MINUTES  ECUSTATRAILAILADVISORY BOARD 2.0 Wednesday, October 30, 2024- -3 3:30 pm City Hall Council Chambers  Members Present: Aaron Baker, Chair, Council Member  Mac Morrow, Vice Chair, Council Member Larry Chapman, Transylvania County Commissioner Dee Dee Perkins, Transylvania Development. Authority Rebekah Robinson, Conserving Carolina (Zoom) John Ditillo, Friends ofl Ecusta Trail Sheila Carland, Transylvania Economic Alliance Doug Miller, Heart of Brevard (Zoom) Meredith Carli, At-Large. Appointment (Zoom)  Absent: Staff Present:  Chris Burns, Henderson County RTAC Madeline Hanley, At-Large. Appointment Maureen Copelof, Mayor, Ex-Officio Wilson Hooper, City Manager Aaron Bland, Assistant Planning Director David' Todd, City Engineer  Guests:  Christine Stout, Lonnie Watkins, Tad Fogel, Mark Tooley, Vicki Eastland  A. Welcome and Call to Order  Committee Co-Chair Mac Morrow welcomed everyone and called the meeting to order at 3:34  PM.  B. Certification ofQuorum  Quorum was certified by City Planner Katherine Buzby.  C.Approval of Agenda unanimously.  Motion to approve amended agenda by Ms. Perkins, seconded by Mr. Baker. The motion carried  1    D.Approval ofMinutes  Motion to approve September 25, 2024 meeting minutes by Mr. Chapman, seconded by Mr.  Perkins.  E. Recap ofl Last Meeting & Follow-Ups  Mr. Hooper recapped the last meeting: Location ofmile markers and multiple parking locations were discussed and given to staff for further review. Staffis scheduled tol have a preliminary map  ofamenity locations at the next ETAB 2.0 meeting.  F.Helene Impacts on the Trail  Traffic Planning & Design (TPD) will go out to assess the damage ofi the railroad bed for damaged caused by Helene and any other features that may impact their design. TPD may need tor redo the survey based on their findings at impacted sites. The damage assessment is outside of the approved Scope of Work for TPD: sO a supplemental contact will be awarded to them for the damage assessments. They will require assess to walk the trail sO they are working with the City Manager and Planning Director to get the path cleared. Once the walkthrough is completed, they will report back to the City immediately and will upload information into GIS in about a week's time. The final report on the damage should be a week ort two after that is completed (2-3 weeks total). TPD is currently working on driveway access point modifications for aj private property that currently has a bridge that will most likely need to be removed due to its current condition Mr. Chapman stated that the County is receiving multiple concerns about if the culverts in the flood prone areas are being addressed by the TPD design. Ms. Stout confirmed that culvert evaluation is part oft their scope and will be addressing culverts that need to be replaced or upsized. They have areas of where they will bei increasing the ground elevation and areas they will be lowing it, so they are making sure that they have no impact on the floodplains ini these areas. There are areas that will be submerged during flooding, but this is common practice with greenway projects that follow rivers and will be designed to drain properly and not hold water. An example oft this is near Crab Creek where the trail is adjacent the river, but the drainage will actually be improved due to upsizing pipes. They are in talks to resolve issues with the new Mr. Hooper asked for ai timeline of the design work as Helene has created a delay. Ms. Stout stated that the timeline is dependent on ifthey must resurvey specific areas, and whether they are required to submit a revised 30% deign or can the changes be made at final design stage. Mr. Watkins will investigate this further with NCDOT after the damage assessment is completed. Henderson County sections have some reported damage to the already constructed trail, and are preparing a supplement contract to get repairs completed but no financial damage numbers are available yet. The delay timeline is not known for them yet as some: sections will need to be repaved and the paving plants shut down for the winter depending on the weather.  and on scoping the final design.  NCDOT bridge crossing on Wilson Rd.  2    G.How tol Measure the' Trail's Success  Conserving Carolina in conjunction with NC State University have come up with options on how tor measure the economic impacts oft the trail by assigning different categories (see attachment). Henderson County is doing the economic impact study mostly in house by geo-analysis, building permits, and possible zoning overlay along the trail to better steer how they want development to The City is managing the Transylvania County section ofthei trail sO it will not be directly benefiting from an increase inj property values as the taxes on the majority oft the properties lie outside the City'sjurisdiction. Mr. Hooper wants to know property value growth related to the trail so he recommends the study focus on the Property Value and' Tax Revenues approach to measure economic impact of property values ofadjacent properties versus non-adjacent property Mr. Baker recommended one-to-one economic development activity tracking related to the trail as potential developers are already asking in Henderson County about proximity to the proposed trail. The Economic Alliance may be able to track this by project development based on the trail ort the County permitting office can ask projects coming at permitting ift the trail had any impact Ms. Copelofb brought up savings to families that will be using the trail for transportation purposes and is there is a way to track this, maybe by questionnaire or survey.Also, halfoft the grant money was given for the trail as thel National Forest wanted a way to bring people to the forest without the parking problems this creates; so, the economic impacts to the forest will need to be Friends of Ecusta Trail isi in discussion with TPD to design in trail counters as an amenity ini the final design.. A supplemental contract may need to be given to TPD to design the trail counter locations from Oskar Blues to downtown Brevard, and Friends will be more than willing toj pay for this supplemental contract. They can provide volunteers to do any surveys needed, or are Ms. Perkins tracks visitors at her business by zip code. Mr. Miller stated that cell phone location data may be able to be used to measure some of the impacts and to contact the Transportation Development. Authority (TDA) as they are already using cell phone data for some tracking purposes. He also stated it may be better forl NC State to gather all the information needed for these reports and not have multiple sources of data coming in that may not be coordinated. A graduate. student from UGA did a market study on Transylvania County and TDA has that study now. UNC and Brevard College may be able to help with market studies as well. Quality ofLife survey data could be measured to see how thet trail impacts the health and welfare oftrail users. Blue Zones has some data already and could be used as a basis for measuring quality oflife. Mr. Chapman also recommended tracking the elderly population specifically to  look.  owners to distinguish natural growth and trail related growth.  on their project.  tracked somehow too to justify the need for the grant.  willing to coordinate data and County needs as requested.  show positive health impacts and bring in visitors to the County.  3    H.J Public Comment  Ms. Harrington with the Blue Ridge Bicycle Club would like to survey the value between different users oft the trail (walkers, runners, bicyclers, etc.) to go into depth about how people  look at the trail. They also have volunteers available for projects. Sales tax implications should be tracked as well as property taxes.  The Transylvania Bird Club discussed the potential installation ofa bird observation tower back inl December 2022 and is asking to have it implemented. Ms. Copelofinquired ifthe tower will be in the Right-of-Way (ROW) or on private property and Mr. Chapman stated it is private property so the City decided tol have the trail constructed first then evaluate where the tower can be constructed via talking to the property owners at that time. The City did try to reach out to the property owner (Prudential) previously to submit a proposal to them and were not successful but Mr. Baker mentioned that NCDOT project R-5800 will be delayed due to having to fix Helene damaged roads. Per Ms. Eastland, the update they have received (prior to the flood) is that the draft State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) will be released in January will address financial constraints and other issues and a delay is anticipated. Mr. Hooper stated the staff working group met before this meeting and are discussing between when the trail opens and when R-5800 is completed, how does the City get people into downtown with the infrastructure we currently have on a temporary basis. Information on decisions will be brought to this board in  will try again.  the future.  I. Set Date for Next Meeting  As special meeting oft the Ecusta' Trail Advisory Board 2.0 is scheduled for Wednesday, December 4, 2024 at 3:30 PM that will be al November/December meeting combined due to the holidays.  J.Adjourn  There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 4:31 PM.  X. Aaron  dasbe Baké, Chair Katherine Buzby, Sdluk  Minutes Approved- l4lay  Attachments: Economic Impact Study Handout    E  3  E  I  I