Planning Board Meeting

means the world to the families in Apex who are navigating the deep complexities of memory memory loss and dementia. My name is Jill Kazowski. I'm here with Caitlyn Masters and we're the co-founders of Sage Crossing. Alzheimer's and related dementias are not just medical diagnosis. They are journeys that challenge entire families and they require immense emotional, physical, and community support. That is exactly why we are so passionate about the work we are doing at Sage Crossing. Our mission is to ensure that no one in Apex has to walk this path alone. By providing dedicated care, specialized resources, and a safe, vibrant environment, we aim to preserve dignity and bring hope to our residents and their loved ones right here in our hometown. This proclamation helps pull this vital conversation out of the shadows, reducing stigma and reminding local families that their community stands firmly behind them. We know that building a dementia friendly community takes a village and tonight Caitlyn and I are incredibly moved by those who have come out to support us. This town proclamation directly fuels our long-term commitment to establish a permanent inclusive senior enrichment center right here in Apex. So, thank you again, mayor and council, for leading the way and keeping Apex the peak of good living for residents of all ages and all stages of health. Thank you. [applause] All right. Thank you again. Our second

proclamation will be June 10th, 2026. Councilman Gray will kick off this proclamation.

Thank you, Mayor. It's a pleasure to be able to kick off the proclamation for Junth, 2026. Whereas in 1776, the United States declared its freedom from Britain. But for more than 89 more years, millions of black Americans remained enslaved and unable to reap the benefits of the promise of that so-called freedom. And whereas on January 1st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure to suppress rebellion, declaring enslaved persons in Confederate States free and setting in motion the end of slavery. And on June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger announced General Order number three in Texas, the last Confederate States to abolish slavery, a pivotal moment in the long journey toward the full abolishment of slavery in America. And whereas Junth, formerly known as Junth National Independence Day, is the oldest celebration of the abolishment of slavery in the United States. And while slavery was not legally abolished until the ratification of the 13th amendment on December 6th, 1865, Junth stands as an enduring holiday through which Americans have long commemorated that freedom. And

whereas 161 years after enslaved individuals were freed, civil rights and equality issues persist for black Americans. And the town of Apex is committed to leading the way in continue to improve fairness and equality. And

whereas the town of Apex is proud to host our annual Junth in the Peak event organized by the Apex Junth Festival Committee beginning at 100 p.m. on Saturday, June 20th at Town Hall campus featuring live music, food, a kids zone, the Apex Black History exhibit, and much more. Learn more at apexjunth.com.

Now therefore, I Jacqu K. Gilbert, mayor of Apex, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim June 19th, 2026, Junth in the town of Apex. [applause] [cheering] And I encourage all residents to join in the celebration of Junth and the true promise of freedom that it brings and continue to love and support all people in our community. Receiving the proclamation is guy named TJ Evans, um Jarvis Woodburn, Selena Vaugh, Alexis Kennedy, Raa Mills, and Sra Sinatra Jones. Thank you. All right. [applause] You guys being Okay,

sounds good. He wants to show he's [laughter]

Yeah, sure. Sure. Why not? [clears throat] I'm good. All right, good evening. If you've ever paid attention to the Junth flag, you'll notice that it mirrors the American flag. And that was intentional by the originator Ben Hayith in 1997. He wanted to paint a message, a message that said, "African-American slaves and their descendants have always been American." I want us to sit with that for a minute. African-American slaves and their descendants have always been American. And that's what this holiday is about. It's not a holiday for black people. It's a holiday for Americans, for people who live in America, who love America, and for people who call American home. And so, I wanted to share that message and I wanted to encourage everyone to come check us out. We have some amazing things in store. And I want to urge you as well as we're celebrating 250 years of this beautiful country. I hope that you also think about the emancipation that is ingrained into the fabric of our beautiful country as well. And as this young lady said so beautifully, we're simply a better place when we find a way to work together. So that's the message to our festival. We encourage all of you to come and take a seat at the table. There are so many cool things in store. I could sit here for about 10 minutes and tell you all about them, but I can guarantee my son is at home tearing the house up. So, I got to get home. So, check us out apexjun.com. As I mentioned, we would love to have you in store. It's June 20th from 1 to 8:00 p.m. Town Hall campus. I want to thank my wonderful committee who are here. Jarvis Woodburn, Selena Vaughn, soon to be Woodburn, Senator Jones, Alexis Kennedy. We also have some members who couldn't make it today. Will Heyman, Donovan Bethe, I'm thinking of my good friend AB as well who couldn't

make it. Uh Jana Carly as well. And then my beautiful wife of course who is who is at home. And so also thank you to town staff Lisa. I'm thinking about Megan as well. And I think about um also Ellison who I thought I saw on here. There you are. Thank you Ellison. So thank you guys very much. God bless. [applause] ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU SO MUCH. OUR NEXT PROCLAMATION IS Pollinator Week 2026, Monday, June 22nd through Sunday, June 28th. Mayor Pro Tim Whereas pollinators serve a vital purpose in their environment by helping 90% of the world's flowering species reproduce and include species such as bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, moths, beetles, and some birds, bats, and small mammals. And [clears throat] whereas the presence of pollinator species is indicative of thriving communities with healthy air, water, soil, food supply, and ecosystems. Whereas National Pollinator Week has been recognized since 2007 in an effort to highlight the importance of native pollinators and increase awareness about the need to protect them. End. Whereas the town of Apex continues to support pollinator efforts through participation in the mayor's monarch pledge and with continued certification as a B city USA town since 2020. hand.

Whereas the parks, recreation and cultural resources department is proud to present their third annual pollinator week event. An afternoon in the garden on June 27th at the Apex Nature Park with the goal of educating the public on the importance of supporting native pollinators. Now therefore, I Jacqu K. Gilbert, mayor of Apex, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim the week of June 22nd through June 28, 2026, Apex Pollinator Week in the town of Apex and encourage residents to show support to the thousands of pollinators that help keep our Apex environment so healthy and beautiful. I would like to invite up Ellison Lambert, volunteer coordinator with the town of Apex. Sarah Beth Vzy, Apex High School teacher. Jack Gaddy, Apex High School horiculture student, and Llaya Tindle, Apex High School horiculture student. Please come up and accept the proclamation. [applause]

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. [laughter]

All right, this one's for you. Hi everyone. Um I'm Sarah Beth Basy. I am the horiculture teacher over at Apex

High School. Um, we had the really unique opportunity of being involved um with a pollinator garden um with a the town of Apex. Um so Ellison actually reached out to me and Rupert landscaping. So we were able to put together um a pollinator landscape that is in the circle of the town hall area. If you get the chance to go look at it, um it was completely designed by students using the knowledge that they learned in class. Laya was one of the designers along with two other students. And then they were able to draw it, design it, and then install it, which was really a unique opportunity. It enforces everything we talk about in class between helping pollinators, learning about plants, um, irrigation, but also getting out in the community and serving others. So, thank you so much for the opportunity to help with that. [applause] Push out the chair. seems kind of absorb.

All right. Thank you so much. We'll go ahead and move on the agenda. We have presentation four, automated license plate reader, ALPR program review and update. Great Chief Ryan Johansson. Thanks for being here. It's a pleasure, Mr. Mayor. Thanks very much for having me and thanks for giving me a little bit of time in an evening where I know we are talking about uh budget, which is obviously the most important item on the agenda tonight, but y'all have asked for another update on the ALPR program that

we run here in Apex. And that's why I'm here before you this evening. Uh for those who do not know me, my name is Ryan Johansson, and I have the distinct pleasure of serving as the police chief here in the town of Apex. Um I'm going to dive right in so we can try to kind of work through this. A lot of this for you all will certainly be review, but I think that there's a number of members of the public who are still asking a lot of questions about what ALPR is and how it works. And so I'm going to try to give a little bit of a summary before we get into some data points uh tonight. ALPR stands for automated license plate reader. Essentially, this is a network for us of stationary cameras. They're fixed, meaning that they cannot be remotely uh rotated or manipulated by remote control. They point in a particular direction and stay that way unless we manually manually move them for some reason. Uh they are aimed into traffic lanes with the sole purpose of capturing rear license plate images as vehicles pass by in the public rideway. Uh much like those that you see on toll roads, you also see these in use in parking lots. Uh it's just simply a ma a way of capturing license plates as vehicles pass by. Um it takes photos of the rear of vehicles. Again, these vehicles are in plain view and in the public rideway. And it does not photograph occupants. uh it is looking at the back of vehicles only the way they're positioned to take photos. It then reads and determines license plate numbers from those photos. This is of value to law enforcement for a number of reasons. Namely, that it will automatically notify the Apex Police Department if one of those vehicles has been previously reported stolen. Uh if it is a crime vehicle with stop orders in a state database, if it has been recently associated with some criminal activity uh in a neighboring jurisdiction or our own. uh if it's associated with a missing person or an amber or silver alert. If it's part of an all points bulletin, essentially if a car drives by one of these cameras and the camera captures the license plate and it needs some sort of law enforcement intervention or action, it is immediately notifying the ondue police officers via cell phone and our dispatch center via computer letting them know this vehicle is here in Apex and you should probably be paying it some attention. Uh it does also analyze

vehicle components from the rear which is of value to us when a vehicle does not have a license plate or when a license plate has been covered or obstructed as is often the case when vehicles are being used in the commission of crimes. So it is able to analyze tail lights and other vehicle features to tell us even if there is no license plate usually a year a make a model and certainly a color on a vehicle which can help with suspect leads in the event that we've had some kind of crime occur and we don't have a license plate to work with. uh it will store these images for 30 days in a database that we control and own and that database is then searchable by police investigators. So we can look for license plates in that database if they have been captured within the last 30 days. I will talk a little bit more about that as we press on. So what does an alert look like? This screenshot you see here is an actual screenshot of an alert that would come to an officer's phone or to a computer in the event that there was a plate that had been entered into the system that passed and was captured by one of our vehicles. So you can see it gives a picture of the rear of the vehicle. It then shows the officer a zoomedin reference of that plate so that they can confirm that the plate on the vehicle that was captured in the photo actually matches what the system thought the plate was. So they look at what the system read the plate to be, what the actual picture of the plate shows, confirm that it's valid, and then this would also come with some description of what the alert was for. Is this a stolen vehicle? Is it associated with missing person? Why are you getting the alert? In addition, it will give them the time, the time and the location of this alert, obviously, so that they can follow up and do something with it. Again, this is only for vehicles that are in a law enforcement database for a stop. That's when the alert occurs. The remainder of the vehicles are just passing through. Uh images are being captured of those license plates, but they're just going into the database and not resulting in any kind of an alert to law enforcement. Again, [clears throat] we have a policy as well that the the officer has to confirm that the not only the plate was correctly read, but that the hit itself is valid, which they'll do through dispatch communications. Confirm that if the vehicle was reported stolen, is it still reported stolen in the system? Is there any kind of a glitch in timing between what the system

is reporting and what is actually in the state database? All of this occurs and as a matter of policy must be done before any enforcement action can be taken. Then you have the the ALPR database which I spoke about these plates being stored for 30 days and how that works. So again the the images are stored for 30 days in this database. The state law does allow up to 90 days of retention of those plates. Uh we have limited it to 30 proactively. That has long been my policy even in having the system in my prior jurisdiction. Um I base that largely on findings of the courts. When the Supreme Court has taken a look at these systems, they have um somewhat unofficially used this 30-day mark as the point at which they think 30 days or less, we're probably not getting into what they would term mass surveillance because it's just not a long enough track record in most cases for law enforcement to develop a pattern of behavior with license plate reads over 30 days. If they're cycling out every 30 days, uh the the court has kind of used that benchmark. And so in attempting to weigh the public safety benefits of a system like this in my opinion as your chief with the safe with the privacy concerns that get raised around flock this 30 days is where we land with our system. So they are purged after 30 days. Uh when a vehicle is associated with a crime an investigator can go search for that vehicle within the database. That's essentially the core value of the database. So, let's presume that we have a series of vehicle break-ins tonight and we have a resident who says, "Hey, I saw a vehicle in the area. Didn't like it looked like it belonged here and it took off as the police arrived and here's its license plate." The officers can go in, investigator can go into this database, search for that license plate and see if it hit any of our flock cameras here within uh Apex can also check and see if it hit any of the ALPR cameras that are within that larger network. And that will then give them something to kind of work on in terms of time frame for the crime, in terms of location of ingress and egress of our suspects. It gives them something to use in an investigation. Whereas typically not a whole lot without a system like this you can do with just that license plate number besides determine who owns the vehicle. So when they go in to do these searches, uh our policy requires that

they enter a specific case number for the search. So it has to be associated with a specific investigation. They can't just go into the system and start searching for plates randomly. It also requires they provide a specific offense type. So if you're putting the case number, what kind of crime is this you're investigating? Is this a robbery? Is this a flee to elude from the police? Is it a kidnapping case? Is it a missing person case? These are mandatory fields that must be entered before they can conduct any search in the system. And then additionally, a plain text reason so that we can go back any time in the future and look at an audit and say, we had a search that occurred that we didn't really like. let's go find out why it occurred and attempt to match it up with cases and determine if it was legitimate uh and conducted for law enforcement purposes. Uh they can look for a plate. They can look for a make model in color. So if we don't know a plate, they can go look and say, "I'd like to see all of the white Ford Explorers that passed by this camera during this time frame while investigating a crime." Oftentimes we get vehicle descriptions from our witnesses and not actually license plates. Uh so it can also search under those uh parameters. It cannot search for a person. There is no place in the field to look for a person's name and look for any times that their vehicles crossed a certain camera. It cannot search for an address. It cannot search for any other personal identifying information. License plates is what we're dealing with here. Uh and again, those images are automatically purged after 30 days. The screenshot you see here is an actual screenshot from within the database of what an investigator sees if they're going online to start searching through our database for potential license plate reads. Uh we own and control the images. So the images are maintained in a database. their hours. Um, in fact, I can tell you from past experience that I had been involved in a case in which a subpoena was served to the vendor in my prior jurisdiction looking for data. This was coming from a federal entity. So, you have a federal entity asking for license plate reader data they otherwise don't have access to. And the vendor was not able to provide that pursuant to the subpoena because they're not the custodian of records. That subpoena was then delivered to my police department and it is up to us to deliver on the subpoena because the records are ours or to file a motion to quash or go through whatever process we want to in order to not release that data. But know that the

data per the agreement with our vendor is ours and we control it. Uh the data sharing is our discretion. So, one of the key values to me as a police officer of this system is that the data is shared with other police law enforcement agencies and I understand that this is one of the primary areas that creates privacy concerns with folks. But, but please hearken back to, you know, just a decade or two decades or so ago with the 911 report and we had a very robust report that came out of about all the things police departments, fire departments, EMS needed to do better in the future. And one of the key takeaways is we needed to share information with each other. We have historically been bad at that. And while I understand the concerns here, please know that crime knows no boundaries and does not pay attention to town limits, does not pay attention to where the laws are different. And if we're not talking to neighboring jurisdictions, especially in an area that has become largely urban sprawl, we will be completely unaware of things that are going on in neighboring jurisdictions that affect ours. Plain and simple. Because shockingly enough, when Carrie has a series of motor vehicle breakins, there's a pretty good chance that's coming to Apex or it was here before it was in Carrie. And so the need to share data and talk is a fundamental premise of modern law enforcement. We are attempting to be much better about that. Certainly, it creates concerns because you have a measure of control as an elected body over your police department and not necessarily over any others in what they do. And so we have to always have measures in place to make sure that we're sort of keeping that sharing in check. But please know that it is a core tenant of modern policing and something that we just need to do plain and simple. So we do share our database reads with other law enforcement agencies, police departments, sheriff's offices, law enforcement agencies only. No private sharing, no sharing with federal agencies. I will touch a little bit on that in a moment because there was a little bit of a snafu there for a moment. Um, but we require the same entries to search the database by other departments as we would require here. They've got to enter a case number. They've got to enter a criminal offense code. And it's got to be auditable so that anytime in the future, we could go look and see why was this search conducted. Now, of course, you've heard

me mention before it was taken a bit out of context when I was requit affairs investigation against a police officer in another state because they've abused the system and used it improperly. I will have to trust that their policies and procedures will have accountability as a modern police department as well and that they will do that on their end. But of course, if there's misuse outside of our department, full disclosure, I do have very limited control over that beyond auditing and catching it in the first place and reporting it if I see it. So again, each request for sharing is approved by the Apex Police Department. If they want to see our data, they've got to put a request through to us that that we have a single point of contact for approving those and it is a civilian personnel and that process is overseen by our office of professional standards which is also civilian personnel. So I will get to some mischaracterizations of things that have been said in the past in these presentations. But one of those is that this is simply the police policing the police. Well, long before I got here, you all appointed a civilian office of professional standards. That office oversees all complaints and allegations of misconduct against police officers and conducts those investigations and that's who's overseeing this program as well. That's who the audits get delivered to. So there is a measure of civilian oversight within the police department for this process. Uh it does also require a flock data sharing. So no one gets data without agreeing to play by the same rules. Again, only so much teeth for me as the chief outside of my department, but it's there nonetheless. Another thing that has been very public lately and complained about is the volume of agencies we're sharing with. It's somewhere over a thousand police agencies at this point that we're sharing with. All I would simply say is that I I don't see the volume as the concern. If the sharing is valid and they're a valid law enforcement agency that is backgrounding their employees and playing by the right rules, the more broadly we're sharing, the more appropriate. But I'm certainly happy to take guidance and direction from council as to your sentiment on that. Uh federal agencies are now automatically excluded. This is a place where I want to spend a moment because there was some recent uh information out in the public about us sharing with two

federal agencies and this is true. This did happen. Uh what happened is that these share requests came in to our civilian operator. One of them was from the United States Postal Inspector's Office. The other was from a uh militarybased military police department. And the civilian just didn't immediately recognize those as federal entities. It wasn't as immediately obvious as FBI, CIA, ICE. And so they approved them, but the audit systems that are in place worked. And so I receive a monthly notification about all of our shares. It's suddenly said two instead of zero in the federal category. Obviously concerning for me. So I'm able to go into the system myself, immediately cancel those sharing agreements, and have since queued up in working directly with our vendor the ability to block all federal entities from even being able to request sharing our data. So technically this mistake should never happen again because if they're a federal designated entity, they cannot even ask to share the data to result in this mistake of us approving it erroneously. But that's your explanation for what it's worth of those two federal shares. And I do certainly apologize for the transgression, but there is an explanation. And I would argue that the [clears throat] systems we have in place worked. So what the AOPR program is not is important. It is not facial recognition. It is not widespread person surveillance. not only my words but the words of the Supreme Court. It is not tied to personal identifying information. It does not generate information for for people in the system. Excuse me. [clears throat] It is not used for traffic enforcement and it is not used for non-law enforcement purposes. So this data is not shared privately uh with any entities that would use it for marketing or other purposes. This is for law enforcement only. So why I would argue AOPR is important for public safety and Apex. First is crime prevention. And I I know that there's going to be a a a large request for more and more data surrounding backing these claims. And I'm going to hopefully put some context as to just how long this has been in operation and why some of those data points will not be coming for some period additionally. But know that there is no question as you look at these programs deployed

throughout the United States for much longer than they've been here in Apex that they have a positive impact on preventing crime. First of all, it is an early warning system. I'm going to give you specific examples this evening here in Apex of times where this early warning system has resulted in police intervention and what otherwise almost certainly would have been criminal conduct within our jurisdiction. So these are vehicles we would have no clue are here without a system like this plain and simple. So if a crew comes in from out of town in a stolen vehicle planning to break into a bunch of houses or vehicles in Apex and that pl that car is stolen, like I said, this system if it passes a camera will tell us that and we can do something about it rather than receiving your call in the morning when you go out to your car and realize it's been broken into and everything's been stolen out of it. So this notice of the presence of victim of criminals before they can create victimization is very very important to us. And quite frankly, with 20 plus years of law enforcement experience, these technological tools are rare. It is very rare to come across something that presents this kind of promise in preventing crime. We are typically reactionary in responding after the fact. And this gives us the opportunity to not always be reactionary. Uh this is this is very very good for us in terms of criminals, but also in terms of missing persons and known safety concerns. I can give you examples from my prior jurisdiction where people threaten mass shootings and they were being watched by the FBI and then they're out of pocket and the FBI can't find them, but the jurisdiction they're planning to come shoot up is where I work as the police chief and I'm able to enter that plate into my system and know when that car comes into my jurisdiction before it arrives at where that shooting might occur. Two such instances at YouTube's international headquarters in San Bruno during my time there. It's also an excellent crime deterrent. Criminals talk, plain and simple. They have pretty robust communication networks. And when they know that we have tools like drones and license plate readers and dogs and all these investigative tools and that we will get after crime in our jurisdiction, they tend to choose to go somewhere else, which quite frankly is a big part of our job to try to keep people here from becoming victims. They also serve a huge role in missing and endangered persons. We had a presentation tonight and a proclamation

for uh dealing with folks who have memory issues and Alzheimer's and we get more and more alerts every year now regarding people who wander away from facilities or from family and are not able to be located and many times they're driving which raises a number of concerns and those plates can be entered into the system so that it's not just cops driving around hoping to find it but we can know that if it passes any one of these cameras we'll be able to deal with it. Um criminal investigations is a huge component here which is where the database comes in. So nationally, a little more than 70% of crimes other than domestics in the household involve the use of a motor vehicle, which means the motor vehicle is key evidence in 70% of cases that are non-domemestic. That's pretty important because evidence is what a modern jury demands of a police department if it wants to prosecute a crime. Plain and simple. And in Apex, this number is closer to 80. Because as you'll find in some of the updates I'll give you this evening, almost all of our crime outside of the household is not committed by Apex residents. It is committed by people from other jurisdictions coming to Apex and they have to get here somehow. And more often than not, it's in a car. And so having a license plate in a large majority of those cases is the number one piece of evidence an investigator is going to use if you expect any kind of justice when you've been a victim of crime. It's the first place they're going to go. And so the license plate reader gives us invaluable evidence in that respect. This is especially [clears throat] valuable for crime during light traffic times. So, if you're trying to determine a vehicle that crossed a major intersection in Raleigh at rush hour, that's an awful lot of vehicle reads to work through. But frequently here, we have break-ins that occur at 2 3 in the morning when frankly we're a bedroom community. There aren't a lot of cars on the road. So, just looking at the cameras generally at that point will often reveal suspect leads that we can work on in terms of who might have committed those crimes. So, I just argue there that it's an even more valuable tool in Apex and in some other jurisdictions. And finally, connecting one crime to others. the if you've ever worked in investigations, one of the things you work so hard to do is that you may solve a crime. There's a small percentage where you're fortunate enough to have a good suspect lead to get all the pieces together and solve a crime.

And you can be pretty certain this is not the first rodeo for that that individual group of individuals, but proving that is a whole other issue. So we have had dozens of cases where for example one of our retail locations gets heavily has a big theft usually by an organiza organized retail theft ring and then we can actually go back working with other jurisdictions and find out well within this same time frame what other stores did they visit and oftentimes connect those visits to other crimes within those stores and not only solve the crime but in many cases return huge amounts of property which is something again without this technology we're not likely to be able to do. So, what does the current program look like in Apex? And this is where I think I need to start to clear up some things that have been uh misconstrued in the past. So, the first cameras were in use in October of 2025. Okay. Alerts were not enabled in the system until December of 2025. So, we currently have less than six months or so of full use of this system. So, yes, of course, there is a plan to bring you robust data about what this is doing to crime rates and what this is kind of doing across the board to the policing landscape here. This all occurred, by the way, long before my arrival. So, just to be clear, any assertion that that uh I am in the pocket of our vendor and I am just all about these cameras and this vendor coming in, this contract was signed in 2023 before I was fortunate enough to be your police chief. I inherited this. Now, I have a lot of experience working in this space in California before I came here. So, I'm happy to be there and I know the value of the system. But the way the system was pitched initially was to do a fullear pilot so that we could look at a long enough period of time to give you concrete data to evaluate whether or not this program was in the best interest of the residents of Apex. So spoiler alert, what I'm essentially asking you all for this evening is to grant that and let us get through January and bring back concrete data and we will of course abide by whatever decisions this body makes. That's our job. So we currently have seven installed cameras. Seven installed cameras. This is in my view just on my past experience not not

even a pilot given the size of our jurisdiction. My prior jurisdiction is about seven square miles 55 cameras not even close to one of the the larger in terms of use of a network like this. We are 28 square miles in change with seven. So again I would just say we took a very I should say y'all took because before I got here a very measured approach to this thing to try to look at what it's doing without putting cameras literally everywhere. Uh, I think the recommendation from our vendor when we sat down and looked at, okay, if we were to go full boore with this program was close to 100 cameras. So, we're not even at 10% of that as we're kind of trying to roll out and test what's going on here. These are relatively stationary, so they can be moved, but you have to go out and unmount them and go put them in another location and realign them. They're not as simple as uh just moving them around at will. And we've not moved but one of them since we started, and it was simply because that one was not getting valid plate reads from its location. All of them cover public streets and vehicles traveling in public view. We do not have any cameras on private property. We don't have any cameras pointing at private property. These are all vehicles that are in public view where an officer would be completely within their rights to pull up behind it and run its license plate through a database that's going to give a lot more data than Flock is. So, this is a much simpler run in a license plate reader system. Um, and the vehicles are in the same place where we'd have the right to do that as well. Uh, none of these cameras are currently on DOT roadways. This is specifically relevant because uh DOT established a pilot program to test these on their roadways. You've probably seen in the news that they are requesting to expand that program now uh under the same assertions I'm making this evening that it's successful and that they think expanding it will make communities safer. So I put that here to make it clear that uh cameras from Apex or not will be in the town of Apex to read license plates. Uh placement of these cameras has been based on crime data. I I hope that you all can pick up on the fact that my interest is really the same as yours. We may occasionally represent different perspectives. We want the community to be safe. I have no desire to put these cameras anywhere other than where they will help us solve the most amount of crime possible. I do not have the time

or the bandwidth, nor does my staff to be tracking people for no reason or going into this system when we don't have a viable reason to do so. The database is there for us to capture criminals. That's what we're using it for. We do also have three flex cameras. Those are undeployed. The contract that was originally signed called for seven regular cameras fixed and three flex. I don't really see the value of flex beyond special event placement and just one of those would be perfectly adequate for most of those. Um so we're in the process of trying to reduce that back to just two uh of these flex cameras so that we could have eight installed uh fully functioning cameras. I do not disclose locations of these cameras for what I would think are obvious reasons, although uh many people have gotten out ahead of me on social media and decided to release them anyway. So what the program currently looks like, we have about 60,000 vehicle reads per day um on average. So about 60,000 images being captured or distinct plate images being captured per day. That has resulted in over 1700 official hot list hits. It's important to put that in perspective there. Of course, there are going to be some measure of misreads. The current misread percentage in in the system we're using vasolates between 3 and 5%. But 1,700 times in 6 months, a crime vehicle, a stolen car or a vehicle known to be involved in criminal activity or a vehicle involved with the missing person has been driving through Apex and passed one of only seven cameras, resulting in an alert to your police department. Now, I do not say this because I want to scare the residents of Apex. This is an exceedingly safe community due in large part to just the nature of the people who live here and the police department and the work they did long before I got here. But there are criminals here and our job is to try to intervene in the activities of those criminals before they would make victims out of Apex residents. That's what the system is being used for. In those hits, you have,00 protection order hits. This is particularly concerning because

this is license plates of vehicles where someone has been restrained. usually due to domestic violence, but there's a protective order on file with the court and they have now come in within range of the residents or the person they are restrained from being in contact with and it is alerting our officers to let them know that's happening. So, if you or someone you love had just been the victim of a significant domestic violence, had gone through the trouble going to court and getting a domestic violence protective order and then that suspect had decided that they were going to go victimize you or that person again, I would certainly think you would love for the Apex Police Department to know that's happening before you have to call 911. Again, the value of the system. 111 stolen vehicle hits, 40 criminal warrant hits, 28 sex offender violation hits, and three missing person hits as of April 2026. So really about four to five months of data at that point that that's what it bores out. Now some specific examples of success here in Apex. When I spoke before I spoke mostly about successes outside of here because that's where the frame of reference was. But now I'm going to give you some specific to here. The first came before we even had alerts available right when we launched the program. Probably saw it in the news. There was a multi-year multi-million dollar ATM jackpotting case that had been going on for years in the area all over the Midwest all throughout Raleigh Triangle area. These this was a bunch of Trenda Argua gang members from Venezuela. They were coming here. They had found a way to jackpot ATMs. So to essentially access the ATM and tell it to spit out all the cash and they were taking tons and tons of money and there were no leads anywhere over years. Then they came to Apex and they passed an AOPR camera and the investigators were diligent enough to find that plate, put it out on a national read that, hey, we actually have a suspect put out of APB and within hours you have two different suspects being contacted by law enforcement. One in South Carolina and I believe the other one in Missouri. It results in, I think, now 12 people in custody and being charged for federal offenses for jackpoting these ATMs. And again, there's it's not it's continuing

in the event that this doesn't hit one of our uh ALPR cameras. We also have a thorted commercial burglaries case. So, the ALPRS alerted our officers to a stolen U-Haul truck coming into town. The officers saturated the area, actually located two stolen U-Haul trucks parked, and these were ultimately connected to a series of commercial burglary attempts throughout the area using stolen moving trucks. Uh this is common in big thefts, right? They're using the moving truck for a reason. and often large tool sites, job sites, places where they can back that truck in, load it up full, take it to a fence, get rid of the property, and and it's long gone. Um, and so this is a great case kind of blown up by not only the initial uh alert, but then being able to go backtrack where these plates had hit elsewhere and connect it to other crimes and return property to people who uh really wanted their property back. Another case of an arrested dangerous felon with multiple felony warrants. We were alerted to a vehicle associated with that felon. Officers saturated the area and were able to locate the vehicle. The driver had several warrants for violent felony offenses and had been on the run for quite some time. Warrants that had not been able to be served. This suspect, like the others I've already mentioned, was not from Apex, but was taken into custody safely using AOPRs. We had an autotheft ring arrest. Again, alerted to a stolen vehicle in town. Officers saturated and located it, attempted to stop, but they did not comply. We pursued them into Durham. Durham PD ultimately assisted in the arrest of multiple suspects for that case and the suspects have been tied to a regional autotheft ring and a chop shop. So, not only one stolen vehicle taken off the roads, but a number of cases resolved again because of the alert from an AOPR camera. Suspects not from Apexed residential burglaries. There were suspects that committed a number of residential and vehicle break-ins in the Pittsburgh area. In those breakins, firearms were stolen. So, this becomes of particular interest to us. Uh stolen firearms typically end up in the hands of gang members and people who use them to hurt other people. So ALPRs indicated that that vehicle was headed south on or was headed eastbound on 60 excuse me 64. This is before Pittsburgh eliminated

their APR program. Uh would probably not occur today. Those ALPRs then not notified us that it had come into Apex. Officers saturated the area, located it, attempted to stop it. Again, a pursuit again into Durham. The pursuit was terminated because it became unsafe, but with the evidence from the ALPR cameras, we were able to identify the suspects. Investigators were later able to obtain warrants and arrest them, and they were tied to an entire string of break-ins throughout the area. Again, suspects not from Apex. We also arrested arrested a fentanyl trafficker. The the mark that fentanyl and the opioid epidemic has had on our community has been well documented. This ALPR alerted officers to a vehicle that had a stop and seizure order due to suspected drug dealing. Officer saturated and again located the vehicle and a search of it revealed that they were trafficking in both methamphetamine and fentanyl and driving through Apex. Again, suspects not from Apex. A domestic violence protection order arrest. I already talked about these. This just highlights a specific case in which the suspect after a felony domestic violence case had come back into town. Uh really no reason to be here beyond the possibility of looking for the victim, which is common in domestic cases. Uh this system flagged that plate. We got to the vehicle before the suspect got to the house and placed him under arrest. an organized retail theft and vehicle theft arrests. Uh in this case, the the system alerted us to a suspect vehicle that had then made it into the Kohl's parking lot. It was an organized retail theft ring uh hit on the license plate and a stolen vehicle. The officer set up on the vehicle even though it was unoccupied and within a few minutes the suspects came out of Kohl's with what would you think a whole bunch of stolen property. We were able to take them into custody with the stolen property, search the car, find a whole bunch of additional stolen property, and then again use ALPR data to connect them to where that additional stolen property was taken from. Connect them to those crimes and seek prosecution there as well. Also, suspects not from Apex. Another violent felon on the run. This one particularly associated with being on the run for want for felonies out of Raleigh. Taken into custody because the plate alerted AOPR. A repeat lararseny series solved and closed due to AOPR. This was multiple

past occurred lararsenies. These are lararsenies that get reported to us well after they've happened. Initially, we had no available video or other physical evidence to work with, but investigators were able to use ALPR to determine a potential vehicle that had been at the location of many of these thefts. The ALPR uh search then revealed it had been at dozens of additional theft locations in Greensboro, High Point, Durham, Kerry, I mean, a number of different locations. And the investigators were able to obtain warrants for the suspects and take them safely into custody. Again, queued up by OPR data. So, these are some of the examples of what's gone on in a six-month period of the system being active. The there are definitely privacy concerns to always weigh this technology. But what is a complete mischaracterization is the suggestion that it has no public safety value. Flat out not true. Period. Hard stop. So, what is APD doing to balance some of these safety and privacy concerns? I've reported on these things before. Again, many of them mischaracterized and taken out of context after the fact. But the fourth amendment measures. And why do I mention the fourth amendment? This is not to hide from something. This is because the Supreme Court is the measuring stick for whether or not amendments and civil rights are being violated by things police departments do. Those are the rules we play by. And ALPR systems have been taken before that court on numerous occasions and they have ruled that this is not a Fourth Amendment violation. There will be people who don't share that opinion. But we don't take direction from those people. We take them from the courts. And at this point, this technology has been ruled absolutely to be compliant with Fourth Amendment requirements and constitutional rights. We also choose to retain the images for only 30 days. I touched on this once already, so I don't think it requires much more explanation, but when I've said before that I would love to keep it for 90, it's because I am charged with leading the department that has to solve crime in this town. And the longer I have evidence, the more crimes I can solve. But it's not that I want it for 90 and I'm going to change it. I could have it at 90 right now and we choose to put it at 30 of our own valition in an effort to balance privacy and safety. So just know the privacy

piece is definitely of concern to us in terms of data sharing. Again, we choose who we share with. Each share request has to be independently reviewed by a professional staff member and it's restricted to policing agencies, official law enforcement purposes only. I know that it's not much reassurance, but we have access in law enforcement to databases that have far more information in them than a license plate reading system that takes pictures of license plates on streets. Simply worth noting. We also have some protection against misuse by end users. I've said that each search requires a right to know and need to know documentation. They got to enter a case number. They've got to enter a specific criminal offense that they're investigating. uh the system tracks every single search and while the images are kept for 30 days, the search audit data is kept indefinitely. We can go search that if we need to look at some search that was conducted two three years ago once we're that far into the program, we can go back and look at that and see why the search was conducted by whom uh and and make sure that it was compliant. Um we do we have regular audit practices to ensure compliance. There's been a ton of talk about this also in the public venue. um loving to point it like this has been around since 2023 and yet councils receive no data or there's no audit information. There was nothing to audit until beginning in December of 2025 we started receiving alerts. So we are about 6 months in. Um we do random supervisory spot checks. Uh we also have the office of professional standards conduct regular audits. Our practices are not only in keeping with normal best practices but they're compliant with Kalia's guidance on best policy for law enforcement. So again the assertion that it's just what we want to do and how we want to do it. We've been Klaya accredited for a very long time and Cala determines that these are the intervals that things should be checked on and that's how we follow. Uh supervisor approval is required for custom hot list entry. This is not true in most jurisdictions. If an officer has a plate of interest from a crime, they can just go enter it to the local system so it will tell them if that plate passes. I see this as one of the most immediate areas for potential abuse. Right? If you have a bad actor and they want to do something in the system they shouldn't be, they can go enter a license plate and now be alerted on

their cell phone whenever that plate passes by. So we require a specific form to be filled out if an officer wants to do that pursuant to an investigation and we require supervisory approval. So that supervisor will go check and make sure this plate's associated with a criminal investigation. We have a reason to enter it in the system. We don't simply allow officers to do this on their own, which many jurisdictions do. Uh we have a civilian intel analyst as I described as our ALPR coordinator and the office of professional standards as our oversight body. And then we've got annual reporting. Again, my ask is that you'll give me till January where I can bring you a much more robust report on what the system is and is not doing. But after six months, it's a little bit tough to get a real good read, especially with only seven cameras. There has been a ton of talk about all the things that could go wrong with this system. And I don't disagree that those things could go wrong. And in some isolated cases outside of our jurisdiction, they have gone wrong. The reality is that we are auditing the system and they're not happening here because of that. And I will tell you that tonight in a couple of key areas. So we're worried about federal agency share. I talked about the two slip ups that got rectified, but how many federal agencies are we sharing data with? The answer to that question is zero. How many ALPR searches were conducted for immigration enforcement in in the Apex system? The answer is zero. How many searches were conducted for abortion enforcement in our system? The answer is zero. How many searches were conducted other than for official police investigations that didn't have a case number and a criminal offense attached to them? That answer is zero. How many searches were conducted without a case number and a text reason description? The answer is zero. And how many searches were conducted in violation of any law or policy? That vi that answer is also zero. So addressing some of the mischaracterizations that have been out there sort of in the social ether. Again, this assertion that council approved this in 2023 and there's been no reporting. The contract was approved in 2023. There was no system deployment until December of 2025. So the program has been full live for about 6 months. Nonetheless, you've requested and

received numerous updates. I think uh I'll go over here in just a moment, but this is my fourth or fifth time providing an update at this point in the program. So just I know that not everyone in the community gets to see these meetings or gets to see when we are at a work session but the reality is we have been really over the top in trying to share data or trying to share the uh construct of this program from the get-go. Uh this was presented at multiple public meetings before my arrival in late January 2025. I gave a public presentation within a month of arriving here in February 2025 at a work session more than nine months before the program went live. I gave another public presentation in May of 2025 at a work session about six months before we went live. I gave another public presentation in January of 2026 at a work session about a month be after we went live. And we're giving a public presentation tonight. I say this obviously not for your clarification, council, but for the public to understand that the idea that we've not been transparent or trying to share with the public that we're putting in these cameras and what they're going to do uh is not valid. We are sharing the data. Admittedly, it may not be getting to as large a percentage as we'd like, but we are sharing information as quickly as we can. We have also thor thoroughly and openly discussed this at more than now 35 chat with the chief events. These are public events where I go out into different parts of the community sort of small group town halls where we take the gloves off and say you can ask the police chiefs anything you'd like. Myself and the deputy chief go and we end up talking about ALPR at almost every one of those meetings. It's that and electric bikes are the two top topics in all those meetings. Um, but so just just know that there are concerns here, but we're definitely not hiding from those. Like we're we're happy to have these discussions and figure out long-term is this in the best interest of the community. We've also thoroughly discussed it at multiple peakmies and in our resident policemies. So there is no effort to pull the wool over anyone's eyes here. There were also some other mischaracterizations I'm going to take advantage of the time tonight to clarify because I think they're important. Uh there were some assertions that we are unable to staff our department or that um there are major major shortages in the department. I've reported on this extensively at work sessions and at budget planning. Y'all know what the numbers are, but there was just flatout

false data there. There was the report that we were authorized for 143 police officers. If you'd like to authorize that tonight, I'd love that. Um, we're authorized for 114 officers, not 143. And we are not having trouble attracting people to work here. People would like to work in Apex and for the Apex Police Department. uh we are recovering from some image damage in the past, but I think that the the men and women who do the good work here are doing a great job of recovering from that and we're attracting people just fine. There's also an assertion that we don't report crime data. This is plainly false and disingenuous. Hard stop. I'm not happy about this. There is no crime data on the FBI site for the Apex Police Department for 2024 because there was a data breach and we don't have that data and you cannot report wrong data to the FBI for crime data. But there's every other year in there. We report data. It's required statutoily and we've always done it and continue to do it. The data is there. You can go to the FBI site. You can look at all of our uh neighbors crime reporting data without any problem. The reason that year is missing is because we don't have the data. Plain and simple. There is also the assertion we don't provide call breakdowns. Uh there are annual reports on the website minus again the cyber attack year that has all of our crime and call reporting data. all the calls we go to how many what the nature of them are uh quite transparent 2025 is still being generated we have some challenges with our CAT RMS system we're currently an RFP as you know for that but has resulted it being taking longer to compile data to bring you a 2025 annual report but it will be there and then again this idea that the police are policing the police and that's just the way it works we do have an office of professional standards that's civilianled we are CLA accredited accredited um we we are above board in almost every respect so I'm not going to bore you with the the summary closing item here because I've already taken up more of your time than I intended to this evening. Um, just know that at a high level, we certainly welcome the discussion about balancing privacy and the public safety. My job is to report to you that I see this as an invaluable tool for your police department and what they're trying to do every day, which is

keep the residents here safe and and reduce crime rates. Whether it will do that long term, of course, remains to be seen and and I we will be transparent reporting that data the best we can to you. Um, crime data is always a little bit troubling because the we love to talk about the underpinnings of crime not being related to police departments, related to social issues and other problems, but but they are. So, if you have an economic downturn, you see a spike in crime rate, that may have nothing to do with what police are or are not doing or what criminals are are not doing. It's a function of something out of our control. But, nonetheless, we will look at all those data points as we have enough data on the system to report back to you. Uh the final thing that that I want to sort of provide here, I really appreciate personally the dialogue that you all as an elected body have afforded me in not just knee-jerk reacting and and doing your job to be thorough in vetting this out, but still being willing to have open dialogue. Uh I put here that we can have honest conversations about policy, technology, and oversight. In fact, we should. And those conversations when they're serviceoriented and they're focused on mutual respect, they bear fruit. There's already an example in this particular case in talking with all of you and specifically in conversations with you, Mayor Prom, and you, Mr. Mayor, uh, you brought up the transparency portal that our vendor provides and why we weren't using it. And I gave you an answer that when I had originally assessed that portal, it provided data points that were prohibited from sharing under North Carolina General Statute. So, I wasn't comfortable launching a portal that would put out data that we could be held accountable for releasing. But you bringing it up made me realize I should reach back out to the vendor and see if that could be changed. And in fact, it is customizable at this point. And some of those fields that would not be allowable in our state were able to be eliminated. And so I've put a link in the in the presentation here. That portal is live. In that portal, you can look at 30-day data for how many plates have been read, how many alerts have occurred. Um, I even have a live function where you can download a 30-day history of the audit of the search system. So you can see you will not see what you will see is a date and time of a search and the reason code that was given for the search. You will not be

able to see what plate was searched for for what I think are obvious reasons. You won't be able to see what officer conducted the search for the fact that that's a protected personnel file under state law. Um but you will be able to go in there and see. And if you go do it right now, you're going to see uh 300 some odd searches uh conducted by investigators. And just take a moment and look at the offense codes. If it's not a little bit disturbing to you, then I I don't really know what else I could tell you. You're It's robberies and thefts and vehicle breakins and domestic violence restraining order violations and fleeing the police. And that's the stuff we're dealing with every day that we see this as an invaluable tool in helping us to do so. Honest, mindful conversations aimed at greater understanding do not come at the expense of the trust, respect, and support we all owe to the men and women, many of whom are standing at the back of this room tonight, who put on this uniform and serve this community proudly with honor every day. You all have always shown us that respect. I thank you very much for that. This community has long shown the officers that respect. It's part of what gets them up and out there every single day. I am so incredibly appreciative of that. I'm simply asking that when community members become heated about issues that they show that same respect. Our ears are open. We are eager to have the dialogue, but we don't get much of anywhere when we start accusing, name calling, calling out and reaching beyond the scope of what the discussion is. So, it is simply a plea from me. I do see it as a leader of this organization, part of my job to stand up here and speak for the men and women who do that work every day. I am quite certain they have earned and deserve that respect and lashing out at them in an effort to create a change in a policy is not the way to get it done. So, I appreciate the direction you all have taken and instead engaging in productive dialogue with me as the police chief. Uh, and with that, I thank you very very much for your time and we'll take any questions you have.

Thank you very much, Chief. Presentation number six, five or six, right?

Yes, sir.

Something like that. Um I know um at a conclusion of every presentation you've made, I made this statement in my time with Apex Police and leading

criminal investigations. I wish I had this tool, this technology back then. Um, I see the purpose, the benefit, not only as a retired police officer, but as a resident of this town. And one of the things I think what happens, and I and I appreciate the community's engagement and concern with privacy. I totally understand. But often times we've seen in law enforcement when something happens across the country, all law enforcement is painted with a broad brush. I'm focused on Apex. What are we doing here? And based on what I see here, all the things, all the crime that we have prevented and the dangerous criminals that the men and women of police department have been able to apprehend because of this technology. I'll also point out the zeros. It's a great number tonight. um all those things that were presented, you've been able to address those concerns and I want to say thank you. Um I said it to the community, I love this technology. Um I wanted to hear from you about Flock, but what I've heard tonight supports I support it and I would like to see it continue on to January as a pilot. there's not enough time to really evaluate six months. We need to proceed out to January. Those are my thoughts.

Thank you, sir.

And Chief, I appreciate you coming out and talking about this. I mean, we you've had this conversation a lot and um you know, when it comes to this sort of use of technology in order to make policing and public safety a lot more effective. I I think what has been a big component of this conversation is not necessarily a distrust of law enforcement, certainly not a distrust of APD. I think it's more of a distrust of some of the pieces, organizations, and

components behind it. But I mean, you know, to be clear, I I I come at this from a very different way. You know, I'm a former federal prosecutor. I used to prosecute crimes. When I think about crimes, I think about the victims. And when it comes to making sure victims are taken care of, you got to have the evidence. I'm also a federal public defender. Uh most people will tell you that my job is to be absolutely skeptical of the police and I am. Um not because it's just part of my job, but because that's what makes us both better. Steel, sharp, and steel. But when I look at what's being done here, I don't think we have a fair assessment of the true value of what this license plate reading program can do because we're only operating with 6 months worth of data. And back in 2023 when we came out with this whole thing, we it remember our fight about this. How long did we want to try this? Did we want to try this for a year? And I think it's fair to say essentially that let's give it that year in order to figure out what are going to be the data points. What are going to be the things that we need to clean up? What are going to be the things that are going to make it more specific for Apex? You know, the part that we're getting today is, I think, the no kidding results of what takes place when you can take this sort of technology and ultimately utilize it to make things better and safer. You know, I mean, I I get the privacy concern. I fight that every day, which is, you know, what's a violation of Fourth Amendment or not. And here's here's the reality. You could put a cop on a corner and they could stand there with a notepad, write down these note, write down the license plate, then call it in and get the exact same thing. But I asked the question, why are we doing that? Why would we not want to leverage technology in order to make things easier? Why would we not want to multiply our ability to stop and impact crime before it happens? Why wouldn't we want to make things easier? Now, to be

clear, I get the other side of the argument, which is there's a privacy concern, but I think that's what we're trying to make sure that we're working through. And I appreciate the efforts that you've made, particularly when we've asked you the tough questions. You know, you and Trevor back there have had some very interesting conversations with me. And I I, you know, not afraid to say this. I I love it when I get the email from someone who says they're disappointed in me as a black man and as a public defender and as a defense criminal defense attorney because of my views on how Flock operates. And I'll be the first person to tell you it's a program that has flaws. But it's also a program that has the ability to make things work better. And I feel like in this year our job is to try to figure out where that is at. At the appropriate time, I'm going to make a motion to have this issue referred back to our public safety committee so that we can start to look at and answer some of the questions that, you know, we really want to get an idea of. You know, how are we addressing the privacy concerns? What are we doing in terms of uh the number of cameras, their deployment, is that the right amount? What are we doing about data sharing? How are we dealing with those who are making the requests? What are our internal audit procedures? Are they robust enough? and you know a number of other issues that need to be addressed. I recommend moving that to our public safety committee because I just rattled off nine things right off the top of my head. I know that there's at least 15 more things that will come to mind once I start to think about it and because of the way my head works at night when I wake up tomorrow morning at about 4:30 I will have come up with 32 more things to think about. But the reason why we have these committees is for us to be able to vet shrink these issues, condense them so that when they get back before us, we were able to have a conversation that's really relevant. But it also gives us a chance to ask you questions and get data points so that we're not operating in a vacuum. So I I I at the appropriate time I will be making a motion that we uh refer the policy development as well as

further updates to the public safety committee so that we can continue to refine these things. And then at the end of the year have that conversation about okay what's worked, what hasn't worked, what are the concerns and what are there because people have privacy concerns. I think they're valid. I think they're cons. Yeah. And you do too. We've had this conversation. We get that those privacy concerns are there. But the tough part is this balance. How do we balance out the no kidding realworld effects? I mean, the fact that we've been able to stop, you know, child sex offenders from being able to get access to children because of this thing that's reading a license plate versus trying to make sure that we're not running into a scenario where the end user can take that data, manipulate it, bastardize it, or more importantly, utilize it in a way that doesn't give us the ability to have some say in it. That to me is the privacy balance that we've got to make. And I think we can do that. Um, it's going to require data. Um, it'll require very hard conversations from all of us up here that we've had time and time again. But I think it's something that we definitely need to take a look at because in the end, the people of Apex deserve to have this level of safety. I'd like to say they don't, but I can't. They deserve this level of safety. The fact that it's showing us results, I think, is something that we need to take a hard look at.

That's my thoughts on it.

Thanks, Councilman. Anyone else? I'll uh jump in on the last comment. Uh I believe that the people of Apex deserve safety. Uh I think they also deserve a proper measure of privacy. And so I do um appreciate a lot of the thought that clearly has gone into the policies that govern the use of this uh this system. um in your presentation you mentioned um Kalia a couple times as kind of like a an overarching you know accreditation

program that helps ensure that everything is on the up and up and and so maybe it would be worth you know for the public to hear kind of what that accredititation is about and and why that gives us a level of um comfort right that the policies that we use are topof the line and and second to none. So maybe like you know want to invite you to maybe say a couple words about what that accredititation bring in context of the ALPR technology.

Yeah, of course I I'm not the best qualified. We have an accreditation manager who's exceptional in this space but I can tell you being involved in that process heavily that CLA is an exhausting process to engage in and and not a lot of agencies do it for that reason. Essentially, they give you a a litany of best practices that they come in and physically review annually to ensure your policies are compliant with those ever evolving best practices within the profession. And then they go measure further in that every year we have to provide hundreds of proofs which are data points in the form of formal reports proving that not only do we have this policy, but we are following that policy. And uh I could tell you I went through my first in-person Kala audit like only a few months after getting here and it's tough. I mean [snorts] you are on the hot seat in front of a whole KA board who is looking at months of evaluating your data. They come in and have full access and they are asking all kinds of pressing questions about any point where you miss the mark. Um sometimes very very simple things that you have to justify and be aware that you missed the mark on. So, uh, it ensures that essentially our policies don't become archaic, that they've sat there for too long and aren't in bestkeeping. It ensures that they're keeping up with new emerging case law, uh, because that governs a lot of what we do. And then I think the big thing CLA actually does that makes it real is require those proofs. Uh, so it's one thing to say, look at my policy, that doesn't really say what you maybe are doing every day. You've heard me say before that, uh, culture eats policy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, right? So the proof is sort of in the pudding when they come in and look and say, "Well, prove to us that you're following this

policy and doing what you're supposed to be doing."

Okay. Appreciate that. Uh and so I I do share some of the the issues that have been raised by the public. Uh I also want to echo the comments that you made that like as long as we can keep the conversation constructive, right? I'm sure that we can learn from the collective experience, right? And I do want to make sure that we as a police department leave ourselves open to that. Um I support the technology as as an you know amplifier and like a a multiplier of what we can do with the police force that that we have. uh clearly there's there's very real benefits that that we can derive from it but again like that cannot come at the expense of some of the you know rights privacy privacy and privacy expectations and as long as we keep those policies topnotch um you know I still think there's some issues to to review in particular around the vendor in and of itself right that that we're currently working with um so I will support my colleague you know council member Gray in in referring this to you know further review uh and and defer a recommendation back to council at some later date.

Yes, sir.

So, thank you.

Thank you.

I want to uh show my deep appreciation for you, the chief and our police officers for your hard work. You take big risk, I mean great risk every day to protect our residents. For that, I'm deeply appreciate. Yeah. Um my question is have you done you know um com you know any compared you know uh to the similar programs you know in terms of cost efficiency and privacy protection do you don't have to you know do it now I mean if you have or have not you can do it you know so we can have some comparison you know to other programs.

Yes ma'am. Uh, in fact, maybe a good opportunity to just kind of like lay it all out there. Like I said, I know if

there are concerns about the vendor, which I have spoken to a number of members of the public about and to members of the selected body about, uh, I think that that's completely appropriate and a completely appropriate dialogue to have because we're the ones that recommend a vendor and then you're faced with making a decision, right? So again, that I think it's a great place to stay in that very respectful space. If there are concerns about the vendor, I would really love for us to focus on as much as possible the concerns about the vendor because I think that in terms of policy and transparency, you should have a high level of trust with the police department. These are all background and employees that are quite transparent. And if you don't, I'd argue we have a much bigger problem to solve than AOPR, right? We're trusted with a tremendous amount of faith every day that we're going to go do the right thing. I think we can be trusted with this system. But if the concern is about the vendor and and we have talked about my my own outside of this uniform propensities like I I might share a number of those concerns. I think that's a very welcome dialogue for us to have. Now I have some prior experience. I was not in my first experience with this vendor. I was with a different one. They were terrible. I would not recommend them. Um but there are some others emerging into the space that are worth looking at. And so if some of the direction from the selected body is you would like for us to as we come back in January also be presenting at least some surface data on what the alternatives might be if this is an issue with a vendor. I am more than happy to do that work. Uh no no marriage to the vendor. The key here is the technology. Now the trip up right now is that that database is pretty valuable and because our current vendor has been in the game the longest they have the most robust database that we can use for investigations. I would argue, however, that if they keep causing concern among the public that they will lose market share and maybe one of those competitors will have a database that's as valuable to us in the future and that maybe is better aligned with the ideals of this community. And if that's where we're going, I'm happy to facilitate that work.

Yeah, I do think uh our public safety

tops any other, you know, uh concerns. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. Um, it was comprehensive and very much appreciated. I wanted to go on record with a few things and say that we know that the Apex Police Department is the best law enforcement department in the state and likely the nation and um led by an incredibly accomplished chief. We even had the opportunity u my colleagues and I did of attending um your promotion ceremony just a few weeks ago and um we got to hear all about the top flight resumes, honors and merits um of our officers and I know you're proud of this department chief as you should be. Um and I want you to know that we are as well. Um I think it's important this is for the public um to dispel the notion that the question is whether one supports law enforcement or not when in fact departments across the country are confronting this issue. And so I believe that the primary question we have to answer is what you're leading to, which is, do we trust the privacy policies and security standards of certain third-party law enforcement vendors? Um I do have a question here in a moment but I was going to uh tell you that for me personally my concern you mentioned earlier and I appreciate the thorough and and rigorous analyzation of your own department. For me the microscope is not on APD and it is not on and therefore not on the end user. It is entirely for me on the front end user from what I'm reading across the country. the folks who, and again, this is not political. Oh, you know, blue or red or something else. Uhuh. We've got five

police departments in the state of Texas that just ended uh their contracts with this particular vendor, Flock. So, I appreciate, you know, the the um I just want to delineate that we're not talking about, for me anyway, the technology specifically. Um it is a powerful technology uh and and I trust your department and your officers. I don't trust that particular vendor. Um, and what I saw recently was two, um, it was actually a municipality and a sheriff's department in Wisconsin who recently, and I've got quotes from both the board chair and from from the sheriff and from the board chair,

um, entirely in alignment on the concerns and they went to go end the contract and there were concerns that the cameras were still that the department was an unwitting participant even after the contract had been uh uh con concluded and so two departments and I have the news story uh it was it was on television uh that two departments had to put trash bags over their cameras because they did not trust that they were off. For me, that's what this is about. This is about this is not about trusting your expert law enforcement officers. This is entirely about the vendor specifically and their um haphazard in my opinion approach to serving uh law enforcement departments like yours. My question is can you offer some insight into how law enforcement departments coordinate efforts between you folks when different departments use different vendors? I dug around and I couldn't find a good answer for like how's this work? And when you talk about databases and us having a a a robust database that's tough to give up, but like I'm having a hard time if somebody's got Nike and somebody's got Adidas and somebody else has got Under

Armour. Like what is this all how's this all interact?

Yeah. I mean maybe a better comparison to help illustrate than the shoes would be like cell phones.

I It was a terrible analogy. [laughter] No, I mean I got it. Okay. But right, if you have an iPhone, you have access to some services that you don't have access to if you're on Android and vice versa. And no matter how much you want them, you're not going to get access to them. And and and I think you're usually married. Man, I might be getting myself in trouble talking about cell phones, like talking about basketball teams or something, but like you're usually in one camp or the other, but once you get into that camp, there's like if you're on Apple, there are things in Apple that are so valuable to you that you hesitate to move on, even if you had issues with Apple as a company. And I think that's kind of what's happening right now in this space is that uh Flock, the current vendor, is is the most powerful player because they have the most clients. So that means the database has the most reads. So if you go look in their database, you're going to see plates from all over the place. and and crime is as you saw in today's presentation very regional whereas Axon is another example that has emerged into this space and we have active accounts with Axon they do our bodywn cameras our car cameras our tasers um they are breaking into this space but they're still relatively new not yesterday new but not flock developed right so they're they have fewer clients which means when you go to run something in their database you don't get the full reach and I think that's mostly above my pay grade but intellectual property protections and you know flock is not really willing to at this point you can't access the flock database unless you're a flock client. You can't join axon and have the two talk to each other. There are some vendors that are producing um aggregators would be the best explanation. Um Paragrin is one of those systems that we actually have spent some time looking at that you know claims that hey we can do that if if they're on flock and you're on axon and this is on vigilant we can actually pull all those APIs and have these databases talk to each other and give you a separate platform to operate in. But maybe fueling your point, um, my understanding is is is Flock has not allowed integration in those systems. So at this

point, if we moved on from Flock, we would have a much smaller database to search. But to be clear, we would still be able to get immediate alerts of crime vehicles coming into our jurisdiction. That just wouldn't include alerts that were put in there by other jurisdictions prior to them hitting a state database. and our investigators wouldn't be able to go look and see, oh, my crime vehicle was also at these locations in Kerry or these locations in South Carolina. We we would lose that until the market share got greater. Does that make sense?

Yes. Thank you very much, Chief. I appreciate it.

Anyone else?

No, I just want to say thank you for the presentation and I broadly concur with the comments of my colleagues and I look forward to to hearing more.

I thank you very much for the time. I really do. And uh just to be clear, we're we are willing to talk face to face with members of the community that want to talk about these things and find out, you know, more information. I always prefer the dialogue. Uh the schedule's busy, but that's always been my priority. I've been out there pretty heavily since I got here. So, if there's discussions and want to know or even ask hard questions, I don't I don't take this personally, but again, I would really appreciate if we could focus as much as possible on where the attention needs to be placed. And um I'll always get a bit defensive of these men and women because I know that they work very very hard in a job that's been really difficult for the last decade or so. So thanks for hearing me out. [applause]

[applause]

Make a motion to refer further policy development and um uh updates to uh be referred to the public safety committee for our council.

Second.

All right. Motion second. Any further discussion?

Is there a timeline that we're going to set for that?

Uh I think let's allow them to the opportunity to figure out kind of what the timeline would be. come back and present that at the appropriate stage. We do know that we've got at least a year or January is when we've got a there's got to be a you know go no-go

point. So this will at least give us the opportunity to develop what we need to develop so we know what we can ask.

Okay. Thank you.

Is it January though? I mean like if if the idea is to evaluate other vendors when there need to be an RFP in some period of time for that.

Right. So that's so that's why I say it's like those are all the steps that I think that the committee will need to start to now you're getting to the 16th and 17th questions that have popped into my head that would be good things to dig into such as you know what would be the cost what would be the advantages disadvantages and I think those are the questions that the committee needs to refine and ultimately say all right council here's our report on that and then moving forward from there

what would the output from the committee be exactly would it be a policy would it be a report

I think it would probably be a policy recommendation poly I mean policy has to be approved by the council and ultimately is voted on by council so it would be creation of a policy recommendation

would incorporate we we've heard policies around data retention and privacy would you look at all that stuff as well

that's where we're going to have to figure out the full extent of what takes place

I think there's a lot of discussion

there's a lot of pieces that are that are going to have to be delved into by the p by the public safety committee

our contract ends January right

I don't know when the contract ends I mean, it's a pilot, so

no contract.

I mean, it is it is a contract. I was just

Yeah, there's a contract. I don't know when the contract ends because I know that we initially I think we engaged in it 2023,

Mr. Bosber.

So, I I do believe the contract is is January. It's around that time period. Our intentions would be I I think we're working to set a committee meeting for August if I'm not wrong.

Yeah. Um, so we would put an item there just to start the dialogue and lay out what needs to be um vetted before it comes back to council because we do have a potential pending contract that we would need with the current vendor to extend if we're going to go that way or if we're going another route. We would need to have that research completed before so there's no gap.

Yeah,

just maybe a little context there. So yes, the current contract we're we're were done in January. uh we were

budgeted to add 10 additional cameras and this fiscal year that contract has been received by us but we are not signing it because of this dialogue that we're having. So um at this point we would be good to do some research and still be able to make a pivot in January if we wanted to. Um I think we'd have a lot of options. The only other thing I wanted to mention is that please we got to make sure that the PD has a seat at the table with this committee because

Oh absolutely the policies they put forth have to comply with KA and NC general statutes or we're going to be in a lot of trouble.

Yeah. I hate to say it. Seems as though you're just gonna be making presentations to this committee a lot. So, no problem. I didn't I didn't [laughter]

We're at five now. Good. We're You'll get practiced. Happy to do it, sir.

Thank you.

Be our first agenda item for the public safety committee. I love it. All right. We have a motion second. All in favor say I.

I. Motion carries unanimously. All right. We're at Y'all want to take a break? Okay. We're going to take a 10-minute recess.

Yeah, man. Here we go. Not saying that I want to

There you go.

Thank you everyone. We're back in

Nice.

Thanks everyone. We're back in session. Um we'll go ahead and move now to the public forum. We want to hear from the community. Um I I do want to share a new process that we have come up with. The current public participation policy states individuals comments are limited to 3 minutes. The public form comment period shall not exceed 36 minutes or 12 individual speakers whichever comes first. Uh if the sign up list exceeds 12 individual speakers, which we have the past few meetings, we we've taken the time to hear from everyone or 36 minutes per the adopted policy. The town clerk will prioritize the list of speakers by those who have not spoken in the last 30 days. After those individuals have spoken, the list will continue in the order and individuals signed up until the 12 individual speakers or 36 minutes is reached. Individuals who still wish to speak will still be given an opportunity to do so at the conclusion of the business portion of the meeting immediately before the close session. So tonight, we won't have that issue because we have eight people signed up. Looks like a total anticipated 30

minutes. So, we're good. So, we'll proceed accordedly. First speaker tonight is Da Deep Vignet. You would please come up. Three three minutes. Mr. Clerk. Uh so hi there, my name is uh Dandib Venet and I am a member of Mayor Jock's um internship program. Uh specifically I'm the head of the environmental team and as part of our work at the internship program, we recently had everyone uh all of the interns go out and interview some of their neighbors uh specifically on the topic of recycling and waste management. And so I just wanted to uh provide some information about the data that we gathered. So the first question we asked was are you aware of where your household waste is ultimately disposed of? And we determined that roughly a little over half of the people that we interviewed actually didn't know where their household waste was going at all. Uh the next question we asked was, "Do you currently recycle and would you participate more if additional recycling services were offered?" The vast majority of people said that they would recycle and that they would uh partake in more recycling if additional services were offered. Uh the next question we asked, sorry, is how do you typically handle yard waste such as leaves and grass clippings? About 2/3 of people said they leave it on the curb and the majority of the rest said that they had some kind of service that handled it or they composted it themselves. Uh the next question was if a yard waste composting cart service was to be provided would you use it? About twothirds of the um interviewees said they would use it for certain and about a fifth of them were may. So the

majority of people probably would end up using such a service if it were to be provided. We then asked on a scale of 1 to 10 how satisfied are you with your residential waste collection services? and we received an average score of about a little over eight. So most people are satisfied with their current residential waste collection. And then our final question was, are you sorry, our second last question was, are you aware that grass clipping collections will be terminated effective July 1st, 2026, although they will continue a little into this summer from what I've heard. Uh, and about it was a roughly a 50-50 split. half the people knew and then half the people didn't. And our final question was, "What additional residential food waste or recycling services would you like to see offered?" The majority of people said that they wanted to see other kinds of recycling um offered, specifically metal, styrofoam, batteries, wood, and other things like motor oil. And then a lot of people also mentioned that they wanted separate bins for the different types of recycling. uh for example, separate bins for metal, for um styrofoam, and the other various things that they asked about. And that's pretty much all that we had from the survey. Thank you.

Thanks for speaking,

Brian Hudson. Three minutes, Mr. Clerk. All right, Fran Hudson. Um, I am here to serve you another notice. Um, this one's actually about the flop cameras. Um, because they're gaining more opposition across the country, and I wanted to make sure that I put in, um, writing the reservation of my god-given rights, not civil rights. Um, the town of Apex has to honor and protect those. uh when I c when I come to Apex, I'm coming for a private purpose and I have the right to

my privacy that cannot be violated except under strict constitutional form of law referenced in article 1, section 19 of the North Carolina constitution. This is also called constitutional due process of law and you all swore an oath to uphold that. If you want to violate my constitutional rights and collect data on me, you must take me to court of a court of record and prove that you have the the power to violate my rights you swore to uphold. So you see the contradiction there. We the people have the right to privacy as we are not public officers like you or the police. I'm not attacking the police in any way. They're doing a great job. Um, but we are not under oath to the constitution and therefore are not subject to any restrictions on our privacy unless we freely consent. Our privacy cannot be overridden by statutes, ordinances or policies. It also cannot be overridden by the town's decision to contract with any corporate entity to purchase block cameras or the like if you go with a different vendor. The corporate entities that sell these devices are also bound by the North Carolina law because they applied to do business. If you as town council vote to approve an expansion of flock cameras in Apex or continue to use the 10 you already purchased, you will be violating my privacy when I come to Apex. Each of your oaths is of office is first to protect the rights of the people including their privacy. We cannot lose our right to priv privacy even on public roads. Any approval of policies, procedures, ordinances, etc. that go against the rights of the people as maladministration and a violation of your oath. I urge you to discontinue the use of these cameras immediately and for there to be no further investments made to violate the constitutional rights of the people. I've asked at the end of my notice for each of you to respond within 10 days if you believe that I am wrong in the law I provided. If you have any

questions, feel free to reach out to me. There are many municipalities cancelelling these contracts across the country due to these constitutional violations and it is your duty to do the same. Um there's actually a case that was just decided on June 4th of this month of this this year. Um that was FCC and AT versus AT AT&T incorporated. Um and one of the state the statements that the SCOTOS made in the opinion was location data by by its nature implicates serious privacy concerns. This is from the Scotas. So more is going to happen. Thank you speaker.

Thank you Michelle Hoffner.

[applause]

Dr. Michelle Hoffner Okconor, 2664 Jordan Point Boulevard. Good evening. My family of three takes a walk around Jordan Point every morning. It is a time we cherish, but there have been moments that have struck me with pure terror. And no, those aren't the moments when my son cries. He seldom does on these walks. The terror comes when we try to cross Horton Ridge Road, which cuts directly through our development as well as Jordan Manners, Belterra, and Woodbury. On multiple occasions, we have started to cross with no oncoming traffic in either direction, only for a car to come whizzing up behind us just as we reach the halfway point. Some of these drivers are clearly speeding, including trucks coming from the Gracewood construction sites. Because of this, I am asking the town council and staff to start stationing police for speed traps along Horton Ridge Road. The way the road is is built with it twists and turns and elevation changes already makes it hard to gauge when it's safe to cross. Despite this, I have heard the road is eligible to become a 45 mph zone. This is terrifying. How is it similar roads like Richard Richardson Road in the Sweetwater area not only kept at 35 m hour but regularly have speed traps? Um, furthermore, the intersection at Corbanks and Richardson is now due to get a traffic light. I completely agree

with that upgrade, but I ask that all roads of similar caliber, especially those directly cutting through residential neighborhoods, receive the same thoughtfulness and consideration to ensure the safety of everyone, especially our children. Furthermore, I'd like to invite all six of you to join me and Lucas on a walk this summer to see and experience what we what we have with regard to when crossing the road. I think we all can agree that seeing is believing. And finally, I wouldn't be true to brand if I didn't close by saying the following. one that air pollutants from generators like those used for data centers contribute to the development of Alzheimer's and non-Alzheimer's dementia and affect cognitive development in children. As a biomedical scientist, I'm happy to provide scientific literature on that. And two, um, to everyone in the room, please support our local businesses, especially downtown. Thank you for your time.

Thanks for speaking, [applause] Paul Andrews. Paul Andrews. Hey everybody, Mayor Gribble, council members, thanks for having me back. Uh, good seeing you again. Thanks for letting me speak. Um, I live at 417 South Tonstall Avenue. Um, right at the south block of the proposed uh, sidewalk. Um, I have some personal reasons, some safety reasons, some cost reasons that this southern block should be u terminated or aborted or at least reconsidered before moving forward. Um, a sidewalk already exists from James Street to Ren Street to East Moore Street straight to the um the middle school there. So, um, I guess a congratulations to the project already a little bit complete. there's already a sidewalk from 55 to the middle school, which was kind of the point of that um project in the first place. Um, additionally, uh, kind of personally, our half of the sidewalk is a little I'll have to the our half of the area is is a bit hazardous. Um, we live right behind where that flatbed tow truck

smashed through the Apex coin currency. And so that's a crazy intersection. We don't want more foot traffic there. We want less foot traffic there. And there's already a safer sidewalk right over on the James Streets traffic light. Um I've already spoken with Mr. Stevenson. He was great. He said that around our area the sidewalk project had a little bit of a um concession or alteration that wouldn't be taken 15 feet away from our driveways, but 10. Our driveways are still only 20 ft, so that's taken half. Um, I've submitted some pictures for you guys to see kind of a typical parking situation. Um, if the plan moves forward, um, as planned, then we'll most likely be in violation of parking on the sidewalk just by parking in our driveways. So, I would like some reconsideration for protection from the town to not have fines against all of us for parking in our driveway going forward. Um, if there is some sort of resident advisory board that, you know, we can be part of to help facilitate the project moving forward, I'd be happy to participate, and I bet my neighbors would, too. Um, additionally, if you kind of scrap that corner, that southern block of the project, it probably save the town some money, too. So, as we're talking about budgets moving forward and trying to save the town money, I think this would be a good way to trim a little bit of the fat. All right, that's all my time. So, thanks again and I'll be see you in the future.

All right. Thanks for speaking.

Don [applause] Don Casalino.

Don Casalino, 3632 Bosco Road. Tonight, uh, consent agenda number five, uh, the council approved, gone in 60 seconds or less, with a quick all-in vote. This was

an amendment to the town's fiscal year 2025 audit contract with Cherry Beckett. simple terms. This extends the audit completion deadline to June 15 of 2026 and adjusts the contract due to additional work tied into the town's ERP accounting system and related reporting requirements. I want to connect this to what I talked about last council meeting because at that meeting I raised a concern that the audit was still not complete. Um but we saw that the audit extension itself approved um at that time was 15 minutes before the meeting but now we're seeing on the consent agenda that it's actually um going to be extended now. So the question tonight is simple. Um why is this still not resolved? Why are we continuing to approve last minute extensions and amendments after multiple years of late or delayed audits? Why does this keep happening in Apex when it comes to financial transparency? Because this is not an isolated issue anymore. Every time financial reporting comes before council, audits, public records, or reporting timelines, we hear the same explanations. ERP implementation issues, software transitions, town turnover, cyber security. And again tonight we um we've heard about that actually the um police chief talked about not retrieving the cyber data. So I that was new for me to learn tonight. Technology does not make these decisions. Okay, these people do. At some point um when we talk about this um this delay in transparency, there's a pattern that emerges um because audits are not just

administrative formalities. They are the foundation of financial credibility for the town of Apex relied on by the state treasurer, bond markets, taxpayers. Um and Apex is not operating in isolation there. the the same audit expectations are applied to over 550 municipalities statewide. So my question is simple. When will the town of Apex stop relying on system explanations and start addressing the management and accountability controls that are supposed to prevent these recurring fa failures? If the system is always the explanation, accountability is never the outcome. Thank you. Thanks for speaking, Karen Ziller. [clears throat] All right. Good evening. My name is Karen Ziller, uh, 303 Interior Courts. First, I'd like to begin with extending my empathy to the council and the mayor. I can only imagine what y'all have to deal with day in day out and all that your roles entail. Um, I do understand that the issue I'm speaking on is not the only thing on your plate, but I did want to address that we come to the public forum to fight for a cause with a purpose. Um, and we don't come to give another entertaining episode of Apex's public complaints. Um, and I want to place emphasis on the fact that we appreciate y'all hearing us, but also acknowledging and taking action. Um, especially with the regulars that we have at these meetings as well. Um, I wanted to reiterate a couple things that I feel that we could take more action on for the Apex downtown uh, construction project. Um, having some kind of mats on the pearl would be great. We would appreciate that very much. Um, some speed bumps on the seabboard street is, I think, essential at this point. We um, have a very

dangerous situation back there for those who aren't aware. Um, those of us who do park back there um, weekly, it's it's it's a danger. It's a danger either. I've had to actually jump aside to avoid getting hit just being a pedestrian. Um and then you know in my car there's always that risk. So it's I know I know I'm not the only person who um is frustrated for that um particular aspect. Um the phase one updated deadline would be very nice. I would we would appreciate that if we had an updated deadline for the current side of the construction. And then I did have something that I wanted to propose, a little survey idea. Could be either mail or electronic. It could be through text. I know a lot of people like audio messages these days, so maybe something, you know, some kind of automated thing where people could leave essentially like a voicemail. Um, and this would be for proposed projects. I think hearing from the people, you know, if we say we're for we're advocating for the people, then why don't we hear from the people themselves? Um, and so I think that that could have been great for the Salem Streetscape um, project or for the potential parking decks that we were talking about. Um, and maybe even the Apex Peakway, which I know some people have very strong feelings about. Um, but yeah, essentially I just want to work together and not against each other. So I just I'm happy to be here again and continue returning. Go Canes.

Thanks for speaking. All right, [applause] Sawyer. Sawyer.

Hi everybody. My name is Sawyer Carneia. I live here in Apex. I also am a employee downtown. Um I'm here again to speak with you guys about downtown. Um I apologize for the fact that you're going to be very familiar with me until these things are resolved. Um but I also think that we can become fast friends through the process because this is all about building community, right? This is all about bringing people together. That's the whole point of this beautifification project that we're working on, right? is

creating a more beautiful downtown that attracts more people and brings everybody together and creates a space where everyone feels welcome, everyone is able to happily spend their dollars and spend their time, right? What about the in between? What about now? Because, mayor, you posted earlier on your social media about businesses that are threatening to close because of uh the just the impact of this construction project. There's all of this data that my friend and I Karen have um collected and brought before you before. And yet I don't see anything happening. I don't mean to put you guys in the hot seat, but the reality is that's where we all are right now. Businesses are closing. People's lives are or not people's uh livelihood is at stake. And this the business downtown is just diminishing quicker than we can really recover from it. Um, I've spoken before about accessibility, about how the website still says that the downtown roadways are completely accessible. There are still issues that prevent people using walkers or mobility aids from actually using the side of the sidewalk where the construction is happening. If you can't fix the problem, at least change the wording on the website. Like, it's not a big effort that I'm really asking for here. I just want for what is really there to be represented in realistic terminology. Um, obviously it would be ideal if we could put down some kind of um layer of protection or something over the pearavevel to be able to create a more solid um walkway, but if that's not accessible, let's just update the website. Um, in addition to that, my friend talked about Seabard Road, the bottlenecks that are created there and the hazard that's uh created with uh the one-way street on Salem. Um, speed bumps. We could even just put up signage. I know that, you know, money is a very important thing when you're running a town. So rather than worrying about, you know, all of these other expensive fixes, what if we just put up a sign that says detour pointing away from seabboard, what if we just put up a sign that says no through traffic so

that it deters some of the people that are about to get hit from these cars that are speeding down this roadway. It's not intended for through traffic. It should be displayed that it is not. Um, [snorts] in addition to that, um, something that came to my attention from the last meeting is that there are no real pride events except for the storytelling event that was held, I think on the 4th. Why is that? In a community that is supposed to represent everybody, the marginalized community of the LGBTQIA, I understand there was somebody who uh was running the pride organization for Apex who stepped down, but there's a committee. So, is there not sorry, is there not space for us to try and include everybody? That's my question.

Thanks for speaking.

Thank you.

Right,

George Hogan.

You got four more people, sir.

Oh, I got a lot of Well, some of them left. That was a long time. Um, so I got a speech here. Um, and I'm not going to pull a full audible. Um, but yeah, also George Hogan 2140 Victoria, sorry. Um what I heard tonight um was encouraging. Um the questions that you guys asked and I've spoken with many of you in person uh here and there, phone, text, email. Uh but it was encouraging um because it seems like there's uniform agreement that relative to ALPR that Flock is not a vendor we need to be in business with. Um and I think that's really really exciting. Um and even even though he didn't mention it and I will get to my prepared speech, he didn't mention it as you know frequently and the chief is focusing more on LA uh LAPR. Yeah. Um that was still a concern, but I appreciate the technology that he needs. But I think we all agree and I think everybody behind me would agree there needs to be a certain level of privacy. But before we even get there, we need to understand what the policy is going to be. And you guys mentioned it today. Um and the chief said, "Hey, you know,

police department needs to be involved with that." Yes, you guys need to be involved with police department needs to be involved with it and we need to be involved with it. That is and I guarantee you if I am involved with that, I'm going to make it way strict. Um and there might be, you know, iterations back and forth. Um but I do want to thank the chief for coming in and I appreciated his uh presentation and I appreciated the cander and talking with him outside. I appreciate that as well. Um, he's done real work and he focuses a lot on transparency, focuses a lot on mental health. Um, and I, uh, I think it's clear that he spends a lot of time on the, uh, Apex subreddit. Um, I know some of you guys do as well. Um, one thing I do want to check is we're talking about the contract for flock being up in January. I think there is a 60-day notice clause. So, we shouldn't be talking about January. We should be talking about the end of November. But we should make that uh very clear. Um I came in tonight wanting to present that uh the uh especially a lot of the comments that were put there were directed at at me or directed at people that were speaking or directed at people in certain subreddits. Um I noticed and I think a lot of us noticed and I was going to say I I think the chief may think I'm his opponent, but I actually don't think that. I think all of us want the same thing. um which is a safe apex and there's a lot of ways to get there but if you think about the last 4 months that I've been coming here I've been warning about things like mission creep um and is clearly happening not necessarily here but with block they are talking about drones they're talking about live camera feeds they are talking about audio detection that's a problem um but let's name what we heard today we heard a complete defense of ALPR and I think there's a lot of discussions people might be on extreme sides of each uh of each of the debate, but it was the defense of ALPR and it was the defense of a certain level of surveillance. Um, but that wasn't really what we were

talking about and it was addressed, but it wasn't really we're talking about relative to Flock. The presentation was a good presentation. I think some of the images were pulled directly from Flock. Uh, especially that nice rosy one of a really pretty neighborhood with a Flock camera sitting over it. Um, and um, I just have to say I think Flock itself is anathema to trust. Um, I'm not going to argue with the examples he gave. He gave really, really scary examples. Um, but that's not the ordinary work that this system does. And uh, most of those examples of crime were, whether we like it or not, they were pretty politically charged, especially when we start throwing in fentanyl, we start throwing in Venezuelan gangs. We know what that was about. Um but none of it actually answers what we came here um uh to discuss which is going to be the privacy which is going to be the data which is going to be the collection of citizen movement and that's a problem. So while the chief was definitely careful not to mention Flock too much. It eventually came out Shane I think you were the one that really kind of started bringing that up. So I appreciate that. But just so we're all on the same page Flock is connected as he said to over a thousand different agencies. Um that was on their slide. Um, one thing to call out, he did mention neighboring neighboring agencies like we're thinking about Kerry or we're thinking about Holly Springs, but if you actually look at our data and it goes well beyond the transparency portal that was just opened up recently, um, you know, the majority of the people that are looking at our movement and looking at our license plates, it is not Kerry, it is not Holly Springs, it is not Pittsboro, it is deep in Georgia, it is deep in Texas, it is deep in Ohio. that is not neighboring. So there was a framing issue that I definitely uh had a concern with. But that single apex search um reaches more than 6,000 networks across the country. And so if we look at what he had presented 6,000 car scans a day and of the hot list is like a thousand. That is 017%.

017%. Uh and I think it's great. We caught bad guys, but at what cost? That's a very small percentage, but we know this is a national system. In our town is a node in that national system. Now, you have a handout up there. I'm not going to have time to go and read all of it, but another uh another member uh of the uh community did pull it up, and what it's doing is looking at um uh criteria for evaluation. For instance, with NC Department of Transportation, there was a lot of discussion about, well, the tolls are doing it. Hey, that's fair. No doubt about it. 540 is doing it. But you know what? Flock is not considered there because flock has such an error rate that it is not allowed to be deployed on the um on the uh uh on 540 or any public roads connected to Department of Transportation. We also heard uh tonight that the courts had settled this. Um that's fair, but I think it's also fair to acknowledge just like when you guys approved it many years ago that um lawmakers um uh judges, courts, they are not keeping up with technology. They will hear things and they will say, "Oh yeah, yeah, that's not a violation." But if we look at the closest case, which was Carpenter, uh it actually cuts the other way. It held that the government generally needs a warrant to track where a person has been over time, even in public, because the hole reveals more than a single read. This is not just little little, you know, there's my license plate, there's the back of the car, you can see my my stickers on the back. It is looking at everything. And when you look at every 30 days it resets, it's gone. Yeah, but I also pass those cameras every day. So, I am never not in that system. So, 30 days keeping it, that doesn't mean anything. It's always going to be in there. That is a national uh searchable national history of my cars movement. And that is the problem. And that's what Carpenter had addressed. We were also told it was safe. Giant zero on federal sharing. Of course, there was two instances of it. And that very civilian that we are all excited about being the oversight was

the one who approved it. We have a single thread of failure that one person can miss one thing and then the Fed isn't there. And if you look at the search logs from that new transparency gives you 30 days. But guess what residents? We have the last 10,000 searches. I found all of them. And there is an instance of APD looking at HSI data. Attempting to look at HSI data. But I'm not necessarily concerned about that. I'm not concerned about zero for abortions. That's a major major issue. But that's not what Flock is set up to do. It's not like someone's going to go in there and type in they might have had an abortion in Texas and I need to find them in North Carolina. Um we also told that it's temp transparent and I think the chief is working on that, but he pointed at the portal. Funny, that portal uh really just came to be uh before he came in to speak about it. Just so we know that portal is run by Flock. It is turned on by Flock. Um and everything that is seen is controlled by Flock. What that is showing versus the other data we have from Have I Been Flocked or Deflock significantly more in-depth than the little little thing that that uh Flock is putting out to make people feel good and give a little checkbox. It's designed to make council say, "Yeah, they're transparent. Let's move on." So, here's the heart of it. Every protection, I think, that we heard tonight was a good policy, but he used a word a lot. Choice. We choose 30 days. We choose sharing, but a choice is not a policy. It's not a law. It's not a policy written by you guys. And a department can change his mind. And flock can change its defaults overnight like it has done many, many times. Nothing was said tonight that would bind the next chief or the next council. So, here's what we all agree on. Flock is not part of Apex future. We're going to take it down. We need to build a policy. I'm going to meet with the chief next week and I'm excited about that conversation. But we as a citizens group, as council, as PD, we have to

come up with a policy that protects us, that protects the community, and guards privacy. Thank you.

All right. That closes [applause] closes public forum. I thank everyone for speaking tonight. We'll transition now into uh public hearings. Public hearing one, annual operating budget and capital improvement plan fiscal year 2027 potential adoption. It's Jessica Hoffman. [clears throat]

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um so the fiscal year 27 budget has been in development now for about nine months. Uh it's been through many meetings, committees, and different iterations. So, I'm going to present um what the public hearing budget is proposed as for tonight. Uh the town's total budget is 261.74 million. The largest portion of that is the general fund at just over um 122 million, followed by our electric fund at about 70 million. In terms of our project um fund ordinances, that totals 41.42 42 million with the largest portion of that being our uh general projects. Um we have two uh fire projects, fire administration building and a fire um renovation at station 3. So that's a large portion of those projects. Diving into the general fund, the total budget is 122.7 million. This is a 6.55% increase from the current fiscal year. And the proposed tax rate is 37.35 cents, which is a 1.75 cent increase from the current fiscal year. The general fund has 14.67 million in capital equipment improvements and projects. Uh some of those projects include public safety radio replacement, uh Apex Peakway at Tingen Road intersection improvements, and the Richardson Road at Corbank's traffic signal. Our debt service for the general fund is its own fund. That is our community investment fund and 7.82 cents of our

tax rate is dedicated to that fund. So that allocation in total is just over 16 million. The general fund is adding 15.5 FTEEs, which is full-time equivalent positions. um eight are public safety, three in parks and recreation, two in our development services, and then two new positions and two um part-time to full-time transitions in internal services. The vehicle tag uh fee is staying flat at $30 and our solid waste fees are increasing to um have our yard waste program be 100% um cost recovery. So that is an increase of $35. Looking further at our tax rate, like I mentioned, um 7.82 cents is dedicated to the community investment fund. Um 1 cent is dedicated to the affordable housing fund, which leaves the remaining 28.53 cents to our general fund. And when you look at um how each dollar in the general fund is spent, um 41 cents is dedicated to public safety uh followed by general government at uh 20 cents, cultural and recreation at 14 cents, economic and physical development at 12 cents, environmental protection at 8 cents, and then transportation at 6 cents. Um, pursuant to North Carolina General Statutes 1587.1, this is also the public hearing on economic development expenditures. Economic development's budget totals $1,1,800. And um, after personnel costs, our um, largest costs are our economic development incentives. And uh, our economic development budget is where we house programs such as uh, Launch Apex. Moving to our electric fund, the total budget is 70.61 million. This is a 10.25% increase from the current fiscal year. Uh this fund has 9.76 million in capital equipment improvements and projects. Uh some of those projects

include the East Williams and uh green level substations as well as Verdia system expansion. This fund has 609,000 in debt service and is adding one new position, a crew field supervisor. The electric rates are increasing 6.25% that is for base and um kilowatt hour charge and for our average customer that is a uh $1026 um per month uh increase. Our water and sewer fund totals 35.61 million. This is a 13.91% increase from the current fiscal year. Uh it has 6.13 million in capital equipment improvements and projects and some of those projects include various waterline gaps, our carry apex partnership programs, uh SCADA system upgrades and UV system replacement. This fund has 3.9 million in debt service and is adding one new position in electronics technician. Our water and sewer rates are increasing 4% for um base and volumetric for both water and sewer. This is an average increase of $3.40 per month. Looking at our storm water fund, the total budget is 3.71 million. This is a decrease of 4.16% from the current fiscal year. It includes 790,000 in capital equipment improvements and projects. Um, some of their projects include uh stream stabilization, uh, dam and drainage repairs as well as uh green storm water initiatives. There is no debt service for this uh relatively new fund. Um it is worth noting this is the fund's first year of having an official uh capital improvement plan. So that's where we're seeing some of those projects come into play. Um there is no change in the recommended storm water rates. looking at our um fellow municipalities within Wake County. Um we looked at the annual taxes, solid waste fees, water,

sewer, vehicle fees, storm water, and electric. Um and since we are looking across all of Wake County, we used uh Wake County's median home value of $470,000. We base the water sewer on our average customer of 5,000 gallons, storm water based on 2,000 um square feet of imperous surfaces and then our electric assumes um 1150 kilowatt hour per month um in energy use. [snorts] So as you'll see here um using those assumptions, Apex is uh second uh least cost at $5,34. looking specifically at our average Apex resident um and what our rate impact is to them. Um water, sewer, and electric assumptions all stay the same, but um we did take uh the average Apex family home value for this um which is 600,000. And so you'll see the monthly change um in uh all of those service changes is $2546 or $35.52 per year.

[snorts]

Um at the May 21st council work session, um council requested an alternative uh 1.75 cent increased budget um that would not infect uh affect the community investment fund. So when uh the original budget was um draft budget was presented, we had a capital work session where um projects were prioritized with the intention of uh potentially doing a 1-centent increase to the community investment fund commitment going from 7 cents to 8 cents. Um when we decrease funding uh in a commitment to the community investment fund, that pushes any projects fully outside of that 5-year window. So, um, our original 1.75 cent tax, um, recommendation included decreasing the community investment

fund, uh, to an increase of 082 cents, which pushed Apex Peakway Southwest widening out of the 5-year span. So, in this alternative option, we are bringing the community investment fund back up to that 8 cent uh, commitment and that would bring Apex Peakway Southwest widening back into the 5year span. Um in order to to offset that 0.18 cent um increase in the community investment fund, we had to look for 372,000 of reductions in the general fund. And so uh we identified the smart cities parking phase 2. So this keeps funding for the current smart cities parking program and replacements of um existing equipment that is um necessary to keep what we have, but it does not add additional um locations and abilities. We also identified a smart cities drone um that was for uh GIS and special events. And then we identified additional travel and training uh reductions from our general fund departments. And then the final um was uh unfunding and additional inspector position for FY27. [snorts] And now I'm going to turn it over to the mayor to talk about his proposal.

Yeah, thank you so much, Jessica. Um, round of applause to your team. Y'all been doing a lot of work as of late. So, thank you for everything you've done so far. So, one of the things I wanted to do just based on the feedback from the community is provide another option. Um I know there are many alternatives we've discussed and we've heard a lot of people talking about the current state of things with the economy and the people have come here you know they spoke during public forum and thank you Councilman Gray for recommending the um you know public hearing every council meeting to to hear from our community members who I'm really concerned about are the community members that can't make it to these council meetings and they're not

on social media, but I hear from them every single day and I'm impacted by it. A tax rate increase and many people are with the understanding we have things that we have to take care of in the community to keep our town moving forward. So to move with a 1.75 and not try to offer any other type alternative, um I wouldn't feel like I was doing my best um in my oath as a mayor. So, when I presented this to um Manager Vossberg, I asked a question because one of the things that had been put out over and over again is can we have a zero cent tax increase and get full funded public safety? And and I hate that's always been used, but it's the reality and we keep hearing it over and over again. It's not anybody up here's fault. I mean, it's just something that's present in the community. and the response was you can um but there are some things you would have to get done. So I asked for that alternative and how that would work and this is what I received back from Jessica and her team and manager Vossberg um with this proposal. One of the things I do want to highlight is the seven cent SIF uh that we're already putting uh projects, you know, we're we're investing in and we made a decision to go with another penny toward the CIF. I appreciate that. Uh I think that's a way to get more projects done, but I'll go back to is it a need today on some of the projects based on what we're experiencing as a community. Um and again the people that are not represented here this evening and what they're going through. So it's more about do we have to do we have to do a tax rate increase versus well we can and we or we're going to because we're going to add more projects.

when I was highlighting what projects that we could I said defer for one year um I was told that it would push out a five-year window but I asked a follow-up question can they be reconsidered the following year and I think that answer is

they they can be reconsidered right because our fiveyear span will move out one more year but that doesn't mean that they can come back to the immediate year because um the way that our community investment fund works uh requires uh planning for the bonds in debt service that we are taking out.

Thanks for that. Um so so that question thanks for answering that. U my my point is what I have listed here for the five-year SIF are I think are immediate needs and it definitely involves public safety and takes care of a lot of transportation infrastructure needs um right now without putting another tax rate increase on the residents of our community. Um I also add this uh where is it at? So, I have a question about the general fund additions, Jessica. Um, for the corporal, six police officers, four vehicle replacements. Is that in addition to because we had talked about before with the 1.75 was a corporal in that?

The corporal was not. So, this was adding back every uh all the public safety items from the original 3.54 cent budget. So, um the corporal is not in the current 1.75 cent. So I can get a corporal with a no tax increase.

Uh when you do all of the reductions that you identified

is that with the six police officers.

Yeah. So the six police officers were pushed off um from a J July 1 start date to a um October one start date. So this adds back the funds for them to um start July 1st.

Okay. Thank you.

So again, you know, I'm just putting another option out there. Um, you know,

what happens tonight happens. We vote and we go forward. But again, as as a mayor of this town, I'm looking for ways that we can be creative. And we've heard that from many members like, hey, really dig deep and try to figure out, is there another way? I understand the needs of this community, but if we can get out of here tonight without a tax increase and still get many things accomplished, I would like for my colleagues to strongly consider that and support it. That's all I have. So, are there any other questions for me before I open up the public hearing, then we'll go back to discussion or any questions for Jessica? Let's open it up for public discuss for public hearing and then we can come back and go through that. But [clears throat]

that's my recommendation.

All right, let's open it up and sign up to speak tonight.

Rustle ready. Uh, good evening. I'm Rhett Fussell. I live at uh 54 uh10 Theor Drive in Raleigh. Uh however, I'm coming tonight to represent the Raleigh Area Land Trust. Uh we're the first uh community land trust created in Wake County and you all are going to be very familiar with land trusts. Um as you're in the process of creating your own, um our goal is to protect uh at low to moderate income individuals so that they can remain in the communities that they're already a part of. Uh my goal here is to provide gratitude to the count town council here um as well as staff who saw the value in housing choices in Apex. I know this meeting is focused on the budget and that includes the 1 cent um for affordable housing fund and I think that's very impactful

for the town. So, I thought it would be very beneficial for you all uh to actually hear from someone who was able to leverage that money um to bring 12 affordable units to Apex in less than four months um and to help the residents um that are actually, you know, participating in that tax. So, I think it's good for for individuals um in the community to hear that. [gasps] So earlier this year, the fund was used to provide uh the Raleigh Area Land Trust with 225,000 in permanent subsidy to assist in buying down the sales prices of these 12 homes. Um without that grant, many of the buyers that we ended up putting in these homes would not have qualified. Uh these are individuals that live and work in this community um and do um great things for the community. Those funds were able to bring down to bring joy to firsttime home ownership to 12 families of very diverse backgrounds in total 27 and a half people and I say 27 and a half because one of them is pregnant and she may have had the baby today because they closed on Monday. Um so and and half of those families um have children um the ones that were placed in the home. Um I was on the housing board for for some time um for for Apex and one of the home ownership goals was focused around 120% of the area median income. Um I will say that with this investment uh we were able to bring all of the homeowners down to less than 80% of the area median income. So we're talking about a very small investment to to be able to get families in these homes. Um four homes were between 70 and 80. uh three homes were between 60 and 70. And the biggest thing for me is less than uh 60% AMI. We had five homeowners. That's a big jump from 120 AMI. So, I wanted to make this um you know that the the the impact is is great here. Um 75% of the residents that were in these homes are were

already from Apex. So, again, it's doing the job of trying to keep people in their communities. Um, I'll I need to recognize the partnership with PY who was also involved in bringing those prices down and to the council who made the decision um to require that. So, with that, I just wanted to give y'all props and thank the town council and the staff and and urge keeping that going.

Thank you. Appreciate you.

All right, Jackie. Good evening, Mayor Gilbert and council members. My name is Jackie Yala. I'm the director of advocacy for Habitat uh for Humanity Greater Raleigh. We just changed our name um so you remember us as Habitat of Wake County. Um thank you for the opportunity to share comments on the fiscal year 27 budget. We have been building safe, affordable homes in this community for over 40 years. Uh we've built a thousand homes in that time um for home ownership and preserved over 750 existing homes. And we really appreciate that this council has demonstrated strong support for affordable housing over the years. Um the town has also also shown support for Habitat including um at our our uh most um recent or one of our most recent developments in Apex at Cassin Lane waving fees for us. So that uh thousands of dollars that would have gone towards fees, building fees would have gone uh instead go to um to new homeowners. Um, we're thrilled to see that Apex is continuing to prioritize affordable housing in the fiscal year proposed 27 proposed budget with a dedicated penny for housing. We know we're in a really difficult budget season. Um, there's federal funding cuts, there's inadequate state funding, and there's inflation. So, no shortage of problems. Um, but voters and Apex have consistently shown that affordable housing remains a priority and the town budget should reflect that. Um the need for affordable

housing continues to grow. Over 72,000 households remain housing cost burdened in the county and in 2024 the median home value in Apex was uh 157,000 over the median home value in the Raleigh metro area. So it is a more expensive place to live than the average um uh place in in Wake County. Uh, with the town's investments, the penny for housing, Apex families will be able to access greater stability and economic mobility. Many Habitat homeowners who were previously housing cost burdened but have since been able to find greater stability through affordable housing. Many of you have come to know some of those homeowners. You might remember Courtney who is here in Apex. Um she has told us that with the stability um of owning her home um she has had her life has really improved for her and her son and uh she always describes this as h allowing them to live instead of just survive. Um and so we're really grateful for for Courtney being able to be in her in her home. And then homeowner Kina um has been in her habit in her habitat home for over 10 years and says that everything in her kids' life has been better since accessing affordable housing. So better healthcare, better education, better relationships, better outcomes on all levels. So we're excited to start our next development in Apex on Tingen Road in the next year. Um we hope to serve more Apex residents with affordable home ownership opportunities in partnership with the town and hopefully with some of the resources that the town has. Um, and we urge you just to keep up the momentum on affordable housing um, by approving the manager's budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Jackie.

Mayor Miss Gimmit, I'm sorry, Fran Hudson first and then Mayor Miss Gimmit follows.

Hello, Fran Hudson. Um, I'm actually not Apex people, so but I have a lot of friends that are in apex and so I'm here to speak for them um because they're on

fixed incomes. So um on June 7th, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia said the words that would change the world. Resolved that they are absolved from the allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved. His proposal was brave and John Adams seconded it. But Congress didn't act. They voted to wait because they knew they did not have the authority. They had to go back to the people and get their permission. This is what the town of Apex should do with this budget, especially because this is the people's money and some of the things that are being um spent on are outside the town. So, you're condemning property outside the town. You're paying attorney fees for those cases outside the town. And these are at the expense of the people in Apex. So there's more that can be cut from these budgets. Um this is happening all over the country. People are very um taxed too much and they can't afford their groceries. They can't afford to live. So I commend you for actually trying to do a zero increase budget. Um but the people need to have a say in this. There's a lot of things that are hidden in the general fund that the people don't even know about. So, I think there needs to be more interaction with the people. They need to have a say. Thank you.

Speaking um Mayor Miss Skimman.

Good [clears throat] evening, Mayor and Council. Mary Miss 3177 Retama Run. [clears throat] My family bought our first home here in Apex. We moved here in the mid 90s and paid $190,000 for a four-bedroom quarter acre lot. Eight years later, we use that equity to build

a fully custom home. Now, a young family like ours was at the time likely couldn't even afford that first house. For years after moving to Apex, I remember getting a notice from Mayor Keith Weatherly and the council about how they were able to hold the line on taxes year after year. That council took pride in containing and restraining their spending. That's part of the reason we moved here and it is a big reason why Apex was first recognized nationally as the best place to live and do business in 2015. Long before some of you moved here and long before we had a splash pad, we won it because Apex was affordable. Now, native and nearly native Apexians like me are being forced to move away from the town they helped build into the peak of good living. Yes, demand has pushed up prices on homes, but so is taxes. As I've said to this council before, nothing is free and it all adds up. The government's job is first and foremost to fund essential services like police, fire, and roads. That is first. Along with tax hikes, we've seen continued increases in utility bills and fees with a reduction in services coming. That is a fee hike. Therefore, I respectfully ask the council to please focus on essential services such as public safety and seek more private sponsorships for the fun and fancy expenditures. Just like Mayor Weatherly did, wouldn't it be nice to tell Apex residents we held the line on taxes this year? No tax hike. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. [applause] Don Kazalino

Don Kazalino 3632 Bosco Road. Um I have

my sign tonight because I talk about um the Lego movie and it was everything is awesome but everything is not awesome. Can we stop the spending spray? And the question is no longer about what is being built but what is being lost in the process here. And I really commend Mayor Jacques for the thinking to bring forth opportunities to keep things in line. Um I look at the budget, I looked at the scale of the projects and it just seems like everywhere you look around everything's under construction. It just never ends. Um keep building building. orange fencing, the detours, utility work, ripped up bros. I mean, everything's a mess around. Um, you know, can we can we kind of take a pause on things and focus back on the essential services that need to be delivered? Um, having the utility billing accuracy, having the quality of service. People don't want the container service. You know, you've heard a lot of people come up here. Why make it complicated and put a million dollars in an arm that you know somebody else can outsource for very you know reasonable contract that you can agree to? So question is kind of this restraint right point of restraint question. Um what investments are really necessary because if you build something you're going to need to maintain it. So there's always going to be an ongoing cost and it's always going to be an uptick. Um can you defer things? Can you slow them down? Can you scale back priorities for what the town really ultimately needs? Most important thing here I'm going to talk about is water. So, um, hear it a lot. The children's hospital is going to demand 1.7 million gallons a day of water, only 0.7 million gallons a day of sewer. That's significant. Why? Jordan

and Lake is where everything comes from. It's not an unlimited resource. Only a small portion of that water supply is unallocated statewide. And Apex is not the only fast growing town drawing from it. Kerry is growing. Holly Springs is growing. Chattam County is growing. Pittsboro is growing. So everybody's pulling. So the question is just where when are we going to call it that we we have limited resources and what really I think it comes down to is what are you all going to say tonight on the record? Where is your stance going to be? Are you going to approve people carrying more burden or are you going to think about really making some tough decisions, things that you may not think you should be doing, but you should. Thank you.

Thanks for speaking. [applause] That was the last person signed up to speak. Um, the public hearing for comment is closed. Back to discussion. I'll start mayor. So, uh, obviously the budget most important decision we make every year. So, I did something unusual and I actually took some time to write down my thoughts. So, you'll excuse me if I go through it. So, uh, you know, first, thank you, mayor, uh, for the opportunity and for the information you brought tonight. Um, I want to start by acknowledging something that's really important, something that I've heard over and over. Um, that any property tax increase matters. It matters to homeowners, uh, matters to renters, matters to families managing rising costs, and it especially, as

we've heard, manages matters to our seniors and residents on fixed income. Even when the amount looks modest in a budget document like this, people do feel it in the real world. I I don't approach this vote lightly, but I do want to give the full context of of how we got here and what we're considering tonight. And one important thing that hasn't been brought up is Apex recently in the past couple years has a really strong record of responsible budgeting and small or no tax increases. During the revaluation year, we adopted the lowest tax rate relative to revenue neutral in the county. Other towns took that as an opportunity to they call it capturing revenue when the property tax rate goes down. We didn't. We went with the lowest rate in the county. Last year we had no tax increase. So that's two years in a row we were best in the county. This year's proposed 1.75 cent tax increase breaks with that pattern for one specific reason. Keeping up with the needs of our fast growing community, especially public safety. And I want to be clear how we got to this number because this budget uh didn't start where it is tonight. The proposal before us isn't the original recommendation. Council staff and the community spent weeks reviewing reductions, alternatives, and trade-offs throughout May and late April. We cut it uh by 150k. We debated the community investment fund and the investments we were making there. We reduced uh the proposed amount there. We moved to a 1.75 ccent proposal that is significantly lower than where we started. Less than half or half exactly. There were judgment calls about what could wait and what should move forward and where the risk became too high and they were made through the budget process with public input and on the record. Many of the deeper reductions some would prefer are ones the council has already examined during this process and rejected for good reasons. I know some residents would prefer no tax increase at all. I understand that

no one should raise a tax rate unless the alternatives create greater risks or costs. In my judgment, that's where we're here tonight. A 0% tax increase is not free. It means cuts, delays, freezes, or risks somewhere else. Residents deserve honesty about that. So, let me talk about more about what this budget funds because for me, the most important thing is the public safety expansion. Apex continues to grow. More residents mean more calls for service, more neighborhoods, more traffic, more events, and more demand on our police, fire, and emergency response. Uh staff has been clear throughout this process that growth is increasing the demand in public safety services. We can't ask residents to accept this and then fail to fund public basic safety standards that the growth requires. We talk about capacity, we're talking about response times, coverage, and whether our growing airboats can count on service when they expect it. This budget makes limited targeted investments to keep up with those needs. It does not give everyone everything they ask for. It doesn't fund every project as quickly as we might like, but it preserves the core responsibility of local government, keeping residents safe, maintaining essential services, and planning for infrastructure, a growing community needs. And that includes the community investment fund, which we haven't talked a lot about. parks, greenways, transportation connections, downtown infrastructure, playgrounds. These aren't luxuries. These are what our residents expect of us and comes up time and time again in the surveys that we do. We always review the timing carefully, but delaying projects is not free either. When a project gets pushed out, residents wait longer, the costs on that project rise, bond planning is affected, and promises become harder to keep, and ultimately cost the town more money, not less. The question tonight is not about whether a tax increase is easy, because it's clearly not. The question is whether this budget funds the real needs of the town while keeping the impact on residents as low as we reasonably can. And I believe it does.

We've held the line where we could. We've made reductions. We've debated the trade-offs. The public safety need is real. And tonight, the responsible decision is to adopt the 1.75 cent budget. keep delivering the services with discipline, transparency, and respect to the residents who pay the bill. I will be supporting the budget. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. Just a quick response to yours. You talked about um you hit a lot about public safety. I I do want to go on record and say the 0% tax increase includes all public safety. Um as well as a corporal and six more police officers. Thank you, mayor. [applause]

Okay, I'll uh I'll jump on on that. Um Mayor Pam has already mentioned a lot of things that I wanted to bring forward. Um I want to go back to the community investment fund because I think that's that's important. Um we have seen what happens if projects get deferred and delayed. Uh we've seen it time and again. Um one of the bigger asks of the original budget as proposed by the town manager was to upgrade a you know a good chunk of of our vehicle fleet. In the past, we have deferred those upgrades to keep tax increases in previous years modest. Um, we have deferred capital projects like Kittown upgrades, which I think a few years ago when I went through my first budget season was estimated at about $1.2 million and it's now, you know, coming in at close to $3 million, right? Um, the town is not immune to inflationary pressure.

Just like we pay more at the grocery store and at the gas pump, you know, the things that we invest in, the things that we spend money on cost more, too. And you know, we have to not only, you know, balance the books on a year-to-year basis, but I also want to recognize that we, the six of us up here, are only temporary stewards [clears throat] of this town. And and so we have a long-term commitment to ensuring the viability and vibrancy and vitality of this town. And we cannot do that if we continue to defer investments in, you know, the infrastructure that our residents keep asking for. Um, you know, the parks and recreation facilities that our residents keep asking for. You know, yes, we can defer it. We can defer it another year or maybe two years. But the price tag at the end of the day is going to be higher than if we do this gradually and in a in a measured fashion over a period of time. At some point, you know, there comes a a point in time where we need to increase or future councils will need to increase taxes much more aggressively, you know, to basically pay the the bill that is now overdue. And then so I much rather, you know, look forward, you know, 5, 10, 15 years and look at the capital plans and then then, you know, what we are putting in place or what we're putting in motion now, right? And with doing that with a modest and measured increase that that has been challenged challenged again um you know public has had input we have considered that feedback uh we have made changes according to the feedback that have been been received as well you know from from the public as well as from council as well as from staff. I think what we have in front of us with a 1.5 1.75 cent increase is uh achieving

what we need to achieve. But I also want to echo what my colleague just mentioned. Nobody's excited about increasing taxes. Nobody up here, you know, is excited about that in in the lease, right? If we can do it all for free, we would obviously love to do it. I'm a resident here, too. You know, this this affects me just as it affects everybody else in in in town. And I'm not excited about paying a bigger tax bill, but it is, you know, in in my opinion as a council member, a very measured plan. I think it it reflects our priorities and I will be supporting this budget with the 1.75% increase tonight.

Jess, can you put that other slide up, please? The one um community investment fund on my proposal. Okay. Thanks.

All right. Next. For me um it's a tough decision but my uh key question is not simply whether we can make zero cent scenario work on paper but the real question is whether it's truly sustainable. Does it protect public safety? Not just in name, but in actual staffing, response capacity, inspections, investigation, and overtime levels. Does it preserve our ability to maintain and replace fleet before the cost become much higher? Does it avoid creating a larger backlog in roads, sidewalks, parks, facilities, and other infrastructure? And does it prevent a bigger tax increase or deeper cuts in the years ahead? vacancy savings, pro um project deferrals and delayed capital expenses may help today, but they can also create

much bigger challenges in the long run. The longer we delay necessary CIP projects, the more expensive they often become. Delaying needed investment may make the tax rate looks lower today, but in the long run it can become much more expensive and we we have to push higher cost onto our residents later and reduce the quality of service our commu our community rely on. Planning necessary infrastructure improvements also very important. We need to do it early and strategically. If we invest smartly, we Apex will be better positioned to attract more commercial and light industrial business. Right now, our residents carry 83% of the tax burden. If we can attract more commercial tax base to reduce our residents tax burden to around 70 in over time it can make meaningful and lasting tax relief on our residents. Our residents deserve tax relief whenever possible. But I believe they also deserve a safe, well-managed, financially strong apex with a stronger commercial tax base. So I believe the right path will be financially responsible, fiscally responsible, but sustainable in the future. Thank you. That's my comments. Um I also support that 1.75 yes increase.

Thank you, mayor. I prepared my comments as well for this one time just because I thought I might talk too long and then it delays us all getting to go watch the game. I first want to thank manager Vossberg, our deputy and assistant town managers, our budget and finance directors, every department head, and every staff member, and each of my colleagues for their input, hard work, and thoughtfulness in preparing the budget that's before us tonight. This proposal took a considerable amount of effort, and we're so grateful today and every day for all that you do for our town. A little over a year ago, I stood at that mic and spoke in strong support of the no increase budget proposal that was before council and later approved. That was then financial landscape has changed significantly over the last 12 months and I think we need to be discerning as to why the same approach this year is simply not a viable option as much as we may want it to be otherwise. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, a dollar in 2019 is equivalent is the equivalent of a $129 or 30 today. In other words, your tax dollar and your dollar in your home budget just doesn't go as far as it used to. And just like your grocery cart or your gas tank, local government, as my colleague said a moment ago, isn't immune to inflationary forces. This annual budget proposal includes a 1.75 cent increase at a time when gas and diesel costs are about 30% more than they were a year ago. And for perspective, those inflated prices have a direct impact on the operating costs of every police cruiser, every fire engine, every bucket truck. Let's be clear, a significant increase in the budget would allow robust enhancements to town assets and facilities, but that's simply not reasonable a

reasonable ask of our residents. On the [clears throat] other hand, a no increase budget this year, I fear, could leave us flatfooted one year from now, hemming ourselves into an ill-suited position. We should anticipate instead of react and take the long view over short-term gain. What we do this year is not siloed because each budget informs the next. That point has been made a couple times tonight and I think it's worth emphasizing. And one could point to some current challenges that we face today that could have been anticipated in decades past. That's not to say councils in decades past didn't care because they very much did and they did a lot of great work. In their defense, we have the benefit of hindsight. As I tell my kids, we can't go back in time, but also we cannot waste an opportunity to learn from the past. I believe it's our obligation to consider the position future councils may find themselves in. And I believe it's an obligation we owe to this community and ourselves to consider the position we may find ourselves in 12 months from right now. So, it's my position that to stall to stall or defer is not so different from facing homework or a chore or a task and saying, "I'll do it tomorrow." Right now, we're investing in projects that have been long delayed and are now severely overdue, like the Peakway Bridge. These are projects that were estimated many years ago. We had a list decades ago. We knew some of these things that needed to be done and they cost a fraction of what we're investing today. We all know the phrase, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is now. This mod modified manager's budget is founded on two pillars, prioritizing fiscal responsibility and delivering results. And it has my support. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilman Gray.

I don't have prepared remarks. Uh I will start off by saying this. Uh two weeks ago uh me and my wife of 28 years celebrated our anniversary and I can guarantee you that I am married to the smartest, most beautiful, most witty, intelligent and caring person in this entire planet.

I thought

but I will but I [laughter] second to licorice. But I will tell you this, the thing that people will ask us is how have you guys maintained and anybody who's met her, you'll ask the question, how have you been able to maintain the level of your marriage for the last 28 years? And our secret is simple. No one is happy. [laughter] I say that partially joking, but I also say that seriously. The budget that we are coming up with, no one is going to be happy with. I guarantee you that no one is going to be happy. And honestly, I don't know if anybody should be happy. I would love to be the person who's going to sit here and tell you, "Yes, I'm going to give you your 0% tax increase. I want to be that person who wants to be liked." Fortunately, I'm not running for election anytime soon here, and I'm not running for reelection for this seat. So, I just want you all to know that I'm going to be candid. I'm gonna be absolutely vocal, but I'm also gonna be real. And part of that reality is this. December of 2025 is when we started this budget process. We had a first work session. In that work session, we all got together and we got a big list of things that we wanted to get done. Now, anybody who's ever watched those meetings knows that my biggest complaint about those meetings is this. We come up with this great list of things of stuff that absolutely should be done, but my complaint has always been the same.

We can't really come up with a list because we don't have a solid dollar figure to balance that out with, but we go through the exercise. We identify and prioritize what are the things that we really want. What are the things that we hear the residents want us to build? But every year we start that budget process, but at the end of that meeting, the first thing that comes up is we have to figure out what is not going to get done. That's a long list, 40 plus projects. If we can get five done in a year, that is an amazing thing to do. But I always do this exercise after that December meeting. I always kind of figure out what's going to be the tax rate in order to make those projects happen. And every person on this dis has a pet project that they wanted done. But when I did the math on that, that meant a 5.5 uh cent increase in order to get all those things done. And fortunately, I talked to my colleagues and they all recognize that that is not an accessible thing. But that's the first stab of where we start this process. February 11th, 2026, we have our first real big work session on the budget. Three days, we go through the entire process. We once again start whacking and stacking projects and talking about things, but we have the staff come in and start telling us about the things that are absolute critical needs that they want. This is February. That meeting is our first proposal of where things are going. And I remember after that meeting looked as though our tax rate was about 4.5%. this uh on February uh 11, 2026, we have our council meeting

and we've had numerous people Elizabeth Ray Stit, I know some of you may think that when she comes in here, she is a pain in our side. I disagree. I like it when she comes up here and talks because the thing that we have in common is that we are constantly saying we really want folks to come in here and talk about the budget. my preferences when they actually are taxpayers within our community, but I don't mind when people come and talk about the budget. That to me is something that is always a real thing because that's the real dollars that come out. So, when we decided as a council that we should have hearings, a public hearing at our meetings before we even get into the whole full budget process to make sure we can get people engaged and asking questions. And I'm glad we did because we got engagement. We got people asking questions. The presentations that we received from the staff was genuinely shaped by the stuff that was coming from these comments and public hearings. We had an entire me and Craig Settzer had an entire conversation about a proposal. Somebody came to us and said, "Get rid of parks and wreck." Sounds crazy, but worth exploring. We talked about it and we talked about all the pieces that come about with our parks and wreck about the impact that that department has. Not simply on people in terms of where do you get to go to a park but real impact in terms of if you have a summer camp program. You are now providing a working family an opportunity to have a daycare center where their kids can be engaged and involved at a reduced cost. I fully recognize that I sit on a comfy seat. My job allows me to have many privileges people do not have. But I'll be the first person to tell you, I remember what it was like eating spam sandwiches.

And I'll be the first person to tell you that ramen was my best friend when I was a kid. Beans and not weenies, but bayena sausages. I said bayena. You heard me. was the thing that would get me through many a meal and I know the mayor knows what I'm talking about and I know many on this dis understand that but that's important for us to remember because that's the type of person that we've got to keep in our mind as we start thinking about budget and those were the people that we had a chance to hear from we heard from people who use our public transportation system that they get to use for free and I know that there are people who will say we don't need that system. We don't need to put the money into that. And I hear that, but we're also talking about a service that allows many people to have the freedom to be able to do things. And maybe that's a cost savings. March 11th, we had our another uh first of five public hearings, six public hearings on budget. And then in March 24th, we had the town manager bring his first discussion about the budget and he came in at about 375. April, we had our first finance. First of several finance committee meetings where we talked about things such as the affordable housing fund, the cost and impact of our employees on our overall operations budget and heard not for the last time the number of things that we need to do in terms of improving the ability for the folks who do the work around this town to be able to do their work. whether it's vehicles, whether it's u being able to have the training that they need and things of that nature. April 6th, we had another finance committee where we started talking about things such as, hey, what money are we receiving from the state and local

government and the federal government in order to help us be able to do our job. On April 6th, we all got together and we talked to we got that big binder. We started talking about the budget. And then in May, we told the budget manager again, the town manager to cut more and asked them to provide us three options. One of those three options was a zero cent option. that was done for the purposes of making sure that we aren't leaving anything on the table. That 0% option wasn't just taken as a as as a ridiculous exercise. We really wanted the staff to put in time and they took three weeks to put together numbers to figure out how to get to that 0% and how to get to that 0% without impacting our public safety desires because that's the one thing that we all basically said from the beginning. We need to make sure that we're securing and ensuring that our public safety needs are being met. But we asked for that zero. During the course of that meeting, we were all there. We all talked about that zero. And the thing that we really found ourselves trying to figure out is this. How do we continue to build in the infrastructure that we absolutely need at the cheapest affordable rate? And the one thing that jumped in my mind when we were having that meeting upstairs as I kept looking out the window is projects that we delay cost us more. You don't believe me? Take a gander right out there at Tontol House. It's a project that we have to do because we made a promise as a council. Ask me if I wanted to do that project. I can tell you absolutely no. But guess what? A prior council made that decision. made that promise, made that obligation, and I'm a member of council. So, guess what

we get to do? We get to uphold that obligation. That project was kicked year after year after year, and every year it got kicked. We saw more and more and more money get added on. This is my only concern with the mayor's proposal because as we kick things down the road, my concern is how much are we going to be putting on that cost down the road?

[clears throat]

And I think when we talked about the 0% at that last meeting, it was the topic of conversation, hence why we had the big conversation about CIF and how much we're going to be using in projects and which projects we can defer and which projects we can delay. We all recognize that we can make our budget easier and reduce that tax burden by kicking off these projects. But I do think about the real issue, which is how much are we going to cost down the road? How much more are we going to have for these projects that honestly need to be done? Expansion of the Peakway. We hear about traffic all the time. Putting up traffic lights, we hear about that all the time. There's a balance that we have to make. We're balancing things such as ensuring that we maintain a lead on affordable housing because people need that. But we're also balancing our need to make sure that we have a safe and most importantly lively community that's going to be here. Like I said, I want to be the person who's going to say 0%. Why? Because I like to be liked. But I also fully recognize based upon my marriage that the best way of doing this is to not be happy. Do I want a zero? Absolutely. But I can't live in that world. I've got to live in a world where we're going to have to spend money responsibly. We're gonna have to think about the future. We're going to have to make that balance. And to this day, I will tell you, I don't think a 1.7 cent increase is light. I don't. And I don't take it lightly.

This is nothing that I feel like is a thing of joy. But I also recognize that I have come to you, manager Vossberg, and every department and asked you to cut and cut and cut. We cut to the bone and then I asked you to start shaving bone and then you started shaving bone. I recognize what you've done and I appreciate that. I recognize and appreciate the work that our budget staff has done because I will tell you nothing makes them happier than a 3:00 a.m. email from us asking them to jump over hurdles. But the reason why you're doing the 3:00 am jumping over hurdles is because we're trying to figure out how to do this in a way that isn't going to hurt everybody. There's going to be a painoint for everybody. We're going to try to minimize and mitigate that painoint down the road. We're trying to make sure that we can do the best we can to make sure that we're providing the services that are absolutely necessary. And I'm happy to say that we're going to get there. I wish we didn't have to do it with the tax increase, but I also recognize that I am a realist. And as a person who's not afraid to say, I'm not running for reelection anymore. I'm not afraid to make the tough call, but I'm not afraid and never have been afraid of making the right call. And I do think that this is the right call. I'm in support of the 175.

Hold up.

Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, you can't you can't say anything. I appreciate your support, but you can't see anything.

You can't can't see.

Yes, can you put the slide up where we have the decision about the 0.18 cents?

I I do want to I do want to make a response real quick. Um I appreciate all the feedback again. Um as the mayor of Apex and just to present another option, that was my goal this evening. So I I do want to point out some of the points that were made. I don't think I've ever sent you an email at two in the morning. I don't think I have.

No, no, just me.

Okay. [laughter] Um I will say this isn't for me a proposal

to be liked. Not at all. I already know there

ma'am last time. Okay. Trust me, there are many people here that don't support things that I prioritize and want to do. That's not the point. The point is just to represent many members of this community who has come to me personally who continue to speak out and all the things that were pointed out here about infrastructure infrastructure is in there right there. So the decision is going to be made. I do want to go on record that the mayor of Apex try to get you a 0% tax increase. Okay. Um make your motion. Uh mayor, we had a decision point regarding at the um previous work session. We asked staff to evaluate alternatives to the 0.18 cent reduction in the CIF and staff has given a set of reductions and I would like to look at my colleagues and ask what you'd prefer on this slide. Um I'm conflicted. Um so on the one hand side I I do see the value in increasing the SI by a full penny because it opens up a lot more project budget down the road. like a lot of our financial modeling uh as the budget manager just outlined is is is predicated on maintaining this potentially growing this so that we can afford the projects that um you know council member Gray so eloquently described. Um that's a like you know this this one particular project is not

one that I am particularly you know worried about fitting in the five-year plan right and so um I would just I would say like um I would support the additional reductions and redirect that money to the civ um you know this this particular project will be you know reevaluated you know for future uh capital you know or timelines project timelines anyways right we'll see if it bubbles close to the top um you know in a future session. It's not there for me right now, but I do like the idea of having um the full penny on the CI. So, I'll go with the additional reductions.

Anybody else?

Because of the development that takes place, we're not starting that project anytime soon anyway.

No. Right. But like we're pulling it into a 5-year time window, right? And I'm not sure if you know this particular section of the Peakway is really up for redevelopment or needs to be redeveloped in in a fiveyear time frame. Um but you know it just it creates more room for maybe another project that bubbles through the in [clears throat] terms of priorities.

Yeah, I I can see that because I mean that you know those may remember we had a we had a a reasonzoning petition where there was going to be a developer that was going to be basically building the other side of the road. That project didn't take place. So, we would essentially be widening a road to a narrowing point that we are hoping somebody will eventually um try to build uh without our funds. This isn't a project that's going to be happening within that 5-year window.

I agree. [clears throat]

Good, sir.

I agree. In that case, mayor, I move we approve the 2027 annual operating budget capital improvement plan um with the alternative option of increasing the CIF and the additional operating reduction staffs presented.

All right, we have a motion.

I'll second.

Second. Any further discussion?

All right, hear none. All in favor say I.

I oppos. All right, motion carries. All

right. The next thing we have is motion to go into close session.

Make a motion to close into close session.

All right. We have a motion. Is there a second?

Second. All in favor say I.

I.

Motion carries.

[snorts]

That was Are we done? [cough]

Motion to adjurnn.

Second.

Second. All in favor say I.

I.