation's leading achievement programs for young women focused on scholarship, service, leadership, and personal growth.
Through this organization I have been fortunate to represent Chapel Hill while pursuing meaningful service through our community.
So for my community service initiative is called Filmentality for Filmed Healing and it uses film as a tool to create conversations around mental health when it can be really difficult.
I've taken Filmentality into places all over Chapel Hill like the YMCA in Chapel Hill and the UNC Mental Health Hospital.
I'm so proud to be able to serve this community and it's truly honestly a blessing, honestly just hearing the first part of this town council meeting.
It's just so like I was in tears, it was absolutely beautiful and amazing and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to serve this wonderful city.
I will be competing for Miss North Carolina's team in June and I'm so happy to have Chapel Hill behind me. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Congratulations.
Next, Tisha Abdul followed by Alex Andrew Sheves.
Good evening, commissioners. My name is Tisha Abdul, and I'm your Miss Chapel Hill 2026.
I am proud immigrant to the United States, and sitting at the first part of this meeting
and hearing June beat proclaimed as, I believe, was it national, or what was the name?
Yes, we're going to have to June 1, that meant the world to me.
This past May, I graduated the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a Bachelor's of Science in
Eroscience and a Minor in Chemistry, and I'm pursuing a Master's of Biomedical Science this fall.
I'm competing for the title of Miss North Carolina at the end of this month, and I am head over heels to say that I am proud to represent the town of Chapel Hill.
It also feels like such a full circle moment to me to be able to stand in front of you today.
Because just eight years ago, I was the President of the Cavernous County Youth Commission,
or every other Monday after school, I would sit in the Board of Commissioners meeting.
I actually had a spot right there in Cavernous County with my name on it for two years.
And needless to say, I am eternally grateful, and thank you for your support.
I'm very excited to continue serving the town of Chapel Hill, and thank you for your time this evening.
Congratulations, thank you.
Thank you.
Kate.
Short.
Come on council.
We'll do a quick picture.
One second, yes, she is.
Come on.
Okay.
Next.
We will have Alexey and her sheaves and the sheaves will receive Jane Stutt's time.
Yeah, and Jane, this year is a neighbor where we are speaking on the same topic.
Yes.
But that I'll actually just give all our comments.
I'm sure, and another neighbor, Neil Spurbecker, he's here.
So thank you so much for letting me address you.
I'm here on behalf of a group of neighbors in King's Mill Morgan Creek,
Highland Woods, and a few other neighborhoods who have organized to advocate for self-safe,
multi-modal access, proposed by Dr. Tung, at Otis Road at Fordham.
We have a request with about 175 signatures from town residents expressing support for the goal
that I'm here to talk about today. And I think the council is broadly aware of our interests
and concerns already. Just a highlight, there is more and more traffic on Fordham.
I imagine you've noticed many drivers don't respect this feed limit, and crashes are common
on the stretch of Fordham that we live adjacent to. With plans for the Greenway connecting
the Morgan Creek Trail to our neighborhood where anticipating Greenway users wanting to be able
to access downtown Chapel Hill and the University in Hospital Complex. With the improvements
that we're proposing, Otis is clearly the closest safe possible crossing to connect not only
Morgan Creek East Greenway, but also other southern Greenways and neighborhoods to Chapel Hill
and UNC, and it has the advantage of minimizing hills between Oak and Be a challenge for
bikers and markers. As everywhere gets operationalized and we were delighted to see some information
about that, we want to make sure that the focus on Greenways, which we are very supportive of,
doesn't neglect the connectors that are going to make those Greenways accessible and useful
and allow safe crossing at major barriers like Fordham Highway. We also know that for residents who live
north of Fordham, there's no way to access the wonderful merits pasture other than getting in a car
and driving to the parking lot adjacent to the Kingswood Apartments that, as I'm sure you know,
often overflows on weekends. So today I basically have two goals. One is just keeping this concern
on the towns radar. We know you're aware of it and we also know that there are a lot of competing priorities,
which we respect, but we do have a couple of requests. The first is that town staff work with
regional planners and the NC Department of Transportation to identify the best solution to improve safety
and access across Fordham and to plan and identify what kind of funding makes the most sense to address
this long time barrier in our community. We know we need to partner with and not work against or around
the DOT in order to get the changes that we envision. Our second request is to learn what criteria the
town uses in considering and selecting improvements to advance. We like information about how the town
weighs the many factors it must consider and determining what prioritized. Despite being in the 2020
mobility plan, providing a convenient connection between Morgan Creek East and downtown and UNC,
and the fact that that segment of highway is on Chapel Hill's high injury network,
acrossing at Otis never quite makes it into the short list of projects, despite different possible sources
of funding, including state safety funds, race grants and others. We know the short list for the town is short,
can I take a brief moment and keep talking? I believe that since she's speaking for two,
that she can have a little more time. Okay, it's just a little. So we know the short list is short,
and we would like to learn how the town weighs the many factors that it has to consider
and determining basically what prioritized what actually gets on the short list just so that we can
advocate effectively. So in conclusion, I'd like to note, acrossing at Otis seems to align with many
town goals. It corrects connectivity gap, gap that ports everywhere to everywhere, and Otis
road crossing would connect King's Mill Morgan Creek, Southern Village, Colbert Road, Neighborhoods,
King's Mill Apartments, and South Creek by the planned greenway network, giving access to
Chapel Hill downtown UNC campus and the hospital complex. And it also supports Vision Zero by addressing
core problems that I think we're all aware of, including high speeds, dangerous left turns and
new turns on that section of boredom, numerous crashes and unsafe pedestrian and by crossings.
So many thanks for listening and also to my neighbors for joining me today. Thank you.
So while the town no longer has a formal petition process, sharing your concerns and ideas is
incredibly important and it's a valued first amendment right. It's something we continue to value
in support. Council doesn't take me action on these requests, but they're carefully reviewed by
the town manager and staff who then will review the matter and they'll respond to us and to you.
And if you have anything that you would like to leave, like signatures or anything else you're
welcome to leave with them with the clerk. I think we might actually need to get those to the clerk,
maybe tomorrow. You can get them whenever you want. Thank you. Thank you.
That's it. All ready. That is our last speaker for items not on the printed agenda. So that brings
us to our consent agenda. Council, do I have a motion to approve consent? Move consent.
Move by council member Ryan seconded by council member Miller Fushi all those in favor. Please say aye.
Any opposed? Please say nay. Motion is unanimous. Eight zero.
All right. We're on to item number 10, which is to consider the final budget and related
items for fiscal year 2026, 2027. And I believe we have our town manager, our director of business
management and all the associated friends that you may need. Good evening. Mayor and council.
We reach the end of the road on our budget process. I'm excited to say and before we
do the presentation, I just want to acknowledge Amy and Matt for their
excellent work and support during the process. Lauren and Mary Jane for their support of me as well.
And all the department heads and their staff that need to do a lot of work to put this information together
so that we can consider it and get you a good proposal. So thanks, team and very proud of the work
we've done and I'm proud of the work that council you did last year to set us up in good
stats so that this year's process is a little less painful. So good evening and after months of
conversation I'm here tonight with the final version of your 2627 budget for your consideration
and adoption. So included with this item to be clear is the budget ordinance that's the legal
document that we used to implement the budget, the pay plan and our fee schedule. I've got seven slides.
It'll take a couple of minutes to get through them. Please stop me if you have questions.
The budget highlights you've seen this before. The total budget is $170 million.
A 3.6% increase over private years. There is no property tax increase which leaves our rate
at $0.50 per hundred dollars of assessed valuation. It includes a 4% of market pay increase for our
excellent employees and there are $2.4 million totaled up in your focus areas.
Our priorities in creating this budget were grounded in our commitment to supporting our employees
with competitive compensation and sustainable benefits funding and strengthening our core
municipal services, advancing your strategic priorities and progressing towards fiscal sustainability
guided by our five year budget outlook.
The changes between the draft proposed budget that you considered are very small. We essentially
received two additional grants. AARP is supporting a grant for our vision zero crosswalk project on
leason road at $20,000 and then we've received the actual amounts for the 5303 grant which we get
annually to support the MPO. We usually get an estimate and now we have the final number.
So that's now plugged in. That's 274,500 dollars additional so the total adopted budget is the number
that I mentioned previously 170,000, 1,300,338. That's the new number differentiated from the
original proposal at 169 million. And so those will be included in the budget ordinance. We are
stewards of multiple funds and multiple budgets. This slide shows the final totals across all of
our annually budgeted funds. If you have any questions, certainly let me know. For those watching
at home, we have discussed this in detail, so we are not unfamiliar with these funds and these numbers.
And so in summary, this budget provides resiliency to handle an unpredictable future.
Reduces our reliance on budgeting fund balance on an annual basis. We brought that down to
only half a million. Makes significant progress in funding the operational priorities outlined
in our five year budget outlook. Makes workforce investments in market pay, benefits, and adds
three new positions, which have been discussed. Addresses and needs of our enterprise funds and
advance as council strategic priorities. We also maintain our funding commitment to outside
agencies as we have done in previous years. So we recommend that council consider enacting ordinance
zero or 01 establishing the town budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1st, 1226, an extending
through June 30th of 27. Thank you for your careful consideration and deliberation on this year's discussions.
We know you have all given the budget a lot of thought over last several weeks. We appreciate the
time and effort you put into that and to understanding our challenges, but also our opportunities
as we move forward together. Other questions? Thank you. Council questions?
I have one. Could you talk a little bit about the greenways funding and using fund balance and how
that will fit into this? I know that we're doing it kind of outside of the regular budget cycle.
Be happy to do that. So annually, when we get to the end of the year, the budget is a spending plan.
It's a limitation on our expenditures, but the revenue side is only an estimate.
And so that is based on the best information we have at the time. In veryably, when we get to the
end of the fiscal year, the estimate's not quite right and often we do our best to spend less than we're
appropriated. So you put those two factors together and you get on the good side of fund balance.
On the bad side, you might get a deficit. We really try to avoid a deficit and we'll take actions
during the year to try to prevent that from happening. But when we have a fund balance, then our policies.
We suggest that any overage beyond our required policy-based savings, that's what most people call a
fun balance, are available for reappropriation. And so this last year, we had approximately $3 million
to consider, and so the council considered that and made some allocations, and we look like we're
going to be in the same boat this year. And so we'll be bringing you some recommendations
when you return from the summer hiatus. And during that consideration, our top recommendation
will be to consider appropriating some of those funds to an internal effort to build some
we call sort of quick wins greenway projects. So these would be smaller projects that connect
existing greenways with other greenways or a missing segment of sidewalk or crosswalk,
and that sort of thing. We hope to gain real world experience by doing this work with our own forces.
They'll need to rent some equipment, buy materials, and contract for some services to make this
happen. And from that experience over the course of this fall, and maybe next spring, depending on how fast we
get things done, we hope to inform how we approach building even more greenways in the future fiscal years.
So that's how we proposed to jump start implementing more E2E projects, even as we're still working
on the master planning that some council members got to learn a little bit about this evening before
the meeting. So that's how we're proposing to do that. There will be some additional recommendations
as well for use of fund balance. One that comes to mind is there's some land, south-a-town that's been designated as
potential park or trail conservation easement land. And outside parties putting that together and
have come to us to see if there's a way to help match that project. We haven't put that in the
budget yet, but that's the kind of thing that's a one-time need that sort of lines up with other plans we
have. And so we might sort of put something like that in our proposal to you along with the
with the greenway effort. So that's how I might address that. Thank you. Thank you.
Mayor Pertem Berry. Thank you that prompted a thought. How would you like to help the public to
understand how we as a town respond to the changes in our funding partners? So how can they stay?
What can they expect? How will respond? So Mayor Pertem I'm going to presume we're speaking mostly
about support for our library. It could be that there could be anything else. One of the challenges
there is we have other entities that have their budget process ongoing. We don't always know what that's
going to look like upon adoption. And so indeed the initial proposal from Orange County was to
reduce library funding over a two-year period. We understand there's an amendment to reduce it over a
three-year period. So that does sort of change that number a bit. There's also an amendment that
looks like there'll be reducing support for parks and recreation services. At this point our approach is
to not take any drastic measures. Understanding that the decisions aren't final, but we do have
contingency plans for how we might address these things. Some of those plans have been shared
informally with council during work sessions. Ideas include fees that might be charged to non-town
residents, changes in service levels such as our reductions or days when things are operated or
availability of programs. Additional ideas are increasing room rentals or on the parks and
rec side. It could be team or field rental charges. All of those things would be typically on the table
for any kind of budget cut scenario. But we don't want to rush into any of this. We just know these
are options. We'll await the final decisions and then we'll take a look at what we might need to do
to recommend to council some adjustments as we move into the fiscal year. In the meantime,
one example of something that will probably defer action on is the additional staff member that's
approved in this budget for the library. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to
proceed with hiring that position only to have the need to do some service cuts or our reductions.
So that would not be something we've moved forward with until we kind of get a handle on where this is all
headed. Is that responsive to your question? I'm asking you to go on record just so that the public can
follow along. They have followed along closely with the county. And I want to make sure that they understand
they have a sense of how your team will respond not the details of it. But what I'm hearing is
A, you're going to be patient and wait until the county is passed a budget or any other funding partner,
how it impacts ours. I also am inferring that you don't expect it to be so drastic that we need
to change anything in this budget that this budget accommodates can accommodate that. And I think that's
important for our public to hear. I think what I would say is our budget is sufficient for us to not
to have to take any immediate or drastic actions. At this point in time, depending on how things go,
we may need to do something in the fiscal year, but we'll keep a monitor on that. Okay, thank you so much.
Oh, go ahead to Council Member Miller for you. Yeah, I wasn't going to say anything, but I have to ask the
question because I think it's along the same line, similar line, rather as Council Member Berry.
Someone message me saying that the posture is that with this $3 million fund balance that we can pay for our own
library. How do we reconcile that? What is our response to that?
Poster. Well, I think I would frame it in an equity framework where town residents
are also county residents. And so whenever we're looking at the services delivered, we need to
think about who pays and who benefits. We've tried to operate the library as a community asset.
When we receive funds from other funding partners that other non-town residents pay into,
then that gives us the opportunity to share those benefits more widely and feel comfortable
that we're equitably sharing that resource because other than town residents are paying
for it. But at some point, if that changes so that only town residents are paying for something,
and I think we owe it to our taxpayers to make sure that we're not subsidizing
non-town residents with free services, essentially. And it's a tough thing to have to tell folks
who might be benefiting from a service that that situation has changed and through no fault of
their own, we're going to have to perhaps consider fees. It's not something that they chose to do,
but when that circumstance changes, we need to consider it and think hard about it and try to be responsible
to the folks who pay the bills in this community. So as the wherever they land on the county
lands two years, three years in terms of reducing funding for the library, at which point will we be
able to charge those fees? Because I think Councilman Bernoulli mentioned that state law does not
permit us to charge fees if the county is contributing funding in any kind of way. And so would it be
when all funding completely ceases that that would be on the table?
So that's a legally complex question that holds the fur to the town attorney a bit on, but we'll
have to evaluate that because one could certainly, let me say how we would potentially
thought this might go. If the county were to do it over two years, do the elimination of funding
over two years, one thought we had was that that's 50% less money that we might implement something
in January because that's half a year and they've eliminated half of the funding.
If they do it over three years, that sort of changes that calculus.
But assuming that any amount of funding would require free service to be provided, that would
change things as well. But I might pause this question if the county were to pay us $1 is that sufficient
to gain free services for non-town residents. I don't think so. So I think we've got some complexity
there and the amount of money involved, I think, must apply to this discussion and we also could choose
not to accept the money and say that that's just not enough and so we're going to have to go to the fees.
So those are the kinds of things we're going to have to think through over the next few months.
We'll wait to see what the county budget is and then council will need to weigh in once we give you
the analysis so you can decide how we're going to implement this. Thank you so much for your responses.
I think it's so important. The first question that I asked and then this one as well for our community
be able to use your responses to those. So thank you.
I have a question that came from Mayor Pertem's question as happens but the shift in hours in some of
our parks and rec facilities is that something that's happening as part of our new budget or is that
in anticipation of the county cutting funding or how did that happen?
Now that's really just a service optimization approach that staffed its analysis. They're in a mind
of thinking about these things as they work on their master planning. They've got some data that
help them make some adjustments. More adjustments would be needed if we had significant cuts the amount
of cuts that are being proposed at this point by the county or fairly nominal.
We would welcome more help so that we can provide service to folks who live in the area.
We do have several thousand Orange County residents who take advantage of our parks and rec
system and they are treated as town residents because of the subsidy relationship.
And we are in town also county residents. Yes we are. But the amount of money that we're getting from
the county is not a lot. And again if we're not really getting anything then we're probably going
to have to change how non-town residents are treated with with respect to fees. They'll always
be treated courtesy but they might say a fee or a different fee. Okay thank you. Are any members
of the public wishing to speak? Okay. Council any final comments? Councilmember Ryan?
Yeah so first I'd like thank you Ted and to staff for all your hard work I know this is a massive
massive job every year and one of the most important things that we do so I appreciate all your hard work.
I support the philosophy behind this budget. I think we're making big strides in investing and getting
the town on the sustainable fiscal path that we've been working on for many years. So please
to see that continuing and really happy. I think it's going to put our town in good position. I'll
be voting to support it, but I agree with the opinion Council Member Rivers expressed at our last meeting,
and I personally don't support the added FTE for the library historian position, and I understand
the strategy you're using as it's aligned with the county funding cuts, but with budgets tightening and
core services more expensive than ever, I worry that mission creep away from essential library services,
especially in light of our very inadequate budget for acquisitions. So, but that aside,
I think it's a solid budget that's not a reason for me to vote against it, and I think this budget is good
storage of our community's tax dollars. May I put our temporary? Thank you. I also will be
voting to support this. I so appreciate all of the effort that went into coming up with this budget,
and then the ability to explain it to us. Thank you very much for your patience and for your
fortitude, and once again, this is it. And I do want to, and I'm grateful that I got to go after
Council Member Ryan, because I appreciate manager for these that you are going to look at how to
invest those resources, what's happening with the library. Did we put in a new FTE there, or not?
I also know that you're considering, how do we manage our human resources? How do we have one
person who is doing that? So, I want to acknowledge the the preciousness of our human resources,
and so as you weigh the fiscal and the human, I want to say I recognize that those are both considerations
for you. So, thank you. And if we can't provide another full time employee, how else can we support
that one individual in that, in that section, burnout is real thing. And we are, we are compassionate
group, and so I don't think it'll be easy, but I want to say that I support you at looking at that. Thank you.
Thank you all. Thank you Amy and your team for all the excellent work. As always, I will reiterate
that I really am pleased that we're, I think, relying less on fun balance and getting on, you know,
really taking additional steps to create a sustainable budget for the future is exciting to me,
even if it's not maybe the sexiest topic, but I think it's, I think it is really exciting
and we do know how much work goes into all of this and how many questions we have and how many times
you get to explain things to us again when we forget. And so, much appreciation to you,
me and your four keys and all the staff, and I know that also all the departments have to put in
a lot of information in order to share their needs and requests, so I know it's a, it's a full-team
effort and you all make it look easy. So, thank you very much and, council do I have a motion to enact
a one with a touch. So, motion by council member, Miller Frisci, seconded by Mayor,
Potembury, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay? Motion passes 80,
zero. We have a budget. Thank you, Mayor, council. Hey. We are ahead of the state, get again,
in passing a budget. We literally laps them. Yeah. They are so working on last year.
Oh, super. Glad they're taking their work seriously. All right. Item number 11 is to open the
public hearing regarding the downtown municipal services district contracted services and our
economic development manager David Putnam is here to walk us through.
This is the perfect height this time. John Richardson has been nowhere near that. That's right.
It's not in the room. Good evening, Mayor and council. My name is David Putnam. I'm your
economic development director. Apologies for the rassiness in my voice. I'm getting over something.
That's what happens when you guys 16 month old that. She's okay. Thank you.
And I'm here to talk to y'all about the municipal services district this evening.
And we have a public hearing schedule for the contracted services of that district and I'm here to
get into a little bit about what that means. I'm joined by Sarah Potter on our team who's our
business vitality manager as well. And so as y'all might have questions that come up towards the
end of this, we'll both be able to readily respond to those types of questions so that we can best address them.
So what I'm going to do is talk about the recommended action in the front end and then I'm going to
bookend it in the back end. And that way, you know, we stay pretty grounded but in between
throughout this presentation. I'm going to share with you kind of big picture what is the
municipal services district and then we'll zoom in to the specific request because I'm sure that is
of interest of the public as well. They probably want to know what this whole thing is and why we're
meeting about it today. So the recommended action that I'm asking y'all to do is open and close
the public hearing for the municipal services district contracted services.
So a little bit about this district, it's a special tax paid by businesses and or property owners
to fund and hand services in certain areas specifically of our downtown. And you are authorized to
do this through the general statutes, specifically this provision 168-536 which places restrictions also
on the uses of those funds that are generated. A little bit about our MSD and our municipal
services district, it was approved in 1989 again under the Office of Providing and Hand Services
to the folks within the district. And it covers Franklin and Rosemary Streets and then between Henderson
and Merit Mill and if you're like me I'm a visual person so I kind of have to see it.
So I included a map here for everybody to look at because when we talk about the municipal services
district and our downtown there are really two different things that coincide and so this is the official
map of the downtown services district and that's important because if you're inside this box you
pay a special service tax. If you're not inside the box you do not pay that tax.
So how much revenue do we collect from this? The current MSD tax rate I like to
break down our tax rate into sort of a plain language. You know most we assess properties based on the
per one hundred dollar value. Most people don't think per one hundred dollar value. People think per dollar.
And so this is that per dollar tax rate that's applied to the MSD. And then for the fiscal year
twenty seven what we're forecasting is that the total revenues are expected to yield four hundred twenty seven thousand
dollars. So we did a ton of engagement September to December we reached we're actually really
proud to say that we reached every business possible and we did a ton of efforts to try and reach
everybody. And we came up with these results on what do the stakeholders want to see. They want
a downtown community safety is their number one first priority. Cleanliness is their second priority
activation and experiences third fourth is landscaping in fifth is town coordination and communications.
And the cleanliness is bolded because that is the basically the scope of services that we have
that's going to be contracted out and that we're proposing to be contracted out.
So you guys just passed the budget and big round of applause for that. That's a heavy lift and I
appreciate all of y'all's leadership. And when we think about the municipal services district sort of
has its own micro budget and this is how we're planning to budget those revenues. So we have
a portion of it going to landscape maintenance which is actually a position inside parks and
rack department that's dedicated to providing those services downtown. We have downtown community
safety and our police department is doing a lot of that work and this is a very reliable and needed
confusion of resources for them to continue doing great work with our downtown and the increased
patrol presence contracted services which we've got for emphasized by cleaning and that's what we'll
get into a little bit more today and then operations which is 15,000. So in total it's about 427,000 dollars.
So about we did a competitive bid process for actually selecting the contracted services provider
and we got three respondents of those three we invited two for interviews and then we issued a
kind of a preferred vendor notice to the final lowest and best offer which was the downtown Chapel Hill
Partnership and they are the prime contractor that we would like to select and then block my block is
the subcontractor that they are using to provide some of these enhanced services. So the scope of that
contract that's that bold you know $220,000 in the budget includes sanitation and cleaning of business
district modeling our respect values in service delivery, coordinating and collaborating with
town staff and then offering regular performance reports and progress reports for the stakeholders of the
district and for the town. And so again I would like to ask you all to open and close the public hearing
for the municipal services district contracted services tonight. Thank you for your time.
Council do I have a motion to open the public hearing? So moved moved by council member Ryan seconded by
council member Miller Fushie all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed please say nay.
Motion is eight to zero unanimous council questions council member Nullert followed by council member
Ryan. Thank you mayor. Two brief questions one what makes it cheaper to contract externally for cleaning
then to perform those activities internally. And second question three bids for this contract doesn't
seem like a lot. Can you help us understand why that's the number we end up with?
Yeah great question so in terms of like why we might be deciding to contract for these services.
It's a good question we take in existing stock of what our capacity levels are internally what services we
have the bandwidth to deliver versus what services we could maybe optimize with a private contract provider
and this is one of those services that we've just found to be more
enhanced and easily streamlined with a contracted services provider while also providing us the best
thing for a buck and so through a contract we're able to really you know again just offer the
really leverage the towns fiscal position and a lot better manner than if we were to do it in
house. Can you be more specific? Yeah so what we get with this contract is full time presence
in downtown I believe we're up to two we get two full time people downtown that are offering
services they bring equipment and inventory that the town doesn't have to manage or maintain and then
we're also not having to you know carry those positions on with this work and we still get the oversight
that we want and we get progress reporting and their infrastructure with data collection and other things
that they're offering for us so in a way we're really getting more than if we invest for that
services ourselves right now. Yeah sure one thing I was going to mention to you I think for the purpose of
this fun contracting out can sometimes make sense because the needs of the district might change
over time so investing in facilities or equipment and stuff that we might not need in five years
doesn't always make sense where a contractor can be a little bit more flexible and part of that
engagement commitment is to always come back to the folks in that district and ask them if their needs
have changed. Counts a member right.
So, I'm having a little bit of a hard time understanding exactly what is in the contract. So, I get that we are going to contract with the downtown partnership. They will subcontract to block and block for the cleaning services. We, the con, and other than that, out of the budget, we spent money for our police. And there was one other. There were two other items, one of which is operations. I don't know if that's our operations or if that's the partnership.
That's ours. Okay. So, so presumably, is the partnership getting any money or are they just to pass through?
So, what we do is we package that contract the 220 to the bidder, and then they, they are providing services as a pass through, but they're keeping some for administrative functions and operational needs.
And it's not entirely cleaning services. They're also checking in with the stakeholders of the downtown district.
They're providing us with progress reports. There's some administrative capacity built into the contract that they're able to leverage.
Okay. Yeah. And I like the fact that you had metrics on that on the progress reports. I think that's that's very useful.
Again, I know that in the past, when we've kind of talked about the municipal services district, there's been, there's been some feeling that things were very general that there wasn't.
We didn't have a strong direction for the things that we wanted them to do, and sometimes that made having a partner difficult, because there wasn't a lot of clarity about what was going on.
I'm still kind of feeling that here. I don't know what the intent is.
I know that when you reached out, you've got a lot of different responses, and I see that we're addressing some of those.
But I'll talk about more this in the comments later, but those other interests, I think are important too, and I'm just not seeing them happen in here.
Yeah. So the contract that we've bid out is just for the cleanliness services. And then the town is taking on the rest of the services that are provided here.
Or that are requested here. So downtown community safety are police department, and then the collaborations that they have with other entities, we feel pretty adequate to being able to provide those services.
Activation and experience is offered through partnerships like community arts and culture, the economic development department, collaborating with UNC, those sorts of things.
Way in escaping with that one position, and then town coordination and communications.
That's specific to just being able to like, call and activate the town and have a ready, reliable person who's available.
And while it's not being addressed in the budget, we do have that person, and that's there.
Our business vitality manager, and we're constantly updating and maintaining and also building those relationships with downtown business stakeholders and the residents stakeholders, the property stakeholders, make sure that there needs to be in that.
Yeah, so do you guys get any extra money for, say, the activation and experiences, the town get any money out of the MSD for that?
No, we're rolling that into just our current capacity levels of what we can provide.
Can you explain that in a different way?
Yeah, so when like what we're doing is rather than assigning funds from the district, because it's a resource scarce fund, right?
It's only generating $427,000.
And to address all these needs, we're trying to do that by leveraging the capacities that we've already got internally.
That being things like working with community arts and culture a little bit more closely, so we have regular check-in meetings with them now.
As a department, where we bring together other stakeholders and interests, so that we can help meet their needs and help meet the business interests needs.
We're regularly checking in with folks from the university to try and do that same thing, and then we're constantly boots on the ground, getting out in front of the businesses and making sure that we're responding to their requests, especially as it relates to activation.
But there's no extra money in here for you guys for those efforts.
Okay, thank you.
Mayor Protem Berry.
Councilmember Ryan addressed what I was curious about, and I'm just going to go with it.
You did a great job of listing what the stakeholders want.
And then on the next slide, you told us the accounting for the resources, the capital resources that we have.
Are you going to, in a different manner, articulate how those wants are being addressed if they'll have to be paused or not?
Because I think it's important, and this is going to go into our comment.
But are you going to share it with the stakeholders of how you're addressing their desires there once?
And it could be, we don't have the capacity for it, but these are the ones that we are addressing.
I'm just curious because it doesn't necessarily line up with this.
Yeah, it's a good question.
I mean, we try our best to communicate how we're achieving these interests through some of the things that we're doing like the downtown newsletter that we send out.
We're asking this contracted service provider to do regular check-ins and engagement with the stakeholders too, and the intent is to work collaboratively with them so that we can.
Make sure that these things are being reported out on for accountability, right, and transparency.
And then through those engagements, we're hoping that we collect feedback from the downtown stakeholders and say, hey, you're not doing enough in this area, we would really like to see this optimized.
And that's really where more of the collaboration scope of work comes out of that private services contract and just a cleanliness.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I had a couple questions, David.
The first is that it looks like it's a year contract, and I think the previous, well, I don't know what the previous contract was, but I know it was three years, maybe two years, I don't know.
But I'm just wondering why we're doing a year contract, if, well, I can really get into a comment, but I'll try to hold it.
Yeah, our business, our best business practice is to only do year by year contracts.
And so this contract that we've currently got drafted is to do one year and then four options of renewal for a year each.
The general statutes allow units of government to contract for up to five years options included.
And so it's just the practice that the town does to do one year contracts.
Well, but it's not because the previous contract was not a year, right?
I can't speak to the duration of the prior contract, but the way this is structured is while it's a one year contract with the additional options to renew.
We could view as a five year up to a five year contract depending on if we were happy with the services.
Sure, I see.
Yeah, the language is the same. So how we've always done it is the bid essentially is valid for five years.
And then every year we, the contract gets essentially the partnership would issue a letter to the manager asking to renew that contract and then renew it.
Oh, I see. So it's not like they're having to correct too much of anything.
Yeah, they don't have to submit and do a proposal or any that like administrative work. It's just a letter and that's how we've done it past you.
Okay, thank you. That's helpful.
I guess the other question is about what this public hearing is.
I thought that this was coming back on consent or there was something that we were approving, but then maybe not.
So I guess I'm not really clear on what we're doing.
Yeah, so this public hearing is explicitly about the scope of services that are being proposed as offered in the contract.
Not the vendor. It's not about anything like that.
Yeah, I understand.
It's it's just about really.
I mean, this the contract scope.
And it's provide.
It's a collect comment on that scope and to see if the public and especially the stakeholders feel like the scope is in accordance with what they had asked us to do.
And so how would you know if they.
I mean, I guess I'm not I guess I'm from a process standpoint. I'm not really understanding why like is it that if a bunch of them showed up and said that's wrong.
That's not what I said or you know whatever which I wouldn't anticipate, but then it would somehow change or I mean I would have met the council is the partially the vehicle to the public right so if the council is not approving it then.
I guess what are we.
How are we what would be a point at which we would change this.
I'm not a mayor so pursuant to the statute our town clerk is actually sent out notice to folks within the district to let them know of this public hearing if they wanted to come and ask for a change in scope.
The way our delegation resolution of authority is set up is that the town manager has the authority to enter into this contract after this public hearing has occurred.
So if this body we're interested in expanding the scope of the contract or perhaps some of the services we internally provide with staff to expand that to have that scope we could re-bid that out.
But this is the current recommendation for that if we would want it to change within that next five year period the statute also allows for council to expand the scope of the contract to renegotiate.
So this is just an opportunity to really double check because there is this special tax for the district to make sure that we're doing what it is that the body wants us to do.
And that's okay.
Give me one second.
And so I guess my only other question is in terms of obviously and I think council member Ryan asks this but I'm not sure I totally understood the answer.
So in terms of the things that aren't being contracted for and some of those are then coming in house I understood that.
How do we I guess understand how.
How much effort how much how many resources are going to our downtown given that some are kind of being funneled into our current capacity some are being contracted with the downtown partnership in the cleaning green.
And obviously the you know 127 thousand dollars or whatever is not even close to what the police department actually spends downtown.
And so I guess partially from.
You know a communications standpoint but also to understand like how are we supporting downtown and vibrancy and and all the things that we all want.
You know how much are we actually investing and I guess there are pieces to me where our arts and culture department is not like heavily funded either.
So it doesn't seem like that's going to just magically happen by having meetings with them.
So where the you know how is it all coming together that we're achieving these goals and how much are we actually spending.
To the how much we're spending question I don't have that number for y'all right now but what I could commit to is working with my peers and try and get a sense for how much we are actually spending.
I can tell you as well above and beyond the.
And yeah I mean this is the perplexity of this resource right like we have a very.
I mean small downtown district and it compared to some of our peers like Wilmington and you know Winston Salem it does not generate the same amount of resources that those districts do.
And so we feel like what we're offering is just the way that we can best achieve all those interests, especially through this contracted services but I you know I think.
The ultimate team support I hate the fall back on that but it really is I mean we reach this further together.
And through those collaborations and just working with this private services contractor.
The university community arts and culture and just trying to find new ways to be innovative and achieve the interests of this district.
I strongly believe that's how we're going to help to achieve it.
And so what would be the process for enlarging the district because we've talked about many times having it go down.
I mean that's been over the years something that we've talked about and especially with Carolina North now there's kind of this.
You know so how do we broaden the tax base of this district.
Yeah so there's a few ways you can grow the district and the general statutes spell out a specific process and how to do that and it involves like engagement with those property owners petitioning and then you know pretty strong.
Approval lift from this board and we.
We can follow up with more specificities on how to do that after this meeting, but the other way that you can do it is to prove more projects in downtown increase the tax base.
And then this has a specific tax rate attributed to it. It's that 0.005055 number. And places in the past have, especially peer communities in North Carolina have looked at, we need to write size that number to meet the interest of the downtown, or the municipal service districts they call.
Because it's not always downtown, some places use it for other business districts, some use it for watering sewer, sanitary districts, all sorts of stuff.
I see. Okay, and then my final final question is, in terms of the town coordination communications, which like obviously, Sarah's amazing in is doing is everywhere all the time.
So it's not, I get, you know, my question is more about how or I think one of the functions that it used to serve maybe when it was working a little better before we had the like dip and now hopefully we're on the upswing.
It was being able to advocate to the town as opposed to like talking to ourselves. And so like I'm wondering like who does that then if, if Sarah, if the if the team of one was like, you know, pounding the pavement all the time, which is amazing, but like us talking to ourselves is not quite the idea, right? So how does that happen?
So it's impossible to advocate against yourself, right? Like that's tough.
Yeah, I think this downtown organization in particular has been through quite a bit of changes, and I think you're right.
I think we're on the uphill climb, which is great.
So relationships with that group, one is this private contract, relationship one is as a nonprofit in our downtown area that's representing the interests of some of those merchants.
And the property owners in that downtown. And so, you know, I know there, and I say that because they have to have the capacity to handle that type of advocacy work and I think they're building that right now.
We put out a job posting for an executive director, style role. I think they've identified a few people that could take that on. And we would work very closely with that person, but I think they're sort of at that period of rebirth and trying to get their leg stable again, and then they could be in that position to advocate more strongly for the interests of that district.
But right now, to answer your question about who's doing that work, I think it's a podge podge of all of us. I think the chamber gets involved sometimes. I think independent merchants get involved. I think the board members of that group get involved on occasion.
And so it's, you know, it's going to be of increasing interest for us to work together and collaboratively with them, so we can best meet that interest.
Thank you.
Are there any members of the public?
There are not. Okay. Council, comments, Mayor Pertambiari, all of the council member, right?
Yeah, thank you very much. What I'm hearing is that this was a step to make sure that we've made it available to the public as opposed to being on the consent.
And you've answered a lot of our, you've answered all the questions that we've posed. Thank you.
And one thing that I would just stress is help us help you communicate.
That's one concern that I think is shared by all of us.
Communicate the wonderful things that you all are able to do with the investment that the MSD represents and then the investment that the town puts in as well. Thank you for this.
Council member Ryan. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thanks to you guys for this good engagement with a district.
I think that that's very useful. I don't know that I couldn't have told you that that's what they wanted, but it's good to it's good to confirm that.
I think for things like this, I think there's a bigger conversation.
We need to be having at some point.
This seems to be a time to talk about it. So I know it's not related to the contract specifically, but I think the scope needs to be not just what the district is interested in.
I think Council as part of our complete community and as part of just making sure the Chapel Hill general is a thriving place has a big interest in what happens downtown as well.
So I'd really like at some point to have that larger conversation about where in terms of a policy direction we really want to go and that can have implications for funding.
So for instance, clearly if we want to really do activation downtown and experience we're going to need to find money somewhere.
I know it's always been a dream for a long time to get locked to up and running in a different way to be kind of an activated space.
Maybe there's a chance to talk about that in the fall when we talk about fund balance.
But I'd really like the opportunity at some point for us to talk with staff and council together and to say, hey, what are we really trying to do down here?
Clearly we want to police presence.
And since we want, we want it to be clear. Like those, yes, absolutely.
But I think there's there's some bigger things involved.
So the only other thing that would have been helpful to me to see a contract just I think it would have helped me understand the specifics of how we're scoping this a little bit better.
Thank you.
Councilmember Nollard.
Yeah, I want to echo Councilmember Ryan in that, you know, these goals are not super surprising.
There's a lot of tactics and strategies to reach them.
And I think that things like way finding arts and culture investment, our development strategy inside of the boundaries of the district to create more money.
I think I think we need a much.
We need to devote more attention to that.
We need to get a plan. We need to be able to broadcast what the plan is.
We need it to look pretty and be simple to explain.
We, I think, are really not optimizing and maximizing the value.
We can get out of the downtown that we can create for residents who live in it and don't live in it and for businesses that operate in it and don't operate in it.
And I know that we have a statutory requirement that this money be spent primarily to benefit things inside of that boundary.
But I really don't think that we're fully meeting the opportunity we have to be creative about that into invest in things that meet these goals in.
Perhaps slightly less intuitive ways, but that's a communication challenge that it's on us as a as a board and as an organization to rise to the occasion of and get creative.
So I just want to really say I'm totally agreement that we need to we need to dig in on this and we I think we have a huge opportunity here to create a lot of value by a lot of different metrics and definitions and I hope this conversation will will stay.
That a rolling boil.
Council member make me and followed by council member Miller for she.
I want to add my voice to this.
My council members who are saying the same thing you know downtown has a lot of opportunities the heartbeat here a lot of our residents have on memories of downtown.
They're wondering how downtown can be a place for them again.
I'm excited to have this conversation in the future to get at some of the bigger picture things that are exciting.
For everybody in town and also opportunities for us. So yes to this conversation. Thank you.
Council member Miller for she.
Thank you, Mayor. I know we've we've passed the question we're in comments, but I just wanted to refresh my memory a little bit when we return back from Ann Arbor.
I believe as a council we had a little bit of an opportunity with you working with you.
To talk about what we saw on that inner city visit and to express some of our interests in what that meant for our own downtown.
And so while the purpose of this presentation from you this afternoon was to discuss this this contract and to allow the public.
To come and speak to it.
What may have potentially been helpful is to.
Alongside what stakeholders have presented and what they wanted.
How that ductels with what you and what we as a board have talked about in the past about what we wanted to see in our downtown.
And so I think being able to thread that needle would have been helpful.
As I'm listening to my colleagues in some of their interests or whatever.
And having to new council members who don't believe you all were on involved in those conversations and so.
Essentially being able to revisit some of the interests that council have been able to express that we have talked about.
And threading that needle and how that drives with the stakeholders would have.
Maybe.
Been helpful.
I don't know.
But I understand the purpose of you know what the presentation was intended to do this evening.
So thank you for providing this.
And presenting to us I especially appreciate it.
The extra.
The Adam materials that came in later for us to take a look at.
So thanks.
Okay, I'll I'll add on to that I think council member Miller for she is absolutely right we did some really good we started some good work in our.
Council committee on economics sustainability and we started I remember and I asked for it at some point a while ago and you sent it to me the the white boards that had people's ideas and I thought that was a really great start and I think.
And I think.
I think.
I've said strategic plan in the past because that's the way my mind works or I guess that's the the word that I think is appropriate but I don't necessarily mean like a full blown.
You know weeks and weeks of engagement with us on a strategic plan but I just think it's really really important that we kind of.
Pull it together and create that vision and strategic path forward or however we want to talk about it with you.
So that we can also yeah figure out how we want to move forward where there are opportunities because I think it it's a really good reminder that I didn't think of myself like yes of course we can increase the tax rate we can also increase density downtown we can go around the corner like those things all have.
So merits and challenges right but like I think generally thinking about how are we moving forward and then this is kind of a small piece of that right is this is not they can't do it all and but I think you know what I'm really hoping is they can take on more in the future.
Since I think that really exciting downtown often do have a really strong external group and then of course they get to work with our very strong internal group so it's not that it's you know it needs both and so.
I'm really hoping in the fall that we can have a bigger conversation about where we're going downtown and signal that to people and help people.
Inside and outside of downtown understand where we're trying to go and how they can be part of that and how.
Kind of what we want them to come to us with if they're interested in doing something we're exciting with their property or you know whatever the case may be I think there's just so much opportunity down there and it is.
It needs to be a really exciting place and I think with all the activity happening with Carolina sports and all the other things going on there's a really it's a good time for us.
To dig in and figure out really like what is this look like and how are we going to get people to to you know engage and do the things we need them to do for it to be the place that it should be.
So thank you I.
I think this is you've heard from us.
Nobody from the public I guess we are the public but thank you very much for this and we are looking forward to continuing to work with the downtown partnership and.
Even though they're not here I'm sure we're all cheering for them and ready to continue to work on making downtown a really great place so thank you very much.
Do I have a motion to close the public here.
Yes, I'm moved.
I moved by Councilmember McMahon.
Woohoo seconded by Mayor for a temporary all those in favor please say aye.
Any opposed please say nay.
Those are definitely a yes down there motion passes E to zero.
Council it's still light outside we are done with our agenda which is very exciting thank you for all your hard work and our budget is the most important thing we do all year so well done everybody and congratulations.
And we will see you one more time before summer break next week here same time same place have a great night meeting is adjourned.