Environmental Advisory Board Meeting

They're usually Oh my god.

Yeah. Don't want on that committee.

The regular uh town of Apex Environmental Advisory Board um for Thursday, September 17th, 2026 is now called to order at 6:00 p.m. Uh please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you very much. All right. Um, first thing, uh, approval of minutes. Um the August 20th regular minutes are postponed uh until October. Uh so tonight's approval is for the three subcommittee minutes. Um the tree canopy subcommittee from August 24th, the data center subcommittee uh from September 2nd and the data center subcommittee from September 8th. Um so let's see. Um um do I have a motion to approve uh all three subset of minutes?

I have amendments to the tree canopy subcommittee minutes

um revisions. So on line 30 um after we discussed the heat zones of the nature park, I discussed that there were lower heat turf options. Then I would send that to Bruce. Um on line 26, uh when we were talking about tree canopy, um island spacing, it wasn't about parking lot spacing. It was about parking lot island width to support tree growth. on line eight. Um,

when we were talking about looking at preserving existing trees, I was talking about mapping existing tree canopy, in particular, priority tree canopy for the purpose of understanding tree preservation from an ecosystem perspective. on line 20 when we were talking about Depot 499. It was the loss of raptor habitat that was sad to see. Um on line 22 I said uh that um it would be good to map tree canopy areas as an example of the benefits of the mapping to help people understand where tree canopy actually was on that site. And I have sent these revisions to Amanda by the way. Um line seven should be struck. I did not say that. Line 20 should be struck. Line 28, uh, the value on those goals was to help drive EAB priorities and recommendations. Line seven on page six was about um, urban infill and economic development, not just simply not growing residential areas. Line 12 should be credited to Suzanne, not to me. And that is it. Apologize that was a lot, but

well, you gota get it.

So, do we actually have a motion? Was that seconded? Or I was wondering if maybe we should pull these out so we could

I I know I would like to review the um

the edits.

The edits.

Yep, we can do that.

I'll second what Suzanne said.

Okay. Uh do I have a motion to uh withdraw these from voting? U specifically the tree canopy subcommittee.

I'll move to withdraw this tree canopy

All right.

Second. All in favor?

I voted is unanimous. Um do I have a motion to approve the two data center subcommittees as they are?

Second.

Yeah. All in favor? I. All right. Motion carries. Um, next we're moving on to the public comment period. Amanda, we don't have anyone. Is that correct?

All right. All right. Um, next, uh, moving on to council member comments. Uh, uh, Mayor Protemp.

All right. Moving right along tonight, huh, guys? Um, okay. So, uh, good evening. Um, welcome again. It's good to see you all. And I have a couple notes that I want to make about the past month. Uh, the first was to thank, um, the organizers of and and everyone who showed up to the triangle uh, symposium um, you know, thing that I moderated in in August. I think they're actually their final event is tonight, which I think we're missing by being here. I think they're uh, they're shown a movie. Um, but it was a a good time and, you know, thanks to staff and and everyone at uh, Trees of the Triangle that helped organize it. It's pretty great. Um, I want to put a plug in uh, you know, with Shannon for the P2055 plan to make sure that's in everyone's mind here. It's really starting to take shape. And this is the group uh, where we're working on the next revision of the land use map, which affects a lot of stuff we discuss here, development types and densities and everything. And uh the last meeting we had a couple weeks ago, we um you know gave comments and kind of a draft plan and I think that'll be coming uh forward pretty soon for more more public comment as it moves through that process. So just sort of make a note and if you can make a meeting coming up um take a look at it. It's pretty important stuff. It'll it'll be sort of the driving document for the next uh decade in Apex.

Uh in terms of resonings, I don't really think we had any that were related to the EAB in August. a lot of annexations. So, not much to report there. There's one coming up uh next to Haden Hall that's getting a lot of attention called the North Salem PUD that you may have heard of. Um I think it went to Plentyorn got approved this past Monday. It'll come to council I believe at our next meeting. Um and that's probably the the the biggest environmental relationship we be we're hearing are about that one. So, we'll keep an eye out for that. Um, I want to call out that the council committees are finally starting to meet and uh the first real council committee in a while uh is meeting tomorrow uh and it's the responsible development committee and I'm excited. Uh we got the agenda set out and um there's a lot of stuff on here that might interest you. The biggest item is we're going to be going over in the committee some of uh the potential UDO changes, anticipated UDO changes related to state law changes and looking at the list like it's all bad news. Um stuff around uh you know developer friendly vesting of rights and additional land uses and um removing street parking, removing uh you know just a laundry list of uh of various things. Uh looks like storm water controls are getting kind of nerfed too. Uh ADU changes and it don't really bug me. That's fine. Uh but so there's a bunch of stuff that we'll go over and how that impacts. We'll get a preview in the in the council committee tomorrow. I'll probably write up something about it if you want to read that and it'll be coming to a planning board and a town council meeting uh near you pretty soon. And the other thing I want to talk about is council is we're trying our hardest to push forward our appointments. I think we're going to make the set of them at the next meeting finally and try to get on a process where we make these uh more regular and um you know kind of like clockwork where they're just coming out every couple months and we make them uh sort of as a getting get into a better routine is sort of the goal here

and we have some U amendments related to that which are tremendously popular. Don't worry about it and um we'll uh you know get that stuff uh done and start making the appointments. So I know we have some vacancies uh here as well. So, um, that's about all that's going on. So, I'm happy to take any questions. And anything else that you want me to do for you guys?

Is that responsible development committee meeting, is that going to be live stream?

No, we typically don't stream committee meetings just because it takes more staff overhead than the it has to come in and everything. So, um, it will be I think it's on the third floor, right? Yes. So, it'll be upstairs, but we're not going to get live stream it. Uh, but it is open to public. So, you're welcome to come tomorrow morning at at 8:30. And I I'm told that we have to be out by 10:00 because there's another meeting at 10. So, [snorts] we'll on a tight tight schedule there.

Thank you, Mayor Prom.

All right. Thanks.

Moving on to staff announcements. Um, tonight we have assistant planning director Amanda filling in for Norah and Bruce um who are out of town. So, welcome Amanda. The floor is yours.

Nothing. All right. We're speeding through this. Uh, moving on to new business. Um, we have let's see. So, under the new business, we have a presentation on storm water outreach. Um, I'd like to welcome Rachel Gamble, Stonewater Specialist, too. Uh, Rachel, welcome.

I got you. Okay. [laughter]

Uh, I see. Yeah,

there you go.

Thank you. Hi everyone. I've met a few of you, I think, at different events over the the last few years I've worked for the town. Um, I'm here to talk about public involvement in participation in regards to storm water and the importance of that and making people understand what storm water is and having just the public be more involved in that. Um, so we have a quick presentation. It's um just kind of goes over why this is part of our storm water program because we have other volunteer groups in town. We have yourselves um we have high school students, just different groups, but why it's important for storm water to also encompass volunteer and public participation. Um the clean water act in 1972 created the national pollutant discharge elimination system and then the NPDES created the phase one and two storm water permit program. So we that was then delegated to DEEQ and Apex received our first original phase 2 permit in 2005 and that created a storm water management program for the town. That storm water management program requires six minimum measures. One of them is public outreach and education, which my co-orker Matt takes care of. One of them is public involvement and participation. That's that falls under me. Um, elicit discharge detection elimination falls under my co-orker Anthony. Um, we all work in construction site storm water runoff and controls for soil and erosion. Post construction storm water management falls under Jimmy and then pollution prevention and good housekeeping is my boss James Micho and also um myself. I do the facilities

inspections for that. So, as you can see, it's a pretty small group. We also have engineers in the group, but it's it's a pretty small group for a lot of different things that take up our time, especially with how big our SNE program is uh with the construction site storm water. So, I'm here to talk about public involvement and participation and some of the programs that we have and how maybe we could get more support and help with that from folks like you. Um, just knowing that it's an option and it's something that we could we could make a better program with with more support and time. So, um I most of my slide is most of my slides are photos of previous uh volunteers. Some of them are real cute, girl scouts, boy scouts. Um, we have the storm dream marking program that's mostly kids. We really gear that towards kids and push this the younger groups towards that. Um, they learn about only rain down the drain, kind of ties in with the elicit discharge and education and it gives them a way to participate in their local environment within their developments themselves. Um, we also do big sweep stream cleanups, which we are really as a as people contact us and say, "Hey, we would like to do a stream cleanup." Um, or like this past year, we we really I pushed to be um participants in the QEP annual creek week events. And that was our first year that we really had a lot of participation in that as the town. Um we do we've started doing invasive species removals with Norah's high school group so that we can do a little bit of education and um more about program. So I'm looking for a other ideas of ways that the public can get hands-on with storm water and these types of programs.

Um, and right one of the things that I've worked on in the last couple of years is pushing for more partnerships because I myself only have so much time in the day and my day-to-day job is mostly soil and erosion that I mean everybody's [snorts] driven through town. We know how much development there is. Um, we have I think about 1,600 acres that fall under us. I have 605 acres that I inspect every month. 30 over 30 different construction sites and I also do our public involvement and participation. We just I would like to do more. The hardest part for me is finding locations. The envir the the volunteers are very enthusiastic. They really follow through and do the parts that they need. Filling out the paperwork, showing up. We provide all of the materials. We schedule it. We will work with land owners um for access. We have a waiver. We work with Wake County big sweep for that and they do and um Alex Hinimman does a really great job in supporting our program with that. She will help us do you know the contacting different land owners and um it's she's been a really great asset for that. And we also started working with um Nora and also the volunteer coordinator staff through the parks program. Really just using those town resources to create a network to really ramp up this program. But at the end of the day, the hardest part is finding locations, especially the stream cleanup locations to [clears throat] be able to go out and do it, which is a great problem to have. I like that I don't find a lot of trash, but it takes a lot of my time to find those locations when I do have an event that I need to hold. Um, and so, you know, we're trying I'm trying to find different avenues for

people to contact me. Um, I don't live in Apex. I work here. I love working here. It's a great town. I love that I don't find much trash. our parks program, our easement staff with public works, they all do a great job, but it means the land that I come in contact with dayto-day, I just don't find a lot of trash. And if I find it on a construction site, I make the developers clean it up. So, it's that's why I'm here tonight is to just kind of um you know, get the idea out there, give you my contact information, and just make people aware that this program exists. And if you have any ideas, my um in ways to contact me um is here if you my name is spelled differently. So if for some reason you don't have it um I'm also listed on our volunteer website. So you can get to my email address that way as well. Um yeah, and that's why I'm here. So

thank you, Rachel.

Uh any questions from the board members?

Yeah, I do. Um, yeah.

Do you guys ever look at replantings of stream buffers or wetlands or planting pollinator species in SEMs maybe on uh city-owned properties?

Yeah. So, we've actually done some of that since I've been here. I've been here almost 5 years. Um, and we actually replanted um the town hall SCM at one point. Um, we also did a stream restoration. I don't remember which neighborhood that was, but we went in and did supplemental plantings ourselves. Um, you know, the weather it's very weather dependent where they whether they live or not. And so we went in and supplemental plantings rather than have the contractor come back to do it. Um, so that is something we would do. Yes. Um, we I will say we have to be a little careful when it comes to not town owned just because everybody's HOA is supposed to be they have an H uh an O andM agreement.

They're supposed to have maintenance and contracts in place for that kind of thing. We would advise if an HOA wanted to do something like that, we could come as staff um you know the professional advisory in that sense. Um but yes, when it comes to townowned, we will do some of that. Um we did it as staff and we also have a maintenance contract contractor that is supposed to be doing a lot of that and and um maintenance- wise, but if like with town hall when it needed just a a refresh of those plants, we ordered them and went and did that. Well, thinking like along Beaver Creek along the greenway, of course, you know, there's a lot of bamboo, but you know, as invasives get removed, um, there's the

That would be a that's actually a great, especially as Norah's group goes into an area and removes, if we had a way to go in there and replace before they could just fill back in. Yeah, that that could be something that I will definitely be bringing up in our next staff meeting is the you know volunt because then it's kind of piggybacks on programs that are already there. I can't make any promises for our department but those are things that we can discuss for sure and I have no reason to think that it wouldn't be but I don't. And in terms of partners, um, have you reached out to anything like Partners for Environmental Justice for potential nonprofits that they work with that might also work with Apex? I think that's probably above my pay grade for something like that. Like I have no problem reaching out to people, but I also try very hard to not speak for the town and storm water because I'm not the one that like we have, you know, that would have to go up through our director. I don't see why I couldn't ask if there were um organizations,

right? But I thought you were looking for partnerships.

I think more volunteer partnerships. So like high schools um we are a we are a

member of the QEP which is the clean water education program. So we pay dues and they do some of our education programming through high schools and and things like that. Um Norah's group Swan is a great partner for her. um things like that. Not not necessarily um membership organizations, but just more support for the program. So, volunteers that want to reach out and do some of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

It sounds like you have uh a pretty good problem. No trash, right?

Yeah, it's a great problem. It is a fantastic problem. I don't It's not a complaint, but it does mean that so we um I don't know. Are you familiar with the DIA day um organization through the UNCC dental school? They contact us every year to do um a stream cleanup. It's their day of service. And so that one of the events that they hold is always an apex. And every year around now, I go, "Oh no, I got to go find trash." And I spend a while just walking greenways and sewer easements and looking on maps at streams and going, "All right, we'll go look at that one and see what I can find." Um, some of them are easier than others. Some of them we can go back to every couple years because they're in a more urban setting. Um, but yeah, that just it's it takes a lot of time to find one location. And if I could find if I had a way to identify more, I could advertise and say, "Hey, we would like to hold this event in October." Kind of like we did with the Creek Week events. and then draw in different volunteers. Not necessarily that they came to us, but that we were able to say, "Hey, we're doing this." And it gets sent out on um the parks list served for volunteers. It gets sent out to town staff for volunteers. It, you know, anywhere anybody that wants to sign up, we could put it on the website as an event. Um but right now, we just don't have the the time to

spend looking for more sites to be able to say, "Hey, we would love to do this." Um, it's a great problem to have. I don't disagree.

Could you Oh, I'm sorry. No, after you.

I'm wondering if you could sort of leverage the town staff who who are driving around a lot like the streets.

Yeah.

The guys that are cleaning up the

Yeah. And I've contacted a lot of uh different groups. Um Nora contacted I think you all.

Yeah. And so I started looking into some of the ones that you guys had sent us. Um, some of them I think I'm going to have to go back in the winter when it's when some of the brush has died back so that I can really get a better idea of what's going on. Right now it's just a wall of Japanese notw weed um in a lot of places. But um yeah, and I very much appreciate whoever sent that in. Um I have a running list of places to check out. Um yeah, so I have we've contacted public works um the uh oh gosh, community engagement. Um I think Nora also contacted the parks planners just to to get a you know eyes more eyes we have out there just who to send that information to is is what my goal is right now is to make myself visible for that. And I think we've talked about this at previous events. um that this is a a hurdle is the staff time and and things like that. So, yeah.

Is there a way to add it to the town website? Like you can report all something out. We have that option. Why can't residents report, hey, there's trash here, trash there?

So, we do have to I I thought we actually talked about that at a recent meeting. And part of that is that um we might get a lot of, you know, I saw a cup, I saw a bottle, I saw a couple of things. Um I have no issue with it being

litter sweeps in along roadsides instead of um stream corridors and things like that, but it's a lot of it is also um public versus uh private property. And so yes, if there was an issue, there is a way to report. Um I think it's in our report a concern link for like excessive trash and things like that, but it's not specifically environmental to get to that. I think it's really to get to this website for storm water involvement and um me. So

is there an outreach quota that you have to meet? Um

because it seems like you're busy, but you want more. So all of our programs have minimums of what we need to do. So the six MCMs have minimums. Um for SN for example, the minimum is a one report per construction site with a with a permit per month. That's the minimum we try to meet. Um for involvement, one a year is the minimum, but nobody's aiming for the minimum. We try to do better than that is, but time-wise, this is the hurdle is the locations. So, um we still do a lot of the we do Peakfest, we have a booth at, um Earthfest, we we we do what we can with what the time and staff we have. Um but the minimum is not a great goal. So, same thing with education events. Um we're really trying to ramp that program up. I don't know if you've seen our our recent storm water videos. Um, but we also had education events during the creek week. Um, and also just we went to a middle school this year and did like a career day and told them about storm water and um, so we yeah, our quota is pretty pretty low for the minimum and we

would like to do more than that.

I have a location for you. Uh, okay. Right on Lufkin Road. Right by Lufkin Road Middle School.

Yes.

There's a creek there. I And I actually have a a cellular trail camera. Okay.

Um so I know

the US one side of that a lot of the trash blows out of like trash trucks and stuff as they drive by.

Yeah.

That's been a problem for years.

Yes. Yeah. um that's one of those locations that's on the list of finding property owners is can be and things like that. So

I'll reach out to you about that.

Yeah, absolutely. Um we I'm through there a lot. I do our Apex Commerce uh inspections for those sites out there and I have Hort and Park so I'm out that way pretty often and so I see the trash out there but it's just a matter of DRT probably has no problem but then who owns these woods and is it all the same person and so yeah that's that can be a little bit of a hurdle and so our working with Wake County Big Sweep has really helped that hurdle because she's very good at that um

a matter of getting access or

Yeah. Yep. So they basically sign a right of entry um for but Wake County has she does a lot of that for different municipalities. Um and so she's just got the it's the spiel down and what to say and how to not scare people. Our volunteers sign a waiver. I mean it's not but people are about their lo, you know, their private property. So um yeah that's

Rachel I know a couple of uh nonprofit organizations they come in a group 15 20 people

um they remove trash you know I've seen them in engaged in a modus well and carry area

is that can they contact you if you need help

absolutely yes

okay I I can

they can reach out to me um like I said if my I'm on the website for the volunteer opportunities My email is at the bottom of that page. So, um you are more than welcome to send volunteer groups and locations and just other ideas too as you come upon them if you think about this later and are just like the replanting. Um those are things that you know all fall under storm water and could involve volunteers and education and outreach. So,

can I ask you about grass and uh grass clippings? I saw a picture earlier in presentation of like some kids cleaning up a storm drain.

Yeah. So they were marking the storm drain, but yes, same idea.

One of the things we tell them is not to put grass in the storm drains.

Yeah. So you know Apex is considering removing grass collection or and or moving to containers and I was wondering um for yard waste.

Yeah.

And I was wondering if you could kind of talk about how that relates to our um uh phase 2 storm water permit. And there's rules there that we're not quite follow like what's the story there and why that's important for storm water.

Gas is technically an illicit discharge. So it shouldn't be going in our storm drains. That's why there's rules of where you should put it when you do put it on the curb while you're still allowed to put it on the curb. Um we encourage people to a leave it long and mow it so it mulches in because then you have less fertilizer. Um, we don't want it washing in our storm drains. And from an HOA standpoint, it's a very expensive thing that happens in the spring to all of the HOAs. Everybody goes out and mows their lawn and fertilizes and then those first big rains wash it all down the drains and into your storm water ponds. And that's a lot of our spring algo blooms. Um, and so if you keep that out, you don't have to pay to replace those plants that the algae uh kills. you don't have to pay to have the algae removed. Um, so there's financial aspect of grass not being on the curb, but also

just from an environmental standpoint, grass is great at breaking down into nutrients that cause algo blooms in our waters. So, is that what you were asking?

Yeah, I was trying to get out like there's actually a requirement, right, that we 48 hours or something.

Yeah. So, you're not supposed to put it out within a certain time frame. Um, you're supposed to be a certain distance away from the the storm drains, not uphill, things like that. Um, the the grass is the most mobile because it's small, so it really washes right into those storm drains. Um, yeah, and I don't I don't know the requirements off the top of my head. Um, but it is a problem and it is an expensive problem, not just an environmental issue. um which is one of the ways that I educate people about it because sometimes people don't really care until you tell them how much it will cost them to fix that problem. And it's I think that's the same reason why we can't have it in our normal yard waste. Correct. Is because it's expensive to dispose of because it's such a hot amount of nutrients.

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm told is that there's a different disposal requirement and

a dump that takes regular yard waste

might not necessarily be able to take grass because they have to do different things and compost it and shift it and

one of the the best fertilizers for grass is grass because it breaks down to what grass needs.

Is there not a way to put some sort of like very tight screening over the storm grains to keep that out?

It would probably cause flooding.

Okay.

And that is a will cause flood.

Yes. Yes. I didn't I don't want to talk in definitives, but it will cause flooding because it'll catch everything.

Yeah.

And it doesn't take much for that to plug.

That's what you see in some of our um construction sites. When it looks like the road is flooding on a construction site, it's because there's um inlet protection. And so that catches the

sediment, which is great. But then once there's sediment, I mean, it doesn't take you know what our soils are like. are so fine that they plug and they can't infiltrate through those and it doesn't take much for them to get plugged and so it wouldn't take much for

I was just curious. I live on a hill and I have neighbors up the street who are really good about putting it out but if we have a big rain

Yep.

goes right into the storm drain.

Yeah. So it's timing w it's timing its location. Um, I know it's a very hot topic, but I think storm water probably very much supports the the idea of change in that aspect. Um, and I think public works does as well in a lot of ways. So, but I'm not I don't speak for them. Um, yeah. Do you all um ever do any education or outreach like about who's living in the stream? like what the biology of the stream is.

No. Um I mean I we not past the point of healthy water and clean water supports the entire environment not you know so in a healthy ecosystem supports all of us. Um, but we don't usually get that far into it because the the permit itself and the requirements um of just storm water management is usually the education that we that we talk about. Um, and usually once we start talking about that, then we get a lot of questions about individual, you know, locations and properties and owners and and we're happy to educate, but it doesn't usually get into the specifics of the aquatic and benthic environment.

And does the town do any of its own um monitoring like Okay.

Not to my knowledge. Um,

I don't know if that's part of the phase one. So the difference between a phase one and phase two is the size of your m

municipality. Um and it's usually a few years behind but because you got to ramp up to that point but um I don't know if that's part of the sampling for phase one or not. Um I know that um NC State does a lot of that. Um

yeah, Town of Chapel Hill does it.

Yeah. And it's I I don't I don't think we do.

Okay. Um I know that we don't in my group. So I don't know if the um like the affluent from the wastewater treatment plant or anything like that. I don't know. So

then um lastly um Rachel I think you were wondering u there's a patch of like wooded area right off Lufuskin Road. I believe that's owned by Wake County Public Schools.

Okay.

Um so I can also get

Yeah, definitely. That's an easier contact. Yeah. Okay. So I I I can get um

get middle schoolers to help with that.

Perfect. That would be good. Yeah. It is when I drive by and see and it's just like

Yeah, it's bad.

Yeah. And then every once in a while it's cleaned up and then it's back. So any other questions? All right. Thank you. You know how to get a hold of me.

Thank you.

All right. Uh, next on the agenda is old business. Um, seems like we don't have any old business listed on uh for tonight. So, moving on. Um, under announcements and petitions, item 8A is voting members into subcommittees. U, we have several members um, interested in filling vacant subcommittee spots. Um, I'd like to open the floor to hear interest and nominations for our subcommittees. I'm interested in sub

I I was interested in data centers

data center as well.

Um so we should let's see um all right so let's do this one by one. Uh, do I have a motion um to appoint Courtney to the Tree City subcommittee?

Second.

Yeah. [clears throat]

Sorry. [laughter]

Sorry.

Um, do I have a You both said you wanted the the data center. Yes.

Yeah. Do I have a motion to appoint Romesh and um sorry and Kimberly to the data center subcommittee?

Make a motion.

Motion second.

Second. All in favor?

I motion carries.

Um are there any other vacancies or any anyone else that's interested? That is all. Okay. All right. Any announcements by the board?

I have a question.

Yep. um with the data center subcommittee, you know, we're meeting monthly during the moratorum. Um John and Suzanne both roll off in January. Is that correct? Um Bill had to step away. Mark has moved away. Um and I appreciate you two coming aboard, but I'm the sole person that's been on since the beginning. And I was just curious is that a concern or is that okay or I think that's fine. That's the nature of committees. You have you know you're going to have a change over membership [clears throat] and that's going to happen on your subcommittees. Okay. It's ideal to have continuity of course but um that's why we have minutes of all the subcommittee meetings and and videos of recent so that new members can get up to speed.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Any other announcements?

Uh I quickly wanted to uh say something. Um I wanted to somewhat echo what uh Terry said. Um I I wanted to I think it already started. No, it's going to start soon. Um the um I wanted to wish our friends um Tree Triangle luck on their their final installment of the um Triangle Environmental Symposium. Um I know I personally attended the first three um and I also saw um week over week uh it seemed like attendance improved. Um were great talks by the way. Um I was very impressed with a lot of the stuff that was said in those in those three different weeks that I attended. Um, and I I guess I just wanted to say that um I feel a sense of pride that this year it was hosted in Apex in the in the hobby center. Um, and um I just hope that next year we can host it again. Um, because it was um it was it was eye opening for me. Uh we had people from places all over the world honestly u speaking about their regions where they're from their culture um but also the work they've done internationally. So just wanted to say that good luck to them. Um all right um if there are no further announcements um is there a motion to adjurnn?

[laughter]

Second over here. All right. All in favor?

I. All right. The meeting is adjourned at 6:40 Yeah.