Board of Commissioners Regular

Good evening. Welcome to the Pittsboro Board of Commissioners meeting for July 13, 2026. I will call it to order and we'll start with a moment of silence. Mayor Pro, will you lead us in the pledge of

allegiance? Anyone rise for the pledge?

Allegiance to the flag of the United States to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible. Liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Up next, we have the adoption of the agenda. Uh I do have one change to the consent agenda. We're going to take item 26, the budget amendment for affordable housing, and make it uh action item six on the regular agenda. Are there any other changes or additions?

Yeah, I have a couple. Mayor Ship, uh 23, you said 26 is being pulled, right? 28 and 29. Two three will be number seven. Two eight will be number eight. And 2 nine will be number nine. Okay. Any others?

Make a motion to approve the agenda. So move. Thank you, Commissioner Frell. Second.

Second.

Commissioner Huner. All those in favor say I.

I.

Thank you. Take a motion to approve the modified consent agenda.

So moved.

Thank you.

Commissioner Foley.

Commissioner Thurber. All those in favor

I. [clears throat] Thank you. Um, our first information item is the uh ABC financial report. Jamie,

I'm Jamie Fio, the chair of the ABC board, Pittsburgh ABC board. We have general manager um, Scott Cox with us here today. I've sent a memo and our financials through the end of third quarter to you all. Um so you can see the distributions to both the town the um law enforcement and alcohol education. Please uh note that I um noted that the law enforcement and alcohol education dispersements or um distributions they they kind of go up and they don't go up and down but they they are what they are by the end of the fourth quarter. So you'll see some differences in what was um dispersed same period last year, but that should settle out and it should all be higher. Um and we're looking forward to our next set of financials because that will be apples to apples because our store number two will have been open um it one year it was open one year miday. So, um, that's going well and it's contributing to the distributions that we can provide to the town. And I think that's pretty much all I have to say. I I will note that um GM Cox has done a great job because while the country and the the state and the surrounding counties are seeing lower revenues, Pittsburgh is is

still gaining revenue and um that's a real success story. Obviously, it has to do with store number two, but behind that is your support of the system. So, very much appreciate that. Um does anyone have any questions? always open to questions if um if you have them, you have my information. Thank you very much.

You have the great work.

Thank you, Jamie. Keep it up for good manager right there. Thank you.

All right. Up next, we have uh two ceremonial items this evening. The first is a resolution commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America. Whereas the year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America and commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, marking the birth of a nation dedicated to the principles of liberty, equality, self-government, and the pursuit of opportunity. And whereas for two and a half centuries, the United States has endured and prospered through the courage, sacrifice, innovation, and civic engagement of generations of Americans who have worked to preserve and strengthen our democratic institutions. And whereas the semiquincential provides an opportunity for Americans to reflect on our nation's history honor the contributions of those who came before us, recognize the progress that has been achieved, and renew our commitment to the ideals upon which our country was founded. And whereas Pittsburgh's own history dates to 1787, the same year the United States Constitution was signed, giving the town a civic history that has unfolded alongside much of the nation's history. And whereas for more than two centuries, the citizens of Pittsburgh have contributed to the strength and vitality of our nation through military service, public service, volunteerism, entrepreneurship, education, stewardship

of our natural resources, and a act active participation in civic life. And whereas throughout 2026, communities across the nation, including Pittsburgh, will participate in commemorative events, educational programs, service projects, and celebrations recognizing America's 250-year journey and its enduring promise. Now therefore, be it resolved that the mayor and board of commissioners for the town of Pittsburgh recognize and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States of America and encourage all residents to observe this historic occasion by reflecting on our nation's history, honoring those who have served and sacrificed for our freedoms, recognizing Pittsburgh's own long history and civic contributions, and participating in activities that celebrate the enduring ideals of liberty, democracy, civic responsibility, and service to community. Can I get a motion to approve the resolution?

So moved.

Thank you, Commissioner Foley. Second, Commissioner [clears throat] Ferrell. All those in favor say I.

I.

Thank you.

Yes.

All right. Up next, we have a proclamation designating July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month. Whereas parks, recreations, facilities, greenways, and natural areas are essential community assets that enhance the quality of life for residents and visitors and contribute to the character and vitality of the town of Pittsboro. And whereas access to parks, trails, open spaces, and recreational programs promote physical health, mental well-being, lifelong learning, and opportunities for people of all ages to and abilities to connect with nature. And whereas parks and recreation provides safe spaces for play, fitness, outdoor adventure, community events, youth development, environmental stewardship, and cultural enrichment, helping to foster a healthy and engaging community. And whereas parks and

recreation strengthen Pittsburgh's economy by attracting visitors, supporting local businesses, enhancing property values, and making the town an attractive place to live, work, and invest. And whereas the town of Pittsburgh recognizes the dedicated efforts of its parks and recreation staff, public works staff, planning staff, administrative staff, volunteers, community partners, advisory board members, and advocates who work to preserve, maintain, and enhance parks, recreational opportunities, and natural resources for the benefit of current and future generations. Whereas the mayor and board of commissioners encourage all residents to enjoy Pittsburgh's parks, trails, recreational programs, and natural areas to celebrate the many ways they enrich our community. As the mayor, I proclaim July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month in the town of Pittsburgh and encourage all residents to recognize, appreciate, and celebrate the many benefits that parks, recreation, and natural spaces provide to our community. So, thank you Katie and all the staff.

Up next, we'll have citizens matters and we'll start with the manager's update.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh, and in that same vein, um, park staff worked harder last week to try to get the splash pad, uh, back up and going. So that piece will be hopefully installed tomorrow. So we can get that back and running this week. Uh Lewis Freeman Park, if you've driven by, you've seen a lot of activity happen just in the last week. Um so that that project will progress a lot faster now that they've been able to get a couple of the the issues solved with the grading and the topo. Uh so that is solved and moving forward. Also working with the county to try to then add some uh what will be temporary parking at the beginning, which will then hopefully turn into some more permanent parking in that area as part of this project. A quick update on the community project

funding from uh uh Congresswoman uh Bash's office. We have given some alternatives for that money. If you remember, we got 850,000 through that program for streetscape because it's federal money. It can't be allocated to the streetscape project because that complicates what is a state funded project. Um but we have found a couple alternative projects that we have. Um, we gave that proposal to them last week and that's being sent to the appropriations committee this week uh for them to look at. So hopefully we'll get some good news back on that uh sooner rather than later. Um, lastly, we are setting some dates to work with the fire department on the fire department merger study and that was a project that you all funded in the budget that we're now in and so hopefully we can meet with the consultant uh and get out get that off the ground. And lastly, I want to introduce our new planner 2 uh Elizabeth Woodby. uh who comes from us uh comes to us from the private sector where she specialized in UDO rewrites which we very much needs. She's already been a huge asset to the organization and we look forward to seeing what uh what she continues to have. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome. [clears throat]

All right. Up next is me and I don't have anything to say this month.

Uh Commissioner Huner. Um, I don't have a lot to say this month, but um, I did attend the Chattam Chamber of Commerce women of Achievement event, which is incredibly inspiring. Um, I participated in the Junth opening ceremonies representing the town and redoing the uh, uh, resolution that we had done on June 8th. And, uh, we had a great commissioner coffee chat um, this month with um, Commissioner Tiana Thurber and County Commissioner Katie Kemlin. and we will be having more of those. And that is all I have.

Thank you, Commissioner Bonds.

Yes, thank you. So, first brief update from the Chattam County Climate Advisory Committee meeting and then some other

comments. Uh at the June 25 Chattam County Climate Advisory Committee meeting, uh the committee reported that it had developed and submitted to county planning staff the CCAC's core principles and guidance for regulating data centers. Uh the meeting also included discussion of the Nbridge Brack gas pipeline proposal and uh those two things um inspire me like to take the opportunity to just state my current views clearly uh on these two topics. I am gravely concerned about new fracked methane gas infrastructure. Uh, continued investments in fossil fuel prolongs harmful pollution, worsens climate change, threatens water [clears throat] quality and ecosystems, harms farms and forests, and may infringe on private property rights. In my view, new gas pipelines are contrary to the public health, safety, and welfare. Also have serious concerns about large proposed data centers. Uh, these projects can put upward pressure on electricity bills for the rest of us rateayers. They can create significant noise, emit air pollution from on-site power generation, and can impose impacts that may conflict with the public health, safety, and welfare. And I follow uh AI and computing developments closely. And because of this experience and this knowledge, I reject the premise that society must continue building ever larger centralized data centers, especially when they're fueled by fracked methane gas infrastructure. The technology uh is is becoming more efficient and more computing can be done

in distributed ways such as on home computers or even on newer cell phones. So, I hope my policy position is clear. I'm deeply skeptical of new fossil fuel infrastructure and of large data center development tied to it. Any specific matter that comes before this board would of course need to be reviewed under the applicable process and standards. Uh, thank you for hearing me. Um, just a further couple of items. In anticipation of the next board meeting, I'd like to see if there's consent on the board to uh set three additional agenda items. Uh I'd like it if uh Amy Allen could come and speak to the board on the invasive weed eradication project at the future Robinson Creek Park. Number two, I'd like to see if the board is open to a presentation from the local chapter of the Ottabon Society. Uh, and number three, u hope that we can start talking about a packet of policies to enhance our environmental performance.

Do you need a second on that or how how's how does this work?

I don't know that it's a motion. I think it's

I I agree with you and I request the same.

Thank you.

I would like to see all three of those as well.

Okay.

I feel the same way.

All right. [clears throat]

Thank you, Mayor Pro.

Um I attended the joint commissioners meeting. I think we all did in in back in June toward the end of the month. Um and as Jamie said, the we we do have a strong manager in our ABC board and the board also. So, uh, that both both of those are looking up very well, but other than that, that's all I have.

Thank you, Commissioner Foley.

I was at the same joint commissioner's meeting with the uh the county. Found it

illuminating. I also would like to put a request in for presentation for the promise. It is a a condominium based uh building right downtown Pittsburgh. and love love to do a presentation on that very item next month.

You'd like to do the presentation on your project?

Yes.

Okay.

Does he need a second? Because I would love to see it as well. Thank you.

Uh, Commissioner Thurber,

um, I don't have much this time, but I did attend the, um, downtown Pittsburgh advisory board retreat and update, which was great. It's really uh you know to see all the ideas and and all the different um the different demographics in the room who are just kind of sharing their thoughts and their that how what they want Pittsburgh to look like, the events that they want to see. Um it's it's very inspiring and I I love Pab. I love Teresa and the work that you do.

Thank you.

Okay. Um, first up we have a miscellaneous item on the downtown Pittsburgh or I'm sorry. Next up, public comment with two people signed up. First is Greg Stafford, followed by Cath. Please state your name and address at the start of your comments.

There's a time limit of three minutes which will be displayed on the screen. In the interest of time and fairness, it's the board's policy not to respond directly to comments during this period. Staff will follow up as appropriate. Inner speaker with handouts shall be given to the town clerk and will be distributed to the board at the conclusion of this meeting. M Stafford, 901 Jordan Hills, Chapel Hill. And I'd like to thank you guys for listening

to me for not three minutes, but about 15 seconds. Um I'm on the downtown advisory board. There is a U study by Bolton Mink that was funded to look at the future of downtown Pittsburgh and the property that the county is likely going to be handing over to the town. Um the advisory board met with them initially and spoke with Balden and Mink slightly and we were told that they would then come back to us asking us for advice and observations on this study. Um, then I saw that it's on for this evening for sort of an endorsement of where it sits. Beyond the scope of this conversation is how unhappy I am with the endorsements for where it sits. But more importantly, I was we were never given the opportunity to comment on it. So, I'd ask that you guys simply delay the endorsement of this study until the downtown advisory board gets the opportunity to fully read it and give our views on it. And that is it. And I'll give all the rest of my time to Kathy. She's more eloquent than I am. Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next is Kathy Russell. [clears throat]

Thank you. I'm Kathy Russell. I'm chair of the Pittsburgh Downtown Advisory Board. I'm actually here for two reasons tonight. Uh [clears throat] first is to thank the board for your support of downtown and uh for sending making us part of the main street program and having Jonathan attend and Kyle and Tiana is awesome and you know to have a manager with the commitment to downtown that we have is amazing. Thank you. I had hoped to get on the agenda for a meeting to do this but that didn't work out. So I did put it in writing. I apologize for not knowing the protocol. I my initial um inclination was to say your honor may I approach but that's my old job so I didn't [laughter] know but Carrie does have them now I even had slides prepared so it's just a little recap of the um the down of the Main

Street um conference that we went to and the the slides aren't nearly as good on paper but they do highlight the importance of tax dollars from downtown and how much more downtown businesses bring in than subdivisions. or like big box stores. So, thank you for that. And my second item um is what Greg talked about. Um Pab did have a session with Bolton and Mink. They presented the you know the initial thoughts on the plan to us. They asked us for input. We also got input from other stakeholders downtown. We uh turned all that in and then I I didn't even know that it came back until I saw it on the um town board website. So I we we were told that we would have more input and get to review it and we haven't. So I would ask that uh we do have the opportunity to do that and you know I think sort of as a greater measure just that Pab we work really hard and we're all volunteers and it is a lot of work and I I happily do it even though I have a bazillion other things to do but if Pab's just kind of optics or there to approve you know unmeaningful things it's not I don't want to do it it's not worth my time. So when something this important about downtown comes up and we aren't included, I I feel um that that's not a good way. You know, if if the board really wants Pep to be meaningful and be a partner in downtown that it should come before PDP and uh that's about my time. So thank you,

Mr. Mayor. May I not sign up on the list, but just have a question on procedure. Well, I guess what's the question?

Yeah. So, the question is I I um do have comments that I would like to make about the UDO item that's on the agenda for tonight. Um but I don't know, and I did speak on it when it first came up uh

three or four months ago. Um but I don't know if you're taking comment on an action item or not. If you're not, I'd like to make my comments during the public input.

It's up to the board whether you allow public comment. uh during the action item.

Okay with me.

I agree.

Right. Up next we have a Mayor

one. Can we just have a little verification for the downtown committee that the direction that we were going with this that it was the county and the town received this first before it went to these advisory boards. Is that correct?

Was Yes, sir. I think that was the intent. Um, now Pittsburgh was different in that it gave the downtown or at least staff uh took G allowed the downtown advisory board to have input in their own kind of space whereas I think the rest of it was you as a person in the public you just came to the the meetings that were set. So we did sit or we did set uh a public input process specifically for them so they would have input um before a majority of the plan got going. But I mean that was maybe I didn't explain that but that was the idea for for the board to get it first and the county board to get it first before it went out to advisory boards. Is that not correct?

Yes sir. That that was at least my intent the matter because the the plan as a whole was designed for this board and for the county board and so it seemed [clears throat] proper to for you all to see it first. And w with respect to our our our Greg Stafford and Kathy Russell, um this is nothing in stone, right? What we're what we're your referendum is about today is we're just accepting it as knowledge and not as concrete, right? anything that u anything that's being presented tonight won't be uh

won't be agreed upon unless we wanted to and so we value you guys

absolutely

and and know that know that we value your opinions I know how hard you worked on it too

yeah claim 15 seconds of my time

let's let's get into the item and have it presented and not respondirectly ly. Um, so Jenna, can you come up and we'll start the item, please?

Good evening, mayor and commissioners. Uh, we have the downtown, uh, pre-development project, the final deliverables here for you tonight. The last update you got was in April at the budget retreat, and we have our consultants here to present the final deliverables. I do want to just add one like touch on the previous conversation. Um, we have a resolution for support, I believe is the wording, but we were very intentional with the wording because we didn't want to get tied to one specific thing. So, our consultant team worked very hard on their deliverables and then we the county and TM were very intentional with that wording. And with that, I will let the consultants.

Thank you, John.

Hello, everybody. Can you hear me? Okay,

good. Thank you to here.

It's a pleasure to be with you all tonight. Um here at the end of our process for analyzing the collection of public properties in partnership with Chattton County. [clears throat] Um it's been a year-long process. Uh as you are aware and as we've just been discussing, it's been involved a variety of types of engagement, input, and analysis to arrive at this point in time. This is not a plan. This is nothing set in stone. This is research. This is diligence. This is investigation into these many properties, all of which have a tremendous amount of value and potential to transform your downtown. So that when we move forward with our decision-m for each one of them, we are doing it with as much knowledge as we

can possibly obtain into what is possible for these pieces of property. So um without further ado, uh next slide. Let me this one right your name. My name I should probably do introductions, but let's get this worked out first. There we go. We can advance. My name is Alan Davis. I'm an urban designer and project manager with Bolton Mink. Uh I'm joined tonight by Jeff Bandini and who's with Innovate P3 and Albert McDonald who's with Studio 310. Uh if I need them to come up for any reason to answer any questions, uh I I reserve the right to call them up. Um sorry about that. Let's see here. So, uh, as you all know, you've seen this map a few times. Um, this is a collection of public properties that are owned by a variety of entities. But previously, there were six clusters of properties. We have now created seven. And by the the reason why we have seven is that we've divided the Mlanahan blocks uh, D and E in this map into two separate parcels. One of the main reasons why is they were just so large in terms of visualization, but they each have their own uh kinds of recommendations associated with them. This se this clust this grouping of seven clusters constitutes 23 parcels approximately 28 acres, 20 of which are owned by Chattton County. As we've said before many times, they're centrally located. Many of them are most of them are highly visible. They all have a variety of unique conditions associated with them. beyond just size. Uh things like visibility, uh the amount of frontage, uh the various buildings that are on the site that may be worthy of adaptive reuse, adjacency to open space, all all kinds of various factors associated with each of the individual uh clusters of property. Our process is generally three phases. uh we do a discovery and diligence phase

where we really think that we leave no stone unturned in terms of our research. We put boots on the ground. We visit the sites. Uh we do all kinds of investigation option testing into them. Uh we do a market analysis. Uh we determine a technical high highest and best use approach. And of course we do as much engagement as we possibly can do so that when we are receiving a variety of inputs and then synthesizing those inputs uh and for our next step which is to make sure we're headed in the right direction. Step two the confirmation of direction. That was our last meeting. We heard we got a lot of nods to to move forward. We we thought we were we think we're on the right path and that kind of led to our final deliverables. Our final deliverables are multiaceted. uh you have the executive summary which is a synthesis of all of the inputs and and all the findings highle summary of of what should how we should move forward in terms of sequencing of sites uh challenges that may remain recommendations for even off-site improvements that may be considered as part of how to better position these sites. Then there are individual development opportunity summaries that are derived from the technical diligence. That's just a, you know, snapshot of each of the properties that again encap encapsulate and capture all of the things that are going on with them and provide recommendations for how to position them and move forward. Along with that are the conceptual development scenarios. This is a variety of ways that we put a pencil on paper to figure out what can be built onto the sites, how it needs to look, how buildings need to be situated, how they need to be related to open spaces and mobility elements such as trails and streets. Then we have the public engagement summary. This is what you guys received last time that we met along with the market study. These are our main inputs in addition to direction from you and other uh other points of contact in the town. This slide speaks to our engagement

process. We did hold one event in person uh two two sessions per during that day where we had maps and boards explaining what the sites were explaining all the relationships around the sites. Um you know and basically went through a dot and post-it note exercise. Uh met with everybody that walked through the door talked to them about the project got their ideas on what needs to be developed for the project buildings that need to be preserved or don't need to be preserved things like that. and from that and and other forms of engagement including pops up pop-up site events, a communitywide survey, meeting with PDAB. Uh we synthesize all of these inputs and put them side by side with a technical market study uh to to develop our scenarios. We also created this vision. Now this is not a plan. This is a vision. And why did we create this drawing? Because that actually specifies to a potential future partner that you are serious about this, that you have intention for completing your downtown, that you have that it it create the drawing is vague enough to indicate that that you want to do something with these parcels, but it's not so prescriptive to say, "Thou shalt do these things." Right? it it this is a napkin drawing, but there are things indicated in this drawing that kind of behave a little bit like a master plan uh where you've got a really strong well-connected downtown that's highly walkable. Uh kind of behaves like an urban village, if you will. You've got two offshoots of downtown, one on the north, one on the south. The northern site is the popup park, which as I've said before, has kind of a side street condition that you'll want to capitalize on. That site, as you can see in this drawing, is big enough to hold structured parking. It's wrapped by multif family residential. I wanted to show that because just to indicate how big that parcel is and what it can do. Uh that's not necessarily our final recommendation. down to the south and on

C on the fire station site, you have the fire station itself and also the development opportunities that surround it, the important features that are next to it. And we've extended the drawing all the way to the south on Pittsburgh Elementary School Road because we felt that that connection there has certain safety issues that need to be resolved and as a way of getting around uh the creek and from the south accessing Mclanahan blocks. You think about the relationship between the downtown core and the Mlanahham blocks. You have three potential ways of getting east and west. One is across one is on West Street where you have F. F is one of our sites and I imagine that is a stepping stone to keep people walking from the heart of downtown onward to the Mlanahan blocks. It creates a little bit of activity that is in itself a destination but again enough activity to keep people walking and to encourage them to keep going to the Mlanahan blocks. Mlanahan blocks as we've said before are have a tremendous amount of potential um just based on their location uh the amount of land available um and you know just the the the possible configurations associated with with the parcels. I'm definitely going to go into more detail on all of these sites. I just wanted to talk through the the overall vision and you know really we have to be really clear about what this is and what this isn't. And I said it's not a plan. We we use terms like this is not set in stone. This is really for recommendation only. These are really sketches. They they start with sketches. They're refined sketches and they stop right here at these massing diagrams. And they do so for a reason. So we don't want to create too much specificity in these potential development outcomes because we want to see what our potential private sector partners can do for us. We want to leverage the talents and the capacity of the market to be able to deliver the product that you want to see in your downtown. Right? So we want to leave enough room for that flexibility. We

provide some guidance. We provide enough information to say that we're serious about this and we provide some diagrams to indicate how we want these sites to behave. Some minimal functional criteria that we think would create success on all of these clusters. So I have a kind of a funny thing here where one of my colleagues and I won't say who has said that he will give me a million dollars if I'm able to get through all of these scenarios in less than 15 minutes. I'm gonna start my clock.

Yeah, I can tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Right. He said the conceptual development scenarios, but you know, the reality of the situation is that each of them do warrant a lot of time. I could talk for an hour about any one of these sites. So, somewhere between a million dollars and an hour per site is where we're going to land on the rest of this presentation. So, each of these sites are kind of um the cover page is this map. These are the same exact maps that we used in our engagement process. They're a little bit more than an aerial uh image that you might find on Google Earth because a some of those aerials are out of date. They don't reflect existing conditions and b some of the place names really aren't accurate. So, we wanted to paint a picture in a simple way to help people understand what's going on with the properties, where they are, what what's next to them, you know, what are some of the open spaces or hardscapes, where's the tree coverage, things like that. So there's more simplistic diagrams. They're also kind of uh preceded by these existing conditions perspective views. Um and we do this as a way to capture existing buildings to indicate the relationships of adjacent buildings particularly in terms of massing and why we're situating uh certain things where we've recommended for them to be situated here in what we're calling the courthouse square. for a lack of a better word for now. I'm sure we'll come up with a great name for it in the long run, but really this is the heart of your downtown. We all know this. It's

currently occupied by three relatively large obsolete buildings that are single to two to two to two stories, excuse me. There's a building uh the the county administrative building was really right in the way of what would really want to be a continuous north south axis from courthouse to courthouse. There's surface parking. There's suburban building typologies mixed into the block. And right across the street is the southern part of what is your main street which is Hillsboro actually Sanford Road on this side. Excuse me. Our primary scenario really in terms of an urban design strategy is to to open up that north south axis. Secondly, we create a civic open space on the west side of that axis. This is about a 2acre open space. It gives you a lot of opportunity to really have a civic square. It could be as green or as hardcape as you want it to be. Uh the the main theme here is that you're able to visibly and and access and from an access point of view navigate north south uh between from courthouse to courthouse. So it really opens up that that is which is essentially utility easement. And you have a building now that provides a street wall along that open space. We envision this to be a vertical mixuse building. So it's retail on the ground floor that complements the retail that's across the street on Sanford Road. So essentially you have a square that's flanked by active users on now in all on all sides. I I may have talked about this before, but now I have a visual to sort of back it up. is that you know what you have here is a block that can have park arcing in the middle that it and buildings all the way around it. So that on the outside of the block along the streets you have active space building that is go go goes right up to the street. It activates the street and you have parking that's concealed in the middle of the block. That parking can be s sur surface lot or it can be structured and that is generally what's

going to dictate the amount of public parking that you could have there along with how tall these buildings can be. So we're generally envisioning to be three to four stories. There's a lot of opportunity for density here. These could be commercial or I'm sorry this could be office or residential or it could be a great place for a hotel. We don't get into too much specificity about this because really any three any three of those uses if you're able to get them and the market can support them will be successful at this location. You can imagine there being great residences here. You can imagine this being a great place to stay if you're visiting town. You can also imagine this to be uh offices mainly administrative or professional office that are complimentary to the courthouse. I've also included a building uh on East Street. there's a gap, a surface parking lot gap on East Street, and it would be great to fill it as part of this complex. And then the difference between these two scenarios is very subtle. Whereas one has a building in the open space, which would be of what you might call a jewelbox building, uh, where it's activated on all sides. It could be a singlestory restaurant or a two-story restaurant, perhaps even a bar on the roof, um, or a completely opened open space, right? Free of a building. But either way, you still got um buildings on both sides of the open space. The the conceptual framework here, again, I I've talked through all of this that north south axis. You really want to make sure people aren't crossing the street in the middle of the block. We've actually pulled some of the building massing back from the historic courthouse to respect it and to make sure we're not putting a bunch of mass up against it, things like that. All right. ABC store. ABC store is about a third of an acre. It's very small, doesn't leave a lot of options on what you can do with it, but you can do some things and and really it's a great way to improve this intersection and to to enhance the safety of it and the walkability of Sanford Road extending further to the south. So, here's the

existing condition. You know, it it's a singlestory building with a surface parking lot. Um, what one of the things that we're proposing is a pretty straightforward adaptive reuse, but a cleaning up of that parking lot. This may result in less surface parking spaces which you may need to pick up in another location. That could be on street parking could be adjacent surface parking. But the ideal situation here is to improve that frontage, the frontage of the building, the relationship of it to the street and then how that parking lot itself relates to the intersection. Because right now you've got parking that goes right up to the sidewalk and you want to create a little bit of relief for pedestrians who are waiting at that intersection. More aggressively, you can fill up the whole site with a building. Now, this is really going to require you to have an alternative parking strategy. Again, you know, what you see in downtowns is not every building has their own parking. You see a district-wide strategy. So, why should this be an exception? This gives you the ability to actively program that corner and to continue that walkable streetscape from north to south. But again, you have you'll have to think about where uh parking would be located. Now, we decided to get a little um ambitious here where what we provided parking underneath of a building and uh with a small uh ground floor commercial component that could also be perhaps a lobby space that would have include an elevator and a stair that would get you up to the upper floors. A modest two-story building could be residential or this could be office. If it's residential, you're really into sort of loft type spaces, higherend um to make the deal work is generally how this may go. But the whole point in here is that that surf this is now parked on site surface parking underneath of the building. Now, it does create a very narrow ground level space. So, you have to really be creative and and seeing if you can activate that. Perhaps you can get a coffee shop in there or perhaps it could really only be a lobby for for the building. But you also see here there's relief against that corner where you've provided small corner open space there.

That's number six. This diagram is really funky. There's a lot going on here. All that's to say is that there's an opportunity to connect to the rear service areas uh that are that are uh common on the remainder of the block. there's an opportunity to think about curb extensions or intersections improve and improve intersection improvements because this is a very important intersection in in in this block in this downtown in near downtown. There's also this sort of interesting saw to pattern that's happening with the setbacks that we've we've replicated things like that. So architecturally and structurally how does this new building fit into the the fabric? So next site is the fire station site. There's a couple of scenarios here. You've already seen these, but just as as a as a recap, uh, one of them is an adaptive reuse. One of them is going to be uh housing on this fire station site itself, and then the other again is more ambitious. It takes up the whole rest of the block. Now, that assumption, and I'll get to it, is really just a long-term strategy that you may consider with adjacent property owner participation for a larger development scheme. Right? So we want we don't want to limit ourselves at all times to only the properties we control because there's a lot of ways especially in the future to en envision and enable something uh bigger and better if if that's the desired direction forward. So uh on the fire station itself it's a pretty simple straightforward adaptive reuse potential. Um, but what you really want to do there is start to clean up the parking that's around the edges uh both on Wulmax Street and behind the building on Fagetville Street because this after all this is a a building that's been used for uh a fire fire station and firefighting in a more kind of utilitarian manner. These are large driveways, mostly concrete, lots of impervious surface. They're not designed for, you know, parking associated with a brewery, for example. So, you'd want to kind of clean that up. Um, you also see in my diagram later that, you know, this is a pretty substantial gateway coming

into downtown. So, anything you can do architecturally to make it significant on that corner to present itself better to downtown, uh, it would we would be a win for the for the site. One scenario we tested here was basically a rowhouse concept. And this could be live work where you have a small um, non-residential space in the ground floor of the building. It could be, you know, occupied by the owner of that unit, for example, a small hair salon or a coffee shop, things like that. Thinking about this kind of small intimate scale that you already have in your downtown. Um, and behind this, you can't really see very well, but it's all it's all parked and parked uh using garages under the building and some surface parking in the back. Um, this was our our preferred scenario for just redeveloping the fire station site itself. again cleaning up the parking uh and then tying into some of the adjacent relationships there. This is the bigger more ambitious scenario. Now, why did we think about this? Well, because you've got a lot of underdeveloped land uh also located on this block. Um but you and you can grow this project to be more attractive to more developers if this is your vision as a mixeduse vertical mixeduse development product with some structured parking. Uh it provides obviously more units onto the site, more opportunities for ground level commercial and you'll see here and we've preserved the Marcel's Pizza building here and and and we've entertained the idea of there being shared parking in the middle of the block associated with this block. And then on number three, I don't know if I have a laser pointer. There it is. Number three, you can envision a small uh intimate open space where both Marcel's Pizza and the future tenant of that ground level commercial space can serve out onto it. So think about cafe seating, activated plaza, things like that. It' be very successful for both entities. So again, it's more ambitious. One of the one of the things that we would take further in a long long-term strategy is to completely wrap this building, excuse me, all the way around. Um but what that results in is

something that is you know, a little bit larger than we want to see for downtown, but it is it is possible to to develop that entire block with all of the property owner participation. Okay. Looks like I will not be a millionaire tonight. All right. So then this this diagram speaks to uh some of the performance criteria, right? We want to extend the Sanford Road streetscape, extend that walkable environment as far south as we possibly can. I talked earlier about going all the way down the Pittsburgh Elementary School Road, improving that intersection and then wrapping around and getting to the Mlanahan blocks from that black back that backside. This is really what that what that talks about. Um, so we'll move on. All right, speaking of the Mlanahan blocks, these are the the biggest and best in my opinion in terms of the potential, right? I've talked a lot about that already. Before I get into the details though, I want to point out a few things and these two diagrams really spell out something that two things that I think are really important and that are driving these scenarios. Number one is the adaptive reuse potential of three buildings that are located on these two blocks. The former high the former elementary school gym, which is a gorgeous building. Number two is the old uh sheriff's office or the it's existing sheriff's office, but it's created by architect

uh Burns. Burns. Burns architect. Sorry for not remembering that. It's a very interesting structure in terms of the modern intervention that uh Pittsburgh and other towns like it had experienced in that era. And number three is what we call the hardened building which is the emergency operations center. All three of these buildings from a structural point of view and even from a character point of view have the potential to be adaptive or reused. Now you can imagine that if we take all three of those buildings and we run a variety of scenarios, you're going to get a multitude of permutations associated with different site plan configurations that are possible. So we've made a few assumptions to get us to to this point. The second diagram is the balance of developed area to open space area. When you look at the amount of open space

that already occupies these blocks and potential to connect them, improve them. Uh we've got the parks office that's now moved into the former Rafi building. Um there's a lot you can do there to make that open space system more robust and have it be a complement to the new development area to the north again which is already developed for the most part. So that it we thought that was a really nice way of illustrating that balance of uh developed and open space north and south. So what's the vision here right is that we want to create opportunities for housing particularly affordable maybe mixed income housing uh we want to we want to consider adaptive reuse in this scenario you can see that that old high school gym sorry old elementary school gym is adaptive reuse with a small open space in front of it. We want to see uh all of these other open spaces tied together with different sidewalks and pathways and the two relate to each other. So, if you're living in this place, it would be very easy for you to just kind of walk out and go take advantage of some of these facilities. Play baseball, pickle ball, whatever you like, go skateboarding. Um, but really what you see here, just like in the civic core that I talked about, are buildings that occupy the perimeter of the block and front really well onto the onto the onto the streets. And then what you see is a newly uh renovated Mlanahan street. And I'll talk more about why that's important later. You also see an east west street cutting through this block that kind of takes on the shape of the uh baseball outfield there, but for good reason because you're able to actually get a good layout. One of the things I'll also talk about is this surface parking lot here and how we've expanded it and made better use out of it, formalize it and enhance the pedestrian flow to and from it. And then also the Habitat for Humanity owned parcel here and and why that's configured the way it is. And that's essentially because you know if for whatever reason they weren't ready to participate in the grand scheme development deal in the near term you could develop the rest of it and and leave that or you could handle that in a

different kind of ownership regime. Won't get too far into those details but there's a reason why that's sort of carved out yet integrated like that. So that's the overall vision and here's the uh three-dimensional view. You can see that buildings are generally three to four stories. We didn't go too crazy, but it is a place that you can achieve some density. There's selective adaptive reuse. In this situation, we're playing with the idea of preserving the shell of a hardened building and growing units up out of it. You've probably seen examples of adaptive reuse that has new uh structure added to it. It's a nice architectural complement of one another. The gym, which reads really well in this scenario where you've got an open space in front of it, the expanded parking lot. Talk more about that right now. What you have over here is uh the elementary school parking lot which is essentially three bays in width that is half of a parking lot and you've got a piece of this parcel which is just coming over here which really wants to be the remainder of that parking lot. Now why am I talking about a parking lot when I've got all these great buildings that I need to go through? Well, all of these buildings park themselves. This building is what you're going to have to consider in terms of its demand on the parking load within the mixuse development. What I what I mean by that is if you want it to be a food hall or something that's going to attract a lot of people, you're probably going to need a little bit more parking than this, right? And that's why we're thinking about this is that maybe there can be some shared parking scenarios. Maybe there's be some pedestrian connectivity to to and from them. So really uh where you're going to need this surface parking lot is really where where you're going to have to make some decisions about what this wants to be. Now, this could be something more passive like a arts center and it wouldn't require so much parking. And it's it's also a nice way of me telling you that all of these buildings in this density can park itself. Doesn't necessarily need an off-site parking situation like the ABC store does. Is that my timer? So, uh, and I will I will speed this along. I apologize. Like I said, I could talk for an hour about any of these, but

here are the existing buildings in Mlanahan blocks east. I'm sorry, west. Here's a little bit more detail. uh we want to provide maybe entertaining some a rooftop amenity deck that you can oversee the the baseball games going on. Here's that partialization that I was talking about where the Habitat for Humanity Habitat for Humanity piece is probably considered separate. A new east west street that gives the block better connectivity. So we think we've reached a satisfactory arrangement here that reflects you know all the sort of values and input that we receive plus the market potential and again it's just a great place to achieve some density in housing. Moving on to the east block, same kind of thing. Uh, you know, generally from an urban design perspective, buildings that front onto the street. We've got a scenario here that does preserve the existing sheriff's office building and repurposes the frontage of that one, similar to the uh to the old high school gym as as an open space. So again, we provided some flexibility in what you can ultimately do with these sites while uh while meeting the vision that that that we've heard. So, uh, last two, I promise. Um this is the what we've been calling the old library site, but it's really the county IT office and um MIS offices where you basically drive through to pay your tax bill. And then uh this is Lewis Freeman Park on the back which is you know as of today currently under construction. Um and then West End kitchen. So this is that stepping stone that I was talking about where you with a with a just a little bit of intervention you can provide um some activity that relates to the street and keeps people walking from east to west and really synergizes with with the great activity that's already going on there. Um parking would be would be plentiful in a small intervention like this. You could adaptively reuse the IT office or it can remain IT office for the foreseeable future or could be converted into something else quite easily. uh parking opportunities around it and connectivity to uh Lewis Freeman Park. Um over time though uh you may

decide or immediately you may decide that that IT IT office is not worth uh adaptive reusing or it could be uh constructed as a another civic amenity. In this case, we're showing it as a fire station because throughout our process, we understood that if we're going to be taking away one fire station on one of the sites, we need to put it back somewhere else. Um, and generally speaking, a fire station is needed in this part of town to service this part of town. So, that's why we running this scenario. Now, the fire station design is just shown as a simple apparatus bay. That's not to indicate the architectural style at all. It's just showing it and how it would perform on the site. Um, another scenario is that you have the adaptive reuse IT building with a new fire station installed in the middle of the site right beside it. So, the two structures could be integrated. Um, and there might be some room for or there would be some room for a small corner open space and and plenty of parking. And then you've got two open spaces with park uh with some public parking that could really help um help this area. So, one thing I wanted to point out is if you this is like a community center for example and you did want to park here to use that, you would just simply walk around in front of the apparatus bay and you can think about all the cross programming. I mean, I even think about you could have a you know, you could have a pumpkin patch in the in the fall here. You know, a lot of things you could do with this corner corner space. Now, we had to run it as a standard building, right? It no adaptive reuse. what would it look like with a simple three-story building really that you see in a lot of other places, right? That basically again, sorry, continues the um the frontage of the uh of the walkable main street um and then considers how much yield you would get out of a pretty straightforward building, [clears throat] right? The pop-up park. For the pop-up park, we all kind of know it. uh you know it basically it changes grade substantially uh from from north

to south. Sorry I don't have my street names on here. Um there are some adjacencies in terms of what the block could share. You'll see that in our phasing. Um there's this side street condition that I keep talking about where you've got some commercial activity along that side street. Our first phase and this is where the main scenario we ran was for a boutique hotel that would have an active ground floor component that would complement the you know the side street condition. Again, uh because of the grade change on the site, it's a really great way to kind of talk and hide parking, whether it's surface parking or parking under the building or the whole thing as a structured parking facility. Um again, taking advantage of that grade change to be able to access it from both sides. But you'll also see in the diagram that we want to promote as much as possible um continuation of on street parking. So, this is a kind of an articulated mass that's done in a in an interesting way. It's got some rooftop amenity. It's got again commercial on the ground level between the parking and the street. So we think that's a pretty successful way of achieving a boutique hotel on this site and that would really be in great proximity to all of the walkable uh amenities in the downtown. Now you can see pretty you can see that we jump pretty quickly from phase one to phase two, right? And this is property that we do not currently control, but we wanted to entertain its eventual expansion and integration into the project. The reason why is because this is also a good place to achieve some height and density. There is a single family structure over here, but generally speaking, you've got multif family, you've got a church, and you've got an employer over here. So, it's a really good place to start uh building out uh this generally underdeveloped um part of town or or this underdeveloped site, excuse me. Um let's see. [snorts] And then last I'll leave off which is the framework for this one where you know the sites relate to each other. they can share parking. There's opportunities to expand on street parking on both of the streets. And you really want to encourage that uh the continuation uh and further development of that side street

commercial activity. And that's all. I can go back to any slide and of course I can dive into any questions or levels of detail that you have. And I am not a millionaire.

How long did you take? What was the number?

23 minutes.

Okay, that's good. I like that. Try any questions?

A general question. Uh it's more towards the board and staff, but uh Candace and I were talking about a larger plan for Pittsburgh. And I'm thinking this this is an incredible effort, but all of a sudden we have other elements that are should be included. Uh, for instance, Cadam Mills, there's been a sale. Uh, there's also Robert's Run, an affordable housing uh, community just to the east of these homes here. And finding a way of including those items to make the town that much more enhanced. I I see the value of the hill from Thompson Street up to Chattam Chattam Mills as being an incredible asset to the town. If we can tie that all together, I think it would be an incredible advantage and an attraction. Jenna um in regards to Robert Shron the Habitat for Humanity project at the start of this project we included like we shared with the consultants all information about ongoing projects or projects that we knew were in the works. So they did have an accurate table and additional information on any development projects. It doesn't 100% address your

Yeah, it it doesn't. But um my point is that we as a board should be thinking about the vision of not just this Bolton

and M brilliant presentation, but we have to think a little bit more globally now. Where do we want to go with this town? And uh that should be something that we should be considering

pointing [clears throat] us in the right direction. love to hear agreements.

If I could kind of build on what um Moloi was saying when I was looking at all of these I these are really great puzzle pieces but I really don't know what the puzzle looks like and what I mean by that I guess we have this great picture here but how much housing and affordable housing do we need downtown? How much office space do we actually need downtown? because there are some scenarios that I that jumped out at me and I said, "Oh my god, these these are great, but if we do this one, well, we don't need this one." So, I'd like to kind of see something that tells me what we need. Um, and I I think that what we're really going to need downtown are is a a focus on um residential and affordable and attainable residential because that is what supports downtown. If we have all these residences in there, um I think that's where we I I think that's what's going to support our downtown business. I think that's what's going to um support our tax base. So, I would like to see the concentration on that, but I don't know what the number is. Um and with all of these, they're great, but I I would kind of like to have a better idea of what the town needs.

Cool. Thanks. So, the scope of this was a county town partnership project. So I think what you are looking for was a little beyond the scope of this specific project. We also with the market study I might turn to Alan again but with the market study I believe that they one of the reports that they gathered data from was uh had affordable housing numbers. I could probably find more information

on it with my laptop. Um but I believe that there was some of that data. Yes. Would you like to come save me?

Sure. Well, you're you're getting at what's going to h what needs to happen next.

True value.

This is a snapshot today. These, you know, we're looking at a vision today of we've kind of fed all these together. What's really missing is is like market outreach and market input. So, the the trick is going forward is you're you're not going to tackle all these all these properties at one time. You're going to take them one at a time. So, you need to prioritize which ones you want to proceed first pursue first. they they kind of fall out naturally because of the existing uses on the site. We can kind of see which one should go first and which one should follow. The next step is before putting out an RFQ RFP, you really want to kind of do some preliminary market outreach to the you know the development community to see what is working, what's not working in the area, what what they see. So is there a magic number of square feet of office? No. I mean at any time in the market there's more office or less office housing we could build all the sites in housing tomorrow and still have you know plenty demand for housing. So you're just going to have to take a one one kind of step at a time and and in each step be very deliberate about what it is the town wants to see occur at that moment how it fits into a broader vision and then see what's possible in the market. And that's really beyond a market study. It really is. You have to do some deliberate outreach. Um but you can you can commission a market study tomorrow and they can tell you what it's gonna you know they can give you a report you know next year and says well this is what we need but by the time you implement it the market study will be stale. So um you really kind of have to pursue it [clears throat and laughter] examine as you go. Does that

Yep. Thank you. you know, we have we have an advantage uh all this inheriting or or being donated all this property and there's not many towns in the United States that have this advantage of such

density right downtown Pittsburgh. And I think we're on the right track, but uh I think we need also need to think globally what's next traffic patternwise, parking wise, all those things that will enhance the downtown area. That's

one thing I would take away from this report too is there's the design and what could happen, but if you look at the specific analysis, there's a lot that has to happen before any of that can't happen. So this is as much about, you know, we have existing uses on the sites, we have infrastructure questions, we have a lot of questions that you need to work through and and I would not advise you to tackle all this at one time. You're going to need to take it incrementally. Um, and you know, and just this is going to build on itself over time. So one of the key findings of the of the report really is here's all the things you have to do to even do anything. If I can, I do want to kind of add a couple of things. Um, I was kind of fishing for the uh detailed numbers and I wasn't able to find them, but I'm going to generalize here and say that if you built everything that we're showing, you could absorb it. It's pretty safe, right? I mean, all we're really showing is 600 units of residential. That that is [clears throat] com who who doesn't want to live in downtown Pittsburgh, right? I mean, this it could easily be absorbed. Mlanahan blocks roughly about 270 of of those units. maybe maybe 300 depending on the number of stories that you want to achieve. And that assumption is that if you run residential on all on on the ones that we're proposing be residential or commercial, right? So you've still got to make room to absorb some of the office building. Um the other thing is your uh market differentiation, right? You've got a a really great collection of plans and development ambitions uh for the eastern part of the town and county. Um there's a lot of activity in that area, but um downtown Pittsboro is special and that's, you know, a distinct market advantage that

downtown has that those other communities as as walkable as they're going to be will never be able to achieve because of the layers of time that that Pittsburgh has associated with it and and more the the authenticity, the character, right? There's a tremendous market value on those things. So, the demand is there, right? Um the other is you're exactly right. Uh you need a downtown plan. Um you know we were I look you know me in the level of detail that I like to get into right I I would have loved to have done a lot more here. Um and and we probably went beyond scope. Uh and Jeff will tell me that we did but um you know where we were thinking about all the kinds of connection points between the sites. Uh you know how and even looking at some of the neighboring developments. Um, you can see my little arrows because I was trying to think about all of the small trail systems that you have that lead to Town Lake Park, for example. Um, all of those things need to be considered in unison. So, that's why I'm really clear that this is not a plan. This is just a vision drawing. But, uh, I think you do need a downtown plan relative near future. And I think a lot of this like as it will develop whatever piece goes first what it what happens there based on the market and all the other factors will shift all the other pieces around as we go on to those the county gets funding and you know moves out and and all of those things happen. So, I think there's there's obviously a ton of information in here and I think a lot of good good background in in process. Um, but just trying to remember that none of it is prescriptive or or what this is going to look like 20 years from now,

right? Yeah. It's not a shot in the dark either, you know. Uh, so, you know, we we spent a lot of time thinking about, you know, how these sites would grow. And and one more recommendation that I'll leave you with and it's in here somewhere in the slides is um you know town and the county work really well together. We work in a lot of municipalities where that is not the case. So our strongest recommendation is to continue the good work that you're doing together as as you move forward in this um to figure out what exactly what you're going to do with each of these uh

sites.

Thank you. More questions?

Yeah, sure. Uh, so, um, I very much appreciate, uh, Commissioner Hunicker's question. Uh, I think I heard you say 600 residential units total across the whole vision.

That's assuming that if we're showing a site, we're selecting the residential outcome of the scenario, right? So, yeah, roughly 600,

right, max.

Well, that that's kind of where I wanted to go is is wonder why why such low density. So, um, obviously the the courthouse is the crown jewel of Pittsburgh. It's the centerpiece of Pittsburgh. And so, we want to be very cautious about over topping that about having height of buildings near that. That is is is overwhelming. Mhm.

I mean that's the tradition in Washington DC and in many other places where there's some really special architectural feature in the center. Uh you don't want to have too much taller than that in close proximity but is four blocks away far enough away to go for six stories at the Mlanahan West site. Um, you know,

I'm just curious, can you can you tell us a little bit more about how it was that you settled on what by my eye looks like low density?

Yeah. Um, great question and great point. Uh, when you look at our scenarios, one of the things you don't see a whole lot of are parking decks. And the reason why that is they're incredibly hard to finance right now. Um, they're incredibly difficult. They're increasingly difficult in terms of public private partnership. Uh they usually when you subsidize those you have to include some level of public parking which makes the deal even harder to pencil out. The other factor there is as designers and and as planners we

really want to pay attention to the character of the communities in which we're working. Uh throughout the input process we've heard a couple of times that Pittsburgh is a two-story town. And so we thought that we were already challenging that notion and and introducing few more development typologies, a slight increase in density that is also respectful of of what you the fabric that you already have. Now to your specific question is the Mlanahan blocks were a place where we could achieve taller buildings. Absolutely. Yes. Because you are far enough away from the core of town. There is not a lot around it that would be adversely impacted by a tremendous amount of height. and you could achieve height on the site and then taper down to any adjacent sites that would be affected by that. Um, that's why I celebrate the Mlanahan blocks because it is a place where you can go taller if you want. And of course, you can get that number higher. You want to be careful that you're not getting the unit count so high as to necessitate structured parking because, you know, and this will be up to the developers, right? uh they're they're smarter than I am in many ways because just what we're seeing right now in the market is is not it it can no longer really support too many what you call Texas donuts and I don't know that you'd really want those in your community uh as anyway at this point. Um so that's why we went something a little more modest. Um and you know it's really up to y'all to figure out how far you want to take it. you kind of shot down what I was going to discuss a little bit was as a previous downtown owner, all I've heard from everybody downtown is parking. Parking has been an issue in Pittsburgh for 70 years that I know of. So that's a big concern for downtown Pittsburgh. There was a parking study done relatively recently and our recommendations are consistent with that study is that it really needs to be an

all the above strategy that you need to find places where you can have centralized but parking that is visible enough to be safe but not located in a way that kills your street and doesn't where people don't want to continue walking where vehicle vehic vehicles overwhelm the street which is why we're kind of redeveloping that civic core. or into a into a civic space. Um, structured parking is sure, but you got to have a site that's big enough to hold it. You got to have a lot of capital injection to be able to build it. Um, so that's that's if you can afford to do it. Sure. Um, that site A is a great place for that because you're able to uh if you're able to afford a deck and and have a development deal pencil, that deck will be tall enough to support everything around it and it'll be hidden so you're not looking at the side of an ugly parking garage as you're walking down [clears throat] the street. um maybe D and E, but they're far enough away that it really you you're not going to get you you may get an apartment developer that would would build a deck right now there uh given the site size. But back to the allove all of the above strategy on street parking, uh transit, ride share, alternative ways getting around. Uh really it's it's it's all of the above. But really what you have to put first is the physical fabric of downtown and making sure that you have something that is walkable and and not unsightely as a result of having service parking.

Just to leave you with one thing, we put there has to be a parking deck and any opportunity goes out the town as to pay for it. So, you know, to the extent that a parking deck's required, you really want the private sector to bring that option forward. Um, but that's that's I see this happen a lot of times um in small towns around the country. Um it's like well we want big we want parking decks and the developers could say it's fine. [clears throat]

So there there there could be hybrid answers to that. Uh my pricing what my research is between 24,000 to 30,000 a parking space which is per space. It's profoundly expensive. However, uh there

are government um like Robert Reeves has a bill right now for $50 million rotating funds for affordable housing, infrastructure, parking, and we could we could use that. Uh that's that's one that's one alternative. Uh public and private mergers is another. So that that's something that uh I'm considering using with the promise that downtown space with uh 420 units uh two buildings, five over two, five residential, two commercial parking underneath and then a parking deck that's both county town and government financed and private financed. So that's you can do. Yeah, we those are all options. Um density is key if

true. Yeah.

More you can build the more financable it becomes.

Exactly.

So I asked many times during this project does that building park itself? Does that building park itself?

So the the the pro the the project that I'm working on right now when in section D that's where the police department the sheriff's department is top topographically it's relatively low right it's about 120 ft below the the the base of the courthouse. So that would support six or seven stories and uh a parking deck right behind that would be an appropriate spot. We have the uh Mlanahan Park right there and uh so I think it would be walkability. It's just two blocks from right downtown. So something we can consider.

Yeah. And as part of this conversation, I I you know, glancing back up at the map, I I failed to remember that I show a parking garage on the pop-up park in this scenario just as a way of showing how it fits. And you know, you mentioned the grade associated with the site that you're examining that that's a good way to conceal a parking garage. Parking

garages are very successful in downtowns when they're wrapped by habitable space.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

Thanks for the opportunity to work on this. Thank you guys.

We've learned a lot about Pittsburgh and Chattam County and the working relationship between the county.

Why don't you come here? Move here.

You're invited.

I'm going to live right there.

When I started working on us, I actually brought my wife out to Chattam County and we toured all of Chhattam County looking for houses.

That's great. Thanks for your help.

Thank you, Ellen. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, everybody. We have a recommended resolution as well.

Yeah. Before we move on to a motion, um I wonder if we might move past questions and into a little bit of discussion. I I I just wanted to share some thoughts in reflecting on this that um it's it's very exciting. There's so much potential. we really have not it's bigger than a once in a-lifetime opportunity, right? It's once in this town's lifetime opportunity to do something really significant. Um I'm eagerly supporting the uh kind of an approach that has this study continue. I know that the the contract is probably finished and this is wrap up phase, but um as evidenced by the eagerness uh for further input from PDAB, I wanted more public input. As I was reading this at home, I'm thinking I want more public input. So, I'm eager to hear more from the public and from the downtown advisory board and from other organizations. So, uh I also uh am very glad that the

uh the resolution is so explicit uh and kudos to staff that indeed y'all did really work hard on this that you know this resolution is intended to recognize past and f future collaboration and does not commit either party to any specific action, funding obligation, development proposal or project outcome. all of which remain subject to future review and approval by the respective governing bodies. And I'm really really happy with that. I came in wanting to say that uh I don't want anyone to have the impression that this is a prescription. These are a bunch of ideas and we need all the ideas on the table. Um that's my opinion. So, um, the other piece that I'd like to share with the board is I feel very strongly that we should retain public ownership of these lands. That we should think of this as an opportunity for public private partnership far into the future. uh like 99-year leases that allow for public control but private private development and private investment uh for private you know for-profit interests. That's we need to harness the engine of the profit motive to have further develop in downtown. So, that's my opinion and I'd really love to hear others thoughts on it.

I'd love to hear the pros and cons of of that very thing where uh we have a dollar lease where the county does. Maybe the county takes that. I'd rather it be Pittsboro. But what what are the pros and cons of of doing that very thing?

Uh I'm I'm not quite sure.

Can we get Jeff to hit on that? Yeah. Thanks, Jeff.

Expert.

Yes. chicken ideas.

Um, so, so the the ground lease conversation, I think we've had this conversation a few times. Um, the ground lease, long-term ground lease is a a common way for the the public to retain ownership of these properties. Once once the public kind of gives up property, you're not going to be able to ever buy it back. So, that that's I mean or or buy other property quite honestly because the cost of real estate is so high. So the the 99-year ground lease is a very common tool for public entities and institutions retain control of the property while at the same time leveraging private investment and development to you know to deliver community goods. So that that's pretty significant right there. Um in terms of the the the financials of it and what it means from a financial perspective um you know a ground lease can a 99-year ground lease operates pretty much the same as if you were selling the property. So to the extent that there was consideration going to be paid for the property by the private developer or private owner um it would either be wrapped up in a ground lease framework or a sale of the property. So there's there's really no difference in economics. Um the ground lease um clients I work with I prefer the ground lease model. Um I it allows the public entity in if if a development goes south at any time during sort of the initial phase and development phase, it does provide the the the owner the owner of the property the opportunity to claw it back. And that's pretty significant. A lot of times projects will get into trouble after the public entity or institution has conveyed the property to another party and now they're in a situation where they got a defun product project on the ground and they don't own the land anymore. how do they get it back? Um, so that's that's a common problem. So there there are a variety of um pros to using ground leases versus just straight sales. Um, in North Carolina, ground leases weren't as common. I would say, you know, 30 years ago, NC State Centennial Campus really started using ground leases. Um, um, and then they've been growing in use more across the

state. So early on, we'd hear developers say, well, you know, we can't do that. Well, they do it everywhere else in the country. Why can't you do it here? So we kind of got over that hump. Um they are financable. The um you know the banks will finance them. Um the ground leases are more complicated to negotiate because you are talking about um you are talking about making significant private investment and lender interest on a piece of property that the owner doesn't necessarily control outright. So the the negotiation is more complicated because it's a multi-party negotiation. Um it's not just you negotiating with the buyer, you're negotiating with the buyer, the lender and the investors involved as well. So that dynamic is more complicated. Um but again at the end of the day um I at least in my opinion I I think it offers more pros and cons. Um but it's a it's a conversation that you know you would have more fully with your town attorney um and others involved with the process when you got to [clears throat] put out an RFQ or something. So that's my notes version. Any questions? [clears throat] Thank you. Any other questions or discussion?

None.

None. Okay.

Can I ask a quick question, Commissioner Frell? Um the idea of the police or the excuse me the fire department uh moving over to a street that's almost as congested as the one that's currently on. I mean is is that a good idea? I thought if we were going to move the fire department, if we were going to move the fire department, we'd move it to a a road that is wider and you know, maybe farther down Sanford Road or intersection of Pittsburgh Monure Road and Sanford Road.

Really can't comment completely on that, but I don't think that would be a location that we would accept.

Okay. Thank you. [clears throat]

I mean, I've heard a lot of concern from the community. I was really surprised and

I may be wrong about that. I believe it was in our uh we did a survey like I've told everybody, we need fire station north.

Yeah.

And something downtown. The station we're in now will be fine for several more years, you know, but we need something north.

Yeah. The location in this study is moving the station in downtown on Sanford Road to West Street and then you activate the or reuse the current building for something else private.

Yeah.

But Darl and I have talked about that for quite a while

and [snorts] that'd be in addition to additional new fire station sites up north out east that would provide that access. It would still be the downtown

serving a smaller area than it does.

We do we do think we still need a station in the downtown main core area. Absolutely. Thank you. I get a motion to approve the resolution. It's moved.

Thank you, Commissioner Bonnets. There a second.

Commissioner Huner. Any other discussion? All those in favor say I.

I.

Thank you, guys. Any opposed?

Thank you. All right. Up next we have a uh unified development ordinance amendment ZTA consistency commissioners may services um director this is in in response to the comments that were made and the tableabling of this item and the hearing was closed and

we are just responding to those comments. We have a very detailed staff report. Um it's about 10 pages that goes through each item. I've had two planners review myself and a lawyer as well. So we tried to make sure it was thorough as possible. We've made some minor corrections and we have added two additional chapters. One is transportation and the second is the infrastructure acceptance and that should make it quite a bit easier for the development community when they come in to know the exact process and the stages and the requirements and that is what this was intended to do. [clears throat]

Questions or comments on this item from the board? So, yeah. U Thank you for Do you have a bed in your office?

No.

You You stay there all the time. The amount of work you're you're putting out is phenomenal. It's It's impressive. Um I'm I'm curious. Uh I do know that you enrolled the uh the help of some like uh Nick Robinson to provide feedback. Can you tell me about that process? um for this one specific

um it's not for this one. We said we noticed

that some of the community had questions and we said please take a chance to make comments. He came to the board um and made the comments here instead of before to us for this specific update. The updates that they have been involved with is the conservation subdivision when we reached out to several of the primary developers who work in that specific section. I understand. So I I do see that I'm confused. So help me out with page three of So I see comments by Mr. Robinson.

Um it follows through where we started for page one of 10 at the bottom until

you get to his comments on page three, his markups that he provided. And then on page four, it actually starts with his recommendation, the requirements, and then we responded to it accordingly with the background on what the revised version would be. Well,

he was part of the feedback, right, to the board.

That's why it was pushed back after the hearing.

[clears throat]

So, uh, this has been, uh, it's not posted yet, right?

No, sir. Is not

obviously not, right?

The updated versions for transportation and infrastructure go to planning board. They're on there for next week. Um, along with storm water and conservation subdivision. So, uh, those updates are coming in the future, right?

That's why we have reserved, not the actual sections in there, but we want that actually noted where they would be. The specifications for transportation were updated partially with on the consent as well as all the sections for the utilities where they changed over to try river water. So, this that goes

those are all peeled off. Yeah. Saw that. Um I'm concerned that uh there how how do we normally do feedback with u uh residents with this type of document?

The smaller updates. It hasn't been normal to actually put it out and have full public comment except for that the hearing section which is two weeks or going to planning board and have that section through there.

So this initial uh um document is just

[clears throat]

give me some um synopsis of what you're trying to do here.

Pick some of the errors that are contradictions throughout the document items and the definition.

Yes, in the UDO um specifically the definition for the um the consistency for a comprehensive plan. that comprehensive plan actually referred to two documents that are not actually defined in the UDO and we added which ones that needed to be in there and make sure it pointed to the correct ones in the section and the definition just points back to the section so that the [clears throat] section can be firmly updated going forward and not doing a definition which should be the basis for it and not something you would continuous update there are the supplemental piece they're not the idea of what's in media that was the the supplementation

this this document then to provide guidance for developers.

Yes.

To follow specific instructions by the town. Is there any significant changes that we need to be aware of?

Adding the transportation and the infrastructure section that don't currently exist in UVA and that's

so let's talk about the transportation side of things. What is it? What have we changed in our There was nothing there. Is that correct?

No, it's just the reserve for now. are adding the chapter which is going to the planning board next week and that will outline everything from level of service to what's expected not just in what's in a subdivision but outside of that.

So this is like a guideline but u specifically you you've you've omitted or you've deleted the uh uh Tri River um language, right?

Yes. And the rest is just ways to approach the planning department.

Yes.

Can I Can I say that

simplified version? Yes. [clears throat]

Is there any anything in this document that's restrictive?

No. What we did do is make sure that it was clear where we were pulling the information from so they have reference to the documents. Not restrictive. It is their guides and their plans. They're not meant to [clears throat] be this is everything you have to go specifically detail what's in this book. It is this is the list of the plans that we use. This is what you reference. That's what this section is for.

Okay. Correct. And the other topic you're going to be talking about is more specifically tonight. Tell me the other document that you'll be presenting or will you be this is it.

This is it. We updated the specs for the first section. get this portion cleaned up where it's nice and clean and then a plane board will work through the transportation and infrastructure and then bring it to the board in August.

So, uh who has reviewed it?

This specific document um our department, so two planners, our acting staff lawyer, myself and then the rest of the staff has also taken a look at different sections to make sure it all lines up and what we have in here that we didn't miss anything. Wonderful. Has uh the town attorney approved it, reviewed it?

No, sir.

Does the UDO say that the town attorney needs to review it?

So, we have the staff lawyer and we have the town lawyer both. He's had a copy of the piece that's been added here and this

he's had a copy since the last time and we have addressed his comments in here. So, he's

Mr. domestic,

but we also had the staff lawyer, the acting staff lawyer look at as well and go through review it.

Has the town attorney looked at this and approved it? I don't know his his actual what his review piece be other than the first revision and his comments and we've repotted the response everything back into it. I think we should follow

the guidelines on the union note and have him approve it.

That's what it's for, right? Staff has to approve it and the town [clears throat] attorney. Okay. Where does it say that our town attorney has to approve UDO

in the UDO? You want to pull it up? You can.

It's in there. I I think this the town attorney should be reviewing the UDO. I mean, we have we are struggling right now with the UDO and I'm glad we have Elizabeth helping. Thank you. But uh we need to do it right and we need we need to follow what the UDO says we should be doing. I ask that we consider I ask that I move as a matter of fact to move this to next month to have the town attorney Paul Messi review it and okay it I'd love it a second.

I'll second that.

We still have other discussion or do we have to talk about it? Yeah.

Motion by Commissioner Foley second by Commissioner Huner. their discussion.

I think we should bump this. This is important stuff. We've already tripped over the UDO so many times. We have [clears throat] conservation subdivision section that is embarrassing. It's not It doesn't have full sentences in it. And for us to approve anything, I think it's it's up to us as commissioners to make sure it's done correctly. And that makes not just the planning department pushing it forward, but also what is described as the legal entity that is our town attorney to give us a

thumbs up. I would love to hear more thoughts about that.

And since we're veering into discussion on that, um, Mr. Massie, is it since it's already been reviewed by the attorney that the what do we call that? the other attorney,

contract attorney.

Okay. Our contract attorney and I I thought I saw in here that you put back some comments on it as well. Is have you reed this newest?

No, ma'am.

Do you feel that you need to review this or are you satisfied with the other this contract attorneys?

I I have not spoken to them. I don't know what they said about it. This is a document that's going to be published and I think it's prudent for us to make sure that it's vetted by the town attorney. Not a contract. Not a contract because a contract attorney doesn't report to us. It's one month. Let's get it right. A lot of the times I found UDO uh amendments to be pretty complicated and confusing. In this case, I found this to be pretty straightforward. I'm satisfied with moving forward with it. So, any other discussion? Yeah, I'd have to repeat uh [sighs and gasps] the town attorney has not approved this and uh there have been mistakes in our UDO before and I think it's up to us to make sure that it's done correctly. I know that May has done an incredible job with this, waiting a month to make

sure that it's approved by our town attorney, which is exactly what the UDO says we should do. It's one month. [clears throat]

Mr. Messi, can you comment on that requirement? I don't know it's a requirement that I'd approve anything, but I'd be glad to review anything. Um, review

I'm sorry, not approve or review. You're right. I'll give you the I know everybody should know this already. I I'll look it up.

It also asks Mr. Robinson if you want to speak.

[clears throat]

Thanks. I uh I did have some comments, but I I would say this about the process of it. There was an original version of this UDO text amendment that came to you in April. I spoke a little bit about it. I was asked by um M. Armstrong afterwards to to do a red line of it um in 4 days, which I did. So, by April 17th, I had done that. Um and then I didn't hear anything about it for for 3 months until this morning. Um, and I I didn't even actually know it was on the agenda until I looked at it this morning. But I will say this, I think the version that was originally proposed to you all in April has been changed. Uh, items that were not in it in that first version are now new items are in it. Items that were in the first version have been deleted. And items that were in the first version have been modified. And I think your UD I'm pretty certain your UDO says in section 9.2 two that amendment text amendments to the UDO have to be reviewed and recommended by the planning board. Um I believe the staff has said in the staff report that the planning board did review and recommend approval of the first version but to my knowledge

and may you might know if it's been gone back to the planning board. I don't think it has with the new changes.

It has.

It has not. So it seems to me like uh in line with what Mr. Commissioner Foley is saying is it would be prudent I think to make sure that the version that you are going to adopt gets reviewed not only by the town attorney but then also by the planning board because the UDO requires it. Um that's what I would say and it's not my job to say anything about that but um that's that would be my comment on the process right now.

We're asking for one month one month and let's do this right. Will this go to the planning board if it was delayed for a month? Will it go to planning?

Still has to go through the planning board whether it's next month or not.

May, can you comment? It will have to go to planning board next month because the timeline has already passed for this month is next week but don't

I guess more the requirement for planning board review for changes or like level of changes to a text amendment.

Um

question about that Mr. Mayor.

There's no

there's no question about it.

Okay. towards the

it's a substantive change from what was reviewed by the planning board then it needs to go back.

My question I guess was the determination of a substantive change. Would you consider subs this a substantive change? I was issuing it as a response to the minor items that noted and we retracted some of it and then put the rest of it in the next one to go to the planning board. But what we can do is just update it to go with that if we can make the modification because we already have the transportation and infrastructure. We

may be able to do that. I'll have to talk it through with the clerk so it goes all through.

Can you do it all at once? Any other questions or comments

on this part or like the motion or on the entire

uh I guess on the motion at this point the motion to delay this item I I you modify to one month or as needed

or as needed. That's even better. I just want to write I want it right. We owe it to the people ahead of us just to get this right. So my motion is uh as I stated to um to bump this amendment to uh as further down the road as as much as needed to get it correct. Help me with that. Second

motion to delay the item for further staff review and to consult the town attorney.

There you go. Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

I second.

Thank you. Uh any other discussion?

All those in favor say I.

I.

Any opposed? No one opposed motion passes.

That's the weirdest thing.

Yeah, it is. And I don't want I don't want to vote on this until it's

Yeah.

I have a question about Yes. I'm I'm not done with it. Can we do that or do I

have to wait till next month? Bill, I I don't have an idea.

Neither do I.

I would say give your comments to staff and then as it comes back to us, as it gets reworked and re re-reviewed question rather than comments. Well, I I I I guess it is it's more of a comment about it based on something that was brought up about um how your watershed is going all through the planning that that's in process now as well. Um and this is covering transportation infrastructure and we've got watershed coming up. Um I basically because it's a consistency standard and it's going to the UDO. I just wanted to see if I could ask if there could be some standard requirements um for you know

to the board.

I'm sorry. [clears throat]

Talk to the

Okay. I'm sorry because I was kind of asking her. Um so I I kind of I would like to see that um

sorry

respectfully I'm sorry. respectfully taken. Um I'd like to to establish some consistent requirements um with a traffic impact analysis, the fiscal impact analysis that looks at both the revenue and um cost of providing towns uh services and infrastructure. And then as was mentioned the comprehensive watershed and environmental impact analysis that talks about the streams, the for uh flood planes, tree canopy and so on just being a standard requirement for all um applicants. Uh I just wanted to kind of state that my goal is to make sure every development is evaluated using the same information. So is that something that we can require as we go forward?

Yeah. Uh, we that's not a Are you making a motion or

I I guess I am. I I'll How would I do I'll make a motion that we require a traffic impact analysis, a fiscal impact

analysis, and a comprehensive watershed and environmental impact study to accompany at the appropriate levels of um

development. Development. I second.

What are the appropriate levels of development that you're interested in? I guess it would depend on if we're going for a zoning or if it's a plot review. I

I'm not

I'd like to hear that from staff.

Yeah. Instead of a motion, maybe we can we can ask [clears throat] individually to staff.

Okay.

Well, the motion's on the floor. Um and and I support the motion. Um and we can leave it to staff to uh uh assess the level of impact at which an FIA and a TIA and uh storm water work is required. So

okay, one one thing I would like to add, we have House Bill 162 that uh addresses a number of things. Parking is one for the town, but also storm water and uh and um I'm sure the staff is aware of House Bill 162.

Yeah. And I'm sure that that's been that needs to we need to uh I recommend that we we look at House Bill 162 and assess how it's affecting our UDO and and our land.

Yeah. So, so I think just I think we have a lot of things.

Yeah, we do

here. This this particular item was about cleanup items to the UDO. So, I think that's one deferred that to staff to go out rework it.

If there's additional suggestions about things that should be included in the UDO or updates to the UDO based on new state law, I think we should handle those separately and and you know, ask

staff to bring those items back. I think we already require some of those review at some point. We'll see what it is.

And I think that that's the motion that I heard.

Yeah. I just want to make sure we're separating.

Sure.

This this is not really this is not a part of the zoning text amendment. This is a two item that we're discussing.

Yes.

And then we'll go back and discuss.

My new item.

I conflated your yes bill into that and it didn't need to be there. Uh, however, Commissioner Hunicker, would you be willing to take that as a friendly amendment to a fourth item for your motion?

Yes.

Parking.

Yeah.

Okay.

Parking just because of the House bill or Yeah.

Whatever changes are needed to our UDO based on the passage of that new law.

Water, parking,

something else.

CIA.

Yep. the environmental

FIA

storm that language

like a comprehensive uh

storm water

storm water that includes things like the that could include the parking and also tree canopy.

Okay.

Yeah. House Bill 162 also addresses some fire department issues too. So that needs to be addressed as well. So I think one question

a lot of talk but we are on this text amendment request.

Correct.

We're done.

We voted on that on it.

Okay. So we should go to our next order on the agenda before we start on

House Bill 162 or anything. We should follow our agenda. Correct.

Unless we modify it. Yes.

And we did not.

Well, I think it was just comments. So pushing from the floor is acceptable.

Yeah.

So let's try and separate some of I think as a matter of force or correct me if I'm wrong, but staff

would would bring updates based on state law updates to the UDO.

Okay. So we already have that piece. They're already they're tracking state law updates and we'll come back to not requiring parking. Um, and then if you can like repackage a suggestion of your additions to the to the UDO function.

Okay. Um, let me get my notes again. So, I make a motion that um we require a traffic impact analysis, a fiscal impact analysis with both revenue and costs, a comprehensive watershed environmental impact that includes the storm water, the tree canopy, and parking. And that staff advises when um at which phase each of those are required. Did I get that? When you say each phase, do you mean like which type of project? Correct. Or which phase of

I would I guess

um I guess it would actually be both, wouldn't it? Because it could be with zoning. It could be with um uh anything that goes before planning and it could be um at a certain phase within those. So

and and magnitude of of development like size of impact is was was my first thought on this. Are we just asking the largest developments, the PDD type developments to be subjected to these kinds of additional studies or and that's where I think we need to leave that to staff to come back with clarity about where and when and what circumstances those tools necessary.

So do we want to say recommendations on when those things could be required in the development process? willing to

defer to staff.

That would work for me

until the draft comes and then we'll look at it then.

But the reason I'm I'm eager that uh Commissioner Thurber second and Commissioner Huner's motion um is that I think that these things are urgent and I think that we need to have this conversation now. So, glad we've got a motion on the floor. Um, is everyone clear on what the motion is?

should I disable my motion and bring it next meeting? Would that be

Does that help?

The motion is made and seconded. I would prefer that you not withdraw the motion. I think we should go ahead and vote on it now. If

you Okay, that can you restate the motion?

Okay. So, I would like to ask our direct staff to advise us on when that we require a traffic impacts analysis, a fiscal impact analysis with both revenue and expenses, a comprehensive watershed plan that deals with the uh storm water, the tree canopy, and parking. and that they advise us as to when we should require these things. Okay.

Thank you. Is there [clears throat] a second?

Second,

Mr. Thurber. Any other discussion?

Is this for all developmental developments?

Should we allow staff to advise us on which which development should be required to provide these?

Yeah. Just a UDO. I think I think

okay

yeah I think they could tell us where it's already required and then where if we are able to

whether we want we want to enhance it. Okay.

I would ask that we do that in September,

but I would say

September

when staff is ready.

The request is that staff come and educate you all when these certain things are required and then if there are other times in the development process or development styles or size of project where we think those should also be required. Is that what I'm hearing? No, I'm thinking staff are going to come back with a UDO amendment

to add all these things.

Yes.

Okay.

That's not what the motion was that.

Sorry.

It was to advise the

we can we take that step first?

Sure.

Then we can make a more educated decision. Let's take that for them to advise us and then we can decide if we want to make that an amendment to the UDO once we have that advice from staff.

Yeah, that's good because it's got to go through planning board and everything otherwise. So we can give some direction.

Okay.

Did you say that would still have to go to the planning board? So this would be the first step is just a report from staff on what's currently required could be required and then we could give any advice that we want to that would go back to probably a UDO amendment to them go through the whole process.

Any other discussion? All those in favor say I. I.

Any oppose? Take a break. break. Uh, recess until 8:05. Great. Thank you.

Welcome back. Uh, up next we have a request for the Town of Pittsboro um advisory board policy revision. And Malia,

good evening. So before you tonight is the revised advisory body policy for your consideration. Following the review from the board in May, staff really carefully considered edits and comments from the board. Um incorporated those edits throughout and provided the revised version to the affected departments for their review. The overall purpose of the policy has remained the same. While the revised version is intended to feel a lot more supportive and user friendly for advisory body members while also maintaining that consistent governance framework. So I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Any questions? A motion to adopt the advisory body policy.

Oh, I'll make a motion to disapprove the advisory body.

Second.

So, um it it is clear that a lot of effort has been put into this. I note that this is version uh 11 and 12. Um, this is still only the second one that we've gotten it. So, um, second time we've gotten it. And from my reading, while it is improved, it does have a better overall tone, but that there's some things that I'm still wanting from this, and I think

we're in my written input. Um, doesn't create clear staff obligations to seek early advisory board input. um to um transmit formal recommendations to the board of commissioners from those advisory boards, to respond when recommendations are not followed, or to explain when staff uh bypass advisory review. I'd also like to see public comment strengthened in this draft. And oh, there's some um some struggle I think that we need to get through about um minutes and uh practices that that can be accepted. Indeed, the county is accepting um automated minutes because there is a re review process inherent. minutes are always approved by the board, the advisory board in question. So any automated minutes or that would be drafted would of course be reviewed by presumably staff and board members or the board chair. Um on remote participation, I think there's still a lot of distance between what can be done and what we're allowing. I really prefer the more pers per permissive rules of the county Chadam County use boards. So, I'd like to see that changed. Um, I have some more thoughts, but I think that's enough to support my my motion. [clears throat] Others have thoughts. [clears throat] Any other comments or questions?

So in in your motion is to just disapprove

advisory body offer suggestions or

I have

but is your request for those revisions to be incorporated or just to disapprove the policy and

you know if we disapprove the policy then we won't have a policy right is that

and I would hope that staff would come back with a new draft. I think we need to start over.

Um would you would you consider rephrasing your mo motion [clears throat]

so that um we are without so we're not without a uh a policy right now.

Haven't had one for a very long time. I'm fine with staff bringing another one back but my motion's been made. So seconded.

Would that motion mean that we would do again send in more comments uh constructive criticism and so on to be included in the next draft? I

think if we disapprove it, there wouldn't be a next draft unless

it would be dead.

Yeah, it's just done.

That's that's what my question was. So if if you would to rephrase it saying can we continue to work with the staff uh to

Yeah. Thank you Jay.

It was it was presented in May. We discussed it. They asked for changes, additions

and we have it back.

My written feedback I feel wasn't incorporated in full. And so um and I'm adding to my written feedback with my verbal feedback just now. So um

yeah to speak

I don't think so. No

any other discussion from the board. Well, I do think that this is a significant improvement on the one that we received before, but I do think there is a few things that we could definitely do to make it better. Um, and I I would like to get a better polic uh advisory board policy in effect.

You know, I was speaking with another commissioner recently and that commissioner commented on the uh um the work this that the staff has been doing and some of it's been very commendable and I agree. Uh, I would love to be able to uh thank the staff for their efforts and encourage them to be a little bit more specific on things and um so I would object to voting on your your motion, but I would love that we work with the staff and come up with the second motion that we can do it in a way that's uh friendly.

[clears throat]

So we have to vote on that one motion.

Any other discussion?

Motion to table would take precedence.

Move to table it for now.

Is there a second? Already got a motion on table. I believe her message just had a motion to table with there a second to them.

Second

motion to table.

Uh any discussion on the motion to table?

Very good.

All those in favor say I. phrase on the table motion.

Can you rephrase the motion again?

Motion to motion to

bonnets or yours. This is Commissioner Foley's motion to table

table till what we get [clears throat] information or just forever

just to table uh his motion that's all

and come up with in my

I believe that table procedure reason that that motion to table takes priority is because you're moving to table the item in discussion not my motion

I think is correct that motion would No, you're right on. You're going in the right direction. Keep going.

So, it's either as is. It's a motion to table until we pick it up from the table or you could do to a time defined.

Right.

I'm withdrawing my motion.

Okay. Uh the motion on the floor is to disapprove the advisory board policy. Is there any other discussion on that motion?

If we disprove it, then we don't have a policy. So how do we get a policy

to approve this one?

This this one you Mr. Bonnets brought up some good points that should, you know, be considered and be added. Um, and I I I I do know that staff is working on some frequently asked questions along with the advisory board policy. So, I think we need to let them get back to the drawing board and get some more suggestions from us. This I mean there's this is a significant improvement. It's it's almost there. So, how do we get a policy if we disprove this? I think the two options we could approve this and then modify it at any time like

other policies or we could suggest revisions and and bring it back.

Do you think we need revisions?

But we've already made revision requests that I didn't see.

Let's talk about the requests that you don't see. What wereision? So, the first one was the remote uh someone calling into the meeting. That's not allowed. Um I don't have I don't remember the rest of them, but that was probably my number one. Uh because a lot of the me being on that board for so long, a lot of people do travel. They had lives. Um this is not a paid position. This is a volunteer position.

And I think in some of the language it says, you know, if you miss two meetings or something, you're out. Um I don't agree with that either because again we all have lives, things happen. Um

so yeah,

hi virtual participation was we added a section dedicating procedures for virtual participation. Okay,

allowing virtual participation with the caveat that they are not counted for quorum or a vote. and that was discussed along with staff and that was the recommendation from staff as well. Um public comment is also addressed in section 6.6. Um planning board will be required to have public comment. We feel that that's really important from planning board. It's up to the board chair for the other boards to decide whether they would hold public comment in that section, but it would be an option for them rather than just completely cutting it off. Attendance is not addressed in the policy anymore. Um, all of those were cut out. Term limits, attendance were all removed and reference the creating documentation. So the board would retain control over what those requirements are

by passing, let's say, the resolution. Um, so those things were addressed in several sections. Well, I'll be honest. Um, trying to read it, it I couldn't really get past the first page because it just is very wordy. um it kind of like some sections contradict itself and it's just hard for me to read and I can't imagine a volunteer reading that and then also wanting to sign up to be on a board.

Yeah. And um

[clears throat]

I regret that I felt compelled to disapprove the policy, but uh it really does feel like we need to start from scratch because of concerns like this because of what I feel is the still some problems with tone. Um, so uh that said, I recognize that there are certainly some improvements and I I really appreciate the hard work. I'm sorry that I'm seeing that this has 12 versions to it when really really this is the second time we've seen it. So, um I will modify my motion to table the advisory body policy if I can get a second.

A second.

Um and uh ask that we specifically address some some some some details. Um, I don't recall what I had submitted in my prior email, but I I would appreciate

that closer attention to to those concerns. Um, I do feel strongly that if we're going to ask this much of adv advisory body organizations that um, notwithstanding disagreements with m Mr. Franklin, I think we need to state what staff's obligations are. And uh I'm not trying to write job descriptions of a an advisory board policy, but I think there's some clear things that we probably ought to be able to agree on like um uh staff should be obliged to seek early advisory board input rather than bringing things that are already fully fleshed out. Um and those recommendations from those advisory boards should be transmitted formally to this governing board. Um, and when recommendations are not followed, uh, that an explanation be offered as to why staff bypassed, uh, those recommendations or when staff bypass advisory review. Um, so [clears throat] you that would be the board that would not follow the advisory recommendation, right? The boards would be making recommendations to us and then as a board we would follow that recommendation or not.

Well, I've heard rumor of recommendations that haven't come through staff to this board. So, um, yeah. and and and I think we need to to think through more carefully

uh notetaking and and remote participation with an eye to what the county has done because I feel confident the county uh has vetted that with their attorney. uh it seems to work well and um I really like the way that works and I'm aware of that because of my service on the county climate advisory committee. Those are the things that um that I would like to see changed.

I think we're we have a consensus there. Yeah, we do. So, so can we that's how we do it

a little bit to put the onus on us of to table it and ask board members to submit written comments in the next 30 days to staff.

Sure.

Is there a second to that?

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner Foley. Any other discussion? All those in favor say I.

I. Any opposed?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Malia. Up next, we have the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board uh resolution return. Okay. I we took the recommendations and feedback from the previous month and um it is reflected in the redline version and we have resubmitted it and open for questions and dair a bug here. Been in here all night.

Yeah,

I know him by first name. [clears throat]

Any questions or comments for Katie?

This we saw this in

May or June?

May.

June. Sorry. June.

Okay.

Sorry. The red version. Yes.

Any questions for Katie?

I'll start. Um I think this is good for kind of clarifying parab's role and and so on. Um uh I do like the idea of ambassadors. I want to see um the members be be more engaged with the public. I'd like to see more public um outreach and comments and so on. Um I I would like to encourage and add in though that we get a youth and teen representative into this. I think their input is extremely important as they seem to be forgotten. Um, I do have um a couple of of items that I'd like to see uh added into this. I don't know how we do that or uh just I'm going to I'm going to hold off and listen to what some of the other commissioners have, but I do really think it's important to have uh teen representation. I'd like to see more teams into um the resolution. Um specifically, I know we have our soccer fields coming up and we've got some great people who could be a team on on that. So I want to make sure that teams are encouraged and um I want to make sure that all

advisory boards are not just reacting to staff presentations which you had brought up before but are bringing independent ideas. So I would love to find a way to en encourage that as well in in this document. Um, that's pretty much what what I have.

Would that be specific for this board or for all boards? And the question is is if you're looking for all boards, would that not not be more appropriate in the

Yeah. Um, you know, let's just stick to board. Um, I I would love to see um and I don't know if this is for something to develop more with with this resolution, but um I'd like to have the ambassadors be responsible for a park and bringing back um things that they notice in the park and going out and talking to people. For example, we went and we toured some parks and we saw things like signs down and so on and so forth. And I know that parks can't be everywhere, but if we had our ambassadors taking a And I'm calling them ambassadors instead of just advisory board members, taking a more active role. They could be advising, they should be coming in and giving a report back to you, back to staff, um that, hey, this was going on or this this is broken, this needs to be fixed. Um I I want the the agenda to allow for that. Um I really really would like to see more community engagement from parks and wreck. That's what I have.

Thank you.

Can we get some clarity on what you mean by more community engagement?

Um I would like to see public comment when a park's coming up, inviting the public out to um speak to um to par to the um advisory board on things that they want. Maybe more surveys when a park is coming online. I we we do really good surveys. we just don't get enough people out to

them. I I love the dots. Um I think we do a really good job with that, but I don't think we get the message out more. So maybe engaging our ambassadors to do that um would help us get more community engagement and more input so that we actually do have a good final product

because we had I feel like great engagement on Robus Creek.

We did a lot of people.

We did and I love the dots. I love that we were out there more, but again, I would like to see our our rep our board and and our board members out there continuously engaging and being out there to the parks. Um I and I do I I don't exactly know what it would look like, but I constantly hearing from people they didn't don't know we have another park coming on or oh, we're getting soccer. I mean, we all know, but so I I don't know how to get the message out other than utilizing those um uh board members.

So when we talk about board members like being volunteers and working on this, is this a requirement that we want to make

encouragement? Encouragement rather than a requirement. Strong encouragement. Yeah, I would hope that parap members are in parks routinely and regularly and coming back with observations and suggestions. Um,

can I just

agree with just Yeah, like I agree with those statements. um or you know submitting a high works ticket if if anybody sees anything broken, but like is that is it part of what we want to make in the policy that they will be out in the park regularly or so I think we're I can't remember the exact

language but either prohibiting or discouraging independent investigations. That's I mean does that mean that par members cannot attend a parks conference or go to other towns parks and come back with notes? um independent investigations is the language and um that's part of I think what is a pretty negative tone and very restrictive tone. Um I would like to see PAR be conduit from residents and the community to staff and to the board of commissioners. not merely a promoter of town programs and parks. My uh Commissioner Huner, our conversations about this word ambassador have pivoted around my sense, my general sense that the word ambassador and this policy pulls us away from a more active advisor role. um because there's so much from our current policy that uh is not in this draft and I do feel the need in the design of new parks uh to to have a balance of approaches including a return to our clear tradition of national parks. Uh also I feel the need to have PARUP members give input on gifts and grants and donations which is deleted from the current policy but they did that in the past. Um, yeah, there's a long list of prohibitions and overall I think that this is going to chill um our volunteers, our unpaid volunteers

um and discourage them from exactly the kind of active civic engagement that we need when we're growing so rapidly. And um yeah,

other comments or questions for Katie? Um there's there's a lot of negative there. I'm wondering if we

I know Commissioner Bonis, you have uh submitted some recommendations. Is that correct? And has anybody else [clears throat] feedback?

And to this point, you're not satisfied?

Okay. Are there specific things that you'd like to see done that, um, have not been addressed?

Yes, I mentioned those just now.

Yeah. So, uh, is there a way we can find a compromise here without

up?

Yeah. Um, this document has too many prohibitions. Um and uh I would like for our parab policy to preserve the current ordinances active advisory functions while keeping whatever legal limits and constraints are necessary. Um, but here again, I I would look to county policy um as a much softer and more encouraging

um tone.

There you go. So, is there a way we can um ask the staff to review the county policy and and you have you have a me? You have

they made any of the changes that you requested?

No.

None. Oh,

I'm not going to say none, but

Okay. Right. [clears throat] I'm just trying to find a a way through this. The parks department is the fun department in my opinion, you know, and that's that's the way it should be. And I understand why your feedback is, let's make this fun. Let's make it a place that you want to play and cooperate and spread joy. That is Pittsboro.

Yeah.

So, how do we get there?

How do we get there?

I'm sure I don't think it's by creating a list of prohibitions.

Okay. All right. Uh

I will say that the majority of these um we did a lot of research and the majority of um where it says parab sha on number four the majority of the ABCs um all of those were actually from the county their parks and rec advisory board. So just just to clarify that

no the positives they shall

so of duties and responsibilities came directly from from the county

drawing those close.

What else can we do to move it forward? Is there a specific items you can you can point out and ask them to readress them once again? Not not tonight, but in writing.

Uh move that we table this uh as we did with the last one um for 30 days with uh written input from board members.

Second.

Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Bonnet. second by Commissioner Foley. Um, in general, like process-wise, I think maybe this is what we should do going forward because we've had both of these items we've had, they've come for comments, they've gone back, they've been revised by staff. Uh, in this case, we had additional review time for the agenda as well. So, you know, I want to make sure I think we need to hold ourselves to the written comments and then we can have responses from staff and things like that. uh so that we can get just generally items addressed, you know, comments addressed from commissioners um and be clear about that. But I think we're I think we're on the right path um with these two now hopefully. Any other questions or comments on this discussion on the motion? [clears throat]

Make the motion. Uh the motion was to

table for written comments from board members

within 30 days. I

think everybody's had plenty of time to send their comments in and uh

did I all this table we're just denying denying and tonight sitting things back. We're just going backwards.

I don't like it either, Commissioner Frell. I'm not happy with it. [clears throat]

May I?

A major contention is some of the limits on authority. Are there particular ones? Because some of these are very useful in terms of board shall not make binding decisions. That's across the board for advisory boards including the planning board who is required. Right? No authority over

staff. That should be clear. advisor boards do not direct staff to do things. No budgetary authority. It also should be pretty clear. The budget rests with you all and then it's my job to implement those funds to achieve your vision and goals. Um, no control oper over operations. That's Katie's job. Um, independent communications, I get it a little bit because we make sure you know we talk about one clear mission and one clear vision and one clear expression of that. So that makes sense to come from our communication staff or uh the department head of choice. Um compliance with law. I think we want to make sure that everybody's complying with the law. Um reliance on staff and experts. I see there where maybe the limiting that is a problem because you certainly want the advisory board members to provide their input. Um, case in point, the downtown advisory board, there are a lot of experts on that board who can give information. Um, I can't speak to experts on PAR because I don't know what those folks do for a living. Um, and in creation of duty. Yep. Um, so if there's any one in particular that really hits home, um, just trying to figure out

why is it that the county doesn't have these in their policy.

I don't think it's necessary to put it in a policy document. I think that it's it's pretty clear and can be explained perhaps in an FAQ like with the overall advisory body. But I think when we have this these this long list of prohibitions, it's frankly not the tone that I would like to be extending to people who are giving us their time just that can be conveyed in another way. I think it's a real mistake to do so.

So,

I would say that particularly as we grow, it is important to establish these these guidelines. This isn't necessarily the the flyers we're going to hang around town, but um I think it's important to establish document and not in an unofficial way. And I think just anecdotally, as we look at part applications for service in the town of Pittsburgh, we see significantly more applications in the town of Pittsburgh. Um, and I continue to see the county readvertising for for vacancies that they're not able to fill apparently. Um, so I think we're I think we're doing something well with advisory board and I think we need to do it carefully. Um,

agree

but I think this could undo that.

And I think the other thing about this is this is a board policy and we can change it at any time. Um, but I do think that uh setting it is is important. Yeah, in some of these u we've actually had instances where these particular ones were violated. So I think there's in terms of staff.

Yeah. [clears throat]

Okay.

Any other discussion on the motion to table?

All those in favor say I. I

I [clears throat]

Any opposed?

I

motion passes. Um up next we have the appointment to the parks and recreation board and the want to [clears throat] delay this as well as we did prior.

No sir. I'd like to make a motion to appoint Hillary Pace, Molly Wilging, and Patty Dukes to the parks and recovery board. a second.

Okay. Uh we have a motion and a second.

So, so just as an FYI, if you know per last time we had adjusted to go from seven members to nine members and do change some of the requirements of ETJ versus in town. So that may change just as an FYI, depending on if we're still looking to go that route. So, wanted to make sure that you're making an informed decision based on

Yeah. So,

and so we haven't yet formalized that yet. We're still

you talk

and if and when we pass the Arab policy that will bring it to nine members.

I'm not sure. Uh but Katie is does this get us would three appointments what number would that get us to?

Yeah. Two would have to be ETJ and one would have to be in town. That is the difference when on the new policy if you're going up to nine. The new one reads that because especially since we had 15 applicants were in town with the new policy would be we would need five people with the opportunity of up to three people be ETJ but they don't have to be ETJ. It just allows you that fluctuation depending on, as was mentioned last time, what happens if we have downtime and don't have as many people that are not in town residents that are wanting to participate and we need to depend on that ETJ.

So, without resolution aside,

what what are they currently looking at for openings? One in town and two out of town.

One in town and two out of town. I know.

Yes. And with

15 in town applications and three out of

town applications.

No, my motion doesn't work.

So you need one from the in town and two from the ETJ.

It's not without the updated resolution.

This one isn't correct.

Okay. Molly's on Vine Parkway, isn't that? That's in town. That's not ETJ.

It is in town. Yes. She just

She's ETJ.

Yes. And that's why I have put her on the on the main list as in town.

She's on the list.

Yeah, she's in town.

Yeah, she had just Sometimes I think people get confused and so we double check

just to make sure that we're appropriately allocating them. Okay.

I restate a motion uh to appoint Hillary Pace and Patty Dukes. Period.

What seats would those be for if we're not doing all three or who would still one in town seat and one EPJ seat?

But there's two ETJ open and one in town.

That's my motion. So, we're going to have to state which in town seat that's for if we're not going to do both of them. You're only appointing one intel and two ETJ.

Oh, okay. So, sorry. We have to state which ETJ seat the one would be for this. How do you do? Oh, she's re Okay.

I think we should do these one at a time, but Mr. Bond modified your motion. I'd like to come back to it after a motion, but

I was just saying modify to do them one at a time.

Okay, my motion is withdrawn. In that case, um, like to make a motion to appoint Patricia Dukes as the ETJ. Um, the motion is, uh, C on the advisory board.

Second. Motion by Commissioner Huner, second by Commissioner Bonnets. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor say I.

I. Any oppos? Motion passes.

Well, I'd like to make a motion to appoint Molly Wilgging to the in town seat.

Second. There. Second. Commissioner Frell. Uh, any discussion on that? She's a great candidate.

Glad to have her.

All those in favor say I.

I.

Any opposed? All right. And any action on the second ETJ appointment? I already have.

If not, we welcome a motion to revertise or another ETJ member.

Yes.

Uh move that we revertise.

Okay. Is there a second?

Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. Any

oppose? Motion passes. Sorry, I had somebody. All right. Up next, we have the section design plan liaison position.

Okay. Meaning again. Um, this item was an request to outline the role specifically. The outline was outlined and sent to the town attorney, to the town manager, and to the town mayor for review, and it was par down to where it is now. That was the final revision. I would like to remind the board there is a first meeting tomorrow with Chattam Park at 2 PM to do the TRC with other members and that includes county and it reviews the STP checklist and then the bi-weekly meeting is on Thursdays and that one is this week from 3:00 to 4:30. So those are two of the type of meetings and there is a schedule available or whoever takes that role if that's the case. So is the technical review committee what reviews the concept plans

concept plans SDP plans they get one review on each of those pieces that see those and then your comments. Yes. for this liaison position. Um, as a commissioner, can I attend these meetings?

Yes, you can.

Can I participate in these meetings?

Yes, you can. Can I

ask questions?

Clarifications, but I don't need to be leazison.

So, why are why are we doing this? I it just seems to me that it would be better to encourage commissioners to attend these meetings so that we are informed

of what's going on and be part instead of depending on another one of us to hopefully make these meetings and then bring us back a report that it from this description seems to limit um what a commissioner can do because you just said I could ask questions and this says that the questions need to go through the town manager or staff. So, I don't see the need for this position, but I do see a need for the board of commissioners to take maybe a more active uh role in participating in these meetings.

That is discretion of the board of whether or not the position actually exists and how it exists. So, it be your call.

Mr. Huner, are you saying that in general for technical review committee meetings or specifically for Chatt? for for the liaison for the STP. I don't think the position needs to exist. I think we need to show up to the meetings and participate in the meetings. I this seems to limit what commissioners can do in these meetings. Um and I know we could rewrite it or do but I don't see the point of it. I think we should start attending the technical review meetings and the every other Thursday meetings. um so that we're getting firsthand information and not relying on somebody to go to this meeting and then come back to the next board meeting to tell us what was said or even in a report. I think we'd be better for us to attend. I don't think we need this position.

I agree.

I I would agree that we don't need the position. Uh but I I don't think we've I don't think we need to participate in the technical review committee either. Um with with staff being that portion then it comes to the advisory boards and then it comes to us like we have that process in place I think it creates a few issues of if

multiple commissioners attend and participate that is probably an open meeting. Uh and then also if commissioners are attending specific meetings or specific developer meetings or things like that, I think it can create a an imbalance in the the feedback in those technical review committee. So if somebody wanted to commit to you know attending all technical review committees for all projects, I think that's different. Um, but if it's like selective engagement in a staff process,

worried about the taken [clears throat]

any other discussion on the section design plan liaison. Uh I agree with Commissioner Huninger. I I don't think it's necessary that we have liazison position available. [clears throat] It's my responsibility to make sure that I am updated with Chattam Park and uh I will go to the meetings if they're open meetings when I can. I understand what your your feedback is, Mr. Mayor, and I take that as as it intends. Thank you. Sucked the life out of the the room there. I don't I don't I don't think the position is necessary. We need to step up as commissioners. I need to step up as commissioner. I think it's okay. I mean, I think it says uh leazison may participate. It's not required as a part of the process. Yeah, I I imagine that uh the reason

this was contrived was u because it would be burdensome for individual commissioners to have for all of us or some number of us to have to attend those meetings to work out the issues, help work out the issues with the section design plans. Um uh Commissioner Huner, you've you've convinced me that um it may not be necessary. Um, however, I I do recall Commissioner Foley, you um asserting that the board should be allowed to ask questions and make statements um in those proceedings regarding the section design plans. And um Commissioner Thurber, you agreed. Um, and so I think I think that there are issues that uh maybe we address that with our request of staff to uh get TAS and FIAS, etc. into our UDO. Um, but um I think there's possible improvements for the South Village and I'll just leave it at that. Mr. Messi, could you speak I guess generally on like board participation and staff technical review or and public participation I guess if that's allowed.

I'm sorry I did not hear your question.

Okay. Um if if the board or public would be allowed to participate in like staff technical review committee meetings. There's the open meetings issue that if a majority of the board should attend and consider or deliberate with regard to a public matter, that's um not allowed unless you treat it as an official meeting and with notice to the public and that sort of thing. Um

it might have some effect on the process. Okay. certainly would slow it down. That's why you have staff. I mean, that that's the job of the staff to do this. It will come before you soon enough and you may regret having it come before you, but uh that's the time you get to ask questions and um and offer your comments. It seems to me agree. All right. Any other discussion on this item? Well, I do know that there have been commissioners guiding the way uh as as uh the PDD was created and uh there there in my opinion there was some imbalance created because of it. Um some commissioners couldn't go to those meetings, others could and uh there was an imbalance because of it in my opinion. So, I I I accept your feedback, Mr. Mesik and Mr. Mayor. Um, but it doesn't preclude me from going if if uh if it's definitely if it's a scheduled meeting just to connect. John, you have a lot of thoughts. Um, so is the idea that we would continue

with these meetings how they are regularly scheduled and then a group of board members or one or two or three or whatever would just show up when you're available or is there going to be some coordination to make sure that more than two are not showing up so it isn't a public meeting.

Correct.

I would think there would have to be coordination to make sure that it was

come first sir. Let's say that

RSVP.

Yeah, we it's our it's our call

because staff also put together pretty robust notes following each of these meetings and so I think we'd be more than happy to provide those notes to you all after each meeting.

That would be wonderful

eliminate a lot of confusion.

Also, there are conversations between staff and developers that happen because it's staff and developers. And I think some of those conversations are very key to the process being as successful as it has been with some of these other developments that you've seen and approved. Um, so I'd caution you there as well. I think if I think if board members are going to start attending staff meetings then we would need to have some type of RSVP process where and and not just first come first serve because people plan their time you know around it but it would have to be some type of method where we would ensure that you know two people attend and it couldn't always be the same two people and something that would be something that would work out I think but I I think that sending out the the staff notes of of those meetings is is fine.

I think one thing that we might be missing too is is TRC in the name technical review. So you're looking at folks that are experts in their particular fields, folks from DOT, water, sewer, obviously our planning staff, folks from [clears throat] storm water, the post office, all of these different pieces that make these things work. Um,

typically this board is charged with the overall archery policy, uh, which was the small area plan, the creation of the section design plan, and then the ultimate review of that section design plan once it goes through the staff process with the technical side and the experts. Um, so I'm also curious as to what the input would be at that stage from the elected officials. Are we in the meeting kind of coming up with new policies? Although at this point it's it's kind of late to change what approved. [clears throat]

You can trust this.

You can't

you know I I think that the whole idea has been brought up because in this in this section small area design plans there's an agreement that there is a suggestion at least that we have a leazison. So, you know, so there was some discussion at one point that commissioners really do need to be connected more intimately and uh I would I would think that all of us I'm only speaking for myself, but I would not be stepping on toes. I'd be I'd be there monitoring and learning as opposed to spouting policy or creating policy. Uh that's not how I work at least. Can't speak for the rest of the board. But um it's [clears throat] my intention would be to be to learn to be advised of things that are coming and not to shape policy and I think that's probably what the board would would do as as well if they wanted to attend. So

I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think sending out the reports would make sure that all board members have the same information at the same time from that concept.

Yeah,

I understand the subtlety there, you know, because uh the conversation

changes when there's a commissioner in the room also.

And so I understand that and I think the board also understands that. So I think it might a good compromise might be just that that a transcript is pro provided to us

report.

Okay. A report. Yeah. Because a liazison to let's say the parks and recck board, right? Because then you're liazing with the folks that you've selected to advise you on parks. That makes sense. Leaison with the ABC board. Leazing with the folks that you've selected to represent the town on the ABC board. Um I think if memory serves it was Commissioner Bonnets that requested the liaison be put into the STP process for the SAP. Um so if you if you remember that or have any thoughts on what the original intent was that may be helpful.

Did I suggest it?

I think it came from staff.

Okay. I think it came from them after a conversation with you I believe. But that doesn't it doesn't matter. So, can is there a motion?

Can I get a motion that the board doesn't wish to appoint a liaison, but would request that staff send out the reports from the technical review committees to all board members?

I make a motion that the board does not appoint a liaison at this time. Um and that the that staff sub uh give us the reports of the meeting. Second uh any other discussion?

I'll just mention uh I have the utmost uh confidence in our staff and uh that's their profession. That's their job and getting any report back after the meeting that's the minimum. I mean, I don't see why we need anything more than that. We're not going to have a liaison.

We don't need anything more than that. We I think we've got a staff that can handle any issues with the Chattam Park small design plan, section design plan, and we'll do the best of what town of Pittsburgh.

Well said. [clears throat]

Any other discussion?

All those in favor say I.

I. I

any opposed?

Right. Up next, we have uh moved from the consent agenda is the the budget amendment for affordable housing. Jonathan,

just real quick question for you, Mr. Manager. Sir, uh can you explain to the public uh the process of reimbursing this money to Chattam Park?

Yes. And I'm going to ask that you all table this. Um this is a budget for affordable housing reimbursement.

Yes. Apologies I didn't get to speak to you before the meeting. Um I think you we have engineering specs later on agenda. Apologies. Sorry. So about a year and a half ago, uh we rewrote um about a year working with Chattam Park to rewrite the affordable housing element for the additional elements. And part of that was uh through some discussions with the school of government, we realized that certain sections of the initial affordable housing element did not comply with uh state and federal law. Um the town is unable to to reimburse monies for certain type of housing but can reimburse monies for also certain type of housing. So we had to make sure that our uh element aligned with those laws and that's what we did in the new rewrite. Um, so in the

attached invoice, um, as Commissioner Bonnets pointed out, they do not have anything in there about all the units created, uh, post 2022. And that's because those are going under the new element where the uh, units created 120% do not receive reimbursement. Therefore, they are not uh, in the invoice. and kind of thinking about all of that and everything else that uh we have going on um failed to think about that some of these units that they have on their invoice are at the 120% rate which I do not believe legally we are we are able to reimburse for so one thing the board could do is table the item until we you know verify the the numbers in here um which we will back to you with a different number um or you could also um go ahead and adopt the um the budget amendment, then we would have that that section of money that then we can use uh to pay the invoice once we get it clarified and that would kind of save us a step otherwise so that way we don't have to come back to the board and ask for another budget amendment. Uh but there are some clarifications on this invoice uh that we need to get straightened out and Vanessa and I have already talked about meeting and sitting down and figuring that out. Um, but you all would not be approving the invoice. Uh, that's a staff procedure. You would just be approving moving the money out of our affordable housing fund into the general fund so that we can then spend it.

Um, thank you, Mr. Franklin. And I appreciate the exchange that we had about this. It helped me understand it much better. And I think that it's um it's it's there on the website uh if people uh care to um uh explore that transparency. Um um clearly we want to we want to settle up and this has been too long uh sitting and uh I regret that I learned that it

had been so long. Um,

can I sorry because I spoke to Commissioner Bance earlier about this. Um, Chattam Park actually submitted a reimbursement request about three and a half years ago and because of changeover in staff I think you all had a interim manager at the time.

Understand all got dropped and it's kind of just been sitting there.

Yum. So I'd asked I'm like hey when are y'all gonna ask for some of your reimbursement? U she said we have many many years ago. So we were Yeah. Yeah. No one No one likes unpaid bills sitting on their desk. So Especially

me.

Yeah.

Yeah. So So I I uh support this action and uh Mr. Franklin, I appreciate your suggestion that we go ahead and make the budget amendment now. That way the funds will be uh allocated and ready for when staff work out the details on the invoice. Um, unless there are further questions or concerns, I'll I'll make that motion [clears throat] to approve the budget amendment.

Second it.

Uh, second, Commissioner Foley. Any other discussion?

All those in favor say I.

I.

Any opposed?

Thank you. Uh, staff attorney position is the next item. Uh, Commissioner Foley, did you have questions? Yeah, I I I guess my my biggest question has already been answered. It's about who reports to who. U I I just want to ask a hypothetical question about the the staff attorney. Um we have we have a town attorney that report that uh answers to us or we ask him questions. Will there be a ever an instance where the the staff attorney, the town

attorney, excuse me, the staff attorney uh is put placed in a position where he he cannot divulge things to the to the commissioners. That's a great question and I probably would need Paul to answer that. I'm not sure. I think there I think there is some privilege and confidentiality with items being discussed until they are made public. But if you're asking if you call the the staff attorney and say, "Hey, tell me about this." And they say, "No."

He says, "No, I don't report.

I'm not sure about that answer." Yeah.

So,

I [clears throat] talked to some colleagues about about this growing towns that have have kind of been, you know, around with how they handle legal services. Um, and they did say that for for one that that had a, you know, town board hired contract staff attorney just like Paul is, and an internal staff attorney, the um the contract attorney with the board trumped that one. So, if there was ever disagreement, which he said there was almost never disagreement when there was, um, the town attorney was the ranking attorney.

Is that your opinion?

Yes, sir.

Mr. Messi. Yes sir.

Is there anywhere that that is in writing? Can we put that in writing so that uh future board members understand that being gospel?

Can we be a that could be a policy? Yeah, because we're

I think Mr. M Franklin is correct on that. I mean the staff attorney would be you know would answer to him because he's the manager and he's in charge of all the staff. Um, and you know, any law any attorney is going to have ethical responsibilities to their client and you know, I I really can't imagine a situation where there would be any kind of conflict. But if there were, then it's up to you who you're going to listen to and who you would believe. I mean, I would certainly offer my opinion about

whatever the issue is. And um, you know, sometimes you all accept it and sometimes you don't. And that I don't think that will necessarily change even if you have another opinion on the table.

Okay, I understand that. In in other words, um it's up to us anyway. Is it what you're saying? What call to make? What decision to make?

If they were conflicting advice to be given, I think we would give you both options and you choose. Okay. Thank you. Discussion. Take a motion to approve.

So moved.

Thank you, Commissioner Bonnets. Is there a second?

Second,

Commissioner Foley. All those in favor say I. I.

Up next, we have the moved uh Mini Brooks. Uh this is frozen.

It's a quick question. Okay. Sorry.

I [clears throat] think in in I couldn't find it on my my papers. It said something about a blanket statement. Can you can you read that to me how that that move

how this works?

Yeah. So, the Mini Brooks Act uh looks at um y'all correct me if I'm wrong, but uh engineers, surveyors, folks of that nature, typically where you have to do qualified or qualifications based selections. Um and that goes from zero all the way up. And so when we're trying to hire, let's say, u a surveyor to do a small survey for a sidewalk project, we have to like go out and do uh a full process just to hire someone to do a $2,000 survey. And it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Slows things down.

So it's capped at 50.

Yes, sir. So the Mini Brooks Act

exemption that you all would provide that me um then I can go out and hire these folks up to $50,000 per project.

Okay. That's all.

Yep. Thank you.

In the past, it's been on a case- by case basis. This is a a blanket overall. That's what the word blanket is intended to cover this.

That's why I was asking. Yeah. Can you talk about blanket? What how does that improve the effectiveness of your decision making process?

Well, it doesn't it doesn't force you to go out and do a and do a full RFQ process for for a small thing. And certainly for a town like us where we have surveyors who are active in Pittsburgh, typically you have your person you go to and say, "Hey, I just need a quick survey here." Um,

okay.

Or if you're doing a quick, let's say, engineer drawing for a parking lot. Um, where you don't need to go out and do a robust search for an engineer. Um, and plus, as you all know, Heather's not going to let me spend any money unless she looks at it and make sure that it's within range.

Yeah, you're right. Okay,

next time I'll just say that.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Take a motion to approve.

So move.

Thank you, Commissioner Foley. Second.

Second.

Commissioner Huner. All those in favor say I.

I.

Any opposed? All right. And last action item is the engineering standard specifications.

Thought we I thought we tabled that.

We moved it. off of the consent agenda.

Okay. All right.

Your request.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I thought we tabled it with the other Armstrong. Yeah. Okay. What? Go ahead. We're good. Go ahead. May. Sorry.

Give me one more time. This is for the spec pieces that are based on engineering and process items. kind of um outlines the the checklist and what the requirements would be from the engineering side, not the policy piece that goes in the UDO. This is the technical and we have it set up that all the items for any of the water line, any sewer, all the weight utilities go to tri water the exception of storm water. Um and those they take their reverse to their specs and we take ours out and we only refer to the first page which is we follow their process. They give us a will serve letter and they have to submit all the plans through both trial water and us and the permit and that will serve letter acts for that piece. The additional piece of that is the the permanent acceptance has updates to include how we accept through the engineering side from everything from inspections to the warranty pieces and then the transportation pieces have minor updates for items that were not in there and that is all in this section. Additional updates will come for transportation and additional acceptance after they're approved with the UDO section, not before. They need to follow with that. that this is the primary set that gets us clean and ready to go. This is not the final version. We know that two updates is probably better than trying to do nine sections at the same time, which would be twice as thick as this is.

Any questions for me?

Make a motion to approve the recommended revisions to the town standard specifications.

Okay. Is there a second? Commissioner Bonnets, any discussion?

Is anything in here uh regarding uh House Bill 162?

No, that would that was that's the section that's coming. We will send to the board [clears throat] in August and

the updates should be to the board by September.

Did you did you provide did you receive any feedback from uh the group that we spoke of earlier?

Not for the specs. No, this is the engineering base. That's not for developers or other pieces. It would be for other engineers or development firms if they had anything.

Understood. Understood.

And it is not required to go to planning board or any other item. It is strictly for more of an information making sure that you know what we're doing, the updates that we have.

Any other discussion?

All those in favor say I.

I.

Any opposed? All right. Up next, we have a close session. So, I'll take a motion to enter into close session pursuant to NCGS 143 31811A three to consult with the town attorney and A6 to discuss personnel. Moved.

Thank you, Commissioner Huner. Second.

Second,

Commissioner Thurber. All those in favor say I. I. I. Roll.

when we leave.

I know.

All right, we're back in open session and I'll take a motion to adjourn. A move. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim Ferrell. Second, Commissioner Thurber. All those in favor say I.