Parks & Rec Advisory Board Meeting

Yeah.

All right. Good evening everyone. Welcome. I would like to call to order Apex Town Council Meet for Thursday, May 28th, 2026. It feels kind of strange being here on a Thursday, but we're here nonetheless. Um, want to go ahead and move into the commencement. I'm going to read a diversity statement. The town of Apex values and celebrates diversity and inclusion. We see diversity as a strength that binds our community together. Inviting members from different faith communities to deliver the invocation at the beginning of our council meetings supports this unity. Recognizing that not everyone practices the same traditions, we welcome you to have a private moment of silence at this time. And before we do the pledge, what I would like to do instead of a prayer tonight, which we often do, I want to reflect on an experience I had last week, uh, I was I made a trip to short trip to the mosque here, Apex Mosque. Um, in light of what happened in San Diego, California a few weeks ago and I wanted them to know that our community stands with all things. It doesn't matter what you look like, your faith. We're one community. And so, they allowed me to deliver a message and I gave them a message of hope and a reassurance that we're all in this together. So, um, let your compassion continue to shine through. Um, make sure you give grace to everyone beside you, around you, and everyone you meet every single day. So, I want that to be the highlight and you take away that from our meeting tonight. So, thank you so much. So, in that, let's join together if you're able. Let's honor our country with the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Thank you so much. I do want to recognize I'm I'm going to use the word dignitary. Uh we'll start with if you think about Apex, North Carolina and uh it is the peak of good living. Uh there were people before us um represented here tonight. And I do want to recognize one of our former mayors, the Honorable Keith Wely. Served from 1995 to 2014. Thank you so much for being here this evening, sir. All right. He's on the board of the Wake County Board of Elections. All right. So, we'll be hearing from them later on tonight. Also want to recognize Olivia McCall, Wake County Board of Elections. Thank you for being here. And also Gary Cohen, Secretary Wake County Board of Elections Election, excuse me. Thank you for being here. All right, with that we'll move to adoption of the meeting agenda. And what we have first is pulling close session item number two is noted. And then also I would like to for council to consider a motion for RA1 ordinance amendment chapter 12 municipal utilities and services article 5 yard waste collection overall yard waste program updates. And the reason for that is my understanding is staff is working with um a few stakeholders that could perhaps lead us in a better direction with this program.

Yes sir. Thank you mayor. We are working with a vendor that we use now and we're looking at other solutions uh for at least some short-term uh so any anytime we can buy in this regard for our

residents we're we're looking at that as an opportunity a little more time working with those vendors on some short-term solutions.

All right. So you're comfortable with just a delay of one more month or two.

Yes sir.

One month.

Well uh mayor can I speak on that? So there's actually two ordinances on the agenda.

One uh relates to grass I was you know as you were speaking about. The other one is unrelated. Has to do with uh penalties and fees and such. So, I was hoping we'd still consider that one tonight.

I'm I'm good with that. Long as it's good with staff.

Yes, sir. We would actually would would prefer the adoption of the um the items that Council Member Mafy referred to. Grass, just for everyone's knowledge, too, was not set to take effect until January. So, that also gives us a little more time on on that as well.

All right. So, if anyone wants to make that motion,

actually, I have another request kind of spur of the moment here. Uh just looking at the signin sheet for public forum. There's a very long list of people that have um requested to speak tonight. I'm wondering if it makes sense for us to do proclamation before public public forum today.

Sure. Absolutely. I think that's a wise move considering how many people speak. So

all right. So

maybe before.

Yeah, it changed two weeks ago. It is before.

It's Oh, it's different on the web version.

Oh, yeah. It is. We're good. We're good. Okay. Great.

Okay.

All right. So, pro.

I move to adopt with those all those changes.

All right. Easy enough.

I'll second it all.

All right. I have a motion and second. Any discussion?

All right. All in favor say I.

I.

Opposed. Motion carries. Moving our consent agenda and have no notes of anything any changes here. Is there a motion?

Make a motion to approve.

Motion Zman.

Second.

Second. Mayor Pro Tim. All in favor say I.

I.

Opposed. Motion carries.

All right. Move now to

Mayor.

Yes.

Do we want to do announcements and petitions?

Yes. Yeah. We'll we'll go with that. All

right. Mayor Proy.

Uh, real quickly, uh, we're obviously still in the middle of the budget cycle and, uh, the only announcement that I really have is is to report out to everyone. You know, we had a town hall about the budget on Tuesday. It was fairly well attended. Maybe 20 people were there. I see um some of the same faces here tonight. Um I'm assuming to speak on the same topic. Uh but to to be clear, we do have um another week and a half to go, two weeks to go. Uh our budget hearing is uh is June 9th and um that's the the first time we'll consider adoption of budget. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Council member Gray is not here tonight. Council member Zerman. Um just real quick, um as uh folks may know, I'm the representative on the multimotal transportation advisory board. Um that board has uh a couple more meetings this this year. The July session will be a work session uh where we would and going forward for these sessions, we would like to invite some public participation in those meetings. So it's another opportunity to let your voice be heard uh you know for um you know with any transportation public transit walkability bikeability type of uh concerns. Uh so please be welcome to the uh future multimotal transportation advisory board meetings. They are the help me out here Alan second Wednesday of every other month. So again next session is in July. There'll be one in September and one more in in November. So public input is invited to those sessions as well.

Yeah. Thank you, Council.

All right, Council Member.

Okay. Hi everyone. It's budget season and I appreciate appreciate each one of you. you um reached out to us many emails um many messages um although we may not reply to each one of you but we received and we um take into consideration seriously I also

appreciate uh those who came to the town hall last night it's important that we exchange ideas you think you know um from you know a different perspectives and as a council we may think you know from our different perspectives so it's important we exchange thoughts ideas to understand each other and second thing I want to thank our town staff uh town manager for actively uh try trying to uh solve this grass clipping situation we heard you know um we heard you so many of you reached out to us we hear you. Um the third thing is uh really uh you know you know equally important. Tomorrow night, tomorrow, Friday, May 29th, our first workshop uh behavioral health workshop hosted by the peak resilience and well-being task force with town of Apex. It's specifically designed for youth and families. is at Apex Senior Center from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. All are welcome. We have more than 30 service providers, health professionals on site to help you guide your journey. No one should ever walk this mental struggling journey alone. Thank you. That's all.

Thank you so much for that update. All right, Council Member Maurice.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to echo um everything all of the comments of uh council member move just recently. Uh so I'm not going to uh copy paste but I'm going to jump to um the first thing I want to say thank you so much to the chamber of commerce and especially to the teachers. I had the privilege of attending their teacher

appreciation event uh recently and not only is it um a time for the teachers to be able to sit back and relax for a moment um and feel a little bit of the uh appreciation coming their way, but I also commend the chamber um for hosting such a great event. The only other uh update I have for you is that um Wake Tech um is hosting its launch expo 2026 on Thursday, June 4th. It does require registration. So, I want to note that now and I'll note it perhaps at the end. Um, it is Thursday, June 41 to 4 p.m. at the Southern Way campus. Um, and that is going to host um a marketplace of local businesses, product displays, live demos, giveaways, and opportunities to meet and connect with entrepreneurs and community members. And so I think that's a great uh opportunity to at the very least um get connected and perhaps even uh learn a little bit about the entrepreneurship community uh in Wake County. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilman. All right. I just have one quick thing. In the spirit of community, um we have Apex High School women's lacrosse team. Uh they're in the state championship tomorrow. So, they're going to be traveling to Hickory for an 11:00 game while school is going on. But it's just the way things shake out with the schedule. But nonetheless, we're going to uh staff is going to support them in escorting them out of town to head to Hickory and then regardless win or lose, we're going to say they're going to win. We're going to welcome them back. So, more information to come on lining up the streets to welcome our ladies back with a championship. They're going to bring it back. I feel pretty good about that. So, just keep that in mind and that's the only thing I have for this evening. We'll move now to the town manager report. Manager Vossberg.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a few items to update you on. Uh first I'll start with some of the events that are coming. There's a proclamation tonight for Pride Month. Uh so in that same vein, uh there's an event on June 4th from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. It's at Hunter Street Park. It's a little different take um because you know the details of the Pride Festival. We won't have an official festival this year, but there will be Pride Stories which will have

crafts. It's a guided story walk. There'll be sweet treats and some other activities as well. So that'll be Thursday, June 4th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. in Hunter Street Park. Next, we have the brown bags to building bridges series. That's Thursday, June 4th as well at 12 pm and that's at the Howie Cultural Arts Center. Uh that's the second quarter of our 2026 speaker uh from our department of organizational excellence featured there. Uh next is the Sweet Dreams concert which is part of our Rhythm and Reels and that will be Saturday, June 6th at the Nature Park Amphitheater and that is a free event to attend. Uh then if you remember, we did uh first kickoff of our Ask Me Anything series with the town manager. So we did that at the farmers market a couple Saturdays ago. We've got our next one planned for June 13th from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and that will be at Mama Birds Ice Cream in Sweetwater. So spreading that event out. A couple other updates. The budget, which has been talked about a lot this evening. I just want to reiterate that we've had four public hearings. We will have our fifth public hearing on that June 9th and hopefully have an adoption and u that's in the works for June 9th. We've had several work sessions as you mentioned. You had a town hall this past uh earlier this week. So, a lot of activity on that and hopefully quickly bringing that to a close so we can get into the next fiscal year. Meter updates. We have changed out approximately 18,500 electric meters. Uh we have around 13,000 remaining in that switch out. Uh the last thing on my report is the Ask Apex update. We continue to be north of 90% in resolving calls through the Ask Apex line and the wait time still it went up a few seconds but we still continue to be under a minute. We're at 50 seconds for the average wait time to answer calls. Uh so doing great work out of Ask Apex and that is all for my formal report and for no questions on that we can move into the next item which is our auditor report.

Okay,

we're good.

Sounds good.

Okay, so I'm going to invite John Griffin up, our finance director, and he can kick it off and our auditors will be joining us remotely this evening. All right. I just want to give a reminder um from our IT team uh for colleagues just lean into the mic and speak because we're interacting with daughter virtually.

Good evening. Um John, will John Griffin be speaking first or would you like us to make our audit presentation first? I can go I can just introduce you Leanne. So this is Leanne uh director with Terry Beckert who was uh our kind of primary kind of head honcho for the audit and then Michael Strainy has also joined her who is the manager over our audit as well. So these are the folks who we've got them here remotely because they're the folks who work daytoday to review our financial records. So they have the expertise, the knowledge, the skills and experience to speak to any questions you might have.

So thank you all. Uh, Mayor Griffin, members of the commission, appreciate you all allowing us to be here with you all virtually tonight. Um, I had promised u about six months ago to bring a Gazsby update to a group today and uh appreciate being able to still fulfill that commitment and and present to you as well. I'm going to share my screen with you. Um, and we will review our required communications. Uh, we are issuing our audit. It will be dated as of today. Uh before I go any further, I really want to thank John and Brooke and the rest of the team there for all of their help in facilitating the audit. Um I know it was a challenging year for them implementing the new ERP and um transferring all of that information into the form of the audited financial support uh report. and they worked on that very hard and work

very hard to provide us um with the documentation that we need to be able to issue our opinions. So, I have on your screen um your service team. Uh as John said, I'm Leanne Waters. I'm responsible for the oversight of the audit um and for signing your audit opinion. Dan Gogerty out of our Charlotte office was our second technical reviewer. Uh we have a firm technical director Steve Seagull who becomes involved if we need him to. He did not on this particular engagement. Michael served as our manager and we had a senior associate Carly Coleman and a staff associate Justin Harnesses um who both worked on the audit uh throughout its conduct. So, we have audited the financial statements for your town as of the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025 in in accordance with all applicable standards. And we are issuing our report dated May the 28th of 2026. I just approved issuance of the reports at about 5:45 tonight. Uh we will be providing those to John tomorrow to put in your final document. Uh we have also audited the town's compliance with the major compliance requirements for its federal programs and state programs that met the threshold to be audited as major and we have issued unmodified opinions um on this federal and state single audits as well. We audited one federal program as major that's your highway planning and construction program and one state program the POW bill that kind of goes hand in hand there. So when we are conducting your audit we do not test internal controls to be able to provide you with an opinion on the

operating effectiveness of those controls. We review the internal controls to allow us to determine where the financial statements are at risk of material misstatement. Um, and that helps us to determine uh what our audit procedures are going to be and where um since we do not review 100% of your transactions, it helps us really determine where we're going to focus our audit time. Had we become aware of a deficiency in internal control, uh we would have reported those. Uh but I'm pleased to tell you that we noted no deficiencies in your internal control that we believe to be material weaknesses. Uh there were uh two comments um that we are making. They are not uh report level comments. Um but there is a immaterial non-compliance with uh North Carolina General Standard 168-641 uh regarding um the requirement for the town finance officer to garnish compensation paid um to any elected official who who has unpaid funds to the city for city services. Uh we also noted during the conduct of our audit that the city didn't always comply with its policies on procurement uh card usage. So the policies themselves appeared to be designed well but they weren't always followed. So throughout the conduct of the audit, um town's management has taken um action to ensure that all the required reviews are now being performed um and that cards are only utilized by authorized users. We did not have any audit adjustments during the course of the audit, nor did we have what we call uncorrected adjustments, which are not material um but still ones that we want to bring to

your attention. And I think that speaks um a lot to the thoroughess um that John and his team applied uh to ensuring that they were getting the best possible information out of the ERP. Now, one thing I did want to point out to you all is that during the course of this particular fiscal year, um the town did implement a new accounting standard. It was Gazsby statement number 101, compensated absences. Uh this statement required um some it it had some new requirements for when you actually acrew um compensated absences. uh when they are considered more likely than not to be paid or to be settled by leave taken um or settled in some other means. And it also required the town um to acrew a liability for salary related payments. So essentially that would be your FICA that's associated uh with your compensated absence. As a result of that, the prior year uh balance, the balance as it was stated at June 30th of 2024 was restated a total of $321,000 um to implement that new standard as the liability went up. And then uh one other change that was made this year um in the electric utility fund it there was a cor error correction uh of $108,379. So that was also made to the beginning balance. Our opinion was not modified with respect to these restatements. Um and we noted no inappropriate accounting policies or practices during the course of our audit. Uh we do review related party transactions

um we have we noted no related party transactions for which um that were not conducted at the appropriate arms length. All significant related party transactions were approved in accordance with the town's policies uh and appeared to be for a you know a legitimate business purpose during the course of the year. We didn't identify any significant unusual transactions or transactions that were outside of the normal course of business for the town. um and all of the transactions that the town uh executed over the year um there was authoritative guidance or consensus to guide the recording of those transactions. Now during um the the course of preparing the financial statements, management makes certain estimates. Um the ones that we feel are most significant for your financial statements or your allowance for doubtful accounts in your proprietary fund, your depreciation expense for your capital assets, and then your participation in the other postemployment benefits liability. We review management's calculation of those estimates. We review the assumptions uh that go into making um those estimates to ensure that they are reasonable and we found them to be so. And then other um key estimates include your participation in both the LEOSA and the ELERS uh pension plans. The financial statement disclosures of which there are many as you all are used to seeing are neutral, consistent and clear. That is what we expect. Uh they conform to appropriate governmental accounting standards. Now during the course of your audit uh

we sometimes perform what we call nonattest services and that's really anything we do for you other than just performing the audit. So there are two services um that we have performed or will perform. The first is that our advisory team assisted the staff there at Apex with the implementation of Gatsby statement number 101 compensated absences. Um that is something they could have done on their own but with their heavy lift um getting information getting the ERP system auditable um they just that was really just a matter of timing for them. Uh the other thing that we will do for you is at the completion of this audit you are required to file your financial statements with the federal audit clearing house. Uh because you do have a single audit. We our administrative team will enter um and complete the appropriate sections of the data collection form and we will provide it to John for his review and approval. Once John has approved it, we will upload that uh for him and both John and I will sign and certify uh to the correctness of that document. So we always review whatever nonattest services that we provide just to ensure that they have not impaired our independence in any way as it's related to the audit. Uh and we do not believe that either of these services creates any kind of independence impairment. The next couple of slides are I call it just a little bit of a report card. um we encountered no significant difficulties in dealing with management uh when we were performing and completing the audit throughout the conduct of the audit and we started the audit um we started planning

probably um last last May or June. Um, your team has been very forthcoming with information. When they determined that they were going to struggle uh getting information from the new ERP, they contacted us immediately to let us know that the audit needed to be rescheduled. Um, so and we have, you know, worked together well throughout the conduct of the audit. Uh, we did not have any disagreements. We're not aware. um we did not have to consult with anyone outside of our team. We will be providing management with a representation letter um that it's very detailed. It's about six pages of very specific representations about the financial statements that really what it boils down to is John and the mayor attesting to us uh that they've provided us all the information that we have asked for um and that they know of nothing um that if they were to tell us or to provide us something different would change our a modified opinion. in on your financial statements. Uh we are not aware of any instances where management consulted with other auditors or accountants. Um sometimes clients may not like the answer that we give them and so they they might seek a different answer. Um but we're not aware of any circumstances like that. um during the court. So as I told you all, we do not review 100% of the transactions and the purpose of our audit is not to detect fraud or illegal acts but had we become aware of any concerns in that area we would have already reached out to you. U so we were not aware we are not aware of any kind of indicators of fraud, illegal acts or

material violations of laws or regulations. Um, we noted no events or concerns that indicate any doubt about the town's ability to continue as a going concern into the next year. Uh, there are a few other pieces to your financial statements. You do have certain required supplementary information, your management's discussion and analysis, as well as your schedules that are related to your participation in the pension and oped plans. We re review that information to ensure that it's consistent with the audited financial statements and with the information um that we collected uh throughout our audit. Um but we did and we found it to be so but we do not issue an opinion on the required supplementary information. Now you do have something called supplementary information as well. uh for you all that is primarily your schedule of expenditures of federal and state awards. You're combining uh financial statements. We do audit those ska those those uh schedules and statements and we are issuing an unmodified opinion on those schedules and then you have certain other information in the financial statements because you present an acter. you have the transmitt letter as well as certain statistical data and similar to the required supplementary information. We do not audit those u that information but we do review it to ensure it's consistent and we found it to be so. Uh one thing we want to make you aware of is that as we move into 2027 there are two new accounting standards that your uh financial team there will be working with Gatsby statement 103 which is financial reporting model improvements. It will have some changes to your management's discussion and

analysis uh to the presentation of your budgetary schedules um as well as to your proprietary fund schedule. So we'll be working with the team there to make sure that they have a successful implementation of that. Uh Gazsby 104 disclosure of certain capital assets uh will also be implemented for 2026. Um and then looking into 2027, there is a new statement Gazsby 105 on subsequent events. So that one's a little further out. Um those are um most of the things that we have with the audit. John is currently working um to get the financial information entered into the state's new logo system. Um and once that is completed, if there are any uh performance indicators um that write that are flagged as red, uh we will need to report those to you. We are certain you will have one of those performance indicators or FPICS and that is the fact that the audit wasn't submitted by the December 31st, 2025 due date. Um those are the end of my prepared remarks. Do you all have any questions for me or for Michael?

Thanks for the presentation. Any questions for

I do have one question, Miss Waters. This is Council Member Zagermanman. Um, you mentioned something about an adjustment in the electrical fund and I just want to make sure I'm not conflating two things. Was that adjustment related to the Gatsby 101 implementation or was that a different matter altogether?

There was there was both. There was a Gazsby uh 101 um adjustment and then there was a correction of an error. Michael, do you can you shed some more light on that error correction for us, please?

So, yeah, I think this was in addition to the Gatsby 101 restatement. Um it was just noted that and this was actually

noted by the town's finance team had identified some assets that were unrecorded but had earned book value. So they kind of went ahead and proactively made that adjustment. So that was actually a uh town provided adjustment. Um so it just kind of showed that they were proactively looking through that and making sure all the balances were correct.

All right. Appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. Other questions?

All right. Hearing none. Thank you, Miss Waters. John, thank you so much for your work. So I would just tell you all that our next steps are we will get logo certified and tomorrow we will be providing John with the final audit reports so that he can insert those into your acter um and get that ready to print.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. So, in accordance with this, I also, you know, pulled some tables information that I thought was important for your, you know, understanding of the stewardship of the financial position of the town that we could just run through real quick. First and foremost, uh so the statement of net position for the town, which is when we include all of the town's assets, all of the town's liabilities, all the town's deferred inflows and outflows of resources. Uh just to emphasize, this is a $ 1.3 billion enterprise. Now, the vast majority of that, the financial value of this enterprise is it's about a billion dollars and it is tied up in the net investment in capital assets, which are, you know, it's the building we're standing in. It's the roads our residents drive on. It is the pipes that deliver them water. It is the power poles that deliver them electricity. Most of it, most of what the town

provides is actually in physical infrastructure. Overall, uh, your net position grew by about $135 million. The vast majority of that is driven again by investments in infrastructure, the physical environment that our our residents live, drive around on, what gives them services. Um the bulk of it um is driven again by capital assets occasionally a little bit by changes in revenues things of that nature um and also by cont what we call contributed assets. So for example in the water and sewer fund when someone you know constructs a development they might construct pipes and they then would turn those pipes in over to the town at the end of that and so we record a capital asset estimating their value. Some of uh some of the councils are new uh just to give you there is a distinction when we talk about governmental funds. So this is not electric, water and sewer is there's a distinction between major and non- major funds. Your major funds this year and it can change year to year because it's depending on how much of percentage of the financial resources of the town are in that fund. You have the general fund which also includes a grants and special revenue account and an affordable housing account. It includes your debt service fund, the CIF, uh the Transportation Capital Projects Fund, which is major almost entirely due to the Peakway construction, and the American Rescue Act project fund. Uh I did throw a little aster on this one because they used to have in prior reports, in prior audits, you had two different ARPA funds, and um to simplify financial reporting, these were actually merged into one account for fiscal 2025. But you also have non- major funds um and those are capital project funds, capital reserves, the library and the cemetery fund. The change in fund balance. So that's that income that change the revenue or expenses or the expenses over revenues. Um overall uh you had you added about $9 million in the general fund. This is mostly driven by changes in revenues and lower than anticipated expenditures.

That doesn't translate into $9 million you can spend because we also had an increase in restricted fund balance for incumbrances. We add actually added about $5 million. You know, you order a fire truck, stick a price on a firet truck, it's extremely high, and then it takes three years to get it. So, what that does is that creates a restricted fund balance that then kind of absorbs some of that growth. You added $295,000 in the debt service fund, which is entirely driven by property tax collections. And then your project funds mostly it's because we funded projects in the past and then we've been spending those balances down. Your total governmental fund balances is about $148.7 million. Quickly running through those categories, $34.3 million is unassigned. You can direct it to any purpose you see fit. Uh 56 million of it is restricted. So it's driven by some kind of restriction. So your payment in loses that go into your capital reserve funds count as restricted. Unspent bond proceeds are also restricted. Um the other major component is committed. So that is money you fronted for projects that are currently underway. Talking quickly about your property tax base. Your assessed valuation on June 30th was 19.6 billion dollar and that is increased by a little about 12.5 billion dollars the prior year and that is purely the impact of the Wake County revaluation that occurred that year. Your advalorum tax collections were about 66.89 million. You collected 99.77% of that levy. And just to note, you uh in exchange for getting that revenue, you actually ended up paying about half a million dollars back to Wake County for collecting it. Your enterprise funds, and this is just to focus on specifically the operations. So, we're excluding your capital projects that are the water and sewer infrastructure that's being built out. Um, overall you had a $2.1 million income gain in those funds. And just to give you some context about how accurate your budgetary planning is, that's that's about 2% of the total. So it was extremely the actuals came in very close

to budget. Just quickly showing your long-term debts and equivalents. Uh, you have several major categories. You have bonds and notes. These are the debts you've issued. You also are reporting compensated absences. That's Gazsby 101. Um, I'll break out the Gazsby 101 numbers a little bit on a later slide. You also report a proportional amount of the state pension system. You have a liability for the special separation allowance we offer to law enforcement officers who retire. You have a health plan uh a liability for your health plan that you was for retirees. Um, that's closed to new enrolles, but you have that liability that's slowly going down over time. And uh, Gazsby 96 requires that we report um, software as a service as a liability as well. So, you have about $2.5 million of IT liability overall, your long-term debt, uh, and decrease from about 230 million to about 220 million. Looking at your state and your local policies, so your unassigned fund balance target is to hit about 25% of your general fund expenditures for the following year. So, that meant your operating target was about 28.4 million and that left about $5.5 million that is available for appropriation. In terms of your debt compliance, the percentage of your debt in relation to the value of all the real and personal property in the town, it's 74. It's very small. Your town policy is 2.5% or 312 million. Your governmental debt actually at the end of the year was 95 million. So, and your state statute, so state statute is no, you can't borrow more than 8% of the value of the town. Uh, that's about uh one half billion dollars. And just to give you context, if you legally wanted to go out and borrow that, you could borrow $1.4 billion. though I would certainly not suggest that. Um, your debt service ratio, your town policy target is 12%. Um, and right now you're sitting at about 7 and a half%. So, you do have some room for additional borrowing. Just to quickly talk about debt, we only did one small rolling stock loan in fiscal 2025. We're going to do another

one in the fall with bidding expected in July, award in August, and I'm actually planning on doing a double up and do two years of rolling stock loans in one go. and also a partial reimbursement of some property acquisition that the town has followed through on. And then of course we're going to do some limited obligation bonds to cover town hall, tonsil house, and the Salem streetscape project. And we're also planning on issuing some revenue bonds for the electric fund in the fall as well. So the other issues of note I wanted to bring your attention. So Gazby 101 is new. Uh before in fiscal 2024 and earlier, we acrewed a liability for vacation leave, compensatory time, and professional leave, which is a kind of comp time we offer to exempt employees.

We had to change that and do an acrruel for vacation leave, compensatory time, and sick leave. So, this is a management estimate of how much sick time the town might be on the hook for. And that was driven by about a $321,000 adjustment. To give you some context about why 101 was difficult, we uh have to go back and redo 2024's numbers based off of a three-year rolling estimate of the pre-frier year. So, we had to look at literally four years of sick and vacation leave usage by town employees to kind of come to these numbers. And I wanted to point out one of the tables in your audit is about the allowance, the estimate that management makes for how much of your utility bills won't actually be collected. At June 30th, we estimated about $3.5 million. So you people So folks owed the town $12.5 million as of June 30th and it's been discounted a little bit in your financial statements between about $3.5 million and that's a management estimate that we will have to update and revitalize based on collections as we go into the end of this year. That ultimately does change your fund balances. Key takeaways I just want to point out, you know, you have a strong property tax collection rate. So when you set a rate, you can actually guarantee you're going to collect that number. There are a lot of communities in this state where they set a tax collection, they set their levy and then they don't actually get to collect all of it um because of low collection rate. You have stable and growing fund balances and we didn't have

any issues with the town's use of federal and state funds that were identified. Uh I wanted to quickly talk about the planned response I have for your late audit. Um I just wanted to highlight that was one of the things I noticed. Uh I started in September, so I was about three years three months after the end of your fiscal year. I actually um in my budget proposal for this year identified about $18,000 of reductions to various account line items that I thought could be pivoted to improve reporting. So, you're going to be able to provide a very specific actionable detail to report to the Department of State Treasury about how we're going to turn around auditing in future years with your 2027 budget. We did get the GFA GFOA award for 2024 and we're going to submit an application for 2025. And of course, I have uh the people that deserve most of the credit for this are the actual finance department um themselves and the members of the town staff who help me do it. I didn't do it all on my own. Um any questions or discussion?

Thank you, John. Appreciate everything. Questions?

I had one question about the slide. You mentioned that our current um debt service ratio is 7.5% and the town policy is 12%. And then a slide or two later, you outline some expected debt service issuances for this year. Um, do you have an estimate to what that's going to do to our debt servicing rate to get us closer to that 12% policy?

I think that'll probably get you about 9%. It's not going to be you probably need another big like a geo bond referendum to get close to that 12 and a half.

All right. Thank you. Other questions?

Okay. Thank you so much for the work. Appreciate you and your team. Anything else, Mr. Bos? All right, town clerk report.

Yes, good evening. Uh, one item is the environmental advisory board chair has resigned. It's moving out of the corporate limits. So, um, at their meeting last week, they recommended

Daniel Vale serve as their chair and the mayor has also supported that recommendation. So, uh, coming to you all for confirmation, a motion and second to confirm that appointment through the remainder of this calendar year. I'd like to hear from Mayor Pro Tim. Are you good with that one?

I am. Yeah, Daniel, he's uh he's enthusiastic. He's he's a little new to the board. Um but he was he was one of the not here today, but he was, you know, excited about the position and uh generally interested in the work. So, I'm really excited about what he's going to do as chair.

All right. Very well.

Motion to approve.

All right. Motion may approach him.

Second.

Second. Zerman. All in favor say I. I.

Oppos. Motion carries.

All right. We move now to additional updates. Mr. Clerk, you good? Okay. All right. All right. Moving now to proclamations. Uh we do have one proclamation tonight and as usual I would like to have my colleagues to join me out front. First proclamation will be standing together in pride LGBTQIA plus pride month 2026. All right. I would like to recognize members of our P Flag, Laura, Beth, Jamie, and Ashley. I'll have you come up shortly after we read the proclamation, but we'll kick it off tonight. Leading us will be Council Member Ziggerman.

All right. I have the honor to kick off the proclamation for Standing Together in Pride, LGBTQIA plus Pride Month 2026. Whereas LGBTQIA plus Pride Month is celebrated each June to honor the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, interex, and asexual community while recognizing the importance of dignity, equality, and opportunity for all people who live openly and authentically. And whereas LGBTQIA+

pride organizations across North Carolina and the United States have embraced themes for 2026 such as rallying together, highlighting joy, visibility, resilience, and voice, and underscoring that communities thrive when strengthened through love, understanding, and unity. hand. Whereas the town of Apex proudly values the diversity of its residents and remains committed to f to fostering a welcoming community where every person is respected, supported, and encouraged to be their authentic self regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. And

whereas love and compassion are the foundation of a thriving and connected community. And through empathy, kindness, and mutual respect, we create spaces where individuals and families from all walks of life feel a true sense of belonging and acceptance. And whereas Pride Month is an opportunity to celebrate the resilience, contributions, and lived experiences of the LGBTQIA plus individuals while continuing to encourage meaningful conversations that strengthen understanding, visibility, and human connection throughout our community. hand. Whereas the town of Apex invites residents and visitors to gather for Pride Stories on Thursday, June 4th, 2026 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Hunter Street Park for an evening of contemplation, exploration, storytelling, and celebration that honors the LGBTQIA plus community and their loved ones while bringing people together through shared experiences, joy, and fellowship. And Whereas the town of Apex encourages residents to join together in a spirit

of unity and community pride, recognizing that our differences strengthen us and our shared humanity connects us all.

Now therefore, I, Jacqu K. Gilbert, mayor of Apex, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim the month of June 2026 as LGBTQIA+ pride month in the town of Apex and encourage all residents to celebrate with love, respect, unity, and appreciation for every member of our community because our community is stronger together. So, I would like to invite all members of P Flad to come join me and receive the proclamation. Thank you so much. There we go. officially appreciate the conversation. Good evening everybody. On behalf of PFL

Apex, we want to say thank you to the mayor and the town council for proclaiming Pride Month for Apex. We greatly appreciate all your support for the LGBTQ plus community. For those who don't know us, we are the local chapter of the larger national nonprofit organization P Flag, which provides support, education, and advocacy for LGBTQ plus people, but especially their family, their loved ones, their parents. P Flag slogan is leading with love. And here in Apex, we do that through our free monthly support meeting that's here in person in Apex, through our college um our college scholarship program that we just launched this year, through also supporting other nonprofits in the area who are doing great work and for advocating for the community. If you'd like to learn more about P Flag Apex, check out our website pagapex.org. And you can also find us on Facebook and Instagram. For those who celebrate, happy Pride, y'all. Thanks guys.

Great job. All right, it's time for presentation two. Wake County Board of Elections even year municipal elections. A potential resolution expressing interest. So we have a presentation by

Yes. or is it more of a presentation and got it? Okay,

we're going to provide a little background if that's okay.

All right, sounds good.

Um, so as you all know and for those watching online, even your municipal elections has been part of your legislative priorities over the last two years. And so uh what we have done tonight is asked Olivia McCll who is our board of elections uh director for Wake County um and several board members to

come and present to you some of the advantages, disadvantages and be able to answer any questions that you may have. The resolution, as also proposed in the agenda packet, does not officially adopt any changes. It is to express interest in moving to such a change. Um, but I'll allow our board of elections director to come forward now. Thank you, Olivia.

Thank you all for having us and inviting us today to um discuss um the town of Apex municipal elections. Um we have over 850,000 voters in Wake County. Um we make up over 11% of the voter population in the state. And just to kind of put that in perspective for the town of Apex, um there are 216 precincts in Wake County and 14 of those are um in Apex. And registered voters in Apex, we have just over 50,000 um registered voters as well. So um again we look at our um municipalities as partnerships. Um there are 14 municipalities in Wake County and so each individual municipality we work with during odd years um historically. Um we do have one municipal um municipality that has moved to even years which is Raleigh. and I'll discuss a little bit more about the impacts and what we've seen with their um change from odd u from yeah from odd to even years. Um I do have uh two of my board members here with me today. So I have our chair um Keith Weatherly. He's already been introduced. Um and Jerry Cohen, our secretary. Um so if there's additional questions um they're here to help as well. So, um, when we were asked to come speak, it was really kind of narrowing down topics, um, to discuss, and again, at the end, um, if there's any additional questions that you have, um, we're going to go over basically your current method of election, um, the cost of municipal elections, how we work with, um, the town um, for estimates,

then actuals, and what that looks like in odd, and then what it would look like moving to an even year to kind of give you some perspective of what it would look like if you did decide to move to an even year. Um, and I will go on into um your election method. So, currently, Town of Apex nonpartisan plurality method. Um, again, it's the top vote getters um that are elected. Um, so very simple. Um, you are in oddnumbered years um along with um along with 12 other municipalities um that are holding the oddnumbered year elections. So, you do have um your mayor um contest and then you have the town council. There's five at large seats. Those are staggered terms. So, again, looking at what it will look like from an odd to an even, that would be something that you would have to kind of talk about what that would look like um moving forward. So, in 2027, um we will um have the next um ballot um that Apex is um planning to be on. Um those are two that's the mayor and then two town council and then moving into 29 2029 that would be the three um additional seats. So really with a nonpartisan plurality method um we actually have all of our municipalities that are in odd number years actually are under that method. Carrie recently switched from the runoff method to this method. Um so again there was some cost sharing that we saw this past past time. We actually saw higher turnout in 2025. um higher the highest turnout that we've really seen in a municipal election in 2025. So people are engaged um you know to come out but we do have um cost sharing when it comes to how we look at odd number years versus even number even number years and all of that's contingent on how many municipalities are actually in those municipal elections and then of course if town of Apex which historically y'all have had an early voting site um that's an

additional cost to the town. So just looking at past um statistical data about um election expenses. Um so if you're looking at this chart, we did 21 23 25. Um so one thing that stands out, you can look at election day versus early voting um cost. Um there is a huge spike in 2023. So kind of, you know, looking at data. Um, in 2023, that was um the year that Raleigh was not um part of um the municipal elections in that odd year. And Kerry, they had their runoff method, but they only had certain districts that were um in that November election in 2023. So you can see how all of that is um related in election expenses and cost sharing between municipalities. Um, one other thing to note with early voting. So, because of the current law and the way that the municipals um, work is if a municipality would like to have an early voting site, they are charged for that early voting site. So, we ask a year in advance, we ask all of the municipalities, do you would you like to have an early voting site in your town? Historically, Apex has had an early voting site. Um so there is um municipal to municipal conversations because it has to be uniform the days the hours and that's where it gets a little um you know kind of a lot of talks behind the scenes is you know you could be anywhere from you know 17 days to 10 days and we've seen eight days. So um depending on you do have flexibility in how many days but it does have to be uniform. So if you have a town of Kerry who wants 10 days then Apex would have to also have 10 days. So again, there's a lot of variables when it comes to election expenses, but that's one of the main things I did want to point out is a town of Apex does um have an early voting site in their town historically. Um and so therefore that that cost um

there um is basically all the cost that goes to the um to the town. Okay. So moving from an odd year to an even year. Um so there are um some key things I do want to talk about. It's very different um the way that we budget. We regardless of the election year, we build our budget from the ground up. Um there are various things whether it's new laws that have condensed timelines, how many people we need. Um we look at turnout, looking at how many precinct officials we may need for um early voting and for election day. But when you're looking at an even number year, we're already having conducting an election. Um, so that budget looks a little bit different in even number years and we've only had the city of Raleigh to kind of look at that and see how that kind of plays out. So I wanted to kind of talk individually into these um sections about what that looks like in these categories. So and how it differs from an odd year. So one of the first um one of one of the first things I want to talk about are ballots. Um, so if you did decide to go to an even year, you would be charged for 50% of all ballots that contain Apex municipal contest. So there's a cost sharing with the county on that. Um, so it would just be that 50% of all ballots with that Apex contest on it. I did want to mention something with ballots just for awareness. So in a general election, you have partisan offices. So you would have the partisan listed first, nonpartisan listed after that, and then you would have your bonds. So when you're looking at that, like on a ballot, um something that you're used to seeing in an odd year, you look at it's an apex ballot, and that's what you have um the contest are right there. But in an even year, the nonpartisan are after the partisan contest. So there is a ballot ordering um that I just want you to be aware of. The other um pieces um I want to go over

election notices and advertising. Um we have to by law uh notice the elections. Right now Raleigh takes 50% of the election notice. So if um Apex were to go to even years, we would charge them 25% of that 50. Um so or yeah it would be 25% and 25% for Raleigh. So there's that cost sharing for other municipalities that are also in even years. So right now we do have Raleigh. So if other municipalities wanted to go to even years, there would be additional um cost sharing um for that 50%. Um election day, so different from odd year to even year. So on election day, we have 14 precincts that are in the town of Apex. So the way that it works in odd years is we have um usually our staffing is anywhere between 7 to 10 precinct officials. those are charged um to back to the um municipality. So that's at 100% of what you are actually utilizing in those precincts. The difference for an even year would be we charge for one help table assistant um per apex precinct. So currently that's 14 precincts. Um and that would account for ballot management help table issues. So there's a really big cost difference there when you're looking at how that's budgeted. absentee by mail. Um, you would be charged for 50% of the post cost of absentee envelopes mailed to voters with Apex municipal contests on their on their ballot. So, that's pretty straightforward. Early voting um this is the probably the biggest uh cost um difference. You would be charged for one early voting worker per site per shift. So, we have two shifts because our current law has us going from 8 am to 7:30m. Um, so we do it shifts um in shifts. So, you have one early voting worker per site per shift to account for increase in ballot management needs. The difference there from odd to even is historically y'all

have um requested to have a site in your in your municipality and therefore all of that cost is goes goes back to the town versus the one voter that I mean the one early voting worker um that you'll be charged for the number of sites that we have. Um so that is a variable to think about. We don't know how many sites we'll have um in the general election whenever this happens, but that's just something to think about as well. And then agency personnel, we scale up. Um, again, we have 48 FTEEs. Um, and during that time of the compressed timelines and busy election season, we bring in additional agency personnel to help um, with some of those high volume needs, whether it's absentee, um, some of our board meetings, we have to have additional people to open, flat, and straighten. Um, our absentee ballots. Um we have uh lo logistical challenges. So we need additional people getting supplies out to sites during the early voting period and so forth. And that is um one thing that is a true to be determined because we build our budget from the ground up depending on how many early voting sites we have, how many precincts we have open and so forth. And just to um because I know y'all, you know, looking at costs, I just want to go ahead and point this out um because we do have Raleigh that is currently went from odd to um even years. So, just to kind of put it in perspective um from like a percentage of what the difference would be, I'm going to use Raleigh. I know that's not um apples to apples, but um in 2019, Raleigh was charged 834,000 for election day and early voting. So, fast forward to um the even year in 2024, uh Raleigh was charged 325,000. So, there was about a 61% decrease in the um amount that they were spending on elections. Now, since then, they have changed their method and now they have a primary and a general. So now there

there's two different sides of that. But just to look at that from a high level of what that cost difference equates to in a percentage using Raleigh, it's about a 61% decrease. And that's really all the highle things I had. I'm happy to answer additional questions that you may have or give you any um more statistical data.

Thanks, Miss McCall. Questions? We'll start. Mr. Reese, I think you were leaning in first.

First question. Okay.

Thank you for the presentation. Are there other municipalities you've delivered this presentation to as well or are you about to deliver uh to additional municipalities in the county?

I um I have not um been asked to come to any other meetings. Um I do know that across the state this is a hot topic. Um, so if you're watching the news, this is being discussed across the state. It um, from a statewide level, I believe there's just over 70 municipalities that operate in an inven. Um so again that's a you know that is a a number but across you know conversations across the state this is a hot topic as far as look you know what are the cost savings what are the benefits versus you know pros cons of it. Um and really it comes down to the actual municipality doing what they want to do and actually go because it has to take you know an act of legislation to actually move you to an even year. Um but I have not spoken with any other municipality. Um I do know that um there was a presentation in Durm um that was given by the Durham County director and they did touch on this as well.

I follow up thank you is um when the city of Raleigh made these changes obviously there were financial benefits. Are there any, and I'm not going to

quote you, but I would, it would be great to have any indications for um uh potential uh scenarios we haven't thought of, or you know, the law of unintended consequences. Are there any um uh issues with the Raleigh election, especially with a much larger municipality, that may not apply as uh cleanly to a smaller municipality like Apex? Not that much smaller, only 85,000. Um so just looking at you know looking at turnout that's another thing just to look at just in a high level. Um so you know municipal turnout is lower obviously than um if you look at that data. So like in 2023 we had 17% turnout. Um in 2025 we had 25%. We actually saw a pretty big increase in 2025. Um if you look at a general election. So in 2022 turnout was about 55%. So a big bigger increase of people coming out to participate. And then in 2024 presidential year we had 76% turnout. So if you are looking at turnout and if you would have more turnout in a general year um just looking at that data you do have higher turnout in an even year versus an odd.

Thank you for that. Yeah, I just wanted to add like part of the reason we wanted this presentation is uh we do have a plan to speak to the other municipalities and we wanted to have the video of this presentation to to show them and and let them you know see the answer to some of the questions too. I wanted to to touch on one thing. Um the motivating factor here, we're in the budget season and that's the reason we're discussing this. It it does come down to money and uh based on the data I'm seeing it it sounds like for everyone's benefit uh in 2023 Apex looks like we paid around 200k for the election. um that would obviously go to zero if we uh you know didn't do an an odd year election. 2025 is when Kerry changed our election to advertise the cost a little bit and we went down to 150k. So, but we wouldn't save 150k because what I just saw is that we would have some additional costs in the even

year. Do you know how that would like you said 61% would how it would shake out. So I could say roughly 80k or something we would say.

We can uh we could definitely go back and build like a hypothetical budget. Um we could do something like that. to say around 60%.

Um based on Raleigh's their trend and what has happened over uh with them moving, it looks like it was about a 61% decrease in um cost for them.

Yes. And I I would say like another observation, I think this is true, is that for every town that moves, it becomes more expensive for the towns that stay in odd years.

That is very true. Um, and you see that in that graph because if Raleigh's not included, there's no cost sharing um, for that um, for those shared cost. Um,

and then conversely, for every town that switches to even, some of those costs you shared on the chart would be advertised across more towns, like the advertising cost. It sounds like not as much as I thought, but it would it would get cheaper the more towns that move with us. So maybe there' be a little domino effect here where once Apex goes and someone else, then it just gets more expensive for the other towns and we'd all we'd all go. So anyway, So I I'll yield a little bit because be the trends setters here. All right. So my colleagues already asked some of my questions. Um like you said, Miss McCall, this is a hot topic across the the state. We've seen some legislation being introduced, you know, for other municipalities to move to even your elections. Um obviously uh that will impact uh terms, right? Excessing terms or future terms. Um are you uh or are there any best practices that you would be able to recommend or the board of elections would be able to recommend if we do choose to move to even year elections? How to do that gracefully uh in a way that aligns us with the even years uh and and how to you know implement that with either existing or future terms. I

think Jerry wants to jump in.

Oh sure.

Come on up to the microphone please. While he's coming, I do want to say um so session law 202156 if you want to

take a look at that, that's the Senate Bill 722, that's where Raleigh started this process and so just kind of looking at what they did and how long it took and the steps. There's a whole process for it. So I would check that out.

Thank you. Jerry Cohen, uh secretary, Wake County Board of Elections. I've served since 2019. I served six years in the Chapel Hill Town Council a long long time ago. Well, I prom made me promise to not go to any more meetings, but uh I'm at your meeting and glad to help.

Uh two things. As recently as 2010, there were just four municipalities in the state that had even numbered years elections. It is currently 75 uh for this 2026 election. There's a number that are considering it uh for this year. There's been bills to move 12 cities to even years that are pending in the legislature. Now, um in terms of turnout in in Raleigh in 2019, the most recent oddyear municipal election, there were 52,000 votes cast for mayor. In 2022, there was 150,000 votes cast for mayor. The actual turnout of Raleigh voters was about 10% higher because about 10% of the people left Raleigh blank on their ballot. but 90% did vote. In the 2024 presidential election, the number of votes cast for mayor of Broly were 225,000. Now, there's been some growth in the town over those six years as well, but it really relates to the general underlying turnout in the election.

Fantastic. Can you speak to the methods used by those 70 towns to transition because I know in Raleigh a lot of the there was a lot of unhappiness about the method they used and we certainly don't want to do this in a way that would you know surprise people in town. We want to you know let know what's going on. So what are the options and and how do you see towns manage this transition?

There are two methods that have been used. One is a one-time extension of existing terms by one year whether it's

staggered or not. All of the bills this year filed provide that and probably 90% of the other 70 do that. The other way to go about that is to have a one-time election for a three-year term instead of four. Um that doesn't involve an extension. Of course, you wind up paying for elections in back-to-back years. So, there's a downside of that. But you that's another there are a few towns of the 75 that did have two elections with three-year terms to stagger it without adding anyone's term but they wound up for instance having to have an election in 2019 and 2020.

So

yeah but then the voters are

so it is contro I mean when a board of course it's the legislature that actually makes the change. you were not extending the term yourself, but yes, in Raleigh it was it was a one-time controversy. There's no doubt about that. But that's seven years ago now.

Thank you. That answer my question.

Thank you.

So, any other questions?

I just had one more. One more. Thank you. I just thought of it.

Sure. If this were to occur, whatever the Thank you, Councilman. Whatever the scenario is, whether it's the the shorten one or lengthen a term, what have you, um is there a uh an education campaign um that comes along with that? Is that an additional package price we got to purchase? Like what's the situation there? Or do you just kind of let people and they and it kind of hits them one year and we run into some controversy and then next year we're good or next time? So, I will say um we uh even since Raleigh has moved, we are constantly getting calls in an in an odd year, why do I not have a ballot um in the city of Raleigh? Um, so for us at the Wake County Board of Elections, um, we have

we've well, we have 13 more outreach events um, scheduled up and leading up to November, but we would add that information into any of our outreach events that we go out into the communities. Um, but from a town side, um, there's no I mean, y'all could do whatever you would want to do to get that information out. Um but from a Wake County Board of Elections, we would have press releases. We would be out in the community. Um you know, we we have a social media. Um so we would do all of our normal normal things that we would do to um promote that change. We're no stranger to change. Uh so again, we pretty much have a template of all the things that we need to do to get the information out there. Um we have uh we actually staged a media um event here at John Brown that went well um to kind of get more information out. We had u news groups that came out and got more information about voting. So we do try to engage as much as we can out in the community. Um, but we would uh definitely um love the help from the town as well getting that message out um because it's it's important whenever there's a change and um we know that sometimes it takes people hearing it over and over and over again to in years for it to sink in. Um but we will try our hardest.

Thank you.

There's no way to get local candidates above the partisan candidates.

So currently the way that the law and the ballot ordering is that Yeah. So go up there.

So, um before we wrap up, I just had some other comments more for the public about why, you know, why we've considered this and had this on a legislative agenda for the past few years. We mentioned most of them. You know, obviously there would be a significant um budgetary impact to us. Not having to run an election in the odd year would save close to six figures and uh in a year in a budget cycle where we're scrging for every dollar. That that starts to sound pretty appealing. We mentioned the increased turnout. the election to elect our council members

would 75 80% turnout instead of 15%. Um, another thing that wasn't mentioned is just the use of our facilities. So, because we have and we're very dedicated to elections and and civic engagement here. So, we always love to be an early voting center, but that means almost a month out of every single year, our John Brown Community Center um and the parking lot associated with it and all the town employees can tell you um is is almost out of commission as we run the election. And if we had elections aligned with our federal elections, that would be every other year, which kind of um speaks to another reason which is a little minor, but there's a little bit of election fatigue that kind of sinks in when you're doing this every single year. there's a little bit of fatigue with all the signs that every single summer get thrown around town. Um, this would cut that in half and just do it every other year. So, those are some of the advantages that you did think about. I know there's some other uh many sides of this topic. Um, but I think it's it's uh worth considering and I would um ask my colleague to support the resolution at the moment.

Thanks.

Any other comments? Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you much for

So are we adopting the resolution now?

Just one one question before. So this resolution, where would it go from there? Are we communicating with our lobbyists for general?

Yes. So once you adopt the if the resolution is adopted, then I would share the resolution actually directs me to share it with all the other clerks in Wake County and ask them to share it with their mayors and councils. Um and then it initiates a survey to them asking the uh mayors as well as the uh council members, commissioners, whatever they call them to ask them to submit their feelings or their feedback on if they would be interested in exploring going to even your elections and then that report would come back to you all before anything is filed at the legislature.

Okay.

Yes. So to be clear, it's not a

decision. It's just a resolution to explore the possibility.

Yes. And it's noted in the agenda cover sheet that this does not change the election process at this time. And the resolution is actually titled to say that it expresses an interest in going to even year elections. It does not say the town of Apex will go to an evening.

And if we were to be interested to move to even elections um and that potentially impacting the 2027 election,

uh what is our deadline or timeline for having to file that with the general assembly for their consideration?

I mean technically you could still do things for 2026. I would not recommend that. Um but obviously more notice to the public and more engagement would be encouraged

push one year extend one year probably better.

I think there's a couple of different options

and that's what we want to when we bring back that survey from the other municipalities we'll be able to to share that with you all of you know hey here's all the options that you could consider and then provide some direction. Clerk Coleman, I I imagine this would be understood, but I just want to see, do we need to make any specifications around the fact that we're not interested in making that change this year?

Does it need to be in the language?

I don't think so. I think it's understood that it's a little late because if if I mean, the 2026 election filing for a nonpartisan race is like in a couple weeks,

right? So, it's a little late for us to get a bill filed and passed and signed and then for these guys to have to organize the the filing

like it it's a little late. So,

we'll be looking next year.

It's too too close.

Yeah.

All right. Let's move on it.

All right. So, uh I would uh move that we adopt the resolution expressing the Apex Town Council's interest in further exploring the feasibility and implications of evenear municipal elections.

I have a motion.

Second. Council member moved. Any further discussion hearing? None. All in favor say I.

I.

Oppose. Motion carries. Thanks again.

Everybody good? Okay. All right. We're going to take a five minute uh recess. So, be back at 7:25.

Where's that?

He's right there.

What's that? Yeah, he's Yeah. And then maybe send me a note. I don't know. Can you

me live? Okay. All right. Thank you everyone. We're back in session. We'll move now into public forum. And just remember the policy related to public forum. And um we'll just leave it there. So when you come up, please um respect each other and um we'll be okay. Everybody good? All right. Good. So I want to say m Mr. Clerk, man, we got to go electronic because I can't read some of these names the way they're written. So I apologize if I get your name wrong. I'm just trying to read. All right. So we'll start with Paul Andrews. How you doing? Give your name and address if you would like to give your address.

Yeah, sure. Um, I'm Dr. Paul Andrews. I live at 417 South Tonstall Avenue. Um, it's right on the corner of 55. It's right across the street from the Yamato Steakhouse, those skinny houses, the shotgun home. So, the reason I'd like to I'd like to first of all thank council members and Mayor Gilbert for giving me some time to speak tonight. I really want to address the southernmost chunk of the um William Street, North Carolina 55 Vision Zero project with the sidewalks. Um we live right down there. We're the we're about the southernmost third of the southernmost chunk of the purple sidewalk. If you turn to your maps right there and you look down at the southernmost chunk, those four little shotgun houses,

that's where we live. And that is a really unique part of Apex that will be drastically drastically affected by this um sidewalk project. Currently, it's slated on our side of the street and we already have barely any room to park our cars. Um, and the project is proposed to take a about a 15t chunk out of our already tiny driveways. We're already trying to squeeze our cars in. We can't let our children out in the front because of how close it is to those streets. Um, the photos there are kind of a perspective of where the sidewalk is going to be. And on the back there's that line straight through. It says 15 foot mark. So, that's what we're looking at. We're going to be parking on the sidewalk if the project continues. One thing that we are aware of is the town's ordinance against parking on the sidewalks, and we want to make sure that we're protected in case that happens. Another thing I want to bring up is even the necessity of the project at all in our little chunk of um of Apex. There's already a good sidewalk on James Street, Ren Street, and Moore Street. Um, that allows foot traffic. Um, if you if you take it up basically our little sister street further away from the middle school. So, a way to save the town a lot of money is just to eliminate that part because you already have foot traffic sidewalk connecting down to 55 and there's already a crosswalk and a stoplight there. Our part is pretty dang dangerous. And as the project proposed, it's not a solid line there on 55. It's a series of little islands with walkways across the Circle K's entrance across the eggpace inspection cent's entrance. And if you remember the uh coin and currency earlier this year, it had a

flatbed tow truck speed through there and demolish it. And so we're really worried about that corner. We don't want a lot of foot traffic around there. It's going to impact us. and we propose that you put a pause on the project at least on this southern chunk.

Okay. Thank you for speaking. Thank you, sir.

Have a resolve.

All right. Mza.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. So, I happen to be a neighbor of Mr. Andrews who just spoke before me. So, I own I happen to own a investment property, short-term rental, very successful. We cater to a lot of you know a lot of workers and visitors to Apex and I'm really concerned again losing the parking space which as you would understand was the key to my business and my investment for the Airbnb and would definitely request you to consider reconsider all the points express Mr. Andrews just spoke to before me and but that's what I'm here for. Thank you.

All right. Do me a favor. Just give your name for the record, please. Just say your name.

Madu Cond.

Okay. Thank you so much for speaking tonight. Thank you.

All right. Ann Stevens.

Good evening. Anne Stevens, 311 West Chattam Street. Um, good evening. I'm here tonight to support the Apex Police Department's use of license plate readers. I am both a citizen of Apex and a 30-year veteran of the Apex Police Department. And throughout my career, I have seen firsthand the value these systems provide law enforcement and public safety. These cameras simply create capture images of license plates on vehicles traveling on public streets and in public view. In many ways, they are far less intrusive than the thousands of cameras already in use at businesses, homes, and private properties throughout our community. The difference is that the Apex Police Department operates under strict

policies, accountability, and oversight. Private individuals and companies often collect and store their information with far fewer safeguards. License plate readers are an important public safety tool. They alert officers when stolen vehicles or known wanted offenders enter our community, allowing all law enforcement officers to intervene before additional crimes can occur. They also assist in locating vehicles connected to kidnappings, violent crimes, missing person cases, and many other serious investigations. Across the countries, these systems have prevented and solved countless numbers of crime. Even in the short time they have been in use in Apex, they have already contributed to making our community safer. Despite the fear-mongering and dramatic claims that have been made, there is no single person in our community that has been harmed by the use of these cameras. I trust the Apex Police Department and I have complete confidence that the department has the appropriate policies and procedures in place to ensure this technology is properly is used properly and responsibly. I also know how hard the men and women of this department work every day to protect our town because I did it for 30 years. I respectfully ask the council to continue supporting the use of license plate readers and allow our department to use this lawful, effective tool to help keep Apex safe. Thank you.

Thank you for speaking tonight. Tiffany Burkner.

Hi. Um, I'm Tiffany Burkner. My address is 2015 Hener Street in Apex. And good evening, Mayor Gilbert and council members. I appreciate you giving me a chance to speak. Um, so I'm I'm here to speak about the proposed um tax increase. Um, and basically, first of all, it should not come on the backs of homeowners and existing residents. um the growth, you know, the allowing all these massive

apartment complexes and everything um should not um those those expenses incurred. You know, we already have to put up with the extra traffic and everything else. Um we certainly should not be having to foot the cost of of of the of the growth of the existing people here. Um first um we've had to incur so many um taxes tax increases recently. Um first the 100% increase in the property taxes um due to the revaluation um by the county commissioners. It was basically a backdoor tax um to rather than increasing the rate, they um they revalued the houses when they were at the absolute peak of the real estate market. Um which was not, you know, there's there's no way that I that our houses my house would sell for that at this point. So, um that's caused a tremendous uh hardship financially for myself and I know many of my other neighbors um many who are retired and who have um you know been homeowners and taxpayers here for 30 plus years like myself. Um it's it's it we just can't handle any any more taxes. Um and let's see. Um, yeah, it's it's just um it would be wrong for for long-term residents to be driven out because we're we're part of what, you know, made Apex the the the peak of good living and that's exactly what's going to happen is um I I've talked to tons of people and it's going to drive a lot of us out out of the town. Um let's see. Um there are many areas um this is this would be an unnecessary tax increase. There are plenty of non-essential areas in the budget that

can be cut. I know for me um I operate my household on an extremely tight budget, a shoestring budget um in this current economy. Um I don't I know it was commented that it would be a the cost of a couple cup of coffees out. I don't I don't have the privilege of being able to go and order coffee out. I have to drink my coffee at home and I've had to do a lot of strict budgeting and um so I'm asking for the council to please do the same and be good stewards of of the taxpayer residents money.

Thank you, Miss Burkner.

Okay. Thank you.

Speaking tonight,

Clark Sessions.

Good evening. Clark Sessions, 11:05 Red Sunset Drive. Um, I wanted to thank Mac Gio Leand Soju for bringing um the awareness of the flock cameras here in in Apex. Okay. So, I'm going to start out by saying just because we can doesn't mean we should. Uh, our town deserves daylight and debate on the subject of the terms of service that meets our community's needs and not the click to accept terms that serves the company's business goals and interests. I've worked in software security for 12 years. I've worked in uh u commercial enterprise for over 25 years. We do not accept the default terms for any software. It all needs to be reviewed very carefully, not to meet their terms or the broader interest of the company, but it needs to meet the town of Apex's needs. There should be a clear purpose for the collection, not just because, oh, it might come in handy. We should have very clear retention periods that we all agree on

of what will meet meet our our needs and the destruction of the data should be verified. Just because it's marked for deletion doesn't mean that it's always uh actually been cleared. Uh it needs to be verified. So there needs to be some some good third-party audits for any of the data access both who's requesting it and there should not be any wide openen defaults or we're going to we're going to share our data by default with everybody. What what's what's in it for us at that point? So I support the law enforcement needs to keep us safe. I do not support being wooed by the defaults slick software salesmen who say, "Hey, look at what we can do." We should not be just rolling over and uh taking, "Oh, let's run an experiment here." So, I'm in favor of stopping and then building up from from scratch for what Apex needs. Um, basically daylight and debate, not defaults and negotiations in darkness. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

George Hogan. George Hogan, 2140 Victoria. Council members, uh, thank you. I want to start with something personal. Uh, my kids love Officer Jay, the SRO at their school, the guy who high-fives them in the hallway. That trust is real. Uh, and I'm not here to take it away. But the institution behind Officer J is operating a surveillance system that this council voted for and the citizens in this room did not. And we have a responsibility to look what's actually happening. Policing in this country did not begin as crime fighting. The first organized patrols in the south existed to in uh to capture enslaved people. In northern cities, police forces were created to break strikes and protect

industrial property. Every major expansion of police power in American history has been justified the exact same way. Fear or perhaps using a word tonight, fear-mongering. The tools changed, but it's always been about control. This is the exact thing that happened here with the adoption of Flock in AL PR technology. Apex started with a pilot a couple years and then recently the chief asked for $150,000 to expand it. 50 cameras is what he wants. It was only four months ago in these chambers that the chief told the council on data sharing, quote, "No federal entities. Hard stop." The public records say otherwise. In March, Apex Flock System was sharing data with 994 agencies, 808 out of state and two federal. How are we supposed to trust anything that they say? And if you think this stops at cameras, it doesn't. This month, the FBI published a $36 million RFP for realtime access to license plates across all 50 states. Flock is one of the only vendors that can fulfill it. Apex is not a partner in this system. Apex is the node. APD, whether they want to admit it or not, is a cog in a machine that has been built and being built by Palunteer flock and wannabe authoritarians in Washington that don't know where Apex is on a map and they don't care. This is about control and we are limping along talking simply about, oh, solving crimes. Now, the arguments you're going to hear are, uh, your phone tracks you. Yeah, it does. But there's a legal framework around that. Terms I accepted and courts protecting that. You might hear, "Oh, if I have nothing to hide, then what do I have to fear?" Yeah. 99.7% of plates scanned belong to people on no watch list. It helps cops solve crimes. Independent research has found absolutely no significant effect. And here's something that council needs to understand. Every single talking point that you hear in favor of these cameras

from police departments defending the technology, including here in Apex, originates from Flock's own sales and marketing material. These are not independent conclusions. They are vendor scripts. You might think that you're protecting us with these cameras, but you're not. The preferences of the police department do not outweigh the concerns of the citizens. This is about safety, and safety is about policy.

Thanks for speaking tonight.

Thank you. Joe McGregor. Joe,

thank you, Mayor and Council members. Um, wanted to just, uh, talk a little bit about the yard wastist program. Um, updates on that. Um, to be honest, I was kind of surprised at the direction of the changes that were being proposed. Um, so I did a little bit of my homework and I went and I looked back at the slides you had at the annual retreat and just thought, "Okay, I'll look at those and that'll, you know, explain to me. I'll hopefully come to the same conclusion." Um, and uh, it may not be surprising. Um, I did not come to the same conclusion. I had kind of the opposite conclusions to a lot of things that were in there. Um, there were things in there that just didn't make a lot of sense to me. Um, slides about vacuum trucks and, you know, the problems with them. And yet in the end it was okay, let's keep the vacuum trucks but also add these other trucks, right? Which kind of didn't make a whole lot of sense if I understood it correctly. Um, uh, with the disposal cost, I presumed I would look in there and see rising costs for disposal year after year. And this is something we're trying to fix. And it looks like a chart of essentially random numbers, right? Like the numbers at 2025 were lower than 2024, but I think they were higher from 2023. Like I said, I didn't see that up and to the right that I expected to see with the rise in costs there. Um, uh, I do appreciate the long-term thinking that goes into this and that we have to think about this because it does seem like in the long run this will be a problem, but I think making changes now

I think is a little too soon. Um, the other thing was there was a whole slide in there about regional cooperation. um through membership with the Central Pines Council of Governments, we have requested this issue be presented to managers and mayors and to see over, you know, to do something locally regionally to try to solve this problem. And yet that just seems to be one slide and there was no further mention of it and that does not seem to have been pursued at all as an option here. Um and so these things were confusing to me. Um, I hope just as a perspective looking at the same set of slides all you folks uh spent some time putting together and then reviewing but coming to very different conclusions. I hope uh the council will uh rethink the direction they've gone in um and consider some more alternatives. Thank you.

Thanks for speaking tonight, Bill Welch. Good evening, mayor, council members, staff, and public. My name is Phil Welch. I live at 1471 Big Leaf Loop in Apex. We're continuing the talks for the town council on the impacts of the lack of stable homes caused by insufficient housing choices. Tonight, we'll hear from one of our essential workers who struggled with rising rents in his market rate apartment. I've learned a lot from these talks. My key learning is that the lack of affordable housing choices for our low to moderate income neighbors and essential workers leads to a whole spectrum of individual and collective issues, including disrupting the education of our children. increasing worker absenteeism and turnover and lowering productivity, causing or exacerbating physical health issues such as asthma, making it very difficult for v vulnerable populations to find affordable housing, including single individuals and parents,

especially those coming from domestic violence and human trafficking, as well as lower income seniors, essential workers, veterans, and special needs individuals, forcing many households to make difficult trade-offs among basic needs such as food, transportation, and health care and leading to a scary increase in family homeless homelessness. Here are some sobering statistics from the North Carolina Housing Coalition. On average, 75% of households experiencing the trauma of homelessness in North Carolina in 2025 were doing so for the first time. North Carolina faces the a five-year housing inventory gap of over 760,000 homes, including rental and for sale units. The average North Carolinian cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment. Here in Apex, we've made some progress in filling the housing inventory gap over the past several years. 164 affordable apartments by DHC in DHIC in Stone Glenn. Nine new single family detached homes by Habitat on on Cassenna Lane. 12 new affordable town homes offered by PY Homes through the Raleigh Area Land Trust. Scores of owner occupied homes repaired by Preserving Home under the Apex Cares program. But it's still not nearly enough. The penny tax for the affordable housing fund puts Apex ahead of many other nearby municipalities, but a penny is still not enough. We need to promote different housing types, ADUs, modular homes, tiny homes, and so forth. We need fresh resources from local corporations and businesses, hospitals, educational institutions, philanthropists, faith communities, real estate professionals, developers, and construction companies. I look forward to working with you, all of you, to solve this critical issue and provide more affordable housing choices.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wils, for speaking. Steven Davis.

Hi, my name is Steven Davis. I live at 601 Up Church Street. And I just wanted to to relate the how low-inccome housing has been a positive impact on my life. I've lived in the town of Apex all my life. My mother's family goes back 150 years and I was looking at having to not be able to afford to live in this town anymore because of the high rent prices. But because of low-inccome housings, I'm able to live in the town I grew up in. And I really appreciate you all doing that and I hope it continues to go forward. Thank you.

Thank you for speaking tonight,

Pastor Cara Matthews. Good evening, Mayor Gilbert, council members, and residents of Apex. My name is Cara Matthews. I live at 3509 Pony Soldier Drive in Apex. Um, I work as a pastoral advocate for survivors of human trafficking and domestic abuse. I had the privilege to speak with you last year and I'm honored to be here this evening. I was hoping that the plight and trajectory of affordable housing would be have been remarkably different, but my clients still sadly um it is not for them. Many of the survivors I work with still struggle to procure affordable housing which forces them to relocate to areas such as Sanford, Fukquet, Verina, and Carthage. As an advocate this year, I have learned that many of my clients are still struggling to find work and struggling to make ends meet. The rising cost of fuel, groceries, and cost of living has been incredibly difficult for many of them who are single moms. There is also the

rise in homelessness that is all around us. And when individuals get to a breaking point and simply cannot afford their way, they get evicted and end up unhoused. One of the advocates at a safe home informed me that they have had people from Apex show up at their doorstep. She said, "It's interesting because what we're seeing is that when someone is facing the dangers of being unhoused, they will do a lot of things." She said, "Even adopt a story of domestic violence and human trafficking that may not be their story." But she said, "When you have a three-year-old in your arms, a mom will do a lot of things to keep that child safe at night. This creates a problem for the real victims of human trafficking and domestic violence because there are no longer empty beds for them. And it all leads back to the plight of affordable housing and then the land the need for landlords to work with the residents when they're struggling. When a victim of human trafficking or domestic violence struggle with pop-up trauma, they can easily get behind in their rent and they just need some grace. Or when they're forced to pay such extravagant cost for security down payments plus the first and last month's rent. Frankly, it's exorbitant and it's just not plausible for them. It isn't because they're not trying. Many of them have not had access ex access to education due to family dynamics and in many case they were being trafficked while they were in school. This is why it's so important for all of us to work together. As a collaborative team, it's important for us all to create safe affordability for these individuals. They are doing their best each and every day as they show up for their families. They're attempting to be better than they were yesterday and even better

versions of themselves tomorrow. Thank you for listening and thank you for caring for this amazing population of people.

Thank you, Pastor

Fran Hudson. Fran Hudson. Hello, Council Fran Hudson, 5524 Rex Road. Um, I wanted to thank Alan for fulfilling my public records request that I spoke about in April. Um, when I spoke about it on April 14th, um, it was a three days later when I received an email with some of the I guess most of the data that I had asked for. Um, what concerned me was the in the email itself, it reads, I'm quoting Alan's email, "Please find attached all records currently available that are responsive to your request. Due to the town's 2024 cyber incident, certain records from the requested time frame are incomplete or unavailable." These limitations are not the result of withholding, but rather the condition of the town's records following that event. This concerned me because on March 30th, Randy put out a video and W reported on it saying that the town announced Monday it has secured the stolen information with the help of the FBI. I was wondering, okay, which one's right? Because Allan's telling me there's missing information. Randy's putting out on W that there's they've, you know, gotten the information back. So, I'm just really confused. Um, does the town actually have the data or is it still missing? Those are valid questions that I think everybody should be asking, especially when town data is missing. It was missing. It went missing for two years and nobody talked about it. On May 14th, I submitted a subsequent request asking for additional information based on some conversations I'd had with some other people and they wanted to know, okay, how many requests haven't been

fulfilled? like there wasn't any relevant data to provide. Um I haven't gotten that information. I know it's only been since May 15th when Allan replied to me, but just wanted to let y'all know about that because the last time I spoke here about the public records request being overdue, it was fulfilled. Um okay, so pattern recognition is what I really want to talk about because I'm noticing, you know, here people are speaking about the things that they're noticing. So this pattern of abuses or you know if you don't it's just oversight I guess from different areas of the town people are becoming more interested. They're submitting more public records requests. They're wanting to know this information and they're addressing it in these meetings. Um the scrutiny will continue to increase when things just don't align. So we're we're recognizing those patterns. Okay, they said this and they didn't say this, but they said something completely different. there's a cognitive dissonance there that if the town is not being transparent, the people are going to figure it out and it's going to be obvious to everyone. So, just I wanted to warn you. I wanted to make sure that the town actually addresses those things before it just gets really bad.

Thank you.

Thank you for speaking tonight. Thank you,

Don Kazalino. Don Kazalino, 3632 Bosco Road. Um, so before I get started, um, there was kind of a big change up on the agenda. Um, you initially had the, um, finance audit report as received as information, but it was not, you actually had a presentation tonight that you approved it. They approved it at 5:45 tonight. But in the original agenda packet, there was this item in consent agenda. So, I'm confu conf confused about the procedural clarity on the public records for that because it's in one place, it's not in

another, and it doesn't happen to be in tonight's consent agenda. Speaking of which, that was my prepared remarks tonight. So, within a licky split of under a minute, $4.1 million in public commitments was made. the land exchange, 1.5 million for the town hall renovation. By the way, there's nothing wrong with the building, right? It's just like improvement nicities and 900,000 in sidewalks and roadways. Again, here we you know, we heard how they are not helpful in most cases. So, this isn't about individual items on their merit. It's about structure. Um multi-million dollar decisions bundled in consent agenda. Remember consent agenda is routine item. It's like approving the meeting minutes or something like that. It is not major capital. This is this is an outlay of the taxpayer and the pupil's dollars. Um so we're seeing this compressed government quick. We're seeing it quick. We're seeing it in consent agenda where you can't talk about it. You can't hear about it. Um, and you know, I'll just talk about physics for a minute. System is in continuous force. Pressure does not disappear. It redistributes. It accumulates until it meets resistance. That's kind of what Fran was talking about. And that resistance is oversight. Pretty pretty clear. Public questions, audits, whistleblowers, statutory accountability. That late audit, by the way, that was approved 15 minutes before this meeting tonight. That's a very important thing under statute um NCGS uh 15934. They're the foundation of lawful financial accountability, basis for your budget, your financial condition, public trust, how you borrow. Um all of these things are very important. Um so I want

to end with this that I love different TV shows and one of my favorites is the XFiles from the 90s and if you remember the phrase the truth is out there. Thank you.

Thanks for speaking tonight Elizabeth Stit. Elizabeth Stit

Elizabeth Restit 3113 Friendship Road Mayor and Town Council. Good evening. Um, there was a post on social media that suggested with this budget that public safety might be at risk. And I cannot tell you how many times I started to write something in response and I stopped. I started and stopped and started and stopped. So, let me go back to when I was 5 years old. Every day from kindergarten, I rode in the back seat of a trooper's squad car. I love police officers. And if you want to know what starts the foundation of any quality of life, that is public safety, where I can walk down the street, where I know if I need help, I have someone to call. And so the notion that of all the things in our budget that could be at risk that public safety would even be tied to that, it was just repulsive and gross to me. There's a lot of things that we can save money on. So for instance, scale down scale back the downtown improvements. Get rid of some of the public arts. Don't run the splash pad at Pleasant Park. Stop buying solar panels for the buildings. Turn the lights down at Pleasant Park at night sooner. And maybe my favorite, stop using money to go condemn people's

properties. So, we need public safety to be number one. We never want that ever to be in the media that we might be short staffed because you know what? that just attracts problems. That is people who come and say, "Hey, this community is short staffed and we're going to take advantage of that." That's not acceptable. Everything else can go, but we have to have public safety. Thank you.

Thanks for speaking tonight. Osman,

Hisham Osman, 3181 Mental Ridge Drive in Apex. Uh, good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members, town staff. Uh, thank you for letting me speak tonight. Um, this is probably the third or fourth time I'm coming to talk about the budget. Uh, I attended the town hall, budget town hall yesterday, and we had some really good conversations. Um, but there was one comment, um, Council Member Mafi, you made, I think, on social media, that we're late in the process and we need specific, um, cuts from the public if you want to make cuts. Um, I was taken aback by that statement a little bit because the town only released this preliminary budget back in April, so it's only a couple of weeks. Um, you had a a a u a work session two weeks ago, maybe to revise the budget. So, I understand that the town may have been talking about it for months, but the public only had an opportunity, I would say, probably in the last 6, eight weeks. I know there been a number of open hearings. That's all great, but to say now, hey, we're late in the process. You have to give us specific line items to reduce if you want to be able to affect the budget. Happy to do that. I actually sent everybody an email uh this afternoon with some specific cuts. Now, again, not being an expert in the town operations. Admittedly, I don't know all the impacts of those specific cuts, but you asked for some cuts and and you have some uh some cuts there. The other thing, um, and and, uh, Don mentioned it earlier,

and I think the optics of today's consent agenda is very, very poor. Here we are talking about a tax raise. You've heard multiple times from the public that we want a zero tax increase, that, you know, just talking a little bit about trying to save a couple hundred,000 on the election process. And we spent agreed through consent agenda with no discussion spending taxpayer money. I understand there's a difference between capital and operational. But guess what? That all comes from the taxpayer. Whether it's a capital funding, operational funding, whatever it is, it comes from the taxpayer. and to sit there and approve a renovation for this first floor in this building for a million dollars, which I'm sure we need, but the optics of it when we're arguing about trying to save on next year's budget, I think it's just very, very poor timing. And I think that this council needs to look at that that we're talking about trying to save money and we're and and we're just with a consent agenda vote, which I know there's a lot of prep work in the background, but the public doesn't get all that information and it just seems out of touch. And and and I I'm not saying you are, but that's the impression that when we're talking about trying to save money to reduce our tax increase that in the same breath we approve investing in our community. And that's that's great. we should invest, but I think I think the optics of this is pretty poor. Thank you very much.

Thank you for speaking tonight.

Keith Wood. Hello, I'm Keith Wood. I live at 1809 Cersio Court in Apex and I'm here to talk about the yard waste ordinance. I reviewed the retreat presentation, filed a public records request, and sent each of you a detailed proposal today. And I have two requests that I want to talk about tonight. First, I'd like for you to consider keeping the grass collection through the containerization time frame. The carts that you're planning to deploy

are designed for soft compostable material. Every city using these using these carts puts grass in them. Calgary, Evston, Raleigh, Holly Springs. If grass goes in the cart in 2028, eliminating it now creates a two-year gap for something that you'll collect again. That's two transitions when you could have had one. the disposal argument is no longer uh valid and uh your department's been working with Liberty Waste Solutions since March on a closer alternative to the Haret County site and I think that's where it was. Staff already extended collection through December. You should formalize that through the containerization time frame. Second, before you commit to in-house containerization, you should get the outsourcing proposal that you've been waiting on. The assistant town manager wrote to GFL on April 17th, calling their outsourcing quote a significant decision point. As of April 29th, the staff was still waiting on it. GFL provided a bi-week provides bi-weekly cart collection in Morrisville today for a $155 per household per month using town provided carts. Even at double or triple that rate, you're looking at $3 to5 per household versus building an entire in-house fleet yourself. The town can still buy the carts in three sizes. So town home residents aren't forced to store another another 95gallon bin, 35, 65, or 95 gallons. Residents choice. But the trucks, the drivers, and the disposal become GFL's problem. The entire disposal capacity issue driving the grass elimination becomes the their problem to solve and not yours. the $1.5 million in a in the automatic side loading trucks goes away and there's no collection staffing. A multi-year contract locks in

the rates so you're not back here raising the fees again the way the in-house plan projects to 1169 and then 1203 per month. Both options that I've sent you keep the grass collection. Both keep the chipping and the leaf vacuum. Both include two free large pickups per year. and both cost less than what's on the table. I'm asking you not to approve a fee increase or any capital expenditures for the ASL trucks until you have the GFL proposal in hand. You initiated that conversation. Let it come back before you commit residents to a more expensive path. Thank you.

Thank you for speaking tonight,

Kimberly Wood. Hi, town council. I'm Kimberly Wood, also a 1809 Cersio Court. I'm the better half. I view elections like selecting a babysitter. I need someone to watch over the town, answer questions, and make responsible decisions while the residents go about their lives. Instead, you, the babysitters, ignored the instructions, didn't answer the emails Keith Wood sent, and now the parents have to come home early and do the jobs themselves. Honestly, this is super boring. I'm normally sitting at provincial on Thursdays having my glass of wine, but I'm here with my husband and he had to fly home from a business meeting because you and your fifdom couldn't respond to an email. The call is coming from inside the house. My husband and I voted for every one of you sitting up there tonight. We supported you because we believed you would value transparency, responsiveness, and thoughtful government governance. That is what makes this situation especially frustrating. This is not partisan outrage from political opponents. This

is disappointment from the very residents who trusted you to do a job. Quite honestly, I shouldn't have to spend months, well, I didn't, he did, researching operational models, analyzing capital plans, comparing municipal benchmarks, and drafting alternatives. But here we are. Part of serving on town council is reading constituent emails and responding to them. I don't need a fluffy, oh, we got your email at town council announcement. I need you to read and respond to them. And if long emails are truly a problem, we live in an age of AI. Paste it into your large learning model and let it summarize. It does it for you. What's been most frustrating is the silence surrounding you. Our family dinner conversations have been consumed about grass and not the kind we wish we was legal. This process hides exactly why transparency matters. Once alternatives were actually evaluated that he just outlined and gave to you in a PDF document today, it became clear there are viable options that maintain service levels without forcing residents to accept a one-sizefits-all containers that doesn't really reflect the apex neighborhoods and municipalities. This is a group project, but we ended up doing the work ourselves. That should concern everyone. And I am ticked that you made him hijack my dinner conversations to talk about this cuz you couldn't respond to an email. He asked for response. That's all it took. Just email him. Thank you.

Thank you,

Robert Mononttoya.

Good evening all. Robert Mononttoya 10005 formal place Apex. Uh so tonight I speaking to you I first of all I appreciate the work you've done on trying to reduce the the property tax so far. But I'm talking tonight about some of the concerns with not like an misinformed individual who posted on Facebook earlier. A few people that are posting and against it on Facebook. I'm talking about uh individuals that I volunteer with that are on fixed income, low income that I deliver meals to that this is going to impact significantly. And what I've heard is we've done some reductions. We're about as low as we can get. And and I disagree with that. The gentleman earlier said and Tuesday night you mentioned at the town hall's wall as well um that you had laid anybody off, which is great, commendable, and I I don't want to see that at all. But you also mentioned in the post he spoke about of specific line items. So I worked for a company that was experiencing gonna experience a pretty good de deficit on the the fiscal year. So uh rather than being able to pass on the cost to the the clients of that company which the town council kind of is doing by send uh some increasing the public the property tax. The ownership actually gave the employees a chance to vote on whether or not we eliminate four positions or we don't get the pay raises that we typically expect each year. Everybody voted to keep everybody on staff and not give payraises. In the budget, when you want to speak about specific line items, there's an increase for 2% for market adjustment, 3% for merit increases as well that total about $3.6 million. And that doesn't take into account the minimum wage that was increased. So all town staff from what I see already receives a 5% contribution to their 401k whether or not they participate and contribute themselves. That's pretty great. And I'm hope that stays. But times are tough right now. And if it means that we delay maybe one year and it could happen again if it's not managed properly, delay pay increases, then we do it. And I feel

really bad that that hasn't been that you haven't taken upon yourself to make that recommendation, but you've laid that burden at the feet of the residents to be able to make that recommendation. And that shouldn't be the case. So you want line items and where there's money, there's almost $4 million sitting right there. Not for money that's a cut, it's money that hasn't been spent. So don't spend it. Thank you.

Thanks for speaking,

Hans. Is that right?

Yeah.

All right.

All right. I'm a trash guy, too. Fun times. Thanks for your time tonight. Uh, appreciate it. Uh, Hans Kinsgrab, 148 Brierfield Drive. So, I've been an Apex resident for 18 years. Long time. Like my town. But I'm genuinely troubled by the direction the town is heading on yard waste collection. So here are my concerns. I hope you take them seriously. You may have already. I'm not like following everything as far as this goes. But first environmental cost doesn't add up to me. So we're talking about manufacturing like 10,000 plastic bins, giving them to all these people and saying here here you go. that generates significant carbon a significant carbon footprint and for what we already have vac they we already have a vacuum collection system that works. So number two second we're going to make residents haul these bins out to the curb adding friction to the process. I don't have to do that now. I just set it on the curb. The truck comes along and picks it up. What do you think is going to happen? A lot of guys are just going to throw it in the trash or worse, it's going to end up somewhere else.

Third, container pickup means stop and grow go truck routes at every single property potentially, you know, burning considerably more fuel. They're sitting there, trucks running. Boom. We got to load that sucker up, throw it in the bin. So again, a step backward on emissions. Finally, quality of life question. We're trading a seamless, modern vacuum system for large plastic bins that residents have to store, drag out, fill, and manage. Is that progress? Is that going forward? I thought I was in the town of the peak of good living. I feel like we're taking a step back, not going forward. So again, I've never felt the need to be in politics before, but when we're talking raising taxes and taking away services, that's not good for the ballot box. I know my neighbors are not happy when they hear this. So, thank you for your time.

Thanks for speaking, Sawyer. Saw your also have Karen Zillerite. You guys were speaking together. So, nine minutes. You got How many people we have here with you? Okay. All right. Very good. Nine minutes. Yeah.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Sawyer Carnea. I live at 3528 uh Arthur Pierce.

My name is Karen Ziller. I live at 303 Interior Court. Um we're going to start off by handing out some flyers here. Um you might recognize us from our last meeting. Uh you're probably going to become acquainted with us. We have both been working on a lot of projects in the time that we've seen you. Um, and you can tell from um our our involvement, I guess you could say, that we're very very passionate about downtown Apex, especially um we both are employed by businesses that work in

downtown. Um, and we've been directly impacted by the construction project and all of that. Um, so we have come to share not only some ideas, but also some feedback and comments. Um, starting off with this art project that we have spearheaded. Um, we are trying to help ga uh drive engagement amongst the community and provide more reasons for people to come downtown. And so the idea behind this is that we are memorializing someone known as Kevin the Peacock, which was the unofficial mascot of Apex a few years ago um in immortalizing him in a piece of art that then can be a um something that brings the community together. Would you like to share some?

Sure. Um we feel like this is a good way to build a legacy. um something to commemorate Kevin the peacock, but also something that we could all collaborate together. It could be a voluntary, we're thinking a voluntary collection of names representing the feathers. And so you'll see on the back side of the flyer, um we have actual pictures of Kevin the Peacock, so people can get well acquainted to him, those who never got to know him. Um and then we also have some pictures or some paintings for inspiration. And then we're um we're also open to collaborating with the high schools in the area. So it's going to be Apex Friendship, Green Level, and Apex High School. And we'll have two students from each of those schools to work on this project. Um Kathy uh Kathy Martin, she is the owner of Red Canvas. She has graciously done the basically the core of the painting. So um yeah, the next thing.

Yeah. So, uh, the reason that we want to bring this to your attention is not because we want praise for, you know, this art project, but because kindly we want you to do what we are doing. We are trying to build engagement downtown. We're trying to bring more people together. We're trying to create an interest in both arts and commerce. And that's your job. Like, we love doing what we're doing and we're very passionate and we're happy to partner

with you, but this council is responsible for our people and for our livelihoods. And so here is an example of something that can be done and this is a beautiful example. Um I did want to address some of the issues that we had spoken about last time. Uh such as specifically the accessibility on the side of the sidewalk that is being um currently construction is currently occurring. Um last time I addressed that there's a level of inaccessibility that exists especially for people who have disabilities and nothing has been done about this. Uh the language on the website is still the same. nothing has been done on the actual side of the street to make it more accessible. Um, and I just would like to bring that to your attention again that maybe something can be done about this. We still have customers that come in every single day or don't come in every single day um and complain about the the lack of mobility that they have on this grally, dusty kind of sidewalk. Furthermore, um we've also it's been brought to our attention that some of these businesses are having their floors be become damaged by the debris that's being sucked in. And there's only just there's really just only so much they can do about that at this point. Um you know, we are tirelessly cleaning. A lot of businesses are doing the same thing, but we do not feel that the businesses should be responsible for any kind of repairs for that. Um the next thing is the budget concerns. Um I know people have been hearing different things. I know originally this plan for this project was around 2.5 million maybe to three. Um October of last year looks like it was at three. Um currently and this is coming from the capital improvement plan fiscal year of 2026 to 2030 it's at 6.2 million roughly. Um and so I feel like not only the value of the entire project should be reflected in not only the the end result but also the process the quality of the work and I feel like that really hasn't been done um at least in the very beginning. I know that said

issues have been addressed but personally I feel if we didn't have an airtight plan from the beginning at a $6.2 2 million dollar worth plan. Um then that's why a lot of people are concerned that maybe this shouldn't be happening in the first place, at least at this current point in time. Um maybe we should have waited till we had everything smoothed out so that we could execute the plan and it actually be worth $6.2 million because reality is we wouldn't be standing here if there weren't if we didn't run into those issues. And if everything had just been flowing um in a $6.2 $2 million value, then there would be no need for us to be up here.

Uh, bouncing off of that, there hasn't been a lot of clarity around when phase one of the process will actually be completed. As it stands, the website still does not have an actual projected date for that and that's information that we are asking for and we have been asking for. Um, it would be really awesome if you guys can figure out what that looks like. Whether it means talking with contractors, whether it means putting a little pressure on them. um the people deserve to know what is happening and having updates and clarity around that.

Yes. Um because originally we were told the end of March so you can understand why we're still here pushing for a current more updated phase one deadline. Correct. Um also as these um businesses are transitioning to preparing for the holidays. That's kind of essential for them to know, okay, when is the other side of the street when when is this side of the street going to be done? When is the other side of the street going to be um underway? because the reality is the other side of the street is already being affected. So

which goes both ways.

Sorry. Um speaking of which, so I know that I understand that right now we are in deep discussions about the Christmas parade and other events that are typically held in downtown Apex. Um we would like to speak on behalf of everybody downtown, and I mean everybody downtown when I say that the businesses here need for that to happen downtown. We live and thrive off of the commerce that is brought to the city during the

holiday season. And without that, every single business will suffer significantly. Not just as a business owner, but also on the individual le level. I work in food service and I make most of my money for the year between the months of October and December. If you take away all of the events and try to host them in other locations that are not driving that business downtown, I will lose most of my livelihood. And that is just the real fact of it. Um, in addition to that, I know bes besides the Christmas parade, there are other events um that have typically been held downtown. We would like to ask you to not move them but also to add more events downtown to help us to drive in the in um in this difficult time to help us to drive business. Um you can also do that by promotional content. Um mayor has been really helpful in trying to help you know encourage people to come downtown and posting on social media and doing some of those things in a way that's really really getting that outreach out there. Um but I think we can do better. I think we can do more.

And then going back to just this project as a whole, this isn't we're by no means trying to take away from the project itself. Um, for the end result of it, we're very excited. We hope that it'll bring a lot of good business.

Um, we're excited for Kevin the Peacock to be roaming around downtown as a painting. Um,

and so I feel that we can do personally we can what we what we do for the Apex community extends far beyond what we do in the restaurant industry. So that's kind of a big mission for us. We're passionate about what we do, how we connect with people, but how we can also advocate and support the community.

Yeah. Um in closing, I just want to say that um obviously you are all on this council because you have a passion and you have a desire to help this community and I would just like to remind you that that community does start with you and that that community does include all of us. So thank you for listening to our perspectives and I hope that this helps

to bring about some positive change.

Thanks for speaking tonight. Thank you. All right, the last speaker signed up is James Dallas. Thank you all for a chance to speak. Uh my name is James Tallet. I live at 813 Tulon Way. Uh I am here to speak against the use of flock in Apex. Uh they have shown us time and time again that they really can't be trusted with this level of uh public surveillance. um from simple configuration and security issues that allow unauthorized people unauthorized access to their cameras um with no security hurdles uh to enabling federal immigration agents to bypass laws in certain states um and conducting investigations using those cameras when this is explicitly uh outlawed. um to even surprisingly uh pushing their customers to enable new features that allow more surveillance on their systems trying to go behind council's backs. Uh we have seen many reports of these cameras being misused across the country uh and improperly managed. So I hope you can see why I would be concerned when I saw them popping up around Apex. Um, sorry. Uh, from looking back at multiple of the working sessions, I do believe that the chief of police is trying to set the system up in good faith. Um, but I just simply do not think that's possible. um Flock has quietly walked back many of their initial promises and um restrictions and they seem to be walking further and further away from this simple tool to help police and and closer to a surveillance and data

collection network. Uh in one of the working sessions, the chief has proposed multipleh policies that are there to protect the people of Apex from misuse of these cameras. things like hot list being uh only available for supervisors and church searching requiring case and incident numbers. This is all well and good, but it really only applies to the people in Apex. Uh for anyone outside of Apex that has access to our cameras, uh there's nothing more than really a sharing agreement that I believe the chief himself has admitted has no teeth. Um it's just kind of a simple ask for them to promise not to misuse our data. This is for over a thousand different agencies, 870 five of which are outside of the state. Um, and now to add to that, the FBI is now trying to get access to all Flock cameras. Uh, there's also a wider issue um, when talking about uh, the data that these cameras generate. Flock says that Apex owns this data uh, and they won't sell it. Except this isn't entirely true. Um, this data lives on Flock servers. It's managed by Flock. We don't have any direct access to it to my knowledge. Um, which means that we can't manage it. If Flock decides to do something they don't want to do or that they want to do, we can't really stop that. Um, I just hope that y'all can kind of look back on this and and vote to stop the use of flock and our city. Thank you for time.

Thank you for speaking tonight. All right.

All right. That concludes our public forum. Thank you to all who came out to speak tonight. I hear your passion and uh we're listening and got a lot of notes. So, thank you so much. We'll move now to the next item. Public hearing number one, annexation number 813, Alterara Heights, Jinx Road, and Wimberly Road. Miss Diane Ken, planning director.

Good evening.

So, this annexation is for Alterara Heights. It's an apartment complex that had been previously approved. It is in

the northwest portion of our jurisdiction. Uh, you can see it here. It's across from Alderwood and Westford apartments. Um they are requesting annexation in order to get um their construction plans approved uh and receive town services. Staff does recommend approval.

All right. Thank you so much. Questions? Hearing none. I open up public hearing for comment. No one signed to speak. Public hearing is closed. Is there a motion? Motion approved. Motion. Mayor Pro Tim.

Second.

Second. Ziggman. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say I. I

opposed. Motion carries. All right. Public hearing two. Apex transportation plan uh amendment future pristine water drive extension. Miss Shannon Cox.

Good evening.

This uh amendment is related to proposed development of 232010 road which is shown here on the exhibit. Um to orient you, the orange and brown line here is 1010 Road. Um the amendment is for the future extension of Pristine Water Drive um shown with this green line. Uh future Pristine Water Drive would extend um from 1010 approximately at Penny Road um to uh production drive. Um the proposal is to shift a portion of this future roadway north. Um that would allow a second point of access for 2320 1010 road. Um it would also allow for construction of this roadway from 1010 to the edge of that property. um and would um minimize impacts to the existing nights play golf course. Um the section from the edge of 23201010

to existing pristine water would not be built at this time. That's only anticipated to be built if the use were to change at Nightsplay Golf Course. So, with future development, if that were to happen, um, planning staff, uh, transportation, infrastructure and development staff, parks and wreck, police, fire and water resources all reviewed this amendment and are supportive. Um, it was also reviewed by the planning board at their May 11th meeting and they unanimously recommended approval. Um, so we do recommend approval. The, uh, development team, I believe, is here. if you do have questions about their request. Um, but I'm also happy to answer any questions you may have.

I do have one question. In the packet, there was some mention of the Penny Road intersection where it currently intersects potentially being moved further north.

Yes,

I don't see that reflected in this update. Is that because that that is an uncertain move or why wouldn't it be reflected here, I guess, is the question.

It it is uncertain. Um that idea was part of the initial design when uh the widening of 1010 road was um in progress. That project has since been stalled. Um so we do not know if when NC DOT picks that design back up if they will still want to realign Penny or if it will stay in this location. But in either case, um this alignment um would meet our design standards for a major collector and still intersect with Penny.

Can you tell me what's the status of 23 uh 2320 right now? Is have they in the development process? Are they applying for a reasonzoning or are they entitled? And

they do not need to reszone. They have their entitlements.

Oh, what's it entitled as?

Um I'm going to refer back to the developer who's here for what they want to do.

Hey.

Yeah, please.

Clay Coyle with Foundry Commercial representing the uh the developer tonight. The um the current zoning is light industrial and we would be developing a light industrial pro project. Yeah.

Fantastic.

Two warehouse buildings. Am I reading this right that you're you're I mean was a second point of access required for your use because you're volunteering to build a major collector street through Nights play right

correct. Yes. It's not required but we would like to have it.

Yeah.

That's great.

I Yeah. Yeah. So um and there and so they're they're giving you the easement. You're just building it looks like is that pretty close to their parking lot back there? Uh it it will run to the north of their parking lot and we're actually going to expand their parking lot for nights play. So yeah, we've created a partnership with them and we're working together.

Okay.

Great.

All right. Any other questions for Miss Cox for?

No.

Okay. Good.

Thank you. All right. We'll open up the public hearing for this item. No one signed to speak. Public hearing is closed for comment. a motion.

Yeah, I mean I'll make a motion to approve. This sounds like they're building a major road for us and, you know, helping out Knights play. It sounds like a win-win for everybody involved. I, you know, I appreciate it.

Definitely. Definitely. All right, we have a motion. Mayor Pro Tim,

I'll second.

Second, Ziggerman. Any other discussion?

All in favor say I. I.

Oppose. Motion carries.

Public hearing three.

Jump in girl. Okay.

Like, well, there's only two things that like, you know, there's a motion, a second, like zoning case number 25, CZ2728 Holland Road.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. El Bean, senior planner with the town of Apex, here to present reszoning case number 25 CZ 21, 2728 Holland Road. Uh, this was continued at

the April 28th town council meeting. This property is located in the southwest portion of Apex's planning jurisdiction approximately 3/4 of a mile north of Old US1 on the west side of Holland Road. The property is located in the southwest or sorry uh the property consists of 10.35 acre parcel and is in the ETJ. Uh the current zoning of the property is rural residential as seen here. The parcel immediately to the south known as the Hartley property is also rural residential as are the single family residential parcels on the east side of Holland Road. Holland Farm and Bellacasa subdivisions to the north, west, and farther south are zoned medium density residential conditional. The applicant proposes to reszone the property to medium density residential conditional conditional zoning. The 2045 future land use map classifies this property as medium density residential and the proposed reszoning to medium density conditional zoning is generally consistent with this land use classification. The property to be reszoned is fully wooded with mature trees. A stream runs along the majority of the western boundary of the property and also branches diagonally uh from the northwestern corner to the center of the southern boundary of the property. The applicant conducted two neighborhood meetings, one on November 26th, 2025 and one on March 4th, 2026. Both neighborhood meeting reports are attached in your packets. A letter of impact from Wake County Public Schools was received um and this resone for this resoning and is included in the staff packet. Wake County Public Schools indicates that schools at the middle grade levels within the current assignment area for the proposed

resoning are anticipated to have insufficient capacity for future students and uh transportation to schools outside the current assignment area um should be anticipated. Wake County Public Schools indicates that school expansion, construction, or reassignment uh within the next five years may address these concerns at middle school grade levels. I want to draw your attention to a few of the selected conditions um that the uh applicant is offering um for discussion. Uh number one, the number of lots on this property is is limited to 13. The site has space limitations due in large part to uh stream buffers. 13 lots on this area puts the proposed density of the average lot uh proposed density at an average lot size of 1.3 dwellings per acre which is more comparable to a lowdensity residential district. Number two, uh the applicant has agreed to um provide a minimum 65 foot lot width for all residences that are not on a culde-sac. Um this dimension was specified to ensure compat compatibility with the development pattern to the north in Holland Farm. Number three, um the applicant is offering 35% um resource conservation area uh plus an additional 5% if it's mass graded. Uh this exceeds what would be 30% um required by the UDO. Number 17. Um the applicant is offering two new street stubs to the parcel to the south which is the Hartley property. Um that's seen here. Um these street stubs were requested by town staff to facilitate future connections to and through the Hartley property um should that parcel develop in the future. The intent is for one stub to be located on each side of the stream um so that those

connections can be made without requiring crossing an an additional crossing of the stream or impacting um the current ponds on that property. Um and it also allows both sides to be developed without requiring uh without requiring an additional access point onto Holland Road which is a major thoroughare. Condition number 20 um is that a secondary access point would not be required at the time of buildout due to an abil an inability to add an access in onto Holland Road. As I mentioned, it's major thorough thoroughfare. Um this condition goes handinand with the addition of stubs as profered in condition 17. Um both this the property subject to this resoning and the Hartley property to the south face a limitation per the UDO which prohibits the addition of an access point on a major major um thoroughfare fewer than 500 ft 500 ft from the nearest intersection. Um therefore setting up the connection between the existing street stubs, one to the north at steeplechase bend and one to the south at Ptorio Place, um is considered by staff to be the most appropriate opportunity to develop this property and potentially the Hartley property in the future should they decide to develop. Um staff also considers this to be one of the better options for Holland Farm, which currently only has one access point, um to achieve a second access point. Um there is currently a stub to the north, um but it's not seen as as likely um for connection as this one is. And of note, with this reasonzoning, the owner of the subject property could choose to develop up to three homes under an exempt site plan, which would not require the street stubs to be connected um and would erase this opportunity for future connectivity through here.

And condition number 22 is the offer of an off-site sidewalk connection um which would run um along here. They're responsible for the sidewalk along the frontage per the UDO. Um, but this offer extends the off-site sidewalk in front of what is um, HOA property on the corner here. Um, and includes a crosswalk connecting into the current sidewalk um, network at Holland Farm. Um, one note about this um, condition is that staff has requested the removal of the last line um, as it appears in your packet. Um, and that is that sentence reads, if the location of the proposed crosswalk does not meet NC DOT safety requirements without modifying the existing median within Old Bired Way, then the sidewalk or then the crosswalk shall not be built. staff requested that that line be struck. Um, and the applicant has agreed and let's see, sorry, can I go back? The applicant has offered the following zoning condition in response to the town of Apex's affordable housing incentive zoning policy. A monetary donation of $50,000 shall be made to the town of Apac's affordable housing fund. Payment shall be made prior to recordation of the first plat. Town housing staff have indicated that they are not in support of this condition as offered as it is not consistent with the town's adopted affordable housing incentive zoning policy. The request in accordance with the policy is for 10% of the total proposed dwelling units. In this case that would be one single family home um to be provided as affordable housing or that a sum of $218,000 be provided as an inlue payment um by the applicant.

The Apex Environmental Advisory Board held a meeting for this resoning on February 19, 2026. Four of the seven conditions recommended by EAB were either accepted or offered as amended by the applicant. The table of EAB recommended conditions is included in your packet. Two public comments were received via the public hearing email and were forwarded to staff by the clerk's office in April. One comment was received from Dave Hburn and one was received from Michael Gerardano. Planning staff recommends the approval of reszoning number 25 CZ21 um with the change to condition number 22 as previously mentioned um which strikes the final sentence in that condition text. The planning board held a public hearing on April 13, 2026 and unan unanimously recommended approval. This statement will address consistency with the town's comprehensive and other applicable plans, reasonableness, and effect on the public interest. The 20 45 land use map classifies the subject property as medium density residential. The proposed resoning to medium dens medium density residential conditional zoning is generally consistent with that land use classification. The proposed resoning is reasonable and in the public interest as the proposed density, uses, and architectural conditions are consistent with the adjacent developments to the north, west, and south and requires more conservation area than required by the UDO. In addition, the proposed resoning provides more street connections to the south than required by the UDO to support future neighborhood connectivity without the addition of another public street connection on Holland Road, which is a major thoroughare. Finally, a condition is offered to extend and connect the pedestrian network to the north along the frontage of Holland Farm of the Holland Farm subdivision.

With that, I'm happy to answer any questions and the applicant is here to respond to questions as well.

Okay. Thanks for the presentation.

Questions?

I do have one question. Can you repeat to me the affordable housing commitment?

Sure. Um, as currently offered, um, and I'll allow the applicant to address if there have been any changes, but as currently offered, um, a monetary donation of $50,000 shall be made to the town of Apex affordable housing fund. Payment shall be made prior to recordation of the first plat. And so you made some comments that according to our policy the recommended payment would be substantially higher than that.

That's correct.

Right. Okay.

$218,000.

Just wanted to make sure I heard that correctly.

Thank you.

All right. Other questions. All right. Let's hear from applicant. is buzzing over there.

Thank you, Miss Dalen, for the presentation. And good evening, Mayor Gilbert, Mayor Pro Tim Mafy, members of the town council. I'm Neil G with the Morning Star Law Group, and I'm here with Patrick Kieran with Jones Nawson on behalf of the applicant for the this resoning request. uh at a maximum of 13 homes. This is a pretty small project in the G grand scheme of things, but it also is a very important project, not only to you all, but to my client as well, who I think many of you may know, Mr. Corey Schmidt. Uh yes, he's a developer, but he also lives right here in Apex. And when I say right here, I mean right here. He lives off Seep Chase in the Holland Farm community. Uh, I don't know if I've ever come across that scenario before, but you can rest assured that no one cares more about the outcome here than he does. I mean, if the project goes wrong, he's probably going to have to move or something. Um, well, all jokes aside, uh, he's put a lot of work into this uh, small project. In the spirit of collaboration and transparency, he has worked diligently with his neighbors and met with them separately to solicit their feedback. In

fact, uh, he has a petition here that's been signed by 22 or more of the residents in the Holland Farm. And I have to say, in my experience, it's pretty rare to have that kind of, uh, support from the neighboring community. Uh, but that speaks volumes to what he has put together here. You know, rather than trying to maximize profit, he's trying to maximize harmony, to maximize buyin. And that effort is again recognized and reflected in the planning board's unanimous recommendation of approval. Now, we want to have your buyin tonight as well, and we're prepared to put our best foot forward to make that happen. That starts with committing to having one solar home as requested by EAB and committing to increasing our commitment to affordable housing to the full amount, $218,000, as recommended by the housing division. Staff also asked us to amend condition number 22 by removing the last sentence from that condition which we have also agreed to. Now with those items added or amended, I think we basically have included everything we possibly could, including off-site sidewalk, future planning for connectivity, affordable housing, green building techniques, uh, and other parameters to keep the continuity of the character of the neighborhood. It's a really good project, but the real story here is about future connectivity. We are request requesting relief from the town's connectivity standard as part of this resoning. As a practical matter, we cannot meet the standard regardless of the number of homes developed on the site because our frontage along Holland Road is not long enough to meet the 500t spacing requirement. So even if NC dot did give us an access point at Holland, we still wouldn't meet the standard. Um, in recognition of that, we've included a commitment that will require the site to be designed in a way that have two road stubs to our south to facilitate the extension and future connectivity of Ptorio Place. Uh, under the circumstances, as you heard from staff,

this really is the best we can do. Also, as staff has mentioned, while this is the best we can do, it's not the only thing we can do. if this project if we're not able to get this project approved, you know, my client is comfortable with their backup plan, which is to develop the property by right. Uh that would of course eliminate all of the benefits that that have been included in this resoning packet. Um and that's that's really what I think we're asking the council's opinion on and and your decision on tonight is which one of those two outcomes is is, you know, in your opinion the the best for the town. I think we've put together a very nice project. I think we've tried to meet all of the various uh feedback that we've been given, whether it's from neighbors, the planning board, planning staff, the town, you know, we've tried to do everything that we possibly can. Um, and you know, we've not we've not really tried to stuff every bit of housing into this. This is really in keeping with what the existing Holland Barn community looks like, which again is where my client lives, which I think is fairly important to him. Uh, I want to thank you all for your time and we look forward to your feedback, your questions, and hope to have your support tonight. Thank you,

Mr. B. Any questions for hearing?

None. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right, we'll go ahead and open up the public hearing for comment. Um, Mr. Smith, you good. Okay, Dave Pepper,

Gilbert, good to see you again, sir. Always a pleasure. We um I just, you know, I'm really um I just give a some quick background. I'll be brief. I've lived there for 18 years since the the neighborhood was first built. I've been in Apex for 27 years and raised four kids. You know, some of them I I'm not against development. In fact, I'm for development. I develop properties down in a commercial property

down in Lee County in Sanford. So, I'm I'm for development, but I have one ask here. And I I I don't mind. I'm sure Cory will build a good house. But, as long as I've lived there, I've walked out on that road with my wife, my kids, and I've seen in the old days it was just um the neighborhood to the north, which is um What's the neighborhood to the north, Mike? I forget. So, what I what I'm saying is the traffic it we have had significant traffic increase, right? I heard that the town planning gal said twice it's a major thoroughfare on Holland Road. So, my ask is real simple. I was excited when I saw zoning condition number 18, the 300 the uh three-foot thoroughfare, right? Or sorry, the threelane thoroughfare. And I asked Corey, and I've been asking Corey since January, and he keeps pointing me to the town or NC DOT, and I said, "Look, we got to make this safe at the entrance for the hundred homes, almost 100 homes that are going to be there. That curve is dangerous. It's going to become increasingly dangerous when we have three more developments up and down Holland Road that will add over 320 houses and town houses. So when we start talking about the amount of traffic, that is a dangerous curve coming into the neighborhood. So my only ask for the town is let's run that threelane thoroughfare through the entrance about another 150 ft. Cory said he's only going to go to where Mr. Hartley's where his land stops, but that's short of the entrance into the neighborhood. So we're going to have another we're still going to have a problem. It's going to be dangerous turning in there. So that's my ask is let's just be thoughtful about that for the safety of all drivers coming in and out of there for the years to come because we've got a whole lot of development on Holland Road and it's a major thoroughare. So um I I know Cory will build a good house. Let's just do it the right way. Let's get let's make sure that entrance is safe for all of

us. That's it. Thank you for your time and I'll pull for the lax team tomorrow.

Thank you so much.

All right. Uh last speaker signed up for public hear comments. So it's closed and uh back to council for discussion. Possible motion.

Okay, I'll start. Um so I principally like the development that's been put in front of us. Uh I think a lot of thought has come in gone into it. I appreciate the last minute um commitments that were added. Um what I do not appreciate is the you know accept this or else I'm going to build something else and you're not going to get anything. Uh I do not appreciate that narrative at all. Um that notwithstanding um my primary concern here is that you know we have a UDO requirement that requires uh connectivity and limits you know single street connectivity to 50 units. Now Hall Farm was built you know before those rules were you know took effect or were enforced. Uh so we have a community of 80 plus homes on a single street stop and this would add 13 more to that. Um we have recently had similar reviews with with other developers who were able to accommodate the the UDO requirements. Uh that doesn't seem to be feasible here at least not in its current configuration. Uh I do think however that you know those rules are there for good reasons and those rules need to be enforced because of that and so I don't see this being a feasible development without the property to the south being included which is you know which is not

um so although I like principally what what has been proposed um you know I think it's a little ahead of its time uh not by not including or not being able to include a property to the south and actually finish the street connections that uh we want to be excited about. Uh but you know there's no guarantee that that is actually happening and you know really making an existing connectivity problem worse for the time being and so for those reasons I cannot be in support of this proposal as it stands.

Thank you Councilman.

I you go ahead.

Oh sorry. Yeah. Uh the rule for 50 homes with one point of access uh requiring two above that is a hard rule. I've said no before to the last project asked for it. I'm going to say no to this one. I'm going to say no to the next ones. It's a hard rule. No.

Okay. Any other council?

Yeah.

Oh, go ahead.

Okay. Um I just want to say um that the fee um the 50,000 for affordable housing is not um I mean at least I expect expect at you know 10% like uh 218,000. Another um reason I uh I'm having a problem is that um like um the that gentleman just said the traffic um I like the way you added another step but still the traffic is you didn't solve the you know traffic problem. So just respond. We we did increase the affordable housing commitment to the 218,000.

We did.

Yes.

Okay. It's not in the packet.

Just Yeah. Not in the packet. Yeah, we I did mention that earlier, so I wanted to clear that up.

I didn't see it in the packet, but And thank you.

And and with respect to the traffic component, I mean, we have done what the town has asked. We've done actually more than what the UDO requires with respect to off-site connectivity with sidewalks and crosswalk. And we also, this has been run by DOT as well. I appreciate the comment from the the neighbor. Um, it's not something that we've explored. I we wouldn't be in a position to make that type of commitment. We don't know what the uh right of way is there. We haven't engineered that. I mean, it's not really what has been uh requested or required by the town or NC DOT who both reviewed this uh from both transportation departments have have reviewed it. So, I mean, I appreciate the comment, but we're not in a position to really respond to it. It's kind of outside the scope of of what uh has been mentioned to us by the reviewing authorities, I guess, is where I'm going with that.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Can I ask a question while you're still here, sir?

Sure.

How many homes would be built by right?

Um, we looked at a couple different scenarios. Uh, I think anywhere from three to six homes might be able to be be built by right. Thank you. Y

I'll speak. Yes, sir. Thank you, mayor. Um you're good, sir.

Uh I want to say that um we this is this would be an exciting project if we could make it consistent with the UDO. The reason we have the UDO um we must adhere consistently unless we find legal reason to change the un the uniformity itself. The second thing I wanted to say I just wanted to confirm what Councilman Zerman said. I don't appreciate the um scenario um comparison and uh nevertheless it sounds like that's the direction um of the project. Um and I will not be in support.

Motion to deny.

Second.

Give it to please motion to deny and then Reese is second.

Yes, sir.

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

I motion carries.

All right. Let's take a I need a 10 minute recess for 10.

All right, we're back in session. Go to public hearing four, unified development ordinance, UDO amendments, April 2026, part B, environmental advisory board, EAB, legislative consideration. Mable.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Town Council. This UDO amendment was originally slated to come before you in April. Um at that time the the your planning board had heard it then and had recommended denial unanimously. Um this was sent back to them for reconsideration. I'll go through the amendment. It hasn't been presented to you yet and then at the end we'll have some conversation. So the proposed amendment would amend uh article two sections for review and decision-making for the bodies for the environmental advisory board to formalize the board's authority to review and provide recommendation regarding the project's compliance with the town's adopted legislative conditions that are in section 2.3.5 F.5. Um for a little bit of background we'll show we'll explain what the consideration is specifically where the request was that they can use consideration number five that the design environmental impact the proposed conditional use would minimize any impacts and protection would include in protections of significant water and air resources wildlife habitat scenic resources and other natural resources. In practice, while the EB is often engaged in the early review process, the absence of a defined review framework has resulted in limited transparency and continuity between the board's recommendations and the final resoning applications that make it before you. Specifically, the AB frequently provides recommending zoning conditions, but does not receive follow-up regarding which recommendations are ultimately incorporated, nor does it currently provide a formal recommendation on the merits of the resoning request itself. So, the amendment would add language to section A2. The board shall provide a recommendation to town council regarding the approval or denial of the application's ability to comply with the stated section five of the legislative considerations. Design minimizes environmental impact. Planning staff recommended recommends approval of the proposed amendment. The

planning board did hear this and then again on their May 11th meeting they reconsidered the amendment upon direction from town council and still ultimately re recommended denial of the proposed amendment by a vote of 8 to1. The planning board reiterated concerns that the amendment would result in unnecessary added time and complexity of the current process. The board also recommended that a form similar to the planning board report to town council be developed for the EAB which would allow for the inclusion of dissenting opinions which such views are expressed in a vote. This report would help guide the planning board in the review of any legislative conditions of the UDO, including number five for environmental conditions. Um, Pro10, Mayor Mappy was there for that council. I don't know if you want to speak to that, sir.

Sure. Uh, so yeah, a little short history. Um this amendment the purpose of it uh is to try to empower some of our citizen advisory boards and being the representative to the EAB looking at how they operated and kind of seeing the morale over there they felt as though um their their contributions that you know weren't as impactful as as they had hoped. Put it that way. Um and also part of the problem that we saw was that the perception of their board was that they were voting directly on the merits of resoning and they weren't. Today they vote on the merits of recommending conditions and then the applicant takes those conditions applies some doesn't apply some and then comes to us. The proposed change here which I believe aligns the EAB to what the initial intent was of this council uh 9 years ago or so was that they would provide a recommendation specifically on the legislative condition around the environmental impacts. It's still just a recommendation, you know. It's still just saying, uh, yeah, we think this this meets the qualifications or not. It would it's not legally binding in any sense of the word. It's just changing what they're saying. I thought it was no big deal. Lawyers got involved and here we are month and a half later, five hearings still talking about it. Um, but the back to back to the process. So, at the initial meeting, I didn't know that

it would be controversial, so I didn't attend the initial planning board meeting. has voted down 9 to zero with a variety of concerns. You could probably read in the uh in the report at our April meeting. I requested it be referred back to them so I could attend the meeting and have a conversation about what we were trying to accomplish and hopefully uh change their minds because in addition to wanting to empower the EAB, I also care a lot about what our planning board feels and how how they perceive and I want them to be partners in the UDO process. Um I made some progress. The vote is now 8 to1. So, I think by my math, if we just do this four more times, we're going to get to a successful vote at the planning board. Um, yeah. So, I think some of the concerns, and I don't want to speak for them. I'm not sure if any uh any planning board members um were signed up to speak here, but uh like the notes say at adding process it does you know um there were some comments around concerns about this being another board that an applicant will have to try to satisfy to uh to to get a successful recommendation. It does. That is the point. Um and that was I think the intention of of council or at least me when I recommended that. And I would say uh that that actually could be a positive for applicants. Um we spend a lot of time up here when we have resonings talking about environmental conditions, what we should or shouldn't do, you know, plant some more trees, save some more stuff. The point of the EAB, the initial intention of it was to move those conversations earlier in the process and have those issues settled so applicants wouldn't have to come before us and then get another whatever extracted out of them. The idea was you'd get the buy off of this board or not, you know, and we'd weigh that and then that would be sort of an affirmative defense against me asking for a solar panel or to plant more trees. They could say, "Well, Terry, your EAB just recommended approval of your environmental board, so why are you ask me for more environmental stuff?" That's the idea is to shift the conversation and provide some more consistency um to the process and in the

process, you know, empower the EAB to to go um really a very narrow lane. There's also some discussion about what the recommendation would mean and I said to the planning board and I said to the EAB to be very clear like we're all going to understand the purpose of this is that they give a opinion about the um qualifications of a project specific to that one you know one I don't forget what the number was but the the environmental condition uh that that's in the UDO and that it's understood that we can still approve a project they want to deny if we felt the conditions were sufficient or we could still deny a project they recommended approval for other reasons like they're under no they're no one should be under the impression that this is a recommendation the merits of the entire project. It's specifically within the lanes that we're setting for the EAB and I've always intended to set. So that's where we're at. I made my case. I made a little bit of progress. Uh they still ultimately um were concerned about the impact on the development and the timeline and um recommended denial again. So it's back to us.

So just for clarity like is there so right now we have one EAB meeting will there be subsequent meetings required like if if there's a negative recommendation or so I'm I'm here's let me rephrase I'm not quite understanding the concern about the lengthening of the process because how how where in the process do we see that extension happening? I I think the the what I heard from staff say, maybe you guys could weigh in, is that this would require a second meeting for them to come back and commit to or not commit to those conditions unless they're willing to do it at that first meeting. Because right now they have a hearing, they recommend a set of conditions and then those that set of conditions recommendations is approved and that becomes what our packet is for the list of 12 things or nine things that we see and they check some of those boxes, but it doesn't go back to them. They don't know. They don't even know what gets checked. Um, and that was part of the

frustration they told me is we don't even know what happens. Whether it gets approved it or not or are they agreeing to do this stuff, we have no idea, you know. I said, "You could watch the meetings." Was really boring. I want to watch the meetings. So, I come to the meetings and I tell them. Um, but it it in my mind I I didn't think it would require a second meeting. I thought they could just sort of do it like get an email saying, "Hey, we agreed to all 11 of your conditions. Great." Like that sort of seems like a deacto agreement that would do it. But I think if you staff wants to weigh in, I I heard something that there's some reason we might have to have an official hearing or something. Did you say

what I mentioned at the planning board meeting um was that if the expectation is for the environmental advisory board to vote and make a recommendation um stating that the reasoning meets the um that legislative consideration, the environmental legislative consideration, they would have to take a vote and couldn't do it by email. And so if the applicant was not in the position of that first meeting of being able to review their project, all the details of it, the impact of the requested conditions that they may have to say, "Okay, pause, we need to come back, evaluate all this, see what we can offer and come back to you and then try to get their recommendation." So, so in that way, probably in most cases, many cases at least, um, it would require them to come back to the EAB for another meeting. Um, and the EAB meets uh once once a month.

I got you. So, I misunderstood a little bit because in my mind that second meeting they wouldn't have to be there necessarily. Like it could be we have the hearing and then the second meeting of the EAB could just be like let's review what happened last month. Oh, these guys agreed to these nine conditions. You know, in practice, they may want to show up, you know, because that's going to want to attend and defend their case, explain why they may not be able to offer exactly what the AB is offering. maybe offer something slightly different and see if the EAB is in agreement once they hear the explanation from the applicant.

So, it's a it can be much more involved depending upon the complexities of the site and the process.

Fair enough. Fair enough. I I guess I was just trying to say it was it was less formal than our process where there's formal public hearings and stuff like that. Could be an email where they explain it. Doesn't have to be, but I understand the case that that applicants probably will will want to show up if especially if something controversial. They they don't want to read all the conditions. They might want to plead their case. So be that as it may. Yeah.

So but in practice, you know, that happens today. It just happens in these chambers, right? When we sit here, right? Because if we start asking questions about environmental conditions, you know, we've had applicants, just give me another month, right? Let me work this through.

So I think that's happening today. It's just happening at the wrong stage in the process when it's, you know, coming to us for final approval. So I I'm not really, you know, and with a board that means once a month. Uh I think there's plenty of opportunity in in in the process between the first meeting. You know, t typically there's a pretty long lag time before that that uh that proposal gets to the planning board and ultimately to to us, right? I think there's opportunity in between to schedule another meeting with the EAB if if needed. I like this. I I like the proposal. Um, I like for the development community to take our advisory boards seriously, right? They're not there to be performative. They're not there to um, you know, just play a a you know, a role that in the end contributes very very little. I I like giving the planning board or sorry the the EIB a little bit more teeth, right? And for developers to actually start thinking through these conditions early on in the process. instead of trying to see what they can skate by with and then wait all the way to the end of the process, you know, for us to, you know, either choose to go or not go along with, you know, with what the development community decides. So, I'm I'm actually in favor of this. I would go as far as saying I think we need to consider input from other boards

in addition to that. And that's not part of our process process today. Um, but I I actually like this uh recommendation. Um, and I don't really see this encroaching on the planning board's um role in in any way. It's just another point of input for us to consider as we consider the um, you know, the proposals that are in front of us.

Just have one quick question. Um, I know it wasn't part of the process and getting us here, but was there any feedback from development community about how this impacts them?

Um, there there's been some feedback. There's some concern about the length of the process. Um there's concern that at the second meeting perhaps when they have more of their their site kind of figured out or planned out what they could offer as part of it as while they meet the other requirements or considerations of the town council's policies that um they would get fun of them the second time and it would start the negotiation process again and they would might have to come back a third time or things like that. So there there is concern that it will

yeah but that's part of the process.

I appreciate the good intention from our EAB board. Um but I think um um just to be uh okay to be clear. So when we talk about you know uh you know each resoning case or you know any uh case in front of us, we you know have the packet in front of us and we already you know um see every condition the EAB board recommended and if they you know uh if the developer you know meet or not meet all those conditions we see everything clearly here and we ask question here right and you know uh to make decisions Um I just you know I'm confused Terry clear okay help me clear okay um if we already you know we are doing this part right to make final decision right um we already know which condition is being met or not so what's the necessity to do

a second meeting from the ad to add more I mean the timing and everything.

So, it does not have to be a second meeting first of all. Like that's just one possibility. They could come in the first meeting and agree to the conditions and they could vote to recommend uh approval there. It's about getting the advice of our advisory board. It's the environmental advisory board. It's not the environmental conditions list board. So, I'm asking to get the actual advice uh and conclusion of our of our citizen experts who volunteered their time um to and to move those conversations that we have as Arno was saying uh earlier in the process so we don't have to have them. We've had conditions here the past couple months where we've seen, oh, you didn't check out the AV boxes. Okay, I got to go back. And they came back and they checked all of them, you know. Um, so that was that was just I think I think they I'm concerned they're not there's until we do something like this, the process isn't being treated with enough um, you know, gravity. Like I I feel like the cheap stuff gets checked and you test the waters and you see if council pushes back on this particular resoning and if not, you're good. And if you if they push back, if that's what you know the the thing is uh this resoning then oh we got to go see what we can do about you know solar panels or something. Um I'd like the process to be more consistent and to be treated seriously and I would like this EAP board uh to feel empowered to uh render an opinion on the cases before them that's taken seriously by us because I think that's why they want to be there. Okay,

it's my opinion.

My next question, what is the main reason for the planning board to deny? What's their concern?

I mean, I would say you should ask them, but like my I don't want to speak for them, but I I did hear concerns about the impact of the process, the length of the process. Um, I heard some comments

around, well, now developers will have to go to this board and ask you to get another board they need permission from, which is, you know, the stated purpose of this. So, they're that's not incorrect. That is, that is what we're trying to do is to have a thing here. So, that was a concern by some planning board members. Um, but yeah, I mean, that kind of summed it up a little bit. I I think they felt like it shouldn't be the EAB's role to do this. Uh, and I I I can attest to you that nine years ago, this was sort of what we were trying to create was the EAB was a meaningful um decision-making body that was, you know, taking care of this environmental thing because the complaints we heard at the time was that council would come up here at the very last second and demand a bunch of stuff and they'd be like, "Well, we can't do a bunch of stuff. It's the last second." And then people get mad and they go back and they do some of it and it was all a mess. So the idea was to make it more consistent and move it earlier in the process to try to have the EAB take over those types of decisions and have them be earlier. And like I said, the the advantage is if you get that EAB recommendation, that's something you can wave around at the council meeting just like we did with the uh you know, we also get a letter from WPSS, right? And if you ever saw resonings before we did that, we we would constantly get all sorts of ad hoc statements about school capacity and what it would do. It would be terrible. It'd be awesome. It'd be fine. You wouldn't really know. And then sometimes we decide to push on it. Sometimes we wouldn't. So, we made the decision to to get some consistency in the process and have an expert body weigh in. And then now if someone gets a letter and says there's no problems, it's not even talked about. Like that's sort of the the the frame of mind I'm trying to get at. like this is a thing that you can, you know, simplify your time at council. So,

that's how I I would view it. I know some people in the development community, I guess, don't do it that way. Um, you know, sorry for that, but that's that's the intention.

Thank you. I I'm glad you explained this in detail. It's much clear now. Yeah.

Thank you,

Marie.

Yes. Thank you. Uh, and thank you, Bruce, for the presentation. Um, I first I support empowering our advisory boards. These folks are carving out time out of their evenings for a $50 stipend to cover the babysitter. Um, they're here because they love their town and so I want to empower them. The second is um I I stand in strong opposition to the planning board's vote and I'd like to record my strong opposition and let them know why I disagree. And the reason I disagree is because every time we approve a resoning and we're approving properties to be u uh con uh constructed that is terminal land use. Soon as something as soon as those uh even if holding up the RCA and everything else like that that is terminal land use that is now property that someone lives in from then on out. And so I think we have to say no until it's a yes. And I believe that by empowering this board, we're ensuring better decision-m because I don't think any of these projects should come through uh with expediency. They should be stress tested um and fully vetted. And so I stand in support of this amendment. We have open a public hearing just yet, but um appreciate everybody's questions and

ready to wrap it up.

All right.

All right. So, let's let's

just out of just out of curiosity, if um

would one meeting suffice if it was later in the process, like I know you received the complaint that we're too far in the process. So we can't change much already, but if it was if if it was shifted so it was a little bit sooner like a little bit before the planning board or anything like that where they that then the board could vote at the

one meeting on the merits of it. Would that be something that would satisfy some of the board uh some of the council here or we still like the idea of them reappearing?

Well, we can can I sorry

oh this is okay

I just want to react to that. I think that's entirely up to the develop to the developer if they come in prepared with a set and and prepared to make a set of environment environmental recommendations that they would accept from us right then I think one meeting will suffice no matter where it sits in the process if they come in with okay you know I'll put a sign by the SEM and put a you know doggy station up right because that's you know $2500 um and that's all they're willing to commit do then yes they can expect a second meeting requirement right so I think it's entirely up to what are the developers prepared for to to bring forward you know at the time of that meeting no matter where that meeting sits in the process

and I would say we've moved around the time of these meetings multiple times haven't we like it was super late and then it was super early and you know I feel like the exact place that this meeting has taken place and the process has changed to try to find the right spot to fit it in and if this is two of one early, one late maybe. But like there's that's the balance that I was talking about earlier where it needs to be early enough that changes could still be suggested and and have an impact, but not so late that it solidifies and it's difficult to make to make engineering changes at that point. So I mean I I really don't have a strong preference as to when the EAB meeting happens like whatever is most convenient and where the most uh relevant information is available for the for the board. So what you need No, I was just saying the current UDO just requires that they come in at any point during the staff review phase. So, it could it could be basically immediately after they submit the application or closer to the planning board time. Previously, it was before the application was submitted when there really wasn't enough information about the resoning or any staff comments. So

developers do like to get comments from staff um sometimes before they go to the EAB so they can at least have a more structured, you know, um response.

And I just I really feel like there's a way you can get this down to one meeting like by polling people saying like, "Hey, what are you guys looking for?" Staff maybe give some hints as to what they're looking for. You look at the other meetings, you know, it'll it'll kind of I don't think it's a foregone conclusion. It's always be two meetings. That's my opinion.

Just just a couple of things. Um, I I know I see planning staff recommend approval, but I I would like to hear I mean, is it going to complicate things for y'all even more with with you, you know, doing this process?

We we can accommodate the change. We can update our calendars and schedules and and everything to to make to to accommodate the change if that's the desire of council.

All right. That's what I want to hear. The the second thing is um I I would hope and I know you guys already said what you want to do, but we haven't even opened up public hearing yet. So, we we got to get the comments of the community and then we can uh transition to more deliberation. So, I'm open up public hearing for comment. Jeff Roach kind of sounds like I should just sit down. It sounds like you've already made your decision. Can

I convince you?

It's too bad. You convinced me, Terry.

Yeah, I knew it.

Well, uh by the way, Jeff Roach Peak Engineering and Design for those of you that don't know me. Um I have a list of items here. Um, and Terry, I I find it very unfortunate that you feel that the I'm here from the design community. I'm not a developer. I am not a builder. I see the UDO amendments. I follow the rules when they're in place. That's what I do as a designer. Okay. So, with that said, it's unfortunate that you guys think the development community is fighting against you guys with these UDO amendments and asking questions like this. We're here from a design standpoint to work with you guys to find out what you want. what our concerns are from a design community is a couple things and and I had to make myself some notes because I I tend to ramble um with 219 to go. So EA uh planning board heard this this twice. They heard it the first time, they voted unanimously against it. Terry came the second time. They heard

it. Terry picked up one additional vote that night because of because of concerns. And I stood up at both meetings and I expressed my concerns. My concerns are not timing concerns. I don't care. I'm I sit at council two nights a month. For 18 years, I've been coming here and watching you guys and your predecessors have the same discussion, the same meetings. So, I've seen it happen. I have the time to go to meetings, but both my kids are out of college, so I can handle this now. So, my concerns are are more on the legislative side. EAB, there are 10 items in the legis legislative side based on zonings. You're asking EAB to vote on a zoning based on one of those 10. Uh 2.3 F5 is the environmental are there environmental conditions? It is it is they are un they cannot make a decision on a zoning based on one of the 10 conditions when their sole focus on is on environmental land use master plans impact on surrounding properties affordable housing off-site roadway improvements sidewalk mar connections parks and recreation requests and architectural standards are just some of the other commitments that are wrapped in those other nine considerations. If this goes and it becomes a recommendation from the EAB, then we will start making fullon proposals to the EAB, telling them everything that's happening and telling them why we cannot do certain EAB requests. Solar being a typical one that's not always committed to because there are so many other requests. The second one is 41. There are 41 conditions that EAB can throw at us. Typically, we get depending on the size of the project, we may get 20 from EAB. We don't know. We don't know what Terry's going to ask for or what. And I apologize, Council Member Mafy, Council Member Reese. I don't know what you're going to ask for for us at zoning. So, we can't commit to those the day after we make a zoning submitt or even at our pre-application meeting where that checklist is supposed to be included. The third is a council member liaison. If there is a vote coming out of the AB to recommend approval, there cannot be a council there should not be a council member liaison attached to that board just like the planning board. Fourth, um, other boards, parks and recreation

does not make a recommendation on zoning. They only make a recommendation on fee and loo versus pay, you know, versus land dedication. I spent 16 years volunteering my time. I never once accepted money from them. I don't feel that a volunteer position should be paid. There's a volunteer for a reason. I never accepted the money. I don't think anybody else on that board ever did either. So, it with with staff pleasure, I have one or two more points. If that's okay, I'd love to touch them real quick. Um, timing. Like I said, I don't care if I'm here at a second EAB meeting. I hope not, but I'd rather push it back. I met with two of the EAB members after the last planning board meeting that were here. Terry, you were here talking to them as well. Um, their concern was not being kept in the loop after the EAB meeting. Matthew Carpenter and I have discussed sending letters back to EAB. After we start making additional commitments, things that we can't do at the EAB meeting because it's early, we'll send letters back to the AB board and say, "Hey guys, here's what we're doing. We really don't want to go back, but we will if we absolutely have to. We'd rather provide them a letter and saying, "Here's the update. Of the 12 that you asked for, we were able to accommodate eight. Here are the seven or eight that we weren't able to do." We will also at the AB meeting take their list and tell them exactly why we can't or can commit to every one of those 41 conditions if that will make them happy. It's not a recommendation for approval. It's a recommendation on conditions that that board is asking for. Um, and the last one is conflicts. What are you going to do if the EAB recommends approval and the planning board recommends denial? You now have two boards that are recommending separate zoning approval or denial to you guys and you now have to weigh that decision. It puts you into a conflict. I'm here just to educate. I will follow the rules whatever you guys adopt. I don't want to come to a second EAB meeting. I hope the EAB meeting continues like the uh parks and recck board and they will recommend conditions to us that we then have time to vet with the folks sitting up here to figure out how to move forward. So, that's just my thoughts on it. I'm happy to answer any questions from a design side. Developers can answer on the other side. Um, but that's just how we we tend to approach EAB and some of our concerns from a design side. Okay,

that's representative.

I appreciate you guys input. Let me have time.

Okay, Hisham Osman 3181 Mental Ridge Drive in Apex. So, um, when I saw this, um, on the agenda twice. Um, I'm very torn about it. On the one hand, um, Counciloman Huffy, I understand the role of the AB and we want to we want to empower our our our advisory boards and it makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, Councilman Ziggerman, I'm going to kind of reward your quote a little bit. You have a planning board who twice recommended against it. And should you listen to your planning board, right? just kind of the counterargument saying we need to listen to the advisory environmental advisory board. Twice the planning board looked at it and both times said we don't think it's a good idea. So this is where I'm I'm a little bit torn. We have a we have a board of experts saying recommending don't do it. We have another board of experts saying hey I think we should do it. And um the fact that the environmental advisory board doesn't think they have an impact is concerning. They do they they make recommendations. They provide concessions. I've sat in this room here many times where developers have agreed to the conditions that the environmental advisory board has recommended. So, is it more of a process follow-th through follow-up topic or do they really feel not empowered to um make their make their case? I think this came to a head a little bit on the data center topic. I think this that was an emotional topic. the plan the envir the AAB put out the recommendations and the vote was deemed by the community as an approval of the data center and that just wasn't factually what it was right it was an approval of the recommendations of what the data center would need to do from an environmental perspective so I think there's a education aspect of this to the rest of the community of what the role of the AAB actually is versus maybe what it was intended versus what people think it is and so I know you probably

already made up your mind but I don't I I don't envy the position. It's a difficult position. I can also understand a little bit the planning board may feel threatened that some of their approval authority is being stripped away by giving the EAB a formal recommendation up or down on a project. And so I can I can understand that conflict and I would at the end of the day I think your process works. you get recommendations on the environmental side and and we we don't move forward projects don't that don't meet our environmental standards in the community. So sometimes to like what council member Sue said, what problem are we really trying to solve? And and maybe the simplest solution is to look at this again and see does this really solve the problem that we're trying to solve because I don't remember any development that didn't have significant environmental conditions attached to it. So thank you. Thank you for speaking. Um, I have also Stephen Davis. I think he spoke earlier, but I will see him in the room. So, we'll close public hearing for comment. It's back to council for discussion.

Got a couple follow-ups, Mayor.

Yep.

It's all right.

Go for it.

Uh, really quickly. I've said most of what I have to say, so I'm not going to launch to another big speech. I promise. Uh, but just to respond to a couple things.

That was quick, man. And you're done.

I didn't mean literally. I was like on at least 15 seconds.

You said quick. silly,

but it was brought up the issue of the council member liaison and how that might be problematic. I'd not heard of that before. I'm not a lawyer and I committed at the time that like if that's an issue, I'll I'll speak with a legal team and and address that. If it means I have to leave the room or whatever when they're voting on it. I honestly had not considered that to be a problem. And if it turns out that it is a problem, uh we'll we'll address that somehow. Um, the other point I just want to be crystal clear again like no one up here, no one on the planning board, no one on the EAB should be under the impression that they're rendering a decision on the merits of the entire project. The language, the plain language of the amendment, what I've said all along is they're rendering a decision on that one criteria which is in their lane as an environmental

advisory board. And um, so to me, I think it's pretty clear. And there was a comment um a question about well what if we're in a position where planning board says yes and EAB says no. That to me is not a conflict at all. That just says that the EAB thinks that one slice isn't good enough but the rest of the project has enough merit and then you can look at it and weigh if um the merits of the project are better than than the what we're not getting on the environmental side and vice versa. You can imagine the plenty board might deny a project, but you know, they do a bunch of amazing environmental stuff and permeable pavement and trees everywhere and solar panels, houses made of solar panels, whatever they're doing. Like you could see the first, you know, it's just things that you would weigh. Uh so those are my responses and um I I would urge my colleagues to to vote to approve the amendment. It's an environmental advisory board. Let's let them advise us. I um I think it's better we uh ask the EAB board and planning board they discuss this further because EAB is important planning board is both you know equally important they have their own um different uh perspectives when a developer reach to them and when they make decisions so I think it's better you know um those two boards work some you uh common um grounds and figure this out themselves because I don't want to want one board feel like our council using our power to favor one and you know not favor another something

that's mine yeah

so again I want make clear that the scope is very different between the EAB and the planning board, right? EAB, you know, as Mr. Roach just mentioned, you know, they basically look at one out of 10 legislative considerations, whereas

the planning board has to consider them all. And and so again, just getting a letter of recommendation uh from the EAB, I don't really see as an adverse impact or creating any any conflict in in the process. I I you know I do appreciate some of the concerns that that were raised including the uh council member leaison but Mr. Heavy has already responded to that. Um I I think it's it's a good idea right and as I stated in my earlier you know maybe a little bit ahead of uh the part of the process is that yeah I I would even consider like other boards like parks and rack like multimotal transportation you know to render a letter of opinion on on certain uh uh proposals. So um I think it's it's the right thing to do. I think it gives the process with the EAB a little bit more more teeth. Um, and I u I would be supportive of this amendment.

I just want to make Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead.

No, no. I was I was just going to say I I really appreciate the feedback. I'll go back to um Mr. Roach being here representing the design community. Um I I'm still I'm not sure why no one is here from the development community. Maybe it's all good because they no one showed up, but it would have been nice to have them to present and have some feedback because I think it really impacts them. But we're we're at a point and uh it's time to make a decision.

Motion to approve. Well, and let me just I just wanted to offer some comments really quickly. I just wanted to say that uh the problem we're trying to solve is that we're needing to extract these uh conditions and and I understand um just like I understand the planning board perhaps not wanting to dilute its influence. I I can see where that's coming from. But the problem we're trying to solve is the reluctant nature of some developers

coming and having to constantly do this back and forth who's going to blink first and I think that this streamlines a lot of that.

Thank you for your comments. So we have a motion from Mayor Pro Tim.

Motion approved.

All right.

Second.

Second. Zigerman. Any more discussion hearing? None. All in favor say I.

I.

Oppos.

I oppose.

Okay. So motion carries 31.

Okay. Thank you. All right. We move to public hearing

five. Yeah. Five development ordinance video amendments. Bruce venable.

Okay. So the we're going to go through about four different amendments here. Um the first one is a bit lengthy. Um so just to touch on it. First amendment here is to establish uh two new zoning districts. The first one being a transitional business or a B3 zoning district and the second one being a heavy industrial zoning district. Uh these will introduce new classifications, updates uh district specific standards and integrate new districts into the existing regulatory frame framework of the UDO. Um this amendment modifies provisions to zoning districts, permitted uses, dimensional standards, development approvals and design standards to ensure that both these districts are consistently applied and enforceable. in particular, updates to the use table, district purpose statements, intensity and dimensional standards, and incorporate these new districts into the town's overall zoning structure. The sections that have been affected by this first amendment are all listed on the screen, have been included in your staff report. I wanted to highlight they're all listed there, but I also want to show you that on the second page here, also included in your staff report, um, these were the sections where just references were changed. So essentially, you you'll see them as we go through them, but essentially like it would say that it would the the zoning districts shall adhere to the requirements in section 1.4-5. We had to add new districts, so now it's like 1.4-6 or something like that. But we'll go through them. You'll see all of it.

So again, the first amendments are um like I just said in 2.3.4 four under development approvals and planning plan development districts we changed it from 5.13 to 5.14 because that is the new appropriate reference same thing here changes from 3 to 4 again here from 5 to six here we did have to add the the B3 transitional business district under a 3.2.2 business districts and remove the light industrial into a new 3.2.3 2.3 industrial districts. That now includes the light industrial and the heavy industrial districts. Also in the conditional zoning districts, same concept. Added the B3 conditional zoning district there. Remove the light industrial. Had to shuffle around the the references and the lettering there. And now we do have a new section for 3.27 conditional zoning industrial districts. Um for under district purposes, we did have to add new purposes for the B3 and HI districts. So for the B3, the purpose of it is to provide transitional business districts to serviceoriented commercial uses in areas that act as transitions along autooriented commercial corridors near adjacent residential neighborhoods. And this just shows the shift. And then again, the removal of the purpose for the light industrial has now been moved to a different section. Under the new section, we've just put that we've moved the light industrial purpose. It's the same as it was before in your UDO. And then we added the heavy industrial one. And the purpose of this district is to provide sufficient lands in appropriate locations for highintensity industrial manufacturing, processing, or similar uses that may generate noise, traffic, or other impacts not suitable for residential or commercial areas. This district is intended to accommodate uses that require larger sites, specialized infrastructure, or separation from incompatible uses while promoting orderly development and protecting public health, safety, and welfare. Again, just had to change the numbering here for industrial districts and move everything down.

We did have to add this to your use table in the UDO. So now we have under the business districts the B3 section and the HI section. I'll run through just there's very minimal things that have been added to these districts to start with. Um the first one we we do allow accessory apartments in the other business districts. So we also allowing it in the B3. As you can see, nothing's been added to the HI on this first page. On the second page, um items that are permitted in the other business districts are also permitted in the B3 for the most part. We have uh church or place of worship, daycare facilities, um government services, veterary clinic or hospital. Again, nothing in the HI district. Um utility minor is high is added to both of these for the B3 and UI district. It's standard. We basically allow my utilities in all all districts. And then again for wireless support structures and wireless communications facility. Again both are permitted in these new districts. On this last one we can see uh greenways are also permitted in both districts. Then for B3 only, we have park passive and park active permitted as well as uh youth or day camps permitted as well. on this page. Uh bar, nightclub, wine bar, tap room are permitted under the B3 commissary and general restaurant are also permitted under the B3 medical or dental office or clinic and medical or dental laboratory as well in B3. The only thing that's been added uh that's permitted here in the HI would be a dispatching office on this page office and professional consistent again with the other business districts. Um, a pilot plant is permitted in the HI, a research facility in the HI, and then a hotel motel may be permitted in the B3, artisan studio with an special use permit, which is consistent with the other business districts, beauty and barber shop, bookstore, and convenience store in the B3. Farmers market, fle uh farmers market, floral shop, uh, grocery, specialty,

news stand or gift shop, personal service, all permitted within the B3. Nothing has been added to the HI on this page. Um here retail sales general studio for art tailor shop and pet services have been added to the B3. Nothing's been added to HI. Uh nothing has been added on this page to either one. And finally on the last on this page uh micro brewery and micro distillery have been added to B3 but nothing has been added to the HI district here. So again, more uh more references or things have been added under 4.3.1 residential uses for accessory apartments. Essentially, this section lays out uh that it's a secondary dwelling unit and it lists all the districts that it's permitted in. So again, B1, B2, downtown uh B3 is now added to that as well. Again, retail sales for commercial uses for building supplies, it lists B2 and then also B3 districts. Now again the reference has been changed from four 5.1.4 to 5.1.5. Again four to five four to five here under the wireless support section. Again we've just added the B3 and the HI to the commercial zones that are listed under the wireless support structure to be consistent with the other districts under 4.4.5 commercial uses. Um, cafeterias were are allowed in the light industrial and heavy industrial districts. All we did was add the heavy industrial district to to be permitted to have a cafeteria as long as it is below 20% of the gross floor area of the building. Under office and research, um, again, we just added heavy industrial, which is consistent with the other districts. Again, we've added B3 here to be consistent. Again, we've added the B3 to be consistent here on on the first part and then on E with compatible character again for accessory department here

under ownership. And then for the intensity table, we did have to shift things around and move them. So, uh we added the B3 district. So right now since we don't have a lot of uses we have set this does the minimum setbacks for the front 25 15 the side rear 20 the corner 15 the maximum height is 36 ft the maximum built upon area is 70% for all uses as you uh as we move through this and other uses are added they may have specific standards that are addressed or added to this but this for starting out this is what we have here the LI has been removed from under the business district section and moved to the industrial section which is shown here now new section 5.1.3 industrial districts. So we just moved LII added it the same information that was there prior prior under HI we have all their uses at 50 front 50 side 50 rear 50 corner and 70 foot max height with a 70% max built upon area. Again, these are just references that were changed. As you can see, 3 to four, four to five, five to six, and then again in the very bottom under measurement, 5.14 has been changed to 5.15. For buffering, it's also been added to your buffer table. B3 is now consistently added to the business section uh for adjacent properties as well as HI's been added to the light industrial text flex area for the buffers that are required. here under massing. Um the same standards that apply to the light industrial now apply to the heavy industrial as far as massing goes and for the harmony of design and purpose. Same with recesses and projections and repeating design patterns, exterior wall cladding, colors and materials. So that's that's the end of the of the first amendment. Uh planning staff recommend approval for the proposed amendment. The planning board at their meeting on May 11th recommended approval of the amendments establishing both these districts by a vote of 8 to1. Uh the dissenting opinion has been included in your agenda packet. If you have any

questions, I can answer them now for this one. If you want to keep moving, we can as well.

All right. Thanks. Any questions?

All right. Number two was requested by U. Mr. Council Member Mappy. Um so what this one is essentially is uh it adds the use detention center, jail, prison or correctional facility um to the classifications along with supplemental standards and other rated related development standards for the use. So it's first would be added to the use table and it would only be permitted in the heavy industrial district. We would create a use classification for it. The classification here is detention center, jail, prison or correctional facility. is any facility, building or portion thereof used for the detention, confinement, custody, or supervision of individuals under the authority of a government entity, court, or law enforcement agency or their authorized agents. This includes but is not limited to prisons, jails, detention centers, holding facilities, and any similar use where individuals are involuntarily housed or restricted in movement. Under supplemental standards, we've added um these three right here. The site shall be a minimum of 10 acres. The facility shall be located on a a minimum of 1,620 ft from any public or private school, daycare, place of worship, or any property zoned or used for residential purposes. A 60ft type A buffer shall be required around the perimeter of the site, including along public streets. Under your landscape buffering land use classes, it would be classified as a class six det uh class 6, which is the the highest level you have. So, that would be there requiring the the greatest amount of buffering. uh planning staff recommended approval of this amendment. Again, at the May 11th planning board meeting, they recommended approval with the condition that originally we had the distance from the sensitive uses be 13 uh 1320 square 1320 ft be updated to 1620 ft. So, it went up from a quarter mile to extra 300 feet at the recommendation of your planning board. Any questions related to this one?

Yeah,

it goes really fast.

I'm sorry about that. Yeah, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Yeah. Yes. Um can you go back to uh Councilman Mahafei he suggested uh so um uh Terry I want to ask you so did you made um you know like for the heavy industrial

yeah did you um like the modification make not include all those things mentioned

not include what things

like um like I don't know if they're jail or IC detention

uh detention center jail prison correctional facilities

so not include all this right

they are included

they they it includes it defines it as a heavy industrial use what's going on

okay so it's included including as jail.

So if somebody were to propose a detention center,

it needs to be in a heavy industrial zoning district.

There are no heavy industrial zoning districts in

Okay.

We require some type of reasonzoning process.

Okay. So we do not have have industrial doing doing

right.

So this would So the problem that I think uh that I'm identifying and pointing out and staff help me out with is that we don't have a use for detention centers or a classification for how they go in. So if we get an application for one um it's a little ambiguous as to what happens. You know, I mean, I I would trust our planning director, but you can imagine a future planning director may decide that actually this fits in light industrial and they could find a light industrial building and argue, you know, for some

reason that it's a light industrial use and then would be able to go use some warehouse without having to talk to us. Um, or, you know, a plan director may say, "No, you have to reszone or you have to do what the data center was going to do, which is, well, we need to amend the UDO and do all sorts of stuff." There's no process. Now, this creates a process which says um a detention center with uh some fairly strict requirements in terms of distance. You have to be um a little over a quarter mile now from a house with a 60ft type A buffer on a 10acre empty plot. Um and you have to go through a legislative reszoning process to come to this board to ask for a reasoning to heavy industrial. We just currently don't have the heavy industry

but it's possible in the future we may right.

It's up to us.

Yeah. But you know you you know two terms maybe you are gone.

Maybe one term I'm

one you are gone. Okay. I don't feel comfortable like any having just chill. I think um I pref I prefer commercial you know uh light industrial those um you know um reszoning those zoning um really benefit apex benefit residents any heavy industrial I don't think that will benefit apex you know like um heavy manufacturer like pollution like um geo

then vote no if one ever comes up. Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you know something we don't know about the intention center intentionally coming here?

I don't know. Nothing. All right. Just

don't think

No, we're we're we're defining a process.

I understand.

Uh because the way it stands today, there's a lot of light industrial space. We have no heavy industrial definition. There's a lot of light industrial space. Arguments could be made that certain

uses that are undefined could fit in the light industrial space under different uses. It would be ambiguous. could go to the board of adjustment, could go to a court. This defines a process. That's all that happens here. This defines a process that would happen in that case.

Can I ask a follow on question somewhat along the the same vein? So, we haven't really defined very many uses here. Should we define additional uses? Maybe not tonight, but you know, to put another couple like, you know, uh battery manufacturing. I don't know. like do we want to call it out specifically? Data centers might be one that we want to put in here, right? Um so we have obviously defined some uses but not a whole you know a very big range and so kind of following the argument next time that or you know when somebody comes in and wants to do you know manufacturing of of batteries uh somewhere in Apex right we can have the same argument. So, do we wanted to preempt some of that and and then put them in these heavy industrial classes so that we can force that process to take effect and um and go through it.

Yeah, that's absolutely an opportunity. Um we can explore more uses that belong in the heavy industrial. I think as we move forward on the moratorum for data centers and we received your recommendations from the EAP that's working on that that very well might be a recommendation you receive at the end of TOMA period and it's for the other potential uses that should not be anywhere near sensitive users like schools or residential uses we can absolutely explore those as well and add them eventually. This was uh just a priority made to us by council member Mathy and we wanted to make sure that we included it at this time but absolutely there are other uses that probably do belong under the heavy industrial districts

and then so maybe a point of clarification. Thank you. Appreciate that answer. Uh shifting gears a little bit, um how would we classify if we have a couple holding cells in our police station? So, you know, chief came to us a couple couple months ago articulating

the need for maybe a future police uh building. That building could potentially include some holding cells. Would that fall under this classification or would that, you know, would it be too small to to fall under this classification? How would we look at that? So we could look at it as an accessory use because it just probably is 20% less than the actual principal use of the structure itself. And also at this time and stage it is a it is a a use that exists. So, it's a whether it was legal legally non-conforming or conforming, which we're not creating. We're not creating any legal non-conforming issues at the moment because we're creating an entirely new district and any police station is not going to be in the heavy industrial district at this time. And again, it most likely would be classified as an

I just don't want to force a future police station into a heavy industrial district, you know, because of this condition,

right? So, if it's less than 20% therefore considered accessory use, therefore it doesn't fall under this rule, then I think we're there. Thank you. Any other questions? Move on to three. All right. So, uh this is to to add a new use to the use table. Uh this is for a food truck court. So, we'll go over the different sections and discuss what that is. So, um first of all, we have some wonderful food trucks around the area. they like to pile up in different places where there's a lot of traffic. Um so what we wanted to do is bring a higher quality of development with a food truck court to Apex where people can enjoy these great establishments and within our jurisdiction. So, um, what we're proposing is is standards and a new use that would allow people to come in and develop a site where there's, uh, designated safe places for parking that are separated for places where people can sit and enjoy and walk up and use these food truck courts in an attractive environment that promotes uh, community and other aspects. So, we're promote we're suggesting that the food truck court be permitted in the new B3 district. If you approve that, the text fleck district and the um MEC plan development district. So for outdoor

outdoor storage, the section has been modified to state that no mobile food vendor um shall be parked where visible from a public rideway except as shown on an approved site plan for a food truck. So when a development comes in, essentially what that means is we're going to want to see where their parking lot is, where their primary service area is. We want to know exactly where they're going to park however many food trucks they're going to have on site. So they might have six stalls that are like, you know, cement blocks or pads that they're going to move these trucks to that are going to have connections for electric and other things there that's appropriate for these food truck courts. So under use classifications, we've added under food and beverage service food truck courts established um where there's three or more mobile mobile food vendors as defined in section 1360 of the AEX town code and can operate simultaneously for preparation and sale of food and beverages in a readycon consumed state. um a mobile food vendor in the form of a food truck cart or trailer with a walk up counter offering quick service where orders are not taken at the customer's table but at a window or counter of a licensed food truck cart or trailer and where the food is generally served in disposable wrappings or containers. The food truck court shall include a permanent structure on the site containing the use of restaurant general bar nightclub wine bar or tap room or micro brewery or micro distillery. The use may include on on premises sales and service of consumption of alcohol alcoholic beverages as an accessory and secondary use for supplemental standards. We're we're proposing that the food truck court may be permitted as an accessory use as well for commissary, restaurant general, bar, nightclub, tap room, micro brewery or micro distill where these uses already exist and perhaps they have the space to develop and kind of create a food truck court as an accessory use as part of their their structure. We're also recommending that food truck court shall comply with the following uh requirements. Uh the food court shall comply with again chapter 13 the transient mobile food vendors of the town of Apex's code of ordinances and all other applicable standards or regulations of the permit issuing with Wake County's environmental health and safety department. The mobile food vendor shall be permitted to have one sandwich board sign that may be

displayed adjacent to their designated location on site. The vendors shall be located in areas designated for vending on the approved site plans. Mobile food vendors location shall be clearly defined, separated from all patron parking with fencing, decorative ballards or planters in order to separate the food truck court from parking. Fencing shall not exceed 4 ft in height. The vendor shall maintain at least 10 ft of clearance around the entire perimeter of the vehicle, trailer, or cart. A food truck court shall be required to provide indoor or outdoor seating. All designated seating and dining area shall be shown on the approved site plan. Temporary enclosures including but not limited to plastic sheathing, vinyl tarps and tents shall be prohibited. Individual food member food mobile vendors shall not provide additional outdoor seating for dining and this is tables, chairs, tents, booths, bar stools, benches um that are not shown on the approved site plan of the food truck court. A food truck court shall be required to provide permanent restrooms on site and permanent power source shall be provided to each mobile food vendor. Individual generators shall not be allowed. A temporary power pole made of wood or similar material shall not be permitted. Mobile food vendors shall not operate on site outside of the established operating hours of the food truck court. The site shall utilize two shared dumpsters, one for trash and one for cardboard recycling that shall be located within a masonary dumpster enclosure per standards found in the UVO. Uh specific standards for the downtown festival district. When it's outside, it shall not be located within 100 feet of a residential zoning district or property containing a conforming single family detached dwelling. This does not include the highdensity multif family or more districts. Um outdoor live or recorded acoustic or amplified entertainment shall not be permitted on properties directly adjacent to any conforming single family detached dwelling and with no intervening right of way except when approved according to the standards of promotional event found in section 4.6 6 temporary uses and structures within the district. The downtown festival district should not be located within 45 ft of residential zoning district or property containing single

family detach home. Outdoor live and recorded and amplified entertainment should not be permitted on properties directly adjacent to any conforming single family detached dwelling with no intervening right of way except again and with the provisions that are provided in section 4.6 temporary uses and structures. The mobile food vendor shall be required to store, transport, and dispose of grease and waste water to the commissary identified on as part of their mobile food vendor permit issued by the applicable county department. They'd be classified as uh under your buffer standards under a class 5 and would follow the same table use and have to provide the required buffers for that class. Um they will have their own required follow the parking schedule as shown here. Um we've included the commissary and the restaurant general just so you can have a comparison. We're suggesting that there'll be two designated mobile food two per designated mobile food vendor stalls and one per 50 square feet of indoor dining space devoted to public use and two spaces or one space per 50 motor vehicle parking spaces for bicycles. Um this is similar to the restaurant general which is one per 50 ft of four space devoted to public use and then two bicycles or one space per 50 motor vehicle parking spaces for bicycle as well. Okay. So the planning staff does recommend approval of this proposed amendment um at the planning board on May 11th. Again, this was voted recommended for approval by a vote of 7 to two. The dissenting opinions have been included in your agenda packet as well. Um is there any questions on this amendment?

Question.

Yep. Thank you. Um thank you for the presentation. This is the creation of a food truck court.

That's correct. Yes, sir. How does this impact the three food trucks regularly parked at um the Latino grocery store compare foods right there at the corner of Williams and Hughes?

Um

would this prohibit them?

This would prohibit for having three or

more without having an approved food truck court.

And why I imagine that's pretty well established.

I'm saying what's the So, so

they've been they've been there a while. I imagine this came up in conversation.

Some of the issues is um by by law and by their permit regulations, they're supposed to return to the commissary. They're supposed to leave the site at least once every 24 hours to return to the commissary for cleaning preparation and all things like that. The issue that has come up in Apex is that some of these sites, these food trucks are parking for days on end. And so, they're almost setting up almost a permanent kind of food truck court impromptu on the site itself where they're taking up parking. they're maybe they're creating some type of additional hazards and there's just uh some kind of confusion that can happen on site from having multiple trucks. So, this is trying to bring in a high quality development that would would meet the meet the need for a food trucks to have a safe place to go where people want to go and be able to enjoy their services as well.

Can I ask you though um I mean it's my understanding that those food trucks for under that instance have the approval of the property owner.

Um I can't speak to that. I don't know what they always do. They do well in that instance then.

So my point is is um and thank you again for your presentation. I don't mean to drill down too much. I'm just trying to um what is the impetus for this amendment

there there is uh there's been so having impromptu food trucks can cause some issues for your current brick and mortar facilities. Definitely. agree with that and and especially and

uh but okay I'm sorry keep so if you drive by if you drive by compare foods you might see like two or three food trucks station there they're in the middle of what would should be required parking of the parking lot itself they might be creating some type of hazard as I said already but then you also see that they may be connecting to power in an unsafe way or area they may be running generators on site we're trying to regulate and minimize these unintended impacts that happen just from regular food truck operation and put

already reg forgive I mean, I I it's getting late and I'm getting a little um my question is is aren't those already regulated? So, I mean to the point of if you're if you're burning uh if you're using somebody wants to jump in.

Yes, go ahead.

So, we've actually been asked to allow food truck courts. Uh we had someone interested in putting one out at Beaver Creek Crossings on the property that's not developed yet um out there. And we've had a request from the new property owner of the lot that's next to Compare Foods.

Yeah.

Um and we've shared our draft. We've had this draft ready for quite a while.

Yeah. So, I think that's great. I think the establishment of food trucks is great, but if it necessarily negates the legality of those current food trucks.

So, the current food trucks are not land uses. They are transient vendors. That's the permit they get from the police department. They are not a land use.

I know that.

Okay. So, we're trying to regulate the land use version of of food trucks so that it's a permanent use.

I mean, I see some of the

Well, what's we're not we're not a discussion yet. I know that's why I stopped.

Any other questions from Miss Bible?

Thank you for the appreciation.

Quick simple question. Yeah. Like um the food truck, you know, driving around to sell food, you know, uh all uh the ice cream truck, right? Not um you know, don't have to follow this, right?

If if if there's a site that has

No, as not land,

not the ice cream truck. No, this is like the food trucks you see parked in front of compared foods and other places.

All right, other questions.

Which one or two under this would not be classified as a food truck and they would be permitted to to be on site in these locations? We were just we're just classif.

I think there's I' I've driven around and seen more than two or three in different locations.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was

Yeah. Yeah.

Thinking about that one scenario.

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, maybe that that's a good question. So what's how did we come to the number three instead of four or five

I mean in my opinion a transient vendor should be moving every so often and they're supposed to go back to the commissary and back way back in the day there used to be limitations on how long they could be at any given location. um folks didn't care as much. It got uh I guess more lenient uh in the terms of the issuing of the transient vendor permits of what was transient. Um we could have said more than one. We think that there's many locations with two. So we didn't want to make all of the locations not conforming. There are relatively few locations that have three or more. Um, and and there's not always three. Even at Compare Foods, I mean, they've swapped out. The soda people were there for a while. They moved to a permanent location. So, if you all want four, we can change it to four. We just had to have a number for you all to consider. It's your ordinance. So, if if you all are not interested in even having food courts, that's fine, too. We just wanted to propose it because we've been asked

wondering where it came from. I just

like I mean was it just we just like it's

but the I think the point is is thank you. You've answered the questions and we're in the questions phase. So thank you.

All righty. Any more questions?

Hearing none. All right. We'll open up the public hearing for comment. No one signed to speak. We're

Oh, there there is one more amendment. I

Oh, you got another one.

Oh, no. I'm sorry. I was trying to say No, I'm so sorry. I It's late. I apologize now. Go ahead. Please open up your

Oh, getting there. Wait, wait, what?

Can we help? What?

All right, public hearing is close. We're back at discussion. Council Ree,

you can lead yourself.

I don't need to go first. I haven't gone first all night.

Should be first time for everything.

I'm sorry.

First time for everything.

I think I'll go first.

Sense of things getting a little hot. The AC off.

It is. the tattoo. John, that's the problem.

It's not the amendment, it's the AC.

Um,

this I

take a step back. I think what's happening Can I just ask quickly? This is Forgive me. Housekeeping. This is We're discussing all three amendments now.

All three.

And do we vote on them separately?

All right. Excellent.

Definitely should in this case.

So, I think what's happening here is staff is again creating a framework to to legalize these type of food courts. the requirements that would be applied. Looking through the list, they're not too ownorous. On-site restrooms might be the biggest one that would have to be to be qualified as a food court. Um, so I think view it in that sense. I I think any existing food truck court that is an effective food truck court, you know, wouldn't necessarily have to go away. They would just maybe have to comply to these nine standards or whatever we have here. Eight. Oh no, there's another page. 12 13 keeps going. There's there's a bunch of them, but whatever the ones are there, you know, sound. Um yeah. Uh yeah, that's not the downtown festival dish. That doesn't apply. So there's there's a bunch of they're trying to bring structure around what is

viewed by some as an unstructured uh use right now which are um and there's a lot of really with only three trucks there's a lot of really easy ways to avoid all this like just have one of them drive home occasionally and then you're you're now a transient food truck court right it's it's the three permanent which really triggers this like they're they're mored there they live there um And what it also provides is going forward if someone wants to create an official food truck court now they have a set of standards that they could look at and and try to apply and that's that's a good thing. So I think I think that's what's being done here and that's what planners do. You know you see un you know things that are unregulated or some disorder and you try to bring some order to it some reasonable standards uh that are that are being proposed here. Um, so how do we so is permanent as in like these things will never move or can we still drive off like so right now the requirement is t you know you know the truck needs to move once every 24 hours. So, what would be the new like what what what would make this a permanent location for a food truck?

It's the structure of the lot. It's that it has permanent elements. The individual trucks can move in and out. There's examples of these. There's one called the can opener in Durham and that was actually set up by uh three food truck owners who were tired of having to find new locations and so they built a permanent structure where there's individual stalls. It's almost like a you could look at a farmers market where you have the permanent building but you have the individual stalls for the individual farmers to come and go and it might be the same farmer in that stall for years and years or it might be different ones. That's probably a good way to look at it.

Um, the restroom requirement, if you

have permanent eating facilities, building code's going to require that. That's that's going to be required. You can't have permanent a permanent food service use without restrooms. And part of the intent of having the the other use or structure on site is that if there's a there's an opportunity or the food trucks aren't there, you don't have a bear empty. I don't know if you've driven by seen other food truck court. Sometimes they're just gravel lots with fences around them and picnic tables and when they're gone it really throws off the form and everything of your street and the local community and the character of everything else. So this is trying to maintain that by having a high quality development with a structure that's people attractive and people do want to visit regardless of there's it's full of food trucks or there's one food truck or no food trucks there.

So principally I'm I'm I'm fine with the idea and and again kind of creating a framework for something that we don't have right now. Right. so that we don't get flatfoot as or cause flat foot as you know first time somebody wants to propose a food court or a food truck court. Um, I'm a little bit nervous about creating a nonconformity for certain plots where we have seen this used, you know, pretty consistently over a number of years, right? So, you know, I'm I'm again, I'm okay with it, right? If we can make it maybe four or five trucks before the this kicks in, I think that might be a little bit more palatable for me. I like the structure that it gives. I'm just nervous about creating a nonconformity inputting, you know, current property owners that do allow three or more food trucks or three food trucks immediately. And you know,

I got I got a couple questions. So, which department within the town regulates this? Like as far as

currently it's police?

Yeah.

They handle the problem.

So, they would be

Well, it the transit vendors are police.

Land use will be planning. So this will be a land use. The individual trucks still will be

permitted through the police department. They do background checks and all that, but the land use will go through our site plan process.

So I guess my question is example used earlier if this gets passed a truck stays more than whatever who's monitoring that. This is supposed to be the health department with the county.

County.

Yeah.

That's Yeah.

Sorry. Go ahead.

Go ahead. No, go ahead.

All right. So, I love the idea of instituting food trucks. I also um understand how food trucks can um threaten brick and mortar. I mean, we've dealt dealt with that for over a decade downtown where we're concerned, you know, and we have festivals and all of a sudden we bring 10 food trucks down there and now fewer people are going and and eating at our brick and mortar. That said, and it's about to come up again later tonight, we talk about policy, but then how it actually impacts real people on the ground in real time today. And we've got to think about the least of us and the people who frequent those food trucks right there at Compare Foods are our workingclass folks who are already marginalized when it comes to uh uh uh economic impacts. And now we're about to tell you with $420 uh a gallon gasoline and five some uh dollars a uh a gallon in diesel. and now you got to move your truck all all over the place when your your profit margins are thin. I think this is a terrible idea the way it's written.

I I I would have to support what council just said. Um and and I and I totally support staff and what they're trying to accomplish here, but there's unintended consequences on a community that um that I have a lot of connections to and this

would be sending the wrong message

that the way it's written. how if it's not if we're not grandfathering folks in if we're not able to say here's a real situation um and and we're going to be sensitive to it as opposed to just coming in and ripping up the carpet. I think I think that's a bad move for our community.

Did does a council member have any suggestions on on how we may improve?

Uh you can institute I mean go back to the drawing board. How do you how do you institute what can happen without preventing what's already helping our community right now?

We heard the folks talking earlier in public comment. I'm sorry.

We'd like to withdraw it.

Let's table it for now. And

we'd like to withdraw it.

Instead of withdrawal, can we continue with

and revisit it after?

We won't have a date certain. It's going to take us a while to look at it.

I just I think we've got to think we've got people our staff drives by that. Yeah,

half our staff probably drives by that and has for the five, six, seven, shoot, it might be precoid. Well, yeah, that is pre-COVID. Five, six, seven years. I god, CO feels two decades and also two months ago.

But I I think we've got we've got to protect those folks who have thin margins.

All right. Thank you so much, Councilman Ree. Let me hear from Mr. offer real quick and then we'll

so thinking through on what Diane said earlier if that particular area is your concern and protecting them and we know the numbers I mean Diane said you can set the number she I won't say she arbitrarily picked it but it's not one not two but three but if if four protects that area you can design this ordinance around that's what a food truck court whatever our terminology is it's four or more and that protects that area um so I I think there there are thresholds there There are other examples in other communities. Three's probably been used. Four has probably been used. But there is some discretion with council. And if that area is an area that we want to protect, you could simply make that change

right in real time. And now I like thank

goodness somebody we thought of it.

Like what happens if if it just we're a little too tired and we don't think about that one place and boom, next thing we know those those folks have. Yeah. I I'm just thank you for your consideration on the withdrawal. What is there a motion to withdraw? What do we do?

You can do it right now.

Yeah. Motion to withdraw this or or send this back to the drawing board. Whatever the

clarify, there's three amendments.

The amendment three is what I was talking about. We'll I guess we'll handle it when we get there, but I that's that.

I just want to make sure that we're not withdrawing all three.

Only the three. Yeah.

All right. So,

we'll start with number one.

I'll make a motion to approve amendment number one.

Motion Zman, second by pro Tim. All in favor say I. I.

Motion carries. Amendment two. I make a motion to approve amendment two. Second.

Second. Ziggment. All in favor say I.

I.

Motion carries unanimously.

I make a motion to withdraw amendment three.

Second.

Can they staff? It was staff's Yeah, it was staff's proposal. We are withdrawing our proposal just like an applicant would withdraw their proposal. You don't need to vote on it.

All right. So, we're good. Amendment three. That's good. All right. We move to the next item. Thank you all every um for staff for presenting and um thank you all for your engagement.

All right. RA1. That's right. Okay. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Nice to be uh before you again tonight. I wanted to give you a brief update on um council's direction uh from the work session as well as the proposed timeline and proposed key ordinance revisions. Um as you may know that this is really a pivotal moment in uh what started as council direction in December of uh 14th of 2023. So we've had several iterations

of doing studies uh doing data analysis and so uh that brings us to where we are. So in April of 2026 uh we had an update received public input. May 28th, we uh which is tonight, we are presenting uh changes uh for ordinance adoption. And then as you go on down through the timeline, uh July 1, which was our directive for ordinances to take effect. And then October 19th is when proposed bi-weekly zone collection uh begins. And then January 1st is when uh we had recommended uh no longer accepting yard waste. I know that's on the table as we discussed previously. Just want to roll this on out. Uh as you get into February, uh your bi-weekly zone collection uh begins with an assigned day. Uh you may remember from the presentation where we took 540 and we had a uh one side of 540 one week, other side of 540 the previous week. Um and then uh direction to move towards uh yard waste containers. Uh so that is the timeline. Um I do have our attorney here Chris uh that can answer any specific questions regarding the ordinance. Um but uh the main changes are just in location. Uh small limbs go from 8t to 6 foot. That's so they fit into the back of a rear loader. Um, and then we've got in here proposed uh yard waste up until uh the end of the year and then we exclude yard waste. Again, if that's on the table, then we're happy to discuss that more. Um, no yard waste within the uh storm drain, 10 foot of the storm drain. uh that uh changes and then uh after containerization you'll see that uh the

placement really only a piles uh applies to leaf piles because council's given direction to continue with leaf vac collection. Um, no yard waste in parking ramp is what we've uh decided because right now people will put yard waste pretty much anywhere. And then we've um uh council provided direction of uh anything above two cubic yards that is defined as excess volume would be available for a pickup fee and then after containerization that cart would be part of your monthly fee. Um prohibitive items uh would be um once a per week collection and then proposed as collection schedule set by council. Um no land clearing debris. Uh and then we define a little clear what that actually means. And then as we had proposed no grass collected again we'll continue to discuss that. Uh right now um you're on a particular schedule, weekly schedule. Whenever we have a new schedule, you'll actually be able to to schedule feebased collection. So if you've got yard waste that you want to have collected, you actually can have that collected for a fee. Um one of the big asks that council had given us was to uh really have some teeth in the ordinance. Right now there's unlimited volumes of yard waste. We're picking up contractor waste. Um and so you ask for additional compliance measures and in your ordinance packet that you see um you've got uh those provisions in there. So uh if you've got any questions on the enforcement side, I'm sure that Chris will be happy to answer those questions. Um, but I know that you've got a lot of questions, so I'm happy to try to answer any that I can, especially in light of what you may

have heard tonight if you want anything specific. So, happy to answer any questions.

Sure. I'll I'll start by uh foring along a question. I heard a lot about GFL and Morrisville. I'm assuming you talked to them.

Absolutely. We know all about that.

What's the situation? Yeah. What's

uh situation is um they collect in rear loaders. They collect their entire operation leaves in bags. Uh we were told they would not do that for Apex. That's a small community. A lot of difference in in size. So we have reached out.

They would do yard waste collection for Apex. They would do yard waste collection but cart 95gallon carts only nothing on the ground no brush no anything no leaves so we're still having active discussions with them

so that is an option but it's not a full option and that's the challenge you know um they also don't have a place to take it right now they're taking Morrisville to ro to Raleigh city Raleigh uh Raleigh uh just went up from $45 a ton to $55 a ton.

So Raleigh is our our backup yard county.

What's that?

We pay Haret County.

Uh Har County is about 40 I believe something like that for just the tipping part.

And wasn't the wasn't the issue with Raleigh the capacity too?

That's right. In other words, we we're trying to get a guarantee. GFL does not have a guarantee with Raleigh. they would not issue one. Uh that's the biggest problem we've got is getting guaranteed disposal. So, um if that were to ever be a problem with with Raleigh and these places that have contracted yard waste that you that's what we want to prevent. We want guaranteed disposal and that's been the challenge.

But there are still discussions going on. Yes, we our position has not changed. We are always looking for opportunity. Um that being said, just want to remind council that um when we started this process, we looked at for guidance from our sustainability plan. I know y'all met Dr. Miller. Um we uh are actively promoting grass cycling. We honestly feel that's the best method. It takes grass out of the equation, but we've got a behavioral change to get over, but at this at the end of the day, um, leaving the grass in place is the most beneficial and it eliminates these problems that we're dealing with long term. We realize that it's not politically popular. Um, in fact, I don't know if it's posted yet, but our communications department is posting a video about grass cycling that I think will help inform the residents. We want to encourage that anyway to try to to follow our sustainable model and and to be a model, a location, but we realize that people have their habits and that's what they they want. The challenge is nothing's changed. We've got to get rid of it. You know, we've got to be able to collect it. The other thing I need to let council be aware of. We have two leaf acts running. We have six. We got a third one running today. $3,500 for grass in the springs of the clutch plate. You know, vacuum trucks weren't designed to do grass. And I shared some pictures with our manager. If he wants to share those with you, he can. Um, you heard tonight that vacuum is a wonderful thing. it. We're using the trucks not for what they've intended. You remember the plume of smoke and all that, but what happens is that grass gets behind the impeller

housing puts restrictions on the clutch and and the bearings and we're just really wearing these trucks out. So, I know last year we asked for relief back and it was deferred. Well, that truck is now just all but done and we've we've still got others down. So any delay in grass bi-weekly will help bi-weekly will help extend those trucks, but we cannot keep the equipment running doing the way we're doing now in the capital plan that we option two. You may remember we put a 10-year plan together and that's what we've been following. So I just need to be ask for your support. if we make any changes, we've got to look at the financial impacts of the current equipment and the way we're collecting. So hopefully we can get your assistance with that. But um nothing has changed on our side from any miraculous breakthroughs that that I can share. We always continue to look for opportunities. Uh but it is a real challenge in what we're dealing with here. So, um, a lot of the, uh, history and the data is there, uh, and we support what we've presented and I'm happy to bring you anything that changes, but as of right now, I don't have anything different that I can share with you, um, as far as new developments go. So, we're following the guidance that you provided us and we'll continue to provide that guidance. Um, while we, you know, try to go down the the path that you want us to go, I will say we're in budget season. We have staff that is anxious to know what direction we're headed in. So, you know, if we can get to some consensus on where we're going, that'll be a really good thing. So, they're happy to answer any questions. Yeah. Um,

you had an NC State and thank you for your presentation and I appreciate all the hard work you folks are doing. Um,

and I I agree with you. I mean, this is not um I understand behavior changes and and sometimes are necessary and I also am looking at again sometimes possibility of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Um, I've expressed my concerns a few times about neighborhoods um that are well established that have um again a 20 minute summer rain comes through and it's three or four days where you're not mowing or you're just going to end up with ruts in your grass in your Yeah. in your grass.

Um so the first question I have to do has to do with with grass and I was going to say you had the NC State professor or researcher

PhD from turf grass management.

Yeah. Um, but I had some um there was another NC State uh uh study that was cited talking about fescues and mold or rot that they face

um by laying that grass down. So, I feel like we've got expertise, but it's not um I don't Would you be able to respond to that? Do you familiar with that?

I would like to ask Brandon. Brandon uh worked closely with Dr. Miller and has a degree in turf grass. So, he could probably

forgive me. I was unable to fine

and we've had plenty of conversations. My goodness. We've

Yeah,

we were talking at Peakfest and you know when it's inside and in the rain. So, I really appreciate all you folks all the all your hard work. I just feel like we've got to answer some of these questions.

Absolutely. No, I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight. I know it's getting late and it's hot, but um as as John was saying, I do have a a bachelor's degree in turf grass science. Dr. Miller was uh one of my professors. He lives in Apex. Uh the video that John referred to earlier was a video of Dr. Biller and I at his house talking about all things grass cycling. And one of the things that we discussed was your question there. What do you do if it's wet and it's rain? So, uh couple options, but long story short is you

either mow before the rain comes

or

we can jump right to the fescue the rot or mold.

Yep. So, mowing when the grass is dry. So, if you need to wait till the grass dries out, raise your mower one or two notches so that when the grass is dry, it decomposes in a few days, uh, just due to the composition of a turf grass, blade of grass, and then mow it back down a notch to get back to your normal mowing height on your next mowing session.

I was going to say, I learned some things from your uh, presentation about only ch cutting a third of your your grass stock, but my question, are you familiar with this study?

Yeah, I I am. It's it it's a it's a fescue fungus, if you will, that happens whenever grass is matted down, it's wet. But if you wait to mow when grass is dried out, you won't have that problem of the of the wet grass being impacted.

Did the study account for that?

I'm sorry.

Did the study the NC State study account?

I'm not familiar with that NC NC State study that you're you're referring to, but grass, whether it's a warm season or a cool season grass can get fungi on it for sure.

Thank you. Long story short, mowing when it's when it's dry though eliminates that that concern.

Is this all questions for all the parts of this now? All right. Uh I'll ask another question which is um uh I'll stop. Let me let some of my colleagues

all right.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

I already asked my question. Tonight we heard um someone speak about Raleigh and then they went back. Is that

Raleigh? What now?

Did Raleigh try and then they said Raleigh tried it and then went back?

No, absolutely not. We we don't know where that came from. We called their director and uh he talked to the assistant director and no, they're they're moving forward. What's key in Raleigh? They are eliminating vacuum trucks. So they are all into containers.

Gota.

Thank you for I think it was confusing. They they tried bi-weekly, went back to weekly. Right.

The reason was was the eliminating of ACT trucks. They're going to try to the minute the le their education program be starting soon where the minute those leaves start falling, get them in your cart. Get them in your cart. Now, they also started with bags. So, they've still got the hangover from having compostable bags, but remember, they also own their own processing center, so they could handle the bag. So the bags has been another issue for people that want to try to do bags. You got to make sure your disposal site will accept bags and they really don't want them. So

if I can follow up, I I can you walk me through really quickly the process. I see the news release here from um June, I'm sorry, was updated July of 25 and it says that council agrees to expand yard waste collection. Weekly service will start in fall of 26. Um and it it talks about a um uh a restart. Can you talk about what that what what they

The restart is their street department or their transportation department did the leafax. Their solid waste department does trash and recycling. their council voted to uh I believe it was nine rear loaders and five ASLs and hiring I think 30 employees to replace what they were using in the transportation department and park the leafax. So the restart is that they're bringing the the fullon carts and eliminating leafax and that's starting in the fall.

Okay. Um my question is

you know the uh vacuum truck is for the sleeves right for the leaves

not for grass.

That's right.

Okay. And um and Rally is getting rid of their vacuum trucks.

Instead they are using the carts.

Okay. I mean cost uh wise which is I mean um which is more um I mean cheaper which which one is cheaper?

The carts are going to be cheaper because the goal is in carts they can use a side loader. Raleigh's dilemma is they've got the hold over from bags. I can tell you that uh uh the former director uh end goal was to hopefully get all containers, but it's a transition period. So, um I can't speak for what Raleigh's doing, but the goal is automation, one person driver, one arm, but as long as they've got bags, they'll have rear loaders and side loaders in their fleet. because some people will put out bags and carts, some people will just put out carts. So, they're going to have to work through that. Um, this we just talked to them two days ago and it's unknown for them too. Their volume, their their carts and the bags and everything will handle the volume that they see. The challenge I think you're going to see is if the resident does not get their yard waste out and they they wait till the end of the season, that's when you see all the volume. We we face that here. If we could get people the minute the leaves start falling to get that that material out, it'll fit in carts. In fact, we want to encourage people to put it in carts first, but inevitably people just let the leaves fall and put them out anytime they can. So, Raleigh will be a good experiment on trying to educate the residents to get the stuff in your cart every week, you know. So, we'll see. Um I mean do you have um a rough number

like if we do not do the cart uh use you know vacuum truck to you know serve the residents. Do you have a rough number how much I mean the difference? I don't. But that's the same status quo that we're in now and it is not working.

Just financially it's not working. Operationally, it's not working, which is why we're trying to get to a more automated state.

Still use back trucks for leaf collection though. That's

Yeah. Yeah. Your your leaf backs are perfect for that. In fact, um I remember council member Mafy at one of the work sessions that that came up. That's the when the leaves are down and you don't have any other co-mingled yard waste and the vac can do its job and the trucks are working right, you can get a lot of leaves up, but then you're full, you go off route to go, you know, empty out. Um whereas the truck will compact the leaves, a rear loader or a side loader will pack the leaves, the vacuum just places loose material. So you don't if you in middle of leaf season, you may not get down one street and you're full. So there's trade-offs and that truck has to stop, go dump, then come back. So um a as far as eliminating the leaf, uh I wouldn't recommend that right now. you know, um I would want to see how Raleigh's 100% containerization goes for leaves, but I will tell you Greensboro uh completely got rid of Leafax and they have a con they have residents can call a list of 10 vacuum companies. You know, we don't have vacuum companies here and there might be some, but that's what Greensboro did. They got completely out of leaf collection and they just do car collection.

Thank you.

So, there's two separate problems.

Yes.

Well, there's there's like five.

Yeah.

But in terms of tonight, there's two separate issues and we don't have to solve either of them tonight.

Right.

And just try to keep them straight. At least I'm trying to keep them straight in my head. There's like what do we put the stuff in?

Yep.

And then where do we take the stuff?

Yes.

But that's not even

in the amendment. The amendment one is just the enforcement, the rules, right? So we don't we're not even talking about containerization,

right? That's later on.

That's a different ordinance actually. Yeah.

So we have two amendments here. One is you know talking about the strengthening the enforcements and setting some clarifications on yard waste collection.

Yes.

In general. And then the second one is specific around the elimination of grass uh pickup which the mayor earlier indicated uh and and I think the town manager confirmed that we are in conversations with a potential provider and we need a little bit more time to let those negotiations flow through.

So kind of bringing it back to what's actually in front of us for consideration and voting tonight is those two issues.

That's correct. Yes. That's what we really need the support on is to get the ordinances adopted. The bi-weekly, the limbs, contractor waste, the enforcement is super important. That's what has been a challenge for the town for a long time. So, that would be ideal to get that approved tonight.

Thank you. We do now.

Are we go to Is there public?

Huh?

So,

have another comments. You give any comments?

I'm I'm done with my comments.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, so we feel we're not making a premature decision.

I absolutely don't. I think it I think

we've run the clock to the end, especially equipment wise, too. I mean, we're going to have to have another discussion on two trucks running this town to try to keep the town. It's not working. So,

we we we've kind of used your timeline and capital expenses to try to get us over the hump, but uh but our thoughts were were grass would be ending. So, that volume wouldn't be there starting next grass season. Our goal was to get this last little bit of grass through August, get the leaves, and then we start going to the zone collection and the bi-weekly to try to extend the life of these leaf acts. If that changes, then we we got a problem to try to solve. So,

all right, let's um decision here.

Uh okay.

Oh, we

No. Well, I was going to um some of the feedback that I've gotten has to do specifically with the historic uh district or the small character overlay district and the folks there. Um I understand that it's not um a particularly uh um let me put it this way. I know uh that I've spoken with folks who are concerned about um not only having decades or even century plus old uh deciduous trees that process I mean that scenario is complicated by the fact that there's parking downtown um you know perhaps even near the middle school perhaps even near the uh the business district um and then during festivals and things like that. Obviously, we have considerable uh number of folks. Um what I'd like to bring to the discussion is the possibility that we're able to um talk about how to address that so that those folks aren't facing um additional fees

if there's a way to exempt um that district. And the again, the reason why I say that is because you have a few things. You have the decidu decades old deciduous trees combined with uh necessary parking combined with older folks oftentimes on a fixed income who are now saying, "Hey, I'm not going to pay the fee." So, it looks like I'm simply going to have to drag my branches out. And somebody did the ma the back of the napkin math for me. and they said that they'll be dragging those um uh uh tree branches out to the set um amount of space that they're allotted for 36 weeks. So that's obviously um over half the year. And so my concern is is that we're going to have these um parking spots consistently blocked due to folks who are unable to um or either unwilling or unable to pay that additional fee when you know the ironically the thing that we would need them to do in order to be in better position would be to uh uh heavily pair back those trees which is not what we want to see in our downtown.

Right. Um, all I can really say to that is, you know, there are some areas that that are going to have more debris just from the maturity of it. Trying to get equity though, you got some folks that are paying a fee that don't have that. So, we're trying to

trying to balance equity. Right. Right. So,

which is not in a regular suburban culde-sac.

Right. But but we also have data of two years of data of actual pile sizes. Yeah. At each location. And I don't recall seeing any of that data. And it'll be in your packet. So I'll need to go back and review it. I don't see any of our actual data that's got repeat offenders of large piles at any one address. So

have people reached out and said, "I'm guilty."

Yeah. We've got the data in your packet. I mean, we can go back and look, but I don't think we had a lot of excess pile sizes. I think four or five, if I remember right, was where we had the same location that had pile sizes greater than two cubic yards, which means they wouldn't be charged if they're under two cubic yards.

Well, these people are significantly over it.

I I think so. I I I look at the data. That was one thing that Council Member Ziggman really made us dive into the data. and we did. And so we've got the data in your packet. I'm sorry I don't have it tonight. My honest answer, I don't see that as a problem because we didn't see it in the two years of study or the year of study for pile sizes less than one greater than one. So while they may say that now what they will need to do is have it have it ready for us, you know, because we have to to collect it. So it'll need to be uh six foot long. And that's that our ordinance now is eight. So they would still need to prepare their pile size according to the ordinance and that's in effect now. It's just we're shortening it a little bit so it'll fit in the rear loader.

Okay. Real quick before we move on because I do want to make another statement, but as with last meeting, we we're getting close to

getting excited. Did Did Alan tell you or did you not?

I remember myself. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead.

Man, I was going to jump in there and tell you uh I I make a motion to fix the time to adjourn at 11:30. Oh man.

Sorry.

All right,

we got more items. Sit here till

It doesn't mean we have to sit at 11:30. It's the It's the end.

All right, we got a motion in a second. Is a second?

Yeah, sir.

Okay. All right. All in favor say I. I. Motion carries. Okay. Did you have more?

It's when people send me photos and they're like, "This is what I'm dealing with or this is what I was dealing with last fall." Um I I think that's

that's all the evidence I need

to say that we have a concern and especially when I look at uh the

necessary parking and like I said I'm I'm thinking right there on um on Mason and

uh yeah it's a concern. concern will

so we did add a clause where practicable um like if you look at 136G for example that clause where pract practicable for yardway shall not be blown placed or allowed to be placed on travel lanes parking spaces sidewalks curb ramps so for those properties where their entire frontage has parking or you know whatever it may be some people in culde-sacs they have very small frontage

for what what um where is this 136G

136. Thank you.

So,

thank you.

So, the regard waste would be allowed in a parking space if I'm understanding the hypothetical correctly. If it was the only if if their entire frontage was parking spaces, it would be allowed.

Okay.

okay, this is helpful, I think.

Yes, sir. Um, maybe it's getting late, but like you said 36 weeks at two cubic yards a week would be 72 cubic yards. And I think that would fill up half this room.

Two cubic yards is a is a standard pickup truck bed full. Yeah.

From top to bottom. That's a lot of material.

Yeah.

I mean, it's it's like 72 sounds like it'd be this room, right? Maybe here over. Like that's a that's a tremendous amount.

I couldn't even prune everything on my property and generate that much in them.

Yeah. This is I mean I'm reading from one right now or uh over Yeah. Um if every other week. Yeah. So this is um magnolia leaves um and and branches um and they're talking about it filling up several parking spots worth of space. Okay.

I mean, again,

we have some big trees. I mean, there's

Yeah, that that if they're doing it and they've got that much volume every week or every two weeks or whatever it is, that surprises me from what I see.

It's not every week. It's a We don't need to belabor the point. Got it. Thank you.

All right. Very good.

All right. So we we're moving toward we got two separate things and u can we just get a decision on

I'll make a motion to approve amendment number one

second

motion second. Any further discussion?

All right hearing none. All in favor say I.

I.

Any oppose?

No.

All right. So pass.

I'll make a motion to continue to second amendments to the meeting of I think you

Yeah, there's no requirement that you continue that. It's not a public hearing with the notice requirements.

So, it can just be brought back at a later date when everybody has their information.

Continue the negotiations and let us know.

Yeah. And I will say that I mean I I really appreciate the work, but the community members, all the emails we're getting, there's a tremendous concern. So, I hope the negotiations do work out to a healthy solution for everybody. So, with

there's challenges. there's challenges around it. I do think that the video that Dr. Miller and I put together will be vastly educational for folks. Um I think that a lot of people are just unaware of the benefits of leaving it not only in your lawn, but if you have a compost bin or a garden bed or any of your landscaping beds, spreading the clippings there um reduces your water and supplies nutrients and fertilizer, etc. Um, I would just really kind of question like why do folks want to keep grass clipping that's being collected when you have all these environmental benefits and you're reducing your costs that you're spending as a homeowner as well.

And I and I I hear you loud and clear. I just just trying to be responsive to the members of the community. Yeah.

All right. Appreciate.

Well, I wanted to thank y'all for the

support.

Thank you for the opportunity. um this has been going on and you know we're um we're a little bit of a disadvantage by not having the end source of where to go and where to take it. So we're at the mercy of others and then we're at the mercy of how we collect. So I want to thank you for getting us this first step. I think it's monumental. Uh our goal is to take care of our residents the most efficient way possible, most less expensive. Uh and try to find that happy man. So thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Appreciate the job y'all doing. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Lots of work.

Yeah.

All right. Is there a motion to go into close session?

Motion to go into close session.

All right.

I think we move.

Second. Council member move.

We move one of them. We still got one more.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

I'll second.

All right. Gab council member move, but I'll give it to you.

I

I wrote down.

Sure.

All in favor say I.

I. All right. Motion carried.

She said no. I got it.

We need a motion to adjurnn though. Fix time to 12:30. Okay.

All right. Sounds good.

All right. We're back in session. Mayor Pro Tim,

mayor. Um I move adoption of this resolution authorizing domain proceedings related to a traffic signal project along old US1 highway for the improvement of the apex street system.

All right. Motion in favor second.

Second.

Second. Council member move. All in favor say I.

I. Any opposed? All right. Motion carries. Any other

say any other business? Go ahead.

Motion to adjurnn.

All right. Have a motion to adjurnn. Second.

All in favor say I. I.

All right. We're adjourned. Got my second.