Town Council Work Session - April 2026 - Part 2

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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. We're proceeding to agenda here. Before we get moving with the agenda, we have a few birthdays. I want to recognize and support people with birthdays. So, it is Council Race's birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. You want to go over there again? Two days ago I had a birthday. We're going to sing happy birthday to you. Yeah. You want to say something? Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Shady. Happy birthday to you. What? Uh make sure you get a birthday donut if you're in the room. And if you're online, you can get your fast pass. You know you were going to announce it. Uh those are on behalf of my much better half, my lovely wife. 17 years today and 3 weeks. Yeah. You're older and the wiser now. You can keep the older part. Especially older. All right. say get her. All right. We are ready. We do have I think everybody's got to be out of here by 4:45 to 5:00 for most. That's what Uh so we've got three items. We're going to get started with the advanced tree protections in Apex which I know Nora and Bruce will be presenting on that. Then we'll go to artificial intelligence and Connor is here for that. And then the last mayor last topic is naming practices discussion that has been on the agenda. So ready to get started? Hey.

Good afternoon, everyone. So, today we're bringing for you some ideas for enhancing the tree protection in Apex. This was uh these are early recommendations from your Environmental Advisory Board. Uh we do have a member from our subcommittee here. Uh Suzanne Mason is here to listen and represent. Um so what we're going to do is we're going to go through some background information and then we'll run through kind of some areas that they are looking to kind of enhance our tree protection in the town and they'll provide some recommendations that you guys will be able to kind of get further direction on for further research. I do want to say that these this is right now coming from a uh Environmental Advisory Board. And hasn't been vetted by neither important stakeholders. So this will obviously as we move forward the process of whatever priorities you set, we will reach out for conversations with inter-departments, with developers, and all other people that are a part of that to make sure that we're advancing the right process moving forward. So with that, I'll let Nora start. All right. We'll go ahead and jump into some background information. So like Bruce just mentioned, um what is the purpose? Why are we here today? So we're here on behalf of the Tree Canopy Subcommittee of the EAB. They were tasked with putting up with recommend recommendations to provide to you all about strengthening tree preservation here in town. So the work that we've been doing for the last couple months has been informed by the 2018 Wake County Trees and Stormwater Survey, by the 2023 Wake County Land Cover Analysis and Tree Canopy Assessment, by the Cape Fear Alliance for Trees Coating Canopy document that just came out recently. And then we've also been looking at some best practices from peer municipalities. So, what are our neighbors doing? So, our intended outcome, like Bruce mentioned today, is to hear, you know, council's feedback and see what, if any, priority advancements you would like to for us to work on. So, just so we're all on the same page, what is urban tree canopy? So, canopy itself, that is the layer of the leaves and the branches that shade underneath that canopy. So, urban tree canopy is the actual percentage of the land area that is covered by that canopy. And that

includes impervious surfaces and natural area under the canopy. So, I mentioned that Wake County tree canopy assessment document that we looked at. This report was based off information that they gathered from 2010 to 2020. And they found that the Apex planning jurisdiction lost around 2,188 acres of tree canopy that decade. So, that is a 15% decrease in total canopy, so the total amount of trees. And then also a 9% decline in canopy cover related to land area. So, where the actual tree canopy is in town. And you know, that's a shame because our tree canopy here in town is estimated to be worth around $131 million. And that's based off the ecosystem services that our trees provide to us. We're going to get into that in the next slide. So, what are the benefits of Apex's tree canopy? You can see by this little graphic that was in the tree canopy assessment document that our trees, you know, they capture carbon from the atmosphere, they're storing that carbon, they actually pull air pollution from the air itself, and then they capture storm water. So, we had that big storm last night, all of that storm water would off our trees or absorbing that. So, that canopy study estimated that here in town, and this is in 2020, so remember that, per resident, the valuable services that trees provide is worth about $1,321 per person. So, within the Apex planning jurisdiction, based on that 2020 population of about 58,000 people, that amounts to $77 million worth of services that these trees are providing. Now, we're going to take a quick detour and talk about extreme heat here. So, based on a 2020 study, um the NC Climate Science Report, they found that the past decade have been the hottest years on record. Um and that trend is

only continuing. We're seeing rising temperatures. Um over the last 6 years, it's been like this. And this report found that it's likely to continue, and um the effect of urban heat island effect is going to be magnified by because of these rising temperatures, and because of our expanding growth. Mhm. So, there's a group of us in town, um some staff members across different departments, that actually participated in the NC Climate Office's Leading for Extreme Heat Cohort program. And this is a program that ran for 7 months, and it actually just wrapped up in April. And we talked a lot about, you know, what extreme heat is, what are, you know, the impacts of extreme heat, and then also how you mitigate extreme heat. So, one of the top recommendations is increasing urban tree canopy. Um we know that trees help to reduce local air temperatures, they reduce our surface temperatures by providing shade, and then where trees are over buildings, they're helping to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. So, as a part of this program, we were actually put in contact with a group of students from NC State's Master in GIS program, and they made a set of story maps for us that mapped the location of our Plant the Peak trees that we've given away to residents, um the location of Arbor Day trees that we planted as a part of our Tree City USA um list of things to do. And then they've also mapped some extreme heat priority zones around town. Now, I didn't want to mess with actually pulling up the actual story map online. Um too risky to try to pull up all the different things uh technology is wonky. So, I just took a screenshot of one of these maps that the students made for us. Um and you can see these polygons, those big red areas, those are um areas of high heat severity around town. And this is just one section of the map. Um they've done it across the whole town, and you can see the green circles

with the numbers inside, it's kind of hard to see the numbers, but those are where we've given Plant the Peak trees away. Too many points. Um but only about 74 trees fall within those high heat priority zones. So, that's only about 10% of our total Plant the Peak trees that we've given away. So, thinking long term, um and thinking about some of the recommendations that the EAB is going to provide to the city today, um we can use maps like these to try and plan our areas to increase street trees. I included this one more screenshot. Um Just so let you guys know that this information is available to us now. I had another student that looked at um infrastructure around town. So, on the left side, all of these diamonds, the yellow diamonds, those are our bus stops around town. And the border, that big bubble, that's a quarter-mile buffer of where she thought people might be walking to reach the bus stops. So, about 49% of our bus stops are in extreme heat zones. And then it's hard to see here, but on the right side, the purple little lines, those are our sidewalks. And then, the red part are sidewalks in extreme heat zones. So, if you were online on the map, you could use that area in the middle and scroll through it back and forth to see where those areas overlap. So, we've talked about this already a little bit, but why is street canopy important? Well, we know that it improves our air and water quality, helps us to reduce that heat island effect, enhances property values. I know we all like to see trees in our neighborhoods. Absorbs our carbon dioxide, reduces storm water runoff. Um native trees support native biodiversity. And then, it benefits public health. We like to be outside. And we know that preserving tree canopy here in town is a community priority. So, we are Tree City USA town. Um we were actually just awarded the Tree Line USA certification. Um our

tree crew in the electric department just got that. And Game Plan Apex, our strategic plan, environmental legal leadership is one of our goals that we're working towards over the next 5 years. So, we've made that commitment to preserving our environment. You mentioned Plant the Peak. That's a very popular program that we already have and we're looking to expand. And then, last year at Earth Fest, um our EAB actually did a survey of the community that take this in QR code. And one of the first questions we asked was, "What is your number one concern um environmentally for the town of Apex?" And tree canopy loss was the number one answer. And we did the survey again this year, and it's going out in the all in Apex. So, we'll have more people take it over the next couple weeks, and we can see if that answer has changed. So, I'll let Bruce jump in with the recommendations from the board. Okay. So, just to start with, looking at a snapshot of the current town policies and requirements that we have already as part of the UDO. Just going to run through some of these already. May Many of you are already aware. This might just be a refresher for some of you. So, things like for tree removal that's not part of an approved plan, we're then required to get permits for that kind of stuff. We have tree protection requirements. There's fencing and flagging of special trees during uh the core construction begins on site. Most of your tree preservation now is probably captured through your the resource conservation area requirements as part of the UDO. And resource conservation areas that are eligible to be counted understory forest areas, wildlife habitat, riparian buffers, floodplains, wetlands, or in some cases where there's not enough uh available understory forest or already planted vegetated material, we'll allow them to plant new species there that can count towards it as well. Uh we have requirements for RCA plantings and how much of it has to be how much has to be supplied on site. So, when uh in un vegetated areas that are more than 50 ft away from uh right-of-way, you know, it's like So, you're thinking like an empty field is part of it, but they need to count that as part of their RCA. We require 400 to 700 seedlings per acre. We don't allow removal of trees just for scenic views or aesthetic purposes.

Uh we mostly require our landscaping to be natural or adapted species. Uh we have a parking shading requirement of 35%. Uh we have a replacement cost and have fees available for people who don't follow these rules. On the next slide, some more of our RCA uh woody woody stuff. So, just so you know how the RCA is broken out, there are different percentages required in different parts of the area of town. So, as you can see here at different locations, it can be 20%, 30%, 25%, and 10%. There is an additional 5% mass grading uh requirement for single-family detached developments as well in the town. And so, these are kind of some of the ways we're already trying to address canopy protection as well. So, these are the current environmental advisory board recommendations. We'll run through these for you and get your feedback on them at the end. So, we're starting with high priority recommendations or our best recommendations one through five. I will go through these now. So, establish a champion or heritage tree program. What this does is it designates trees of exceptional size, age, or local value. Uh so, that's going to be trees that are typically 24 in or greater uh at DBH uh including all species. Uh required preservation unless there's no feasible alternative. Um and sometimes we'll have replacement replacement ratios up to calipers per inch per the tree that was removed. Your current TCDO environments require specimen trees to be marked and shown and so, it's a tree of 18 in or greater and those are protected with the RCA buffer areas where uh registration is required. The reason these matter as Norris kind of touched on, they provide exceptionally greater ecological benefits than younger trees. And when you you do things like replacing you replace a 30-in oak with several 2.5 saplings, you don't get the same services for many years if not decades. So, here are some examples of the beautiful giant uh significant trees that could be champion trees or heritage trees shown here. Next, number two is review resource conservation area criteria. The board

wanted to mention that there are sections of the resource what qualifies resource conservation area that maybe should be re-examined as we're looking at preserving more canopy itself. For certain areas that include we currently allow pools, tennis courts, and similar impervious surfaces to be counted to if what are part of the recreational activities used to be counted as 50% uh of the site area and that's part of the RCA requirement. So, maybe looking at that, maybe altering it, or eliminating the ability to use that as part of the RCA requirement thus allowing more canopy to be preserved on site potentially. Number three, hire a dedicated urban urban forester and create urban forestry master plan for Apex. Um jurisdictions like Cary, Charlotte, Durham, uh Wake Forest have some type of urban forestry staff. This may not be the ideal time for Apex to pursue this, but this is just something in the background to have in mind. What it does is it allows this member to kind of dictate and review. Does reviews, they do planning things, and they'll be able to implement the master plan map as proposed so that we can meet all of our goals and desires. Some of the examples administer and enforce sections of the UDO that's related to it. They even supervise tree regulation and review. They lead town-wide department urban forestry goals and initiatives. They interpret, translate information on to the public on the processes. They prepare and make available to the public the tree manuals and other things like that and guidelines for compliance with the UDO. They conduct town-wide tree inventory surveys, document health, size, species, and canopy spread to inform preservation decisions. And they'll designate the appropriate persons to carry out these duties as part of our service. Number four, protect critical root zones. You already have critical root zone protection as part of your UDO as right now. The board wanted to look at this just to enhance it to maybe some best updated best practices and things like that. Your current standard is we have to protect the critical root zone for trees that are being preserved in save areas like your RCA or your buffers. And

we have a ratio right now it's for 1 in DBH so 1 in diameter essentially at 4.5 ft, you have to preserve a foot of distance from the tree itself in a circle. I'll show you what that looks like. Illustration. So, this here is the critical root zone around the tree. In our In our research, we've seen that some jurisdictions are expanding this or altering what types of trees will have a different ratio. So, we found Baltimore and DC. This is what this tree registry is taken from DC forestry department. They have a 1.5 per inch of DBH of caliber. Baltimore, for trees that are closer together that are growing like a natural forest environment, they have a similar to ours, just a one-to-one. But for trees that are stand-alone, that can eventually spread out, have more room, that's a one to 1.5. So, looking at more modern uh our best practices in other areas that would also do maybe go a long way in preserving uh tree protection and tree survival. Standardizing town policies for landscaping. So, adopt the native plant amendment. So, you guys just did that the other day. So, congratulations. Now, all town projects will utilize native plant species in all of our uh projects and developments. They would like to see this adopted uh provide actual metrics and percentages for the development as whole in the community for public development as well. Public and private development. So. That's what they're looking at here. So, we've caught up. They like to see a codified natural plant requirements to go beyond new development and promote interdepartmental coordination in town-managed sites as well, so that we're all working together to ensure that we're meeting the goals of preserving our canopy as well. So, now on to our medium recommendations or better recommendations, six through 10. Tree mitigation fund. So, this would create a fund um kind of modeled on Charlotte's program. Uh one part of it is it requires contractors and site supervisors to complete a tree preservation training, just making sure that they're up-to-date on the best practices. Um you may drive around and may see new plantings. Sometimes you'll see a brand new tree that has like that volcano dirt mound on it. That's not

best for the survival of the tree. You guys should lose trees in the funny process. And so, it's just making sure that whoever's doing work in development around town is following the best practices so that our trees survive and there's not a lot of replacement or complaints about um the loss of tree coverage all over in town. The fund itself provides dedicated funding to replace lost trees, extend canopy, support staffing and expertise in urban forestry and other advances. It also can be used to purchase um dedicated land and other things like that so you can grow and we can kind of have areas dedicated to keep canopy as well. Charlotte's ordinance allows for the payment of blue um things like this. So, this would have to be considered, you know, exactly what your goals are, whether you even want to consider an idea for a payment in lieu. If If your goal is to have more canopy remain on site or versus if you want to consider options for purchasing land elsewhere growing. This we provided some language this is a lot to read so I'm not going to read it to you, but um this will be uh hopefully presented to you and passed out during this as well later, but essentially it just dedicates the ability of the town the town to collect this money and use it for planting trees, purchasing land, native area preservation, public trees, and other canopy assessments and management practices. Number seven is for landscape standards for new development. Again, this is something you're very familiar with cuz it's already usually part of your EABs or the zoning condition recommendations. That 75% of native species will be required in the plans and 25% may be some type of adaptive or cultivar with some type of uh diversity maintained within as well. They would the board thinks that this would be ideal with the codified part of the code. Um so that way it's not just a zoning condition, but again this is something to consider as a trade-off whether or not this is the best practice or whether it should be considered on a uh project project basis through zoning conditions. Again, some language here. Uh the first one is about soil quality and volume. They recommend that for a large tree you have 600 ft cubic feet of non-compacted soil at least 3 ft deep. Uh our current practice, you know, especially for like

uh parking vehicle use area islands, you have 350 ft. Uh it's very similar so you you go 3 ft down for that you're close to 700 essentially being 900 ft for that. Again, more code section is kind of illustrating the 75%. Incentivized preservation with flexible standards. Um a lot of jurisdictions try this and go for this and this is something that we'd like to consider. Grant density bonuses for projects preserving 25% with a little asterisk there. The asterisk is because um as you saw with your RCA, different percentages are required for different areas of town. So, you could also consider how much of the canopy you wish to preserve for that area of town if that was your desire. And you could allow potentially allow dimensional reductions for setbacks, lot coverages, and other things for developments that do exceed the canopy requirement. Uh some language here that shows it just basically allows for projects that meet that that canopy requirement to you have more dense more units things like that. Um one thing to consider is as a council, you have a lot of programs that you guys are passionate about and looking at implementing with your affordable housing and things like that. One of your affordable housing incentives, I do believe we haven't I haven't seen it come through yet, but allows them to reduce RCA if they increase the number of affordable housing units that are available to them as part of our housing policy. So, this will all this stuff here will require a lot of really good conversation to figure out exactly what the priorities will be going forward and how we can best help our goals of most our multiple programs. Require resource manage resource management plans. So, these plans were for projects potentially over 2 acres, include early stage professional tree inventory surveys certified by licensed arborists, urban foresters, or landscape architects. So, right now that we require tree surveys, they're required to point out all trees 18 inches or greater and especially those in the RCA and buffers. Um this would require them to to locate trees outside the RCA and buffers as well. And the goal of this is actually

not to it's to design the project around the existing environmental conditions to preserve as much wood as possible. So, it's not going out there to see a piece of land, throwing their their site down on it just however they want to maximize profit. It's about actually utilizing the site efficiently to maintain the ecological advantage of the site and services as well. So, this is some this is same language. Like I said, if you part inventory all the trees over 8 inches or greater. Um one thing I did see from another jurisdiction was and I don't know how well this would be implemented, but it's just I'm sharing it with you because I thought it was interesting. They had post development inspections that actually went out to like 2 years and the 5 years. Not saying we're suggesting we do that, but some places are trying it to make sure that the trees are actually planted or preserved or actually maintained and living. Mandate alternative routing analysis for utilities. Um again, this is something that has its tradeoffs and it will require a lot of conversation um as well. So, essentially you know, it may be cheaper to go in a straight line or connect from here to there for utilities, but it may go through a really old forest area that is has really high value ecologically for people and from services and other highest or tree canopy. So, it's about moving that around unless there's no feasible alternative and really protecting as much of the services tree canopy on site as we can. Again, the language is kind of showing that no route disturbing the critical root zone of protected trees. So, that would be the canopy percentage or the RCA that's required. Um and really designing a site around having more input from the biological services on site. This is a full breakdown. These are numerical. They're not in order of what we think is most important or best. It's just we labeled there's numerical order for for sake. So, just running them again, the best were defining protected areas and champion trees. Review existing RCA criteria. Potentially explore iron and dedicated urban forestry position. Codify updated critical root zone protection policies, standards. Determine policies for town landscaping,

which you guys have already done. Uh tree mitigation fund, landscape standards for new development. Incentivize preservation and flexible standards. Require uh additional resource management plans and then mandate alternative routing analysis for development. So, any questions for us? Um next steps would be getting your feedback, obviously. Number two would be we would initiate UDO process stakeholders and review for priority recommendations. And then lastly, the idea would continue coordination with all the various groups that they're a part of doing research and continuing to develop and come up with best practices. Any any questions? Thank you so much. Thoughts, opinions.

I do have a couple of questions. So, with the the heritage or champion trees, if if a tree is located on personal property, what is kind of the implication to the property owner if a tree like that gets designated as a heritage tree or champion tree? So, so with like lots of other development regulations that Amanda from Charlotte Energy has more information on this, but typically on personal property like single family lots, there's not there's not much we can do. Say say someone who lived there before wanted the this tree to be counted and considered a heritage or champion tree, and then they sold the property, there's not really much that from my understanding that we can do if they want to the next person comes in and wants to chop it down. So, I think there are there are restrictions and limitations to that. I have seen in my previous position in another jurisdiction, there was a very significant cultural tree on the site that's Native American significance. As part of the zoning conditions, we were able to craft a condition that that tree would be protected and remain on site, but again, there may be situations where zoning conditions are more ideal than a UDO change. Other questions? Yeah, I'm curious um one one thing I don't see on the list is um harder goals around canopy protection. Protection? Sure. I I think one of the slides mentioned an incentive where if you preserve X percent of this, but no like rule that says you have to preserve

of X percent. Um is that something that you looked into? Is that just not legally feasible? Cuz in in my mind it would work if it required new plantings or potentially an offsetting fee in lieu to the conservation fund that you defined. And they could work well together. Yeah, no, we were hoping to get some insight from from you all about the kind of the percentages, how aggressive you'd like to see this be, and then we can come forward to you with our suggestion and best practices, and then we can also compare that to other jurisdictions and then give you a more concrete answer for you. So, it really depends on the priorities and how aggressive you'd like us to be about it. Very very aggressive. Yeah. be helpful for staff to understand what very means. Um, and also just keep in mind that for the most part RCA is undisturbed area, and you're going to have canopy in RCA anyway. The EAB did have some recommendations about looking at what is allowed to count as RCA, which could thereby increase your canopy protection by not allowing things that would not have count canopy to count as RCA. So, but staff would appreciate some general guidelines, um, unless you just want us to reach out to stakeholders and and and

know if I'm allowed to um Just you mentioned Charlotte has some pretty strong protections. Do they have Have you seen anyone take this approach where there's actually regulations around canopy, explicit regulations around canopy? Uh, yeah, there is. And I can In the future we can provide you with actual examples of like I think Durham, I believe it's Durham I was reading up on it again today. They actually have per lot requirements for canopy and things like that. So, like when you're going to develop it's probably certain zoning districts and areas that Yeah, but they where there's critical canopy you want to preserve. But that there are there are examples I can provide you. We can provide you with I kind of like that idea. Yeah, kind of going back to last Tuesday's council meeting, right, where we have developments proposed in areas that are currently rural residential. Um, yeah, where there is a lot of, you know, mature trees and dense tree

coverage, right? And so have something specific, you know, maybe to those kinds of zoning designations and then you know something to explore. Yeah, sure. Along the same lines, I I would like to know the feasibility of when we have some of these developments that are getting closer towards that rural residential side or getting to areas that have substantial number of trees. I know there's going to be some clear cutting or some removal of the trees. On many instances, but some trees are removed and basically sold. Um is there any way to essentially you know, provide a fee in lieu that would be also appropriate to how much they're selling the trees for. You starting from there. We'll have to confirm with with legal counsel.

think about that because I think that would be Yeah, yeah. It it depends on whether we can

charge such fees, but I think that I don't think that we have that capability today. But then it was kind of one of those comments on on the the funds that was proposed. Um you know, how that come to be funded fee in lieu that was mentioned, but I don't believe that we have the legal authority to charge a new kind of development fee on top of a rural dwelling. We wouldn't be charging a fee. We'd be requiring them to preserve canopy and then they'd be offering a fee because they couldn't preserve it. Because they couldn't preserve it. It's an It's an alternative. But I mean, I feel like that may be another one of those fee areas as we're looking at our fees, especially for development. Knowing that our development fee which currently has diminished over time. I'm always interested in ways that we can increase our fees for those sort of developments. This may be an This This may be an option. You don't have to come up with an answer today. Just want to get more.

Definitely want to have a sinking in my idea where we can ask for more fees. Or increase the fees that we are. Flashing back to property owners. Part of that, if you don't mind me um adding on that different trees are going to have different values. Like sweetgum tree is of no value to anyone constructing anything. That forest is called a wooded area. Forest and then um So, that that's actually a segue to my first question. We'll see if I have additional ones. Is there more specificity around the planted native species? The reason I ask that is there's a couple of different directions to go. One is um value that deciduous trees versus evergreen pine. And I I don't know. I imagine it might be pros and cons. And we talked about the critical root structure. I mean, I know that the pines, or at least the the uh loblollies um around here, through you know, their root systems drill down as opposed to you know, oaks that kind of spread. But I just I was my first question. Was there any specificity around um mixture of what that native species we planted would look like. Or simply just, hey, whatever you plant in the city. So, right now we So, we'll be updating the design and development manual, which has a list of the natural trees that we'd like to see. As this is part of your video amendments and things like that, we updated it with Norris help. Um And one thing we could do is move go further, right? So, there are also situations where like dogwood trees are not going to maybe be as big as some of these, but we do want to preserve them. And so, that there could be at species that we call out. And so as the development process moves along, we could be like do your inventory of the trees. We're looking for these specific

very specific trees, call them out. Let's look at them and see if those would be worth preserving. I think there's definitely merit to that in other areas like you know, closer to coast, there's something trees that are very important to those ecosystems. You could absolutely do the same. So I think that that be my request at this juncture is just uh what would that look like and is it feasible? Um because I imagine if I'm looking to uh cost much as possible, I'm going to purchase the cheapest native species I can find and plant those and perhaps even only those um when when allowed. So that would be a first step. What kind of mix um that would look like. Um the next is in regard to the urban forestry initiative. what the feasibility would look like in terms of coordinating with utilities on what opportunities we have in the core of town, you know, neighborhoods that are already established um that may not may be kind of in that middle ground between you know, a uh a play field or a uh Shepherd Stadium and a neighborhood that was just built 5 years ago, maybe 10 years ago. I'll stop there. Sure, you're fine. So that that's something you know, um potentially as as you have a person person in that that position on staff or whatever where they could, you know, be be responsible for doing the the analysis of like where you need the trees like where areas, things like that to help diminish the urban heat island effect. Um they would also be the one who would be responsible for the coordination of making sure that the town's tree policies are being enacted by all the departments as well. So, that that would be a benefit to that. I mean, that's not something that, you know, it at the current state that it has to be pursued. Others I can try and work together to accomplish the same goal, but that's essentially what that role would also help us to accomplish as

well, that concern. Any other answers? Um there's a couple other things I So, principally I'm I'm There was a lot of information in a very short amount of time, so I was trying to I don't know if you want to have like a line by line like yay or nay. Uh yeah, principally I think these are all great ideas that are worth developing further, especially, you know, some of these standing long-standing EAB recommendations that we routinely implement for rezonings like the other 70-75% native species and then 20-25% you know, maximum of a single species um to incorporate those as few deal practices makes a lot of sense. Um also looking at impervious surfaces that currently count towards our CAA to eliminate that. Love to get a kind of sense of what a you know, rough percentage is of the developments that we're seeing. Is it, you know, 2% or is it 5%? Because going back to, you know, increasing the aggressiveness of our requirements that if that alone gives us a 5% gain, um you know, that's might be the change that we're looking for as without having to, you know, increase the limit the limits that we have set today. So, it makes a lot of sense. Uh couple things that I've heard about in the past that I haven't really seen here or actually one thing that I've heard is expanding the front street program by growing our own trees instead of purchasing trees. Uh so, you know, is it's is it worth our while to set up a small nursery, you know, grow some some baby trees? Um and you know, make our dollars stretch a little bit further, you know, as far as that's the that's deep program is concerned. I think that's the that's what we're looking into. And then the other one is kind of going back to the need I learned that and you know, so much of our walkability of town being in those like the heat zones. Um is there something that we can do

within the existing right away is that we require from developers to require tree planting things somewhere in that streetscape that's the that we're developing to provide more shade along the the sidewalks or in medians or you know, wherever we we think we can fit them. We're probably going to get into some utility infrastructure and the challenge is but you know, if we can get explore that, right? Or if we get another five people to post both right away, right? Does that give us some ability to to require tree planting along our our streets? Yeah, so that's a great point. Yeah, we we've discussed uh street trees and things like that and and the more to help reduce it. Like you just said, it'll be really wonderful and probably serious and maybe contentious conversations about how close utilities and things like that just because it's it's an important thing. And then there may be issues where it's along a NCDOT road and they just will not let us do the same that tree replacement at all. And then so you know, I hate to keep playing this card but you know, where I where I grew up, right? Like there's trees along the roads all over the you know, all over the place. They have utility and and infrastructure running along the same roads, right? So why can't it be done overseas and not be All right, and then so it's it's one of those things that I I kind of struggle with. Yeah, I was just I will bring it up. So uh I've heard I've heard a couple priorities. If I could just go through a few of them. Uh very aggressive, so we could look at percentages and things like that. Canopy preservation. Canopy preservation. Um I heard uh looking at clear cutting and the looking at fees I heard nursery, I heard street trees, things like that. Um anything else that's jumping out to you that you would like us as a priority to continue researching and begin conversations with other stakeholders about? I'm interested in the uh you mentioned that affordable housing, right? We we need to do some research. Well, if developer would like to develop certain

percentage of affordable housing, we may uh allow them to go higher, now, uh because the same square footage, if you go higher, you occupy less land, right? So, then we can preserve more trees. So, can you do some research, you know, on the feasibility of that part? Yeah, so that would be under um Yeah, there's some of the new the standards I think there's an incentive incentivizing flexibility standards, so like height could definitely be one of them for building that like that. Yeah, reducing the size of the lot required to that stuff is definitely something we could continue to to make a priority as well if you guys would like to see incentives. How how oversubscribed is our plant a tree program at this point this past year? How old is it or how long?

Oversubscribed, meaning like how many applications do we get versus

had 234 applications and I believe we gave away about 210 trees. Oh, so it's pretty close.

Yeah. Great. Along the lines of not so ceremonial and utility, perhaps that's part of the question of the investigation into um what native species might be most appropriate. Um, again, regarding that. Yeah, the the scope and second is um perhaps maybe you know this, maybe it's worth a phone call, Miller decade ago in six state um it's what with other universities as well to work on um specially selected uh fast growth trees and they were um see, eastern and western cottonwood. I don't know if either of those are native to North Carolina, but nevertheless, those as well as um uh at least two species of pine. And so, if I think it'd be good to see where that is if those are commercially

available. Um because again, those are specially selected fast growth tree um option if they modify. Um the third, maybe I'm getting ahead of it, but you had um council feedback at question number two and number three. And so, maybe I'm jumping ahead, but number three, I was just going to ask um maybe we'll get nervous and say, I just want to see what what the coordination looks like between those volunteer organizations, those nonprofits, and how we can better galvanize and streamline that work. As well as um we've got groups of volunteers who while ad hoc um or maybe perhaps seasonal mission of station like to plug in on those. And so, you know, I imagine it might have a few tiers of folks, you know, Trees with Triangle and folks like that who are regularly involved, year-round have special nonprofits, um uh all the way down to perhaps you even have neighborhood groups who get together and say, well, if we already did the street clean up and that was fun. We don't have to do that for another year. Uh you know, adopt a highway, where else can we go and what you know, when when we're looking to put our volunteer hours to good use. And I think um that organization between those different partners, that's going to be strengthened coming up because our EAB board, the whole board has been acting as our Tree City board, but um at one of our current meeting, or last meeting, um, we elected a Tree City subcommittee. So, now that group, that's three members, they can be people that are working on that organization. Um, so I know something we've been looking at, Philip Barnes and I, the town arborist, we're trying to do our own Arbor Day event. So, we used to do our planting in conjunction with Brewfest. So, now we're going to be working with that subcommittee to plan an event specifically for Arbor Day. Um, they can be the people that are reaching out about those partnerships, whether it's Trees for the Triangle, Arbor Day folks,

um, neighbors. So, yeah, we can work on that, for sure. Thanks. Listen, Orrin, great presentation. Y'all got 45 minutes of this. We we really love this presentation. I want to respect your time and get that wrapped up as if there's anything else you guys That's one quick place I can walk. Stakeholders, um, surely will be involved here and they'll be involved with us. Yes, sir, absolutely. I look forward to seeing you. Thank you. Thank you, Orrin. Good. Excellent. All right, here we're going to keep going. We're going to go into our artificial intelligence and the negative effects. We've got Connor that's coming up front. You want to take us through that presentation? Is it real or is it AI? I'll leave it for you to determine. Uh, good afternoon. My name is Connor McGinnis. Uh, I work with the Information Technology Department. Um, I'm very happy to be here. Uh, thank you guys for inviting us. And this is my first time at a council presentation, so if I miss some of the normal procedure, please let me know. Uh, if you have questions, feel free to jump in during. If I miss something, ask me to clarify. We have some time at the end of all our questions and discussion, but a little bit about what we're going to talk about. Introduce what the IT Security and Innovations Division is up to very briefly. We'll discuss our sort of posture in the in the organization currently towards AI as essentially a tool rather than necessarily paradigm shifting world-changing reality. We'll go a little bit into the very basics of what AI is and what it isn't, especially. And then we'll talk about how it's currently being used to support existing

town strategy. Then we'll look at the AI gap, which is essentially just the difference between what we want to do and what we want to be able to do and what we are currently able to do. Then look at what we are recommending or what we are requesting insight on in order to pass that sort of gap situation. I'll be able to walk you through a brief demo of what some of these currently available AIs are able to do. If we have time, we'll go into that. If we don't have time, we can drop that and I can share more information later. And then ask for some direction and guidance. Essentially just asking you for priorities on what you want to see us pursue in this sort of AI exploration period that we're all in. And then what you would like us to to focus on as we move out of the pilot phase and into the real project phase. So, the IT Security and Innovations Division is IT's newest division. We were created sort of the beginning of this fiscal year. I was brought on about 8 months ago now and we are focused on implementing the town priorities in smart cities work, artificial intelligence and general sort of operational efficiency using technology. So we're we're we're focused on exploring what is out there already, what's coming down the pipeline from the private sector, from research groups, and making sure that the town is ready to handle all of those things. Um the the innovation side of security and innovations is currently really focused on responsibly engaging with AI. Um there's lot of opportunity out there, but we're trying to figure out how to start, where to focus, and how to make sure that we are not overwhelmed by the opportunity that's available and we lose our way in the process. So many towns or every organization that uses AI in any capacity either

explicitly or more often implicitly has a posture with regards to AI. Um many organizations, especially in private sector, see AI as essentially a total game changer. Anything can be different now because we live in this AI world. Um our posture as an organization so far has essentially been that AI is a tool. It's a very significant tool. It's the newest one on the block and it has the ability to change how we do work, but it is not necessarily a system-wide change that transforms the work that we do. Uh so the services are still being provided, the same types of of things need to happen day in and day out, but how we do them is very significantly changing. Uh and as a result of that, the human judgment continues to be and is increasingly important when AI is brought into business processes. So if an AI is able to amass more data or analyzing more information, um having a human that is able to responsibly and thoughtfully make the the final decision uh is is increasingly important as more and more data is is being acquired. Um we are seeing AI as essentially a very important tool to support the existing priorities. So, we should do AI is not necessarily a priority in the town, but we should use the tools that are at our disposal to forward the other things that we have that you have considered as as a We're currently using AI in in pretty much everywhere in the town to some extent. Um but these are some of the ways that we have this and the deepest adoption. Um so, in smart cities work across the town, um we use AI. That one's really important because smart cities tech, especially in like IoT sensors, are collecting tons of data. And collecting data is great, but acting on the data is what's most important. So, being able to analyze a great deal of data very quickly is exactly what AI is made for. Um establishing a community readiness

plan, something that that um we've been working on, and AI was identified very quickly as one of the key economic drivers of change. So, as an organization, as a town, being ready to handle what comes next is really important. And so, understanding what we're doing uh is vital as well. Traffic and mobility is also a really important data processing uh system. It's just a lot of data coming in, and so it's important to be able to understand it. And the resident experience, um people all over the world have been increasingly getting personalized experiences um using AI and using other systems. Uh and so, their expectations are increasing in terms of what they expect from their government. And personalization is a huge one. People are expecting a Spotify-like algorithms to exactly recommend what to do next. Uh and so, being able to use AI to provide those personalized experiences uh is just an increasing demand. So, I want to make sure that we all are saying the same thing when we say AI. Uh it is a humongous category, and there are, you know, dozens and dozens of subdivisions. Um, but I'm going to focus on the two kind of main categories of artificial intelligence. So, artificial intelligence is essentially just a computer's ability to do something that we normally attribute to a human's ability. Uh, it's very vague. It doesn't really answer a whole lot of questions. It doesn't make it all that easier to find out what is AI, but that's about the best we can do for people. Uh, it is a machine learning system um, that allows a computer to gain a skill or to acquire the ability to do something. And that something that it can do falls into two general categories. Predictive AI, which allows it to guess or predict a certain thing um, in response to historical data. And for example, we have we have hurricane trackers that say, "Four days from now, the hurricane could be between here and here." It's a prediction that says there's a 10% chance it'll be right in the middle and a 20% chance it'll be on the side.

Um, and when you open your photos app on your phone, you type in dog, you didn't label it, but it shows you a picture of your dog. Those are predictive AI systems. Um, but the new kid on the block, the one that everyone's talking about, is generative AI. Um, generative AI is trained on humongous amounts of data um, mostly text, but it's also using images and videos as well. Um, and what it does is it creates a synthetic version of something that is essentially new. Um, it can write, you know, sentences that didn't exist previously. It can it can generate pictures that just never existed, sometimes because they were just silly to ever make. Um, but generative AI is creating something that is rational in in in its design and its structure. Um, but it is not necessarily true. Um, that's a very important distinction to make. Um, generative AI is all about making something that looks like it makes sense. Usually, that's pretty good. It's good enough for most things, um but when it really comes down to it, rational and true are not exact synonyms, and so sometimes we can run into issues, which we'll cover later. A large language model is sort of the foundation of generative AI tools, and eyes are glazing over, I'm sure, with the numbers on the screen, but this will be a very short explanation of how an AI knows things. So, we understand what particular words mean because we have years and years and decades of experience with those words and with meaning. Um an AI system essentially converts individual words or phrases or whole sentences into a very, very long and complex, um matrix number. Uh so, it's a bunch of different numbers in 30- or 40-dimensional space. Um and what you do when you turn those into numbers is you allow a computer to do what it does best, math. So, computer is able to do math instead of reading, you know, uh reading uh regular text. And it's able

to create equations that represent different things in language, uh in in spoken or written language. So, in this instance, uh the difference between the word man and the word woman is essentially the concept of femininity. And so, that vector, that arrow that we see that goes from man to woman, is a an algorithmic manipulation of the data that turns a certain word into a word plus the concept of femininity. And the same thing can apply to the word king. If you apply the concept of femininity to the word king, you essentially get the word queen. That's how an AI understands things. It's not exactly the way we understand things. So, it can get very close, and it can simulate human language, but it is never quite getting it exactly right. Essentially, because it is operating on a a system of simulating and approximating human understanding of language. That's all we necessarily need to get into um for this session. If you have more questions, I'm happy to try to answer them um but it could take a while. So, AI has a lot of strengths and and has a lot of weaknesses as well. So, it's important for everyone, you and and the staff who are using AI regularly, to understand what it's good at and what it's not good at. It's able to process data much faster than humans in most situations, reading text, scrolling through an Excel table. Um it's able to handle things that are generally boring. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't get irritated at being asked to do the same thing over and over again. And it's a lot more flexible than traditional automations. Uh you can write a script in a coding language to do something and that's all it can do. And then AI is able to more flexibly understand what you want it to do this time and adapt to the circumstances. The main downsides, of course, are that the AI is irrational. It is not necessarily true. So, it can say something that looks right and is just wrong. It can be pretty important sometimes. Uh we have instances, this is all just from

April 22nd of this year, where an AI uh was used to generate briefs for for a court case or for some sort of legal situation and the judge or someone looked into it and said, "Oh, that case doesn't exist." "Why do you think that case exists?" Well, an AI told me it exists. So, that's an example of a hallucination. Um the AI is essentially just writing something down that looks right but isn't necessarily based in reality. Um AI also mirrors its training data. Unfortunately, the training data for most AIs is essentially just based on the internet. Uh and the internet can sometimes be a toxic and biased place. And so, AIs can sometimes be toxic and biased. And you've seen examples of this, um, especially in from 2020 to about 2023, there was not nearly as much, uh, bias management on these models. Um, if you're familiar with any of this stuff, you've seen things and from other AI providers, they go a little off the rails sometimes. And a lot of those are examples of bias. Uh, and it also can induce over-reliance. If people use AI too much, their their reading comprehension skills, we've seen a little bit, they they can slightly decrease. Uh, in general, uh, capacity can sometimes be a little bit lowered. There is a lot of potential. It's able to mirror or or match or slightly exceed human abilities in a lot of different domains, like handwriting recognition, speech recognition, text analysis. Uh, but there are also a lot of, uh, opportunities for improvement. Um, sometimes the AI will read something off of The Onion, which is a very popular satire site. It doesn't really understand satire the way we do, and it can just tell people that they look like a So, we have AI, everyone in in in here and everyone in in the in in the region had AI kind of shoved down your throats from absolutely every provider of everything.

Um, but how are we using it specifically in the town, uh, as a tool to improve our existing services? Most important methods that we're most important uses that we're we're finding is to support existing needs for decision-making by analyzing, uh, and researching more data. It's able to process more information than we normally would be able to handle and give us more, uh, better informed decisions. They're able to raise alerts, uh, and and will find subtle patterns that we might not necessarily be able to find on our own. Uh, automating tasks that are tedious but still have to get done. Um, and being able to personalize something. Um, it's used expensively in researching basic topics, um, getting, you know, dipping your toe into into programming. It's great for teaching you the basics of the programming language and that kind of stuff. Um, and that's kind of where we have found that it's most useful so far. AI is already supporting our strategic goals um, in our smart cities work. Parking and facility occupancy is big is a big project or big collection of projects. Um, this data is is a heat map data from our park query parking analysis system. Um, and we're using AI in this case mostly predictive AI um, to identify when and where cars are parked in our in our public lots. Uh, and this data is much more valuable and much more rich and detailed than the data we previously collecting, which was manually click manually processed and only processed every now and then. So, you might just get Tuesday afternoons data, but now we get 24/7 data. Um, so we're getting much better data from these systems and we're able to do things like, you know, put information out on the website that says, "Don't go to that park because the pickleball courts are full. Go to the next one instead." traffic and mobility, we're working on a pilot right now with with our technology providers to enable real-time traffic monitoring and and modeling. It'll allow us to sort of tweak the systems and see

what would happen if we change the timing on certain lights uh, without doing it in the real world. And then, operational efficacy, uh, we're working on several tools sort of in-house as well as working on pilots with with um, third-party providers to um, collect and uh, aggregate feedback collected from residents or from staff, um, searching for records, doing records requests because it's a very tedious process, um, analyzing the condition of our pavement. It's a very expensive task. Costs upwards of $100,000 a year to hire a company to analyze our roads and tell us where the the the oldest or where the weakest or where the most deteriorated pavement is. Um, we're currently working with a company called Raven to to semi-automate that process and to give us much again much richer and much uh more data about our roads at a much lower cost using the existing trucks that we already have driving over the roads. Um, and we're able to uh develop some software to uh replace uh services that we have to pay for right now. So, document collection tools, those kinds of things without having to have a full complement of developers working on in uh working in-house. Resident experience, we're working with Polymorphic to provide a chatbot uh and a voice agent for uh supporting the Ask Apex call center. Um, that one uses information from the website that's already public, but it just makes it much more accessible. Infrastructure and safety, uh we're working with crowd uh crowd counting and and uh density analysis tools that we're building in-house in order to avoid situations where a a certain festival has too many people and if, you know, if there is a a stampede or you need to have a crush event, we're trying to avoid those situations. Um, and we're also acting as a leader in the region for um exploring and piloting AI in in services. We were the first municipality to join the GovAI Coalition. It's a a

national and semi-international group uh of AI practitioners in local and state governments. Um, we're the first in North Carolina to to join that and we continue to be an active member of of those subcommittees and active organization. So, for the Town of Apex, we are sort of in a an odd position. We have current projects that are ongoing and a lot of them are essentially pilots. Um, we we have a there's a lot of information out there, there's a lot of tools out there, but exploring them and finding out whether or not they're useful for us takes resource, takes time, and these the situation with AI is constantly changing. So, conditions are constantly changing that may influence what we can and can't do. Um, but if we stay in this position, we lose a lot of opportunity. Uh, first, we have inconsistent tool adoption. So, some departments that have the resources or have the capacity to focus on using AI um, might get a a a benefit to them that other departments aren't able to take advantage of. Um, shadow AI, which is essentially just um, unrestricted or un- unlicensed or or AI usage that organization isn't aware of. Shadow AI can proliferate if we don't have sort of a unified approach, and there won't be any data gov- governance or coordination between departments, um, which is always costly, and then we spend a lot of time trying to break out of the silos, but that's always a risk. So, scaling usage of AI in the town um, requires a great deal of leadership, requires direction because there's just too much out there that is possible uh, nowadays, which is a great problem to have, um, and it requires investment, and investment, of course, requires priorities. So, that is what we are hoping to to address, um, and that's what we need your help for. Um, we have several ideas that we're working on. Um, one is sort of an innovation lab in the town. Um, it's going to be a staff group, it can be a citizen group,

it can be some sort of combination, um, that focuses on identifying pilots that are that are worthwhile, prioritizing opportunities, um, and and making recommendations. Uh, we're already working on um, a great deal of AI training in the town. Uh, I lead a few classes. Uh, we've taught about a hundred folks in the town sort of the basics of what AI is, as well as how to use it well uh as an employee. And uh we're working on expanding our use cases to optimize traffic flow, um to sort of bring bring the pilots that we're currently working on into a production level, where it's uh bringing it into the real world as a fully fledged service. Um but all of these plans, all of these ideas, all of these things that we're working on are only based on our current understanding of your goals for how we use AI. And that's what we'd like to do to get some more information on um or for you to ask us more questions about. It's very important to to have direction just because there's so much opportunity out there. Um so this is where you can help. Uh we'd love to hear a little discussion or for you to to give us your thoughts on you want to see the town using AI in delivering services or how you don't want to see it. Um and where you would like to see Apex sit in sort of the regional balance of progress at all costs or uh security and stability at all costs, right? There's there's a spectrum of of positions we can have there. Um and so how you'd like to see that happen as well. Um and I'll leave it there if you have any questions so far or if you have any things you'd like to say. Okay, I like the idea of the the AI my app. Um but I do think it's critical that it the mix of staff and some residents. I think we've you know, we've got a lot of I think good resident feedback in areas like this, but there's always that gap where the residents don't have a whole comprehension and understanding of many of our systems and processes and just a lot of the data pieces that we have, so

I like the idea that such a task force kind of have a working group to help identify some of the areas that we can then utilize uh AI. I mean, from from my standpoint, I like the idea of leveraging technology to reduce some of our more expensive costs. So, whenever we can find a technological solution that can, you know, reduce the manpower load from three to four FTE down to one FTE without putting too much strain on that one person, I think that's a good thing to for us to do. For a little bit of investment into it. I'm going to say one one like one thing I would like for us to talk about is prioritizing the principle of resident privacy as a kind of guidestar. Um again, I don't know how that fits, but I'm I feel like that should be paramount before anything else. Next it after that is um is town uh security and and vulnerability. Uh didn't read the full story. Um it's very 2026, right? You're the expert excerpts and then not for the next, but I saw where uh I think it was fraud was used um to uh unravel an entire company. Um and I don't know I don't know the specifics of what it was, but essentially it was uh it was pretty it was it was incredible how devastating it was in such a swift period of time. So, I um that's the second thing. I I will stop there, so I think in it would be helpful um for our department of branch church

requests, if AI can actually help, but if residents having you I mean, this probably right here, AI can I search our old database then it will pop up on my then it could save some money on this you know monthly and probably we can you know do some service like this. Um I'll give one example on uh um I do you know Amazon shopping like um sometimes there uh there are problems with you know the products I received. Uh Amazon now using chatbots. But I hate chatbots because I want to talk to the real person, right? But they always give the give you the chatbot. Then I tried once. It's amazing. It solved my problem, right? Yeah. I said I told them you know this um um my this product you know is not I ordered, right? Um not the the one I ordered I never received. Then he asked um the AI bot asked me um you know is this order? I said yes, this is the order and then he said would you like to uh would you like a refund? I said yes. Then you got refunded. So it's you know saves so much you know manpower. Yeah. If we can um you know use the AI to help with public record search or some in some service area uh similar to ask Apex if residents have you know I have this um for example um uh the the uh the street you know um I live in you know kind of has a you know big cat uh possible, right? Then typing then the AI can direct directly to the service department. Yeah, it's really efficient and saves cost manpower if we can develop service. But of course privacy we have to protect the privacy of residents. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. Um Well just what you said and then also want to to to discuss what you were saying as well. Um The the the chatbot's ability to just wave its hand and and make things happen is phenomenal. That's part of what we're working on with the with the chatbot with Ask Apex and Polymorphic. Our first version right now is answering questions and that's it, right? It's able to say, "This is what's available. This is where you can go." But, we're already working on the kind of the next step, which is you've asked about when bulk trash can be picked up. Would you like me to schedule that for you? And so, being able to in the same context handle some of those simpler requests, which isn't necessarily with the goal of replacing any staff that are answering phones, but to free them up so that the more complex queries can be handled with more time and attention focused on it. When I just want to report a pothole, can be handled like that. Yeah, that we're absolutely working on that. I think I saw I'm done is improving their AI chatbots abilities. In the beginning, you know, several years ago, it's it's annoying. And then now it's amazing. Yeah, amazing, really. Um and I believe the the security incident with Claude, it hit the news I think yesterday. So, just to give everyone awareness of what it was. There was a a coding agent that was running off of off of an AI model that it was told to do things and the AI model said, "All right, I can help you with that." Deleted all the code in their in their in their code base or wiped their database or something like that. And all of their backups were stored on the same system and essentially, you know, it it took it all out with it. And those kinds of scenarios are are devastating. And so, ensuring that security is is a high priority both from external threats, you know, from hackers or from you know, state entities or but also from human error and and

judgment errors in in what we're telling these systems to do. Um, you know, humans are generally the weakest link in cybersecurity, and so making sure that, you know, staff are well-trained and well-equipped to handle um the the the extra power that we can give them with AI is really really important. Yeah, just had one question. So, um as far as policy attached to AI department specific we have that in place for the whole department. Not yet. And let's assume this is a scenario. I'm not saying that it's occurring. So, I would hate to see a police officer do a police report AI. And then it gets to like the side bar. The attorney general We'd have to check on There might be a department specific policy on that. I don't know of anything At the IT level we would talk to the governor. The PD This To some extent, to some extent these sorts of things are currently covered with the IT policy. So, every employee agrees and affirms the IT policy, which is um just a very very thorough document describing the appropriate and inappropriate uses of data generally. It doesn't specifically say, "Don't give you know, your police reports to ChatGPT," but it covers the instances of giving your information to any third-party provider um when you're handling those kinds of things. Um and right now, as we're working on these sort of pilots, sensitive data, um criminal justice information, um personal information that's not provided actively by the resident, none of that's being handled by an AI, uh none of that's being stored in in in in in in in in in in in in third-party systems. Um so, at the moment we're working at most as much as we can and fully with benign data, essentially. Um and so, only when we feel very very confident about things, and once we're very confident that our policy posture is healthy, um would we be would be willing to expand into anything sensitive. Right. I asked the thoughts. I actually spoke with Randy last week and talked to

Eric too. Um and you and you did touch on it in the presentation. And the part that excites me mostly about the opportunity here and I'll just let let me start by saying like there is just a you know as you've gone through the the breadth of the opportunities is so wide. All this stuff is good ideas. We could have committees and sit here for hours thinking about the stuff that is possible here. Um so what do you actually do today and tomorrow that provides some sort of operational or or service benefits to our residents? And um what I would advocate for what excites me is you mentioned one of your slides operational efficiency specifically in-house software. I'm of the opinion that there's a whole class of software in the world that's complete and utter trash that we pay 35 60 grand a year for. And the people who write this software tend to um got in that area because they saw a need. A very very narrow market with only a handful of customers so they could charge a ton of money but the actual software is like um college freshman level stuff. And we pay 35 grand for it. And there's just dozens of examples of this. I think we're in a world now where that all those companies are going to stop existing pretty soon because all that software can be generated in-house pretty easily with the tools that are available today and the tools that are available in 6 months will make it even easier and so on. Um so that's kind of where I want to go is to drive efficiency for everyone in this room and everyone in in the you know across working for the town. Like what software do you use that we can replace, you know? Or what software uh do you wish exists or maybe even doesn't exist that we haven't bought because it was too much. Um I think there's a ton of ways there we can really quickly put together pieces of software to make people's jobs easier and more efficient. Um and like just kind of iterate on that. Like have a backlog of software projects and like interview all of the directors. Talk to talk to all the managers and say, "What does your workflow look like? What are you using to do it?" And and

try to find ways to make more efficient. And um audit all of the software that we're paying for. Like what can we get rid of? Like what have we bought that we had for like one specific internal purpose? Do we have to buy this stupid piece of software? The license is 1,500 bucks a year. And you know, we only used it to click a button to e-sign, whatever, you know. Um so I think that's what I like to think about and that's what I kind of have talked to other people about because it's something practical that we can start doing today with tools that are available today. All the meetings and the stuff are great. I think people hate chatbots, so I'm really not too big on the idea of like trying to make AI-facing customers yet because they kind of revolt against it. It's sort of a novelty. Maybe that'll change as the day changes get better, but using AI to make tools to make people's jobs easier. The tool itself isn't AI, but it was coded with AI. And then you can use that. So a lot of the lot of the software I think we've we've done um could be generated used that way and make it actually realistically drive down costs. And you mentioned an IT group. I think that's fine. I think there's a lot of people in town who have the expertise who are willing to help, you know. Um but you know, I I don't want a group where we sit around and talk about policy. I'd want a group of people who would sit around with their laptops and be like, "Okay, what's the next thing on the whiteboard? You know, okay, we'll do that." You know, um so that's my two cents. All that stuff. Okay, thank you. Um yeah, I think what it comes down to essentially is is what is the priority that that you would have us focus on? Um and if the if the knock out the the trim the fat of excessive software or or exploited it because there is a lot of software that municipalities pay for that is coded and named specifically for governments knowing that we're sort of a cash cow for a lot of these things. And we've been working on and tinkering with some things internally. Some of them are already in use. We've been making them so they're just Friday afternoons. You have an hour, you

have two hours, try something out. Some of the stuff, if you would like, I believe this is working today. Um but we've made sort of a feedback aggregation and collection tool so that we can more easily and quickly survey residents. We pay for several different survey sentiment feedback aggregation tools. Send City, let's see, SurveyMonkey, Mailchimp, right? All these services some department might have. But this is this is about an hour and a half work maybe something that is very early. It doesn't quite get everything that Mailchimp do. um to your point, it's adaptable. We're able to replicate a lot of these sort of functions. Um and we have a few of these already. A few of of our own home-built software pieces already out in the real world um at the at the Holi Festival, uh we had uh you know, a drone take a picture of the crowd and we were counting how many people came to the event. Um and so we used an in-house crowd counting tool to estimate how many people were at this event. Saved staff about two or three hours of counting. We counted two or three hours, but counted several um 2,000 or so people at this one you know, location during the event. Um and able to replicate that kind of scenario for for other events as we go forward without exposing any of our data to third parties, without having to store pictures of people in public events for for much longer than you know, 20 or 30 seconds. Uh and without having to pay for it. Yeah, so the opportunity is certainly there if the focus and the prioritization is there. Last thing I'll say quickly, it is policy but it is backed in what you just said a moment ago. Third thing in terms of principles and I think is is that we talk about small town character. I think our front our public facing stuff should be humans whenever possible.

Obviously if you can get your bill fixed with a whatever but as long as there's the which you like to talk to customer service representative is available. Yeah, yeah, we're not in the business of replacing people. It sounds like that's a that's a general consensus. Can we recap? They got What's that? You got to recap. I think the staff um residents sounds like the public or or our group and reduce manpower wherever possible. And prioritize resident privacy which is why innovations was strategically placed with security and and standing over there at the security entrance. Um uh town security and and vulnerability we take very seriously. Um and yes, as you mentioned, the main chatbots that we have which was was was also mentioned, those services we're trying to reduce um our supplementary. So we don't have a huge call centers or or work order systems that you know, want to be able to handle that. That's our small town character but we need supplement that, right? Most can be handled on a regular day but if something major comes in, then what do you do, right? It's going to be very beneficial for our supplementary assistance and or processing information. That's Um I got a note please state any uh lay that out there. We can't control those real police officers. What you got, honey? Um and operational efficiencies, which we did now, Jerry. We Anything that we can do that we're already um looking in and working on our business processes and generating things that help smart people. So, I've got all that notes. Is there anything I missed?

You did this job in a short amount of time. Good job, everyone. I'm glad we're doing that. I could be called a chatbot. We can always give the option that uh do you want to talk to a live person? Like, yes. Because I really, really, really hate chatbots. Then, after I use it and it solved my problem amazingly. I you know, I think it's a great idea to use it. It's yes. It's kind of like learning curve. When you it saves you a lot of time and I it can solve your problem with high efficiency. But it has to get some threshold of quality, yeah. So, my favorite one is the um um uh Department of Transportation. So, waiting in a line at the DMV for hours or going online in 20 minutes. So, my big success story and why we like to do this is we were um my husband and I drove to to um Illinois to see emergency happen with one of our family members, realized his driver's license uh coming to expiration uh very quickly and we were going to be there for a while. Um so we were able to A avoid the line of sitting at the DIT and and praying that we got in within 8 hours like our daughter. We sat there and it took well over a bit we had to come back the next day. We didn't actually do that. Um we were able to go onto the chatbot, fill out give all of the information and it in 20 minutes she had a new driver's license. Um yes. That's amazing. That's amazing. So that I also have a friend in the new chatbot. So

I know Andre and I agree with that too but I have a new I have a new friend in the chatbot. That's our That's our goal and our um uh what we're trying to invest in is that efficiency. Yes. Thank you. Uh this is this is being very brief. I know it's a different discussion but I guess she's working on it. I know we hadn't seen this 20 first. me We talked about naming practices policy. Allen, do you have a whole policy we need to get that to us? Um I think we need to get something in the roll. Can you say that again? Can you say that again? Okay. Yeah, I just want to get this release get directions on on these. I do get paid requests from residents. They want things to be created in memory of their loved ones. You know what it does things to the council level. I probably wouldn't be mind but You did say I got it right. Yeah. Yeah, you know skate park everything. I just want to know what direction we're going as far as future of this place. And have a process in place so standardize the way to this. And that's my purpose of bringing it forward. It has to be a year or so before it's expiration. And I appreciate you doing that here at the Bob, especially now after looking at all the work that's been done by the increasing amount of naming conventions. Renaming happened. Naming, renaming. Putting a name on something. Putting a face on something else. Basically, I think it's So, I think it's timely that you bring that up, and I think I think the issue that that brought to mind was as we do naming, I think the criteria in terms of significance of the of of of the What is that? honorary.

is where we run into the toughest part of trying to figure out like how we How do you How do you How do you weigh the merit of somebody who, quite frankly, is, you know, at at getting it right. a lot of intangibles to the town, and I think it's appropriate that we recognize, you know, folks like that. It's just hard to figure out how to How do we How do we put a a value to somebody's value to the town? Sure. And typically, what you see in the way of someone Jesus, can you open What do you do at the end of the night? What I said before. I don't like you guys. So, I mean, I know there's other towns in the area that have a lot of I don't know if any did, but maybe in that direction, but I don't know what the best practice is. Based on our research. And there's some legal and legal, so Can I add something just to frame the conversation um from my mindset? We have a we have a policy that speaks to facility And I think that policy is robust, and and I want to say that I'll have to just resend it out. Maury was involved with that, so there's a policy for facilities. Sure. Um then there's some other work Greg's group's been working on that talks to I'll call it sponsorship but like a a group got together and they want to name a bench in honor of someone who they played pickleball with and want to sponsor a bench bench outside of pickleball courts. And we're working some stuff there. I think the gap is when we run into things that didn't fall into either a facility or the bench outside pickleball. And the couple of examples that we had in previous council meetings. So, there's not a real clear policy or guidance on that. So, I think what we're talking about unless we're talking about more, we can revisit the naming policy in in terms of facilities. Um, but there is a still not process on that. So, we've got a couple choose your own adventure. If we want to dive into that more, we can. Or if it's more of the not facilities, the the less um, brick and mortar type naming things. Which would

you choose? Both. Yeah. Okay, I think that we should take a look at, you know, I mean, like the Debbie Abono or the coach for the death. Um. I think the bench is okay. Maybe using the facility uh, manual as a guide for how we do non-facility things as a good way of going about it. I think there's a distinction between what we did with council members, our colleagues retiring, and other sort of naming things. Like when you're at a retirement event, you give someone flowers, and family's there, and you're clapping, and you're naming something after them. It's a it's an honorary, it's celebratory kind of tradition that's specific to that context. And I don't want that to be viewed as a model for something broader. It's really not. It's really just their retirement party. Yay, you served the town for a long here's something commensurate with your service. You know, um, it's it's different from naming a building or naming other stuff. So, to me like that sort of tradition, which I think is pretty popular, I agree Carrie goes pretty far. Like they name parks and stuff. We did in our walk in the world. Like I mean the scale's a little different. Like they're you run out of parks pretty soon. Um but uh I just I I see the kind of the whole thing getting inflated, but I just ask that we recognize that like that sort of tradition of retirement and going away party and clapping a celebration as something unique. That's different than someone naming a bench after someone or naming a building after someone even, you know. So. I agree with that lineation. Um And especially any time we can get sponsors to purchase things and name people after

and and those are uh build infrastructure for something that we have in town. Um I don't know how slippery that slope is, but nevertheless I like the idea that someone can buy a bench and other people can use that bench in town. Um and it has someone's name on it. Uh often times whom it's past. I I see where you're coming from on the uh smell the flowers while they're still here. I I do see it differently. I think for a long time in this nation we that was part of it. The idea was putting your work without getting something. Like you just do it, no strings attached, and you love your community one way, one direction, because just that in itself is uh the reward. And if people decide after you're 6 ft under that um honoring brick and mortar is uh you know, with your name adorned um is uh is most appropriate. That's my preference. Otherwise, I think that sometimes you're some people might be working to try to get their name on the building. I don't I don't really Again, I'm not going to say it's wrong. It's just not my preference. It's a different philosophy. Um preference. That um certain people you know certain like um that peers um for example, town councils, right? Retired councils. They serve the community for 8 years. They got retired. And we we can use their names to name like facilities, buildings, or some employees that you know uh served the town for 30 years, 10 years. Maybe we can you know if um uh you know everybody agrees, maybe we

can make use their names for other things. I mean, we you know set up piers. Instead, so people can know you know these are you know the councils. These are our distinguished employees. I'm going to be looking research maybe bring it back. It's what we start creating. It's our research and recommendation. Yeah, we need to probably sit and talk a little bit about how we got a couple of the policies, maybe how we put all the pieces together. Maybe it's something appropriate that we can take it to our meetings down there established. that we have there to talk to me. Any other business? Just so you all know for tomorrow Saturday for big fest, the council booth is inside. Ace. People are worried about getting wet. You still get wet getting Okay. Uh also um all the the camp, the you know um connecting community they are all all night the camp the same day you know uh they second on Saturday, but it's from 11:00 to 1:00. Yeah, yeah. So I know our mayor is going, right? And I'm going to go. Yeah. So you guys are you going to be there too? Yes, sir. Yeah. Cuz

Mhm.