Town Council Work Session - May 2026

Our choice.

All right. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome. We'll go ahead start our work session May 1926. I'll call and before the agenda [clears throat] and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Excellent agenda. Town manager ready for this.

All right. Thank you. You're going to get into new initiative development. If you'll recall, this was originally scheduled for our retreat and we had a very robust agenda. So, we didn't get to everything. So, this got bumped. So, you'll be doing kind of a retreat. It'll have a retreat feel to it. We're going to get you out of your chairs and have individual boards. You'll have a facilitator at each board. Um I did want to hit on the timeline because remember new initiative development um because we had election cycle we wanted to get through council seated uh then since it didn't happen at the retreat we're looking at these initiatives if there's a financial implication then it'll be not for the upcoming budget it'll be for the following fiscal year. Uh there may be things that come out of this process that we could start ahead if it's not uh doesn't have a fiscal implication but we're really our timeline is today. you'll see at the top data collect. So, [clears throat] normally we would do where we develop the initiatives and we have them rank them with the dots and do all that. Today, all we're going to focus on because we have about an hour through this activity is getting your thoughts and starting to build those initiatives within each area. Um, it doesn't even have to be fully developed today. We just want to get kind of your information and and we can help then develop those initiatives. The next step is in July we have a director's meeting and we're going to do a very similar activity with our leadership team and see what initiatives come there. Then we'll mesh the two together. Uh we we'll do that process from August to

September. We'll do the meshing together. um devel look at developing a list of initiatives and then we'll bring this back to council uh September October when we do the strategic planning session which typically I think last year was beginning of October but somewhere end of September beginning of October which actually works out very nicely with the strategic plan refresh that we have uh coming up for this next fiscal year. So, we'll be looking at the refresh. We'll look at the initiatives and how they fall under it, how everything kind of aligns together. Uh, then as far as implementation on those initiatives, like I said, if there are no fiscal implementation or fiscal limitations, we could start as early as January. Uh, and then if there are fiscal implications, then it would be looking at July 27. I also made a note on these two. now have co to restructure our council committees in alignment with the different goal areas of the strategic plan. And so we believe that that would be a good mechanism for kind of followup and progress monitoring of each goal area and do reporting through those council committees. So it kind of works out nicely and then the chair of those committees kind of would be the indirect champion from the council level for those different areas. So we want to build that up a little bit as we go through these issues. Are we good on the time thoughts? Okay. So then what we want to do and it's like I said we don't have a ton of time session about an hour and a half. We want to save time at the end for talking about the special events and the parade item. So we've got about an hour and there are five stations. So we're going to have one of you at each station start. Um Mr. Reese are going to be at the one economic vitality. Council member Gray get you to go to get my glasses on responsible development. Then mayor, if you'll start at welcoming community, council member Mafy at high performing government and if council member Moo comes in, she can be here. I

think council member Seager is not going to make it today. So we'll have 10 minutes there. We've got some questions to kind of get your brains going. We've got stickies with you put ideas up. We'll do a 10 minute and Allan's provided us with a timer here. 10 minutes and then we'll rotate. Okay, just rotate this way counter weird just we'll take it all. We're not going to report out the end. We can if you guys want to talk a little bit on it, we can get your thoughts, but we just want to get that data, take it, synthesize it, and go through the process. Sound good?

Too easy.

Okay, that's the way we like it. Make it easy. So, with that, I know we just sat down and started, but if everybody'll get up and go to your boards and we'll get started there. And from a staff level, if any of you are interested in coming up and helping the conversation, you can, but you don't have to. We've got facilitators for each one. But if one of the boards is particularly interesting to you as a staff member, you can come up and get that board. [laughter]

Let me get over to my board. I am on your

ready. Yes. Um, business

community thrives negative. responsibility status. This is like two. Maximize action. Nevertheless, it seems part of it. So,

yeah.

your next kind of really important. Okay. Just make us have them. The last 15 years, especially the last amount of money

[laughter]

really

someday.

That's too

easy.

Okay. So next while modest Maybe. How are you? Also here last Yeah, that's how you find throughout

your participant. I feel like

she'll give me some instructions.

Okay. I guess what I'm saying. Yeah. Thomas possibility. You're done. So making sure

Wait, I'll go back. Come here. really nice.

Um Okay.

Hold So, here's my line.

Right after are strong. Yes. I'm Just going to say

yeah over infrastructure. encouragement. I mean, that's okay.

30-year-old kids living. It would have been terrible for us 10 years ago.

[clears throat]

having so Okay. And so I almost feel like

have more Um, this promoting I guess again [clears throat] like we're building which is

Oh, that strategy for I Every time I've seen a family All right. [clears throat]

card

[laughter] [laughter]

I'll be pull out. So I guess market At least I

know exactly.

So they're what they can with the wrong. Thank you.

[laughter]

social. I did not

have I want to let your eyes It doesn't go

just as much as the material. There you go. It's just possible. I think that's Enjoy your senior.

Yeah, it doesn't. [laughter] Yes.

No. First lady neighborhood. We all should have been ready to welcome Okay. Thank you. very

[laughter]

talking about that.

right now. Officers, you know, [laughter] Not only that, I don't think it's Fight this and Again,

we're quarreling. Facebook water. sort of [laughter] sex. I listen to church. How are you doing?

[laughter]

This is probably It's not passing along.

Nobody. Nobody. You know, I thought where is it? All the pig stuff.

Google manually Wow. So that's having

[clears throat]

Let me let me know.

Let's also say that it's almost I like talking about tuning in. So many small focused in this bureaucracy. Okay. So right now

I did this. like I have some lawyers that I like it. It's already Anyone in [laughter]

Oh, yeah.

I have a green check. Yeah.

We have opportunity to work. Colorado [clears throat] is my number one. underestimated Yes. Good morning.

Apex hits the target. Best notion. Yeah. probably in the Somebody with me. Oh yeah.

Secretary of State. So what do I mean by that? [clears throat] more on They just like I think So they don't go out.

I'm sorry. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, number. You know what? We can track very canvasing to

all it is. County. I'm sorry. Oh, and then I guess you months. Maybe So we can certainly show on the town. So whatever United It's

not Yeah.

Yeah. All right, I nailed it. [clears throat] [laughter]

All right, man.

All right. Saturday for the next day. last night.

All right. So, just wrapping up that activity. Thank you all very much. We got a lot of good input. Hopefully, we can read handwriting. I see a lot of lot of sticking on all the boards. We're going to start putting that together and then we'll do the staff activity and

then we'll bring it all back. Like we said, the strategic planning.

If you're good there, we can go into the next our second item. Turn

over to Lisa. So, [laughter] due to the streetscape, we have been told that it's just not safe to go downtown. grade. So, what are we going to do? I'm going to walk you that through some routes that we've kind of looked at. I'm going to give you another option and then we do have an option. I know you're on time crunch. If you did want to ride the routes, we do have a park bus available if you just want to see what to kind of get a better idea. But I do have images. So, this is the original route um that comes all the way down and cuts up on the more to give you what it's 1.1 miles and how long the sidewalk is. Just to give you an idea of what we have currently, um the first route that we looked at and this is with uh Keith and Lieutenant Best and Sergeant Zuckworth and Officer Gerslum. Which would be the safest is Bailey's Defunter Street. Um and that's starting up here at Bailey's coming all the way down. These yellow marks are determining how we would break up. So we would have the walkers go on up Amber Gate like where stage we would in Balkam Elementary. Well, we'll get the parts about permission. Anyway, if Boston lets us, we would have the buses and or um slopes kind of head over here to disembark. And then we would have the um the buses for the uh 12 black bands. So, each van has about two or three buses and they're big coach buses, but they come in about 150 students. So, we have to have space stage all of this and we have to have space to unload them. We do not want walkers where all the parents are trying to come and get their kids in one place to be in the same place where the buses are moving. So, we have a way that we could separate everything here. And this is um 6.7 610 of a mile. So, it is short a much shorter route than the original one. Um the next route we have is Apex High School to Hunter Street. Starting

up here at Apex High School. The high school does have enough space. Again, this would be dependent whether they let us. We would come down here. It's mostly flat. That was one of the determinations we needed. We wanted to have making sure that we didn't have a lot of elevation. We weren't crossing train tracks. And same thing with the same split down in here. This is 7.710 of a mile. So, a little bit longer than the first one. Um, the overlay maps. Uh, this is the original one. And then you can kind of see the other two right here. original, second one, first one to kind of give you a sense of how the routes would look different from our original route. I know I'm going through this quickly, but I want to get through everything before you guys go. So, permissions, in order for us to do either of these routes, we would have to have permissions from Thail. And when I say we, I mean the Rotary because this is a community event. So, it wouldn't be the town that entered into an agreement. It would actually be the Rotary. Um, and the only thing that I will note with that is when you agree to let someone do your parking lot, you are then liable for what happens in that parking lot. So, I'm not saying the schools would not let the rotary do that, but that's just something to consider right there. Homeowners, and we'll kind of go into the numbers of how many homeowners are infected. I know that we have homeowners that are on the original route, but you can see I've kind of gone through and shown um we on both the routes have homes where it would be very difficult to stop people from getting into people's yards. Um if you look along the routes, we could rope it off, but I think each of these routes is going to provide a significant decrease in the amount of seating and viewing areas so that people would keep squeezing at different areas like that. um businesses um and then we also right on here and we also have a church. So these are all the people we would need to talk to. Um and by we I mean the Rotary and you know in conjunction with the towns and the trip to here um about getting the permissions um seating uh we would have a lot of

problems ADA accessibility. You know we brought in the bleachers last year to make sure to keep sidewalks open for both of these routes. There are some sidewalks but we would don't know that we would have a lot of accessibility that people would probably crowd the sidewalks. And if you look, I walked these routes yesterday. You can see that there are ditches and there's train tracks and all kinds of stuff besides people's yards. So there's not a lot of there's a lot of plant life. There's ditches, train, business church, same thing. Again, this would be some of the reasons why we wouldn't be able to offer as much seating. Um things that would change, we would obviously have a shorter route. Um we would not have food trucks. They not they would not be allowed to have food trucks. Um, we would need to decrease the number of parade entries, particularly the band. Like right now we have 12 bands. Like I said, they come with two or three buses a piece. There's no way we could stage that at Thail. It would be kind of interesting to see what we would do at Apex High School. Um, because what they do is they zipper the bands in and uh so I'm not sure what we would do, but we last year I think we had 114 entries. I'm not sure that we could stage 114 and then be able to offload 114. Um, obviously decreased viewing opportunities, bleacher placement. There are some areas to place the bleachers, but that would be making sure that those private uh entities would let us use their space. Um, WL live stream, that's something that started last year with the Rotary. I know they want to continue it this year. There are no good spaces uh to really stage for WL live stream. Um, and again, limited ADA visibility options. Um security concerns be blocking private home access. Um fire police and EMS would have no access to 166 homes on Lower Duncan and 53 homes on Salem Street. So each of the different routes would be cutting off a significant number of homes. Um parking options and walking opportunity for guests. Um so basically we have a lot of parking at town hall and downtown, but these are not very close where the viewing rooms would be, especially if you went to Apex

High School. And we could not offer any parking at Apex High School. We'd be staging there. So, there aren't a lot of options for parking where people wouldn't have to walk. Um, do we eliminate the options? We think guests will be sitting in dangerous areas like I showed you the ditches and people's driveways and homes and trying to crowd in to see. Um, private home trespassing, we do not know that we would have enough staff to stop people from getting in people's yards. Uh, you know, we already have a problem with that now. This would be a lot of other homes for us to determine. And then the thing that always comes up, and I'm sure everybody's aware, the Raleigh Christmas Parade Court case, um, right now they are suing the city of Raleigh. They have not been allowed to be dropped. They are also suing both the event organizers and those event organizers do not even go to the parade. They just signed a permit. Meaning what the case is trying to prove is that uh the city is responsible even though they weren't at the parade because having their name on it receiving a COI with additional insured and some of the services they provided made them you know partners in this parade. So, if we had one of these options and based on this, and again, the case hasn't been settled yet, but it's certainly on people's mind because they they denied the motion to let the city of Raleigh and its employees be dropped from the suit, you know, and we had some guests and unfortunately they sat in a weird area that something happened, you know, that's something that we promoted with routes. Just things to keep in mind. Um, one other idea that we had, so here are the route options that we determined. Um then Megan had a really genius idea and you'll see her whole write up in the back of your um portfolio uh your packet and that is a stationary parade. So like a museum this is super cool. Um it'll be the same footprint as fireworks friendly. So PD and fire already have the basis for the security plan. They already know how to lock it down. We know there's plenty of space for everything. We were not asking anyone to have to stop the entries. In fact, we think it would actually promote more businesses with the food trucks. So people will be walking around and become live entertainment. So, you know, band here, dancing here, and it's all going on for two hours, which is going to be

great for traffic control because not everybody's leaving at the same time because when the parade is over, everyone clears out just like the virus. This would be kind of a come and go, like a festival type outlook. Um, we would get a lot of positive media exposure, we believe, because it's innovative and it's a response to the current parade climate. It's about security. Kind of similar to our drone show where everyone's like, "Oo, you guys are doing something new." Apex is having stationary braids. We think that would take care of the RL aspect. We would still be very interested in filming it. Obviously, we don't know that for sure. That's the view that we have. Um, we would not be impacting as many private residences and businesses. Um, the fridge should get more exposure particularly vendors and it's live action. So, something fun to see. So, again, if you're a grandma and you want to bring a chair to sit and watch a ransom play for two hours, you can. Or you can walk around because no matter where you are, there's something going on. So, each entry would get a lot of facetime with the visitors. That is something that we thought about as another option and now we turn over to you guys for questions and thoughts. I know we have limited time so I was trying to talk fast on purpose to get all that.

Great. So we we can go back to routes. We can go back to

Yeah. anything. It's all in the packet too. I have all of that there for you guys.

I have a question with regard to I know that this is community based event. Have we given any thought to being a town based event in order to help facilitate some of the conversations like any of the other

we have not that would be a a converation I believe the parade's been run by the Rotary and I don't know the number of years but I know it's decades long me it's a fundraiser for them so I'm just not sure how they would feel um in this scenario too they can still continue that one of the other concerns so let's say we use one of the other routes we have limited number of entries we don't have WL we have terrible viewing that people kind of drop off for the next year they're not going to be making as much money so we're trying to find a way to mitigate it for the Rotary as well um so I'm not saying that we've come up but the two routes that we determined we drove all around Apex

Lieutenant Beth and Sergeant Doug and WP went everywhere looking for areas that would be safe and these are ones that they did determine we could actually do it um but it would still have a lot of issues and of course we haven't permission for. Yes, sorry.

I was going to say to that before we go into that to your point, this is kind of a hybrid. Rotary has has hosted it and organized it and does a lot of work. I don't want to diminish the work, right? The town is also that hand in hand, which is why we're here talking about it because you might say, well, why are we even talking about it? It's one use of that.

It's done in partnership with

um so I think to to your point, it is it is a hybrid event to begin with and it will stay a hybrid event. uh and and obviously the involvement from PD from public works the park staff there's a lot of staff account staff involved with it so I think the best model probably to continue that and left ro is like where we want to tap out this year and you guys take it off I think that would be benefit because this is a different year if we took more of that if they were

if right yeah I certainly don't want

not a hostile take

yeah don't want to take away from what you know they do great great work So, but more of an idea of like, okay, what what can we, you know, for a one time sort of event, one time one year sort of event, what are the things that we can we have traditionally given them a lead on that we can take a lead on because they have a little bit more um [clears throat] gravitas if we're coordinating like Wake County Public Schools. And we're, you know, I noticed the roads up there. I didn't see any DOT grounds.

Yeah, we can't. We can't.

Yeah, that's what I meant. So, we won't be able to like do a, you know, we might be able to us going to DOT as opposed to the Rotary going to DOT is a completely different conversation and that would open up like a,

you know, you know, Lake Rally u you know, you know, to street sort of access point. That might mitigate a lot of our

concerns with regard to you put people where you put stands and that sort of stuff. So

good. And that's what I just as I was looking at like I don't see any demetri.

Uh [clears throat] part of uh um presenting this before you all today is is a lot of this is driven by safety.

Um and I'd like Steve best to um talk about that or u put me

on the spot.

Yeah. Steve best or or Trevor to talk about it. um because I think that's important uh as it relates to the two routes. Um they put a lot of effort, a lot of work into identifying the best routes, but also being asked to present the challenges um to those routes. [clears throat]

I mean, at the end of the day, we can deliver a parade along these routes that will look very similar. The parade will look very similar. What won't what we can't deliver is we can't deliver the crowd and we can't deliver a safe environment along the parade route. So we present these to you knowing that they're not great they're not great options why we really do a lot as well alternative it will look similar but it just won't feeling the product is not there and that's kind of the driving factor by a lot of us we want to deliver a product not great and this town has done that consecutively for many years we like whatever this product looks like to be equal to the previous type events that we put on. The safety wise, again, safety is one of our our biggest factors. There's so many little things. Hills prevent us from even a slight grade. We have walkers, small children, but we have to worry about cars. We are employing those blocker vehicles in the parade to keep cars that maybe brakes trip, something goes wrong, it starts to roll backwards. So, we have to avoid that. um turns for floats. That was another factor that prevents us from using some routes. Um the ditches as

well. There are a lot of ditches that we drive by every day and just go there's plenty of sidewalk here, but when you actually go walk it, there's a lot of ditches in those spaces, too. Many of which are uncut the private property. Uh as for the private property downtown, we're used to dealing with that. But think about our downtown has a lot of fenced private property. They're up against the fences and that kind of holds. None of this will have that. This will all be exception of maybe two houses. This will all be I spilled over into somebody's little grassy front yard. Um some of those houses are close to the road as well. How they take it, I don't know. One of the the biggest concerns though that fire and has is those 166 houses. That entire neighborhood is cut off. Once the parade starts, we have to stop the parade. we have a fire or an EMS call that goes into like the Nwood area. You can't get to it any other way or ch um it sort of affects Salem Street a little bit less. There are about 50 houses around that North Street area that are affected, but that will be affected as well. If there's a 911 call in there, we have to stop the parade, enter the parade route, answer that call, come back out, and keep going. Those are just kind of some of the parameters that we have. Train tracks cut down in half. Can't stop the train. And again, this is this is we're talking about one time it's temporaries.

I really appreciate that because I mean as as you were going through the scenarios, I kept thinking like, okay, safety prior, you know, safe the safety scenarios start to get really hard to manage. And I fully appreciate and really thank you for looking at it that way. I mean my in my eyes the analysis is safety first product then parade. Um, you know, I think there's ways we can mitigate impact to neighbors, you know,

whether that's temporarily line fences along the way, people walking in the yard to, you know, a number of things that not everybody would be happy that way, but I I think there are ways that we can mitigate some of that impact, but I I truly think that the safety aspect is let's say that

I would say that 90% of both groups allow for 24 between the sidewalk and the pot line. That's it. Now, some

behind that, some of that is flat driveway or front yard. A substantial amount is pitch 24 in line for almost the entire route.

Yeah.

Audience,

the width of the chair, your folding chair, and we haven't even talked about people getting to leave their folding chairs in somebody's park. Hundreds of houses that have never had this before. Yeah.

So, what do you need most?

Well, we would love to have a decision on which way to go. Um, we I did let Robert Carmarmac at the very happening today. We haven't said anything because obviously we don't know what we're going to choose and nobody needs to, you know, get upset and have to know exactly when this happen. It's usually in the beginning of August. They put it up with great entry location. So we'd love to get them in sort of by July 1st so that they have plenty of time if not before they have plenty of time to prepare and to kind of rework things how they would like to do it because again these two routes they're going to scale back the number of entries and um I know this is something that Robert had worked hard on seem like a big deal but he really wanted there and I just think that we're gonna we just got the momentum to get them there and now we're going to say whatever we're not trying to push the stationary one but that kind of gets a lot of different points. Like Megan really came up with this genius idea because I really honestly believe that it's super fun and cool and that people

were like, "A stationary parade? What is that about?" And I think because a lot of people are having anxieties about parades and I'm not going to lie, I knew every person on my event forum is very concerned about what's happening in Raleigh and everybody's being paid into lawsuits and things. People are a little nervous. This might be an interesting take on it and that way every doesn't turn any entries away. All the bands can perform. they can have tons of viewers, they can have food trucks, they can still make their money is certainly not perfect and it's something that we're pitching saying this is amazing, but we do think that is possibly the best option. Um because it's definitely hits the safety, it has a good product and it's a different kind of parade.

And I think someone mentioned, I think it was you, Lisa, um right after the um incident happened in Raleigh, they did a stationary

parade. They took away Yeah. just walkers. At one point, we were the largest parade with vehicles and walking, which is why we developed that protocol to make sure that we always had some a town staff member who was certified driving a vehicle in between the large walking groups. So, we wouldn't have the incidents that happened. A lot of eyes were on us for that. So, we are very proud of our safety and our protocol. In fact, Brley has called upon uh the Rotary and asked about the protocols because ours are so high standard and we've never had an issue. Um, we love that. I'm not saying anything would happen. I just hate that we had an alternate route and people were trying to sit places. And I'm just saying you see July 3rd, you know, we don't people are coming and we certainly don't know what to expect in trying to mitigate where they might put their chairs and trying to be

having an alternate option in future that's packaged. We know work is a good thing. We talked about fireworks. We almost were the only show in town because of the drones because we have an alternative to the traditional ready to go this kind of be the same thing. So if ever happens in the future the construction or whatever we have this in

our pocket that I just wanted to say thank you for the safety aspect of it and I'm I'm not speaking myself on this. I'm just know how the community will respond. So this is one year goes back street perception would be hey let's see how this goes to go down saying

yeah we would love and we just developed that whole piece secure downtown so we are ready to go with that it's just unfortunate that's not going to be an option this year

we're not we're not trying to kill tradition we just have have a problem this year and so want to check all the boxes that we can to have an event that people can actually see and enjoy and then also plan as we know talking about this idea impacts the downtown and so the sooner we can get to a consensus we can work with Rotary and we can plan and then we can also address some of the downtown concerns and some of the other concerns but

and if RO wants to you know not have their name on the station we're willing to be flexible we just want to be able to offer them something that is you comparable to what they're used to. This is they thought for the longest time we were thought sure that we would be able to put you back down.

So unfortunately, but it's reality it's safe to support. I just always put out message

which is why we're here today speaking.

Would it be too much to ask if we take a look at if we were lead whether or not that might open up DOT road options for us? Um, I mean I I don't know how difficult that question is, but I do think I was being able to check boxes. I definitely looked at these other roads as possible options and specifications.

Largely this is driven by these roads. I didn't even consider if there's or not. It was do the roads meet the parameters that we that we have to be to begin again start with train track. There is

no stopping the train can't have a midland tax event. Um, so that kind of divides you to one side or the other, right, of town. And then when you do that, there's really no other flat areas that have sidewalks. You run into substantial grades. There just not a lot of other options DOT aside. I've never even took that into consideration. Figure that we can work through as town whatever we needed. We needed that kind of route. It's just driven by what the routes

because I I think our current route we only have one crossing of the railroad at the beginning. Yeah. So just Yeah. So just to spur out there. So I think as we

as as as you know as we're addressing the concerns of the community because you know they're already going to have a great deal of thinking the idea about oh well we're saying that the you know downtown will not be open coming up with this. I feel like we should do everything we can to show that that every opportunity was explored in order to help, you know, explain that, you know, these are extraordinary times, extraordinary mentors are being made. We're, you know, all all the options we looked at because, you know, as soon as soon as this meeting is over, we're going to get everybody watching the live stream. They're going to have their own parade group that they're going to presenting to us. So, um I do that, you know, and they'll be presenting it without the benefit of having, you know, vest basically go out there and say, "All right, this is the show point where any child would get run over." Um I think that's the sort of thing that will help us as we're making decision to be able to help also send out that message. This is a one time thing. This is our best available route. It doesn't impact the product significantly. It's got the buy in of Rotary. It gives us the opportunity to do something really new and interesting and people walk around a location in front of the house, you know, maybe a stationary parade or something like that.

I ask you about some other routes. Yes,

I know you looked at this. I'm just curious to why some other options have been

determined not to be sufficient. So, the first thing comes to mind, why not start further north by cross for and make it a longer route down there? Is there a reason that was starting point of those? Saley's was the most northern staging location that accepted what we needed for staging to begin space that needed has the multiple entrances. So we have rolling stock vehicles, floats and walkers. They have to zipper in those sections. We can't have them mixed. That gave us an opportunity to have them staged in there on two different sides where they could exit and zipper together instead of having to mix them in the parking lot with a lot of moving pieces. North of there we start growing additions where we put them in my mind crossroads Florida and the other side is crossroads whatever trucks right

I mean crossroads so you could do crossroads at crossroads increase that's a we require them to move a substantial amount like one side would need to essentially be empty which is a bigger lift than we thought we could absolutely do these other locations are already empty during this requirement all those vehicles You don't gain any sidewalk really there. You have that uh on the as you're going north on the left side, you have that large uh state residents. Uh and then there's a few small houses. There's no sidewalk in that section. And that's another section where the ditch comes right up to the roadway. It's actually the closest there. It's not been cut, so grown for the most part. So that kind of while you gain a little distance, you don't get any place. Um the right side going north has a little bit of sidewalk. You know the front yard private residences. We can probably work with that. But you're talking about maybe we gain 150 200 yards on the right side. That's all we

And the other route that kind of pops up the map is why not paradeway across town.

So here was one of our considerations but we don't have a place to stay in the beginning. [laughter] We didn't think that asking grocery store to close for staging would be appropriate. We don't have a staging location there. We can end it. Uh but then we uh we can't cross the railroad track. So we have to end it in the old starting location there on Ambergate. That would be as far as it would go. It's also a significant upgrade uphill grade one way and the other way is downhill which downhill is a problem as well congestions.

All right. Uh my last question is um I did some Google chatting and it looks like Z switched this format for a couple years. So we talked to them about what their experience scores and how the res

we just met on Friday to talk about this and wanted to get in front of you guys as soon as possible. We were trying to get all the ducks to go looking at the different routes and they spent I want to totally call out and probably spent a lot of time really you know combing this town and trying to figure out the best ways to move forward. We were sitting in the meeting on Friday and Megan said stationary parade. We go wonderful. So we were just working to put this together for you guys today to kind of start the conversation. I'm happy to reach out to Zebulun and see what they had and how that worked out for them and report back

and and just so kind of everybody's on the same sheet of music stationary parade means float and everything. They just don't you would decorate your float. You'd have it in there and then we as we envisioned it the marching bands would be a separate position talking about in front of town hall on Hunter Street. They can march back people watch that floats and all are still there. All that stuff still exist the

Yes. [laughter] [cough and clears throat] questions. Um, first I just wanted to offer some

feedback or some level setting for anybody who's listening. We are here with this challenge in front of us because the contractors subcontractors brought a deficient product that meant that we were unable to achieve the intended timeline ahead of the Christmas [snorts] parade that would allow us uh to continue. And that is why we are where we're at considering alternatives. I think number two, a focus on or an assurance that our goal is to bring this back downtown that this is a temporary one time. Um, hats off, Lisa, to you and Megan and your team, APD and everything you folks done. Um, I know that it's not fun bringing I mean constantly bringing the uh the flats app empty, but we have to consider because uh want this to be a great event. We don't want to conf the thing that I find a challenge is that this is a disconnect from downtown and I don't see anything in the stationary plan. This is a big night for economic development in downtown. And so it would be great to see how we can improve the stationary plan because it is literally and and terms of the vibe disconnected from downtown. And so um what can we do to ensure that people go from 5 to 8 or when the kids start to get fussy or hungry? um that downtown is the immediate next stop. I think that is critical and so it' be good to see some improvements in that regard to connectivity to downtown. Um the my but I will end with a question which is

I'm having a hard time envisioning and it sounds like there's already a zebulent tend or folks who are sponsoring a float just standing there.

You're not waving to the crowd. you just gonna like

so they have music or they have um dance routines or they have animals or different things like that or they could each have a tent. They're giving out information about the product that they are trying to promote, you know. So I think there's a way for this because now it's stationary. So now instead of waving now you're hand out the materials and that information could talk to guests about why this is. So I think you have a lot more facing with the guests that were there. Um, if you're a food truck and they get about 10 to 12 food trucks throughout the route, if there's one down here and you're standing here, you're going to eat the food truck close to you. We would have a food trucks all in one area. So, I think the food trucks will get a lot of play from the guests that were there. Um, one thing I'll mention about downtown, I love the idea and we try to do that with our tree lighting is, you know, have some, you know, promotions and some snowman strolls and some different things downtown and maybe colle. I have heard and and this this is just what I've heard is not be a lot of downtown vistas do like it when we have things on campus because people go there afterwards except there's no direct competition. We don't have food trucks right outside their door but afterwards people tend to walk downtown um afterwards and enjoy that that is what I've heard from a couple [clears throat] people downtown. So, I think that we could work definitely on doing a lot to get people downtown and trying to have like, you know, some piece like we did last year with the snowman scroll that is like, oh, okay. You know, maybe everyone has a winter drink and there's a theme and then they're selling smittens and, you know, all kinds of different things that each little area has stop by, scavenger hunt, and there's a lot of things that we could do to connect them up.

Even entertainment in the depot lot, which is what we had originally planned,

right,

for the Christmas tree.

Sorry, sleep. coming out that be so music downtown

but point taken people downtown after they experience the stationary I think we've got some good ideas that we can explore

and at worst downtown is the side car to the event ideally it is part two

thank you uh can you explain more about that uh stationary concept you And we will not have the you know our floats driving around the each one of them will stay at one place. So all the residents they can walk around to visit each one of them.

Okay.

Kind of like a museum or a zoo. So you kind of think about how Ambergate already has the staging down it. So [laughter] you

and going from exhibit to exhibit.

Yes. museum. Entertainment at each different area.

So you think about there's a dancing group and they be dancing the parade there, right? Just stay at their station dancing that stuff.

Jump ropers to jump [laughter] in that area.

It may because the in the past with moving parade, you don't throw out candy. So it could make a lot of kids happier with now you could have candy in each one of the floats and there's a little more interaction and

one to think through it because even I think about our town flow like

do what you said wave and you go so there needs to be music and we have candy

a passport and every step you go to if you do enough you get a coupon for downtown where you can save $20 and or something there's some kind of like you know piece where like they're going around and the more they visit the more discount or benefit they would get from downtown business. Yeah. Um, it's doable. It's just very different.

It's very different.

Yeah. Maybe worth a try. [laughter]

I think it's I mean I I didn't know this has done it. Be just mentioned that we were all like that's a great idea just because it it hit a lot of the points. What we were trying to do is be very cognizant that the Rotary is anticipating has been expecting and planning for this and if we hand them a route and we say we're not able to have as many guests, we can't have as many entries, we can't do, we're not really sure about as many things. And again, these routes are conditional to us getting those permissions. Um, I'm not saying they wouldn't get the permissions. I don't know that. I don't know that for sure, but that's a lot of permissions to get, right? So, we would have to really um they already alert homeowners now. They do a great job on Ambergate let people know and people are used to it. They understand there's still issues today with those groups down there that are super upset even though there's lots of communication every year. Um the church, you know, that's this area right here would be a great viewing area, but that's their private space. And so, are we letting all these people come on? They would have to give permission for that to be maybe maybe their congregation system. I mean, I don't know. That's a permission based thing as well. But this is Facom and Bailey's would both need to say yes as well for us to be able to make sure because our largest concern or one of our one of the biggest concerns is at the end it's a melee of everyone trying to get their kids and we do not want a lot of parents grouping in an area and then having the buses and then the you know they're trying to get all their instruments here and the floats and we need to make sure that we're separating them so that they have a place to go and they can offload. Like even you with the council float, you guys have to have a place to offload and move it. We have to have that separate from where I mean if there are like so many 50 kids in the dance group, if there are 50 parents coming to pick so we really need to make sure that we have an area that's safe at the end for them. Um and so I

so this is only temporary for this year. Next year we'll go back to the

tradition. said right now you could go downtown like yes we'll go downtown. [laughter] This is not a choice that everybody but we're just trying to figure out a way that because we don't want the fewer entries they have the less money make you know also that's maybe don't come back next year because they don't they found you know what I mean this is a lot of people traditionally plan for this all year they have they open it up and they fill up immediately so a lot of people are interested in being in the apex. I just have one quick question. So today they placed these options in front of us but we haven't talked to Burger yet.

I talked to them to let them know that we'll be presenting options but I haven't chatted with them yet about these options because I didn't know what direction you guys might go and you were asked to like this is a no. I didn't want to present that to them and then start working on it. So I just wanted to get some direction from that's what I wanted. Hey council, this is what they wanted to list.

I think our largest concern was I know they had asked uh Robert had come to me and he had some ideas about crossroads boards and so we started looking at routes but because we have to secure the area PD really needed to make sure that they felt like this was a route that they was going to be you know safe and secure

is the opportunity to come back and say hey here's our final decision

100%. I mean, I don't h I I made up the line for us, but I just wanted to give them some time. Um, but if you had another moment and you wanted us to call Zebulin and then do more with the downtown piece, we could certainly do that. We just were trying to put together the other day to get in front of you because this is a time-sensitive issue and want to give them as much time and and and maybe give communication time, whole new marketing plan for what we would need to say to everybody. And uh so we want everyone to know what time

and the longer we wait the messaging becomes even more critical with communicating out to whichever direction we go.

But to your point we we want to be respectful appropriate.

Yeah.

Wanted to the key takeaway for us today is if you're o it seems like you guys are open to the concepts and alternative routes but the emphasis on safety and that this is a one-time pivot. Um, but it's not like a hard no, don't do the stationary break, but I I feel open to that and now we'll go to Rotary and see where we in linement and work out a plan. But we just want to make sure we weren't pursuing something with Rotary that you guys were not committed to.

Would it be possible we did the station still incorporate some sort of a traditional parade? Maybe it's just like marching bands still going downtown. Yeah,

we're not sure what state downtown, but it's just something down our direction. [clears throat] What we what we considered though was that they could march streets for Duncan kind of like a parade field where they can put on a show in that area. just talk about like we'll talk later.

Yeah, we're open. These are things that we have come up with, but we are certainly where else to hear that, you know, but I it's great. Thank you for a very tough problem. We appreciate very much playing out the option the option. I do want to let Mary go with the stakeholders before we you know kind of go in the final direction and I'll make sure I completely know we're not there. So, we got to kind of there I think it's important that have this presentation put it out there a little bit um and sort of have a deadline for when we need to know a final decision like I heard July 1st earlier that's like

yeah we'd love to have it beforehand to say that would be the deadline then we really need to know they open it up in August so that doesn't give much

we have Alan we have the work session you're saying 16th what's on that you know what's on that

CSX is on Then it's about 30 45 16th of

I'm not in town 16th somebody else.

Oh you go. I guess the point would be you would have time to have the discussion come back.

Yeah I'm gonna have discussions with Robert Robert after this and again I had let him know what's happening today just letting him know we're going to have some discussions and options. I just would have saw terms we have and you guys were like you know that that's just one more time that we said no to them. So I want this to say like all off to the table. Here's what we thought about. We certainly want to hear what they're thinking about. That's the first route we considered was the process support route because that's one they had brought to us and we really tried to make something work with that because that's one that they had thought about. It's just we have to make sure in the end I mean it is something that PD was really clear.

I got I really that I think that um you know seeing the presentation very important. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what it looks like. It sort of feels like it's it's like a festival then like has station set up and I can see some advantages where me and these people work on these floats uh for weeks and weeks and months a really complicated thing and they really I mean it's not right like you drive down and you're done. So maybe some vendors might appreciate I I don't know like I want to spot check some of the vendors too to say like how do you feel about setting up a little display and the rotary of course want them to be on board invited to come to our work session have another conversation.

Yeah.

Um but it's certainly I'm not at all opposed to it. I'm just trying to visualize it and you know wanted to learn from the experience. I noticed they switched back after a couple years and there I don't know if that's just again tradition or their actual again probably see this later when you Google it but like it was there was a law pose

in the wake of what happened in Raleigh and then they got told like well this law is going to happen we're going to just do it this way and the law passed so they they switched back so whole different experience but um I'd like to hear from them how it went how their vendors felt about how restor experience and I think it would still incorporate some sort of great element to it just the marching bands going somewhere still that would still be

and on on the 16th I think Lisa with you being gone I think PD can lead that

I will be gone as well [laughter]

we will figure out here

so if you're we can do it on 60 so get an update

PD could still, you know, from a safety standpoint, they still need that

and there's a good chance you might have a feeling for that conversation happen.

So, I'm going to add talk to Robert. Is it best to have feedback come through me and then pass it to admin? Do you want to go to admin and go to you? Like what's the chain of when I start hearing or how would you like that?

I think we should keep it till the 16th official.

You can bring it to us, but I think the 16th is when we

Oh, present everything. Okay. So, just to keep all the feedback. Okay.

I just wanted to say just if we can make sure that Rotary fully understands that's what I what I latched on to what you said about takes one fire call, one EMS call and they shuts down and that feels very precarious.

Yeah. especially if you haven't had a chance to read about I mean we're talking about how many people in the area because there's 12 from I just think that one person falls

right somebody over cooks a pizza in the shut.

All right, thank you.

Lieutenant [laughter] [clears throat]

good. Great work everybody. Thank you.