May 5, 2025 Minutes of the budget workshop meeting of the Mayor and Board of Commissioners of the Town of Elkin, May 5, 2025 12:00 at Town Hall. Present: Mayor Will Gwyn, Commissioners Alvin Hayes, Graham Ray, Cicely McCulloch, Jeff Eidson, and Robert Ball. Also present: Town Manager Brent Cornelison and Town Clerk Darla Parker. Mayor Gwyn welcomed everyone and reconvened the meeting of April 12, 2025. Town Manager, Brent Cornelison discussed with the BOC that the Federal Government has done away with the FEMA program, Building Resilient Infrastructure and have turned it over to the states to handle and is now called Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Withers/Ravenel feels like our future water plant would be a high priority project to apply for this funding. The state now has 1.8 billion dollars to spend by 2027 on infrastructure projects and is now taking letters of intent. We would like to enter into a contract with Withers/Ravene! to secure a letter of intent. The cost of the letter of intent would run between $2500 to $3500. If the state feels this project meets the requirements of the grant; they will then ask us to submit a grant application. We are talking about at least $50 to $60 million dollars for the project. Since we have already purchased the land for the new water plant, it shows that we are being proactive and the cost of the purchase of the land would be reimbursed from the grant amount. A motion was made by Commissioner Cicely McCulloch to enter into a contract with Withers/Ravenel for help with a letter of intent. Motion was seconded by Commissioner Ray and passed unanimously. Brent did a recap of capital items that were approved in the last budget meeting. A question was brought up at the last meeting about the cost of paving all of West Main Street after the new water line project is complete. The cost to mill and pave all of W. Main St. would be $413,820. A quote was also received that included the removal of trees, curb, sidewalk and replace with curb/gutter, 5' sidewalk and 2-3 foot of grass strip at a cost of $357,000. After much discussion, a motion was made by Commissioner McCulloch to only mill and pave W. Main Street, seconded by Commissioner Ray. The motion was not unanimous. Many scenarios were discussed about how to fund the paving while still approving some of the capital items already approved for the next budget year. We may need to delay the capital projects until the end of December to see how the balance is in the General Fund. We will discuss further at the May 12th BOC meeting. Brent stated we will have the Budget message ready to present at the June 2025 meeting and have the budget approval public hearing on June 27, 2025 at 12:00pm. There being no further business to discuss, a motion was made to adjourn the meeting by Commissioner McCulloch, seconded by Commissioner 1S passed unanimously. The meeting adjourned at 1:10 pm. Will Gwyn, Mayor Attest: - Darla S. Parker, Town Clerk