Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome you to the June 6th meeting June 5th. I'm sorry, been long week. The June 4th meeting of the Ashboro City Council. And for those of you in attendance, the public, let me say that we will make this as expeditious as possible. We have a continued business case from last month that according to Robert's rules requires our attention before we get to the public comment period. So the meeting is called order. I would like to invite everyone to join me in silent meditation. Please stand and once we finish our meditation, we will join in the pledge allegiance. Thank you. Congratulations. It's a 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. Let me apologize to the public for our circumstances, but we are still under COVID operations, COVID-19 operations and are exercising the social distancing and trying to keep everybody safe. So if you will be patient, anybody that wants to speak will be allowed to come into the chamber to address the council. It will be orderly and peaceful, I expect. So the first item on the agenda, Mr. Nuddle, you want to introduce the first case, please. Thank you, Mayor. This is continued from last month. If you could open the continued public hearing Mr. Mayor. I will open the hearing continued from last month. The RZ-20-01. Thank you mayor. Today we received an email from the applicant requesting to continue this request until your July regular city council meeting. I'll read and part the applicant would like time to prepare for a B2 conditional use permit application. Given the amount of time before the meeting, I will not have enough time to prepare for a conditional use meeting. So the applicant has requested a continuance with that information, and that is at the discretion of the council. Can also I ask for a motion to approve this request for a continued to the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Asperg Council? Mayor, I'd move we grant the petition's request for continuance. We have a motion by Mr. Bell to approve the request for continuance. Do I have a second? Second. Mr. Berks, I have a second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Ms. Carter, would you vote? Thank you very much. We will be calling on Ms. Carter since she is at home tonight and joining us by telephone. We will call on her for a voice vote separately after the council votes just so that we have her vote on record. Mr. Nuddle, I will open a quasi judicial hearing on RZCUP-20-03, and application to Resoneproperty at 1420, East Salvesbury Street and 358 Patten Avenue from R10 to CUI-2. Mr. Nothin. Thank you, Mayor. This application doesn't involve a Quadside Judicial hearing. Now would be the appropriate time for myself and anyone who knows that they would like to address the Council on this matter to take the oath to take an oath. Administrator by the clerk. Okay. Anyone that expects to address the Council on this zoning matter? We will expand the, if He's going to be here. Come forward and be sworn by the court. And your honor, we will be doing affirmations to everyone who can stand up right where they're at and raise right hand and she can administer the. Stand where you are and we will affirm. You have to make the end of this. I'll be the chair of the whole chair of the government. I do. Thank you. Okay, Mr. No. proceed. Thank you, Mayor. This is an application to rezone property at 1420 East Salisbury Street and 358 Patton Avenue from R10, a medium density residential to conditional use, general industrial. The applicant on this request is Kenneth and Bridget Gallimore. They are not the property owner, but the property owner, Debra Manus, has signed on to the application. I will note that as you see under the legal description on the first page of the staff report, legal notices concerning this matter were made to adjo prop dinners on Monday, April 20th. And again, that would have been prior to the May meeting, which this matter was continued. If you look at the parcel, the Randolph County Tax Parcel map, we're looking at one parcel that totals just over 2.2 acres in size. Currently there are two vacant single family dwellings and an accessory structure at the northeast corner of the parcel. Real quickly looking at the map up on the screen right in the center of the map is outlined in blue, the subject parcel. You'll see it's colored in yellow. I'd like to note the R10 medium density residential district, which you see to the south and north of the property. To the east, all that red is B2 general district commercial. Of note is the purple to the northeast of the subject parcel, which is owned by the applicant and is a gallon more body shop. That has a conditional use to zoning district and permit, similar to what is being requested here this evening. For the west of the subject property, I'll zoom in just a little closer. That blue coloring just to the west across Pat and Avenue is office and apartment zoning. As you move to the Northwest, you'll see some Office and Institutional, some B1 Commercial, and another parcel of conditional use, I2 General Industrial, which is the Ashboro Body Shop. If we look at topographic and utility map, you'll see that this property does have access to city water and sewer. Now this property is not in the city limits connection to those services would require annexation and the applicant has been made aware of that requirement. This is an aerial photo from several years ago, you will see the Gallimor body shop to the northeast and of course, Ashboro Mall to the east and south east. And then you will see the existing residential neighborhood along Pat and Avenue to the south and the various land uses surrounding the parcel. We have a few photos, let's give you an idea of what this property looks like. We are looking east from the intersection of Pat and Avenue and East Salisbury in this photo. We are not looking west along the front edge of the property along East Salisbury Street. This is a view looking south on Pat and Avenue. That was close to Salisbury Street. Now we have gone to the southern end of the property. And you can see the adjoining house on the adjacent property to the right of the photo. And we're standing at the southern property one. We have one more view that's looking back towards the Salisbury Street from Pat and Avenue. So we quickly look at the zoning analysis. I'll get into the specific permit request. From off it is your screen, not functioning. No, I didn't know the pictures were taken at night. Leave the sun is coming up. We look at the rezoning analysis on this request, and I will get into the specifics of the permit. As I noted, this property is outside the city limits, connection to city, water and sewer will require annexation. East Salisbury Street is a NCDOT maintained minor third fair. Pat and Avenue on that other hand is a more of a collector road that connects East Salisbury Street in Highway 42. It is only about 15 to 16 feet wide in front of the subject property. Pat and Avenue is also maintained by the state. As you will see what I've seen from the maps we showed that it's an area of primary consists of residential commercial, office and institutional uses. And again, to the north side of East Salisbury Street, our automotive repair services that are also industrial andizoned. The intent of the I-2 district as described by your zoning ordinances to produce areas for intensive manufacturing, warehouse, and processing and assembly uses that are controlled by performance standards that limit the effect of such uses on adjacent districts. So in addition to the rezoning requests here this evening, the applicant has also filed a permit request for the property that if approved would allow motor vehicle repair, major services to occur there which would include a body shop as well as rental and sales of domestic vehicles that was originally heard from May 7th meeting and was continued. The land development plan does propose the northern portion of the property along East Salisbury Street as an office and institutional designation and the southern portion designated as urban residential. So if you consider the land development plans, proposed land use map, it is not in line with that recommendation. We'll note that it is a small area plan, central designation and because it's adjacent to city limits and can be served by city services, it is adjacent developed designation and that is an area that is encouraged to develop with city services and come into the city limits at the appropriate time. So while the proposed land use map does not align with the application, we do find that in the totality of the land development plan, there are six goals or objectives within the plan that tend to be supportive towards those, towards this request, those are up on the screen. We believe that there are two that tend to be more negative towards the request, but on a whole, the staff notes and the planning board concurred with this analysis that the city has approved two requests for conditional use industrial zoning the district that's before you this evening in the vicinity of this parcel. This application like those two prior requests is not technically in compliance with the city's proposed land use map, but importantly is supported by other plan goals and objectives. Approval of the request we believe would promote development, annexation and provision of services to this property as envisioned by the land development plans for a strategy map. Compound ability with adjacent residential uses which is always a concern when you have a use such as adjacent to residential uses, we do believe that the conditional use permitting process and the site plan that I've passed out, which we'll get into here in a few minutes, can help to mitigate the potential for adverse impacts from the development. So this request for rezoning does come to you with a recommendation to approve. Real quickly, I want to jump into just some specifics of the site plan and the conditional use permit before you. Again, we're looking at a proposed motor vehicle repair major and sales of domestic motor vehicles application. There are two structures that are indicated on the site plan. The square footages roughly are 1,800 and 2,800 square feet. One of the structures will be used for the repair in an office while the other would be primarily used for storage. We do think it's important to note that that plan does propose access from eSOLsbury Street and does not propose permanent access from patent avenue. And so we think that's an important point to make this evening. That does not mean that there could not be a temporary construction access from patent, but the permanent access is shown to be from eSOLsbury Street. We do want to also point out that as you will see on the site plan there is a requirement to screen along the southern property line adjacent to that dwelling to the south. The applicant as per the site plan is proposing a combination of evergreen trees and an opaque fence adjacent to the property. In addition the applicant in accordance with the city's development codes does propose a combination of trees and shrubs along the frontages of Esau'sbury Street and Pat and Avenue. We do also want to note the zoning ordinance and code, the city code generally prohibit outdoor storage of junk motor vehicles and junk materials. So that is not something that would be permitted to occur from this property because there is no storage area in screening provided. So up on the screen for the benefit of those out here in the chamber is the site plan that I have distributed to the council. You can see those two buildings, rectangles, squares on the site plan. The access from East Salisbury Street, which is across the north of the site plan, the access from East Salisbury Street, which is across the north of the site plan, the parking that we provided and landscaping that is proposed in accordance with the city's codes. As we've looked at this permit request, we do propose a few conditions to ensure compliance with the city's zoning ordinance. The first is that a prior to the city issuing a permit for development that the state driveway permit for access to East Hallsbury Street be submitted as well as the erosion control approval from the state DEQ office prior to the city releasing permits for development. As well, we do want to see some information and would propose council condition any approval this evening on submission of some detail on lighting that will be installed on the property so we can ensure compliance with those requirements. We do believe there's excess parking that is proposed as part of this development and we are proposing a condition that would allow the applicant to reduce the extent of that park and if it isn't determined to be in excess of what the city's requirement that's condition C. The last condition should the council issued this permit is for the property owner and applicant to execute the memorandum of land use restrictions that would be recorded in the public registry to put the public on notice of this permit and these requirements. That concludes my remarks, Mayor and Council. I have up on the screen the findings of fact that go along with the conditional use permit request. It is the applicant's responsibility to cover those four findings of fact. And just as a reminder, the action items before Council this evening is number one, considering the consistency statement and whether the application for rezoning is consistent with the land development plan and in the public's interest. The staff has provided a statement to that effect as well as obviously the rezoning application and lastly the conditional use permit. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Are there any questions or Mr. Nubble? Thank you sir. Mr. Dalmore believe you're up. Mr. Dal believe you're up. Mr. Gallemont you're up. All right. My name is Ken Gallemont. I'm currently under contract purchased property of 1420 Salisbury Street and 358 Pat and Avenue. This is a 2.1 acre parcel that is currently zoned R10. I'm requesting his owning change to I2 with a conditional use permit allowing for motor vehicle repair major and wholesale and retail auto and parts sales. Similar to my stateless business across the street at East Sal's Verry. Fortunately, our business has grown to the point that we need to expand in order to better serve our customers. I have applied to have this property annex by the City of Ashboro. I will now turn my comments over to HR-Gallemore of Remek Central Reality who will speak about the properties in the immediate area. Thank you. Mr. Gallimor, you're up. Mr. Mayor, Council, thank you. Appreciate you taking time out today. I want to hand out a few photos. The staff always does a good job, but I want to make sure everybody's clear of what we're resommings. I'm thinking we need well to change the train. I think it's better if you guys did that to just prepare a reason for it. I think it's something I got enough here to buy. I'm sorry you can't see these. Your professional opinion would be picture-upper? No, these are demos. Thank you. You'll take a minute to get the hell out. Good to miss. You want the direct form? I'm sorry. It means we need to get that. Hers is more important. Thank you. Sorry about that. Sorry, I'm... If you'll take a minute to look at those and I'm sure everybody, and sometimes drive by property, you just don't pay attention, right? There are three structures on the property and I'm going to refer you to page two which is my favorite in the Rupert Wright Hand-Water Fedeg. I didn't know that property was owned, that house was owned by property but there's a tree that's fell right down through the center of it. So that one certainly is a candidate for demolition. When we first, when Ken spoke with the city and with the staff, a little corner building on page one left-hand corner, believe it or not, was a body shop. So we thought it was no change of use, but... Well, that didn't work very well. A couple of other things I wanted you to look at in the photos. We talked to the mall, and I think the malls probably talked to the city. So if I can refer you to the second page, and Kay and I took these photographs today, both of those on the left-hand side, well, all three except for the house, for the tree in the in love it, are photos that are taking back at a distance. And what I would say is there's a very, very dense natural buffer there. And we talked to the mall and it may be that we'll do some things in coordination with them to maybe all of that could, to might improve, but that just depends on what the mall's willing to talk with us about on that. So, in my opinion, these properties are an eye sore for the city, not to mention the danger. There have been quite a few, as the owner tells me, Ms. Manus, they've tried to keep people out of those properties with very little luck. They've been broken too many times and squatters and so forth have been there. As a relation to the corridor, you know, if you look at Elm Street all the way to 64, there hasn't been, as my records indicate, we did a lot of research, there hasn't been a reef of residential sale in some time through there. Most of all the properties have changed over to some type of business component. And it's quite diverse, but there's a number of automotive, as you guys know, starting with the Napa Parts, well, actually with Mike Allen's repair shop and Leo's car wash. As you move up the corridor, we've got the Napa, we've got Joe Schuffing's Asperer Body Shop, Ken's Body Shop, which is, I hope you guys are pleased with, he's pretty proud of it. And then as you move along the sector, I know you're aware of what State and Poison Credit Union is recently done. They've tore down one house, fixed and take down another. That's a big parcel for State and Poison Credit Union. I'm sure exactly what they're going to do with the rest of it. And then as you get to 64, it's automotive again. So we feel like it's in good keeping. And we feel it's consistent with the neighborhood and what we've seen today. I'm going to speak to the findings of fact as it relates to my experience in the real estate industry. The first one is we're not million, materially in danger of the public health or safety if locating were proposed and developed, according to plan, is submitted and approved. It's an ancillary use for a shot that's already across the street. What's there is dangerous when it comes down and something is better provided for the community. In transportation, as we've learned recently is a pretty, pretty important part of our function of our life. So I think it meets that very easily. That the use meets all required conditions, specifications of the Ashbur zoning ordinance. I'd say with a special use permit and with staff, staff revisions that that they make to make sure that those are followed. I think that's easily affirmative. Number three, that the use of what's substantially injured that I use is joining or abutting property or that the use of public necessity. Transportation, in my opinion, is always an necessity and good quality transportation repair certainly does highlight that as well. I can only speak of what's happened in the past with Ashburd Body Shop, with gallimor body shop with some other things that have happened have transpired in this sector. And I would I would venture to say from a real estate standpoint, it's improved property values in the sector. This property had been sold for residential. I won't get into numbers, but I sure you wouldn't have brought the price that Miss Maenus is going to enjoy on the sale. Number four, the location character to use is developed according to the plan submitted and approved. Will it be in harmony with the area in which it will be located and in general conformity with the plan of development of Ashburn is in Vyrns? Guys, this is a corridor that I've enjoyed seeing the prosper and improve and develop and I feel you probably feel the same. I hope you did. We think quite a bit of improvement and I think we'll continue to see more. I'm free for any questions if you have any. The questions are Mr. Govermore. a scammer. It appeared when I drove by the tree house. The tree house. The tree house was out or near the rear property. It's down patented near the rear of the property. That will be a demo. All three. All three. Where the new structure or the new answers structure will be. Yeah, all three of the structures are going to go away. So I'll refer you back to the site plan. So pretend there's no structures and of course they'll have to get all the necessary demolition permits. I point is we're trading one structure for another. Say it again. We're trading one structure for another. Better structure for another. Yeah, one better structure for another. I agree with that. Any other questions? Mr. Gailmore, are you aware that we received correspondence from the whole group? I did. I certainly copy that. I did have a copy of that. And I think I spoke to that a moment ago. I don't think any of the person I actually spoke to the gentleman. And I don't think he's really been to the site. If he has, he'd see the thick natural buffer that's already there. And I'm not saying coulds, he's the best buffer norrero. But there's a lot of trees and a lot of cuts here. There it creates and we did talk and he was he was a congenial and I told him during the construction if we could work out some agreement they throw in a fee dollars and can might do the same it might be better for all concerned. I understand they told me the air there was not. I can't. No, I was not. No, it was not. Any other questions? Mayor, I did have one for Mr. Gallemore. The other Mr. Gallemore? Yeah, so please. Where the conditions has proposed by City staff amenable to the applicant. To you. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, just as a technical question only,. Gailamore, we're all familiar with your contributions into the business community, but would you mind stating for the records your experience in any certifications you have in your real estate? I'm a CCIM, which means certified commercial investment member, and I practice totally in commercial real estate all over my firm, but with residential and commercial. you been doing that 18 years thanks sir and I guess for full disclosure the other Mr. Gallimore is my brother any any other question the resemblance is fine but I'll take your room well you like to say he's a younger better brother, but we all know that that's not true. Okay. Council, you know, we have had a pretty good presentation there and regards to the request of this council have any additional conditions that you would like to consider. I just have questions not anything in addition. If they work out something alternatively for screening with the model, is that requiring a modification of the extra justice, an equal or better substitution sort of a thing? Well, technically the city's code is only going to be requiring buffering adjacent to the residential property to the south. So, any agreement they come to with the mall to improve the property would be above and beyond the city's requirements. So, it would not require, that's right, it would not require modification. Thank you. I'm talking about, I think everyone's drove in in a rainstorm, back at the mall and the water gets about a foot and a half deep. And one of the conversations that we had that I had in chatting with the gentleman with the mall is that with some collaboration we make it improve that if you guys will remember across the street on the other Yalimor body shop project there was a lot of issues with water over there before that project was completed or when it was purchased and I think David Hutchinson group were pretty tickled with the job that was done Terry Tucker jumped in there and can't spend a good bit of money can't have registered a good bit of money but they make quite an improvement and we haven't had near the problems in the past. I spoke about that water to him. All right, appreciate that. Can't have you paralyzed weak in that, during the happy monsoon. Okay, good. Other parts of town did not. I can attest to that. Okay, Council, what do you wish, Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor, would you mind two things I'll apologize. One is just for the record inquiring if there's any opposition. Is anyone in the room that in the house that would like to speak additionally for against this request? Hearing none, we'll move to the delivery of of face and I'll ask council for their thoughts. May I look to me? Based on staff reasoning and this consistency statement, I move that we approve the request of rezoning and along with the consistency statement. Do we need to bifurcate the permit? Yes, sir, we do. I'll make that motion as it relates to consistency and the reasoning request. Okay, I have a motion by Mr. Bell to approve. Do I have a second? Mr. Malfon is our second, any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Ms. Carter? Thank you. Motion is, motion to approve is a approve, I'm sorry. Motion to grant the request is approved. Thank you. All right. Mayor, additional use. Yes, you have to see. Mayor based on our vote approving the request. I would move that we grant this decision to use the permit with the stated conditions as have been illuminated by staff in the bill to the applicant. I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself with the anxious minimum. I have a motion by Mr. Belton to grant the permit. Second. And a motion by, second by Mr. Moffitt any discussion? All in favor, sir? Aye. All opposed? Ms. Carter? Thank you very much. Motion to grant the permit is approved. Good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, with any air shot, this is the appointed time for the public comment period. I want to invite anyone in the building or out in the yard to feel free to speak to the council regarding any matters of concern or city business. And we'd ask that you come to the microphone, introduce yourself, sign the book. The book is not there. Okay. We will not be signing to look tonight. And, um, there's Ricardo. Go right ahead, we. All right. Hello, everyone. Hi. Hope you guys are all having a great day today. My name is Jonathan for Bucardo and as you know, young members of our community have taken to the streets to fight for their future out here in Ashbrook. The death of George Floyd was the last straw for all citizens who agree that those who swore to serve and protect us are instead instilling fear in our communities. The problem we are seeing in all communities in our country and around the world is institutionalized racism within the police force. The institutionalized racism has led to police misconduct and violence especially within the African-American communities. With Randolph County being the heart of North Carolina, we must ask ourselves, is the heart of North Carolina still poisoned with hate towards our African-American communities and communities of color? We'll poison with hate towards our African-American communities and communities of color. If so, and what examples are we setting for North Carolina? And what can we do to end discrimination within our police force and within our hearts? First we must understand and acknowledge the problem. The problem is the lack of accountability of our police department after police brutality and the abuse of power has taken place. So what can we do and why should we do it? Let's begin with what can we do. First, it is recommended that body camps be purchased for all officers in our department and that includes the Sheriff Department as well. This will be the first step to bridge a positive relationship between our members in our community and our officers. The cameras will also provide a sense of safety for the officers as well as the members in our community. The cameras can also be used as evidence to hold each part accountable for their actions whether it's a positive action or a negative action. The cameras can also be used as evidence to hold each party accountable for their actions, whether it's a positive action or a negative action. The second recommendation is to form a board made up of ethical and moral members of our community that are sworn to be unbiased when they complain as form towards an officer. As you know, it would be unethical and even morally incorrect to allow police to police themselves. As it would be recommended that any complaints made within the past five years be opened and reviewed after the formation of this board. The third recommendation would be to require mandatory cultural competence training for all members of the force every six months. This training shall include but shall not be limited to the differences in behavior of each culture and race. The program should focus on the treatment of racial minorities. In order to understand these cultures in depth as well, it is highly recommended that the force increases the amount of officers who are brown and black. The fourth recommendation is to require therapy for our officers once every two months. This therapy, it would be mental health therapy, would be to help the officers understand their emotional and psychological health, so problems and preformed biases do not interfere in their line of work. This is something I am sure can and should be covered already by their insurance company. These here are four recommendations that would increase trust between our African American communities and our officers. But why should we do it? And I am very glad you guys all asked. Well one, this is a public health issue. Police brutality can and has as we see with George Floyd led to death. Two, the physiological response caused by discriminatory practices of our police can lead to health issues in the future. Three, traumatic experiences that could have been prevented lead to mental health issues within our communities that all community members will have to deal with one way or another. These traumatic experiences have effects such as anxiety, depression, feelings of worthlessness in PTSD, and our officers are here to serve not to make our lives worse. I would also like to know that economically speaking, wrongful arrests and abusive behaviors strain our people financially. One arrest could lead to thousands of dollars unnecessarily wasted. How? Being bailed out, it's not free. Going to the hospital for medical attention, hiring an attorney to try and get justice, and you've worse yet, a funeral. Unfortunately, racism tends to be perceived as normal violence against minorities, especially our African American communities. Perceiving racism and discrimination practices as normal has heightened the tensions between law enforcement and the African-American communities. The last but not least, it is recommended that the statue outside of this old court house be removed. The removal will create hope for a more unified city, which will lead to a unified state and thus unifying our entire nation. It will be a sign that our vision of unifying this nation is one step closer to becoming realized. City Councilmen and women, Mayor, it is time to challenge the norms and it is time for you as our elected leaders to lead by example. Thank you for your time. I hope you have gained some perspective from the citizens who will be voting for our future leaders soon. Thank you guys. Thank you, Julie. Thank you. Appreciate that. Well done. Man, if you wouldn't mind seeing the clerk to make sure she gets your name spelled correctly, we'd appreciate it. Right here. Thank you. I did forget to ask my apologies because anybody have any questions? Thank you. Next. Who who is next? I'll be next to nobody else wants to. All right. I'm just going to speak a little bit. I ain't got a lot of say for a time I've become here, spoke up. Bobby Crutch would I grew up in this town in Nashville, went to Franklinville School, went to Eastern Randolph. When I grew up, I grew up on Spinks Road right down here. My friends were black, Tim, Dan, Brian, that's who I grew up with. Third-panch, Maddie, Tracy Tracy Rauer, never spoke of this stuff. I was treated great. Our families were great. We never heard about this stuff. I mean, I know race-similar racism exists, but to put the blame on the police officers and stuff like that, also I'm a convicted fellow. I spent three years in prison. I seen a man killed at P. My Dragway, found another black man. We all witnessed it. I can name five, six people. We all saw it. Same thing, Channis Owen, see it right now. We're not accountability. We need to hold our self-accountability. Quit hiding your criminals. I was a criminal. I raised men. I was a criminal. I'd done things I shouldn't have done. I changed my life. I've run a company right here in this town for 10 years now. I employ Hispanic, Black folks, white folks. I don't employ good folks. It no matter what color you are. But to say to the officers, it's his fault. It's his fault. It's selling them short. I mean, I get it. I get what happened to George. It's very wrong. and I say the four officers that done it, lock on my, but don't hold yourself accountable. Hold your community accountable. Quit hiding some of the problems in our county. I was selling dope. That's what I've done. That's what made me the prison. Do you know who I was buying it from? I grew up with good people. You know, Tim and Darn, that had parents. Maddie Brow was in their house. Tracey Brow was there. You could tell the difference. But then I grabbed another group of people that wasn't good. And I navigated to the wrong things. I saw, I did a lot of things I shouldn't have done. And I learned something over here in the correctional institution. Called a accountability. Don't point at these people in here as protectin' us. When you know how some of these drugs are getting here. I bought drugs from black people, I'm sorry. They bought it from the Mexicans, I'm sorry. I'm not calling them good or bad, they are bad, but nevertheless, she needs to own it. We all need to own it. What are the point of officers about what they do? They're in a bad spot. I coached a little boy, helped coach Randy Kerns, went over here to Eastern Randolph. He knows nothing of racism. He played ball with dumb boys over to Eastern Randolph from Liberty, from Ramsoor. Now he's probably worried about his life. He's gonna get caught up in this. What's he got to do with it? Nothing. We were taking a death and we're giving an excuse to people to Ram sack our city. Just tear it apart, Charlotte. I mean, there's black owners, there's white owners, their business has nothing to do with this. So when people come in here and say stuff like that, you're upsetting some of us. I'm the racist. You know, I employ everybody. My son, they're a little girl over there, he used to rent off Kila going stand out athlete, black little black girl. I supported it. Never, never look down on him, never look down on her. You know, one time they, they per se, maybe the goons didn't have a little bit of money like I had, I didn't have a lot, because you know, 10 years ago I walked out of prison with nothing. I'm so bad about the fellon. I don't get food stamps, I can't get housing 10 years ago. I had nothing, I bought my way here today. I'm about to buy, got a Harley. I don't go blaming the officers. I done it. Officer Cook come to my house to arrest me. Several times, you know, I kind of made a move. He jumped. And on the right to the police station, I asked him, you know, why was it? He said, so when you look at your record, I'm a little tense. Well, I run with the guys that did kill him over there at Peemont Dragway. I know some of the you know the lifestyle that they carry and it just like Cheney Soewen said you know you got to hold them accountable. I mean you can't it's hard to explain I guess I should have wrote it all down but it's wrong to point at these officers and to say they're the blame and stuff like this over one, it's not right. Two, the facts don't back up what's being said. White people just as that one more act to be killed than a officer than a black person. I mean, I don't know what to say. It's frustrating. And then the tear down statues that, you know, like it's the Hispanic, I guess the lady what to say. It's frustrating. And then the tear down statues that, you know, like his, his bank, I guess the lady come up here. It's like I told her back there, I talked to her, apologize, so maybe we had a rough comment on Facebook. But my family's got skin in the game on some of that. Right or wrong, they have paid the debt to have some of this stuff. And when you come in our community and you, you've done nothing other than demand changes. Not right. When I come home, I built dugouts down there at Franklinville. Besides the restaurant, we call it a Southern shop field. The people sitting on plywood blocks. I ain't having no money. I talked to Phil Bergers, got some blocks. Talk to Frito Leonard on Franklinville restaurant. Got some mortar. Talk to Brett from Channel Concrete. We built, I built those dugouts for the community. I poured concrete down that cold ridge. I try to give back. So if you're gonna come in this community to man change, put in. Don't just come in and say, give me, give me. Has anybody ever been down to this candor school system? I ain't cracking on any race or nothing. But we have a lot of, I went to prison. I broke the law imagine how I spent three years in prison I broke the law there's people burning down bills and it's gonna hey they can overlook it it's gonna be overlooked why can I sue discrimination I got locked up they're not getting locked up it's not right we got to have logs and that's it we got to give some of these guys a little bit of bleed weighing a little bit of bleed We ain't a little bit of power on their choices. I agree with the body cams whole whole hardly get everybody one that way You know both sides when we get to see what happens, but For people to come in here and sell the officer short It's not right to point the blame that I owned up what I did I I done it I led myself to prison, but I come home, I buckled down with nothing. I walked out of prison with nothing. So there ain't an excuse. There's not an excuse for a black man, a white man, a spanic man. If there's no excuse, if you get up every day, you go to work, you'll make a difference. But if your mind's set, it's the blame and point. You're not going to go nowhere. You turn them statues down all you want. Put them up. It don't matter. If you don't change your community, the way they perceive things and treat these officers, the statues are not going to matter. There's not going to change how anything goes. Thank you. I'm sorry. We got a lot of people to hear. Thank you. I'm sorry. We've got a lot of people to hear. Thank you, Mr. Courts. We appreciate your comments. Thank you. You're going by yourself and by the C.C. Because you leave for you to name, please. Mr. Gantt, next. I want to take a few minutes in. I didn't come here prepared to speak. I came here to support some young people that I've been very proud of this week. I'm sorry, my name is Jane LeBougan. I am a citizen around County. And as I said, I came here to support some young people that I've had the ability to look at on Facebook that has reached out to some of us to say, how do we do this right? I understand what this gentleman just said. But I will say to you, as I've said on Facebook, I do not condemn Ryan ten or looted in any form, but I can understand the sympathy, I can understand the heart, though. I have a 45-year-old son. From the time he was six years old and I raised him in an all-white neighborhood in the north, but there was not a time that that young man went out that door that I didn't remind him. We're at a great neighborhood. We have great neighbors. We looked out for each other and believed me. I was the only black family in the 700 more house neighborhood. But I constantly remind him of who he was. And there are some things that you can't get away with that other children can. Now, when you talk about the rioting, I have yet this week to hear anyone, except for one person email me today and say, I don't know how to say this to you, Jane, because I don't know how to feel the way you feel, because I'm not black. And when I hear people try to play down the pain, the anger, I can talk about 50 some years. I grew up here. I left here at the age of 19. I can tell you about the pain of integration. I can tell you about the pain of discrimination right here at Ashford High School, which I left that school after six months. So what I'm saying, I don't expect people to understand. You have a walk to my shoes. I've been walked in yours. But I do say something sympathetic. And when you talk about it, and I heard this young man talk, but I went to prison before drugs. You got three years. If your face was black, you would have got 15. That is why the prison system today looks the way it does. No, justice is blind when it comes to a young black man sitting in prison for marijuana, whatever, in comparison to the average young white man. And I just want to say, I am proud to be back home. I hope to represent this area. But I don't lose sight of the fact that when I look around this town, there is still a lot that we need to embrace on both sides. We need to come together. We need to do a peaceful. We need to be honest and open with each other and to admit. We're lacking in some areas. And I can say that on both sides. And I do appreciate you allowing me to speak, but again, as a mother of a young black successful man today, yeah, from the time I saw that knee and that young and that man's neck. How many times did I think that could have been my side? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gantt. I appreciate your interest in this community. Thank you. Next, Mr. Files. Good evening. My name is Clive Files Jr. I'm a like Mr. Gantt. I had not planned on speaking, but I feel that it's important to come up and just say one or two things. The first thing that I want to say is, after listening to the young man speaking, he was very passionate. But I think it's very important that we understand a difference between personal responsibility and community responsibility. When that young man was selling drugs and he was doing the things that he was doing, he was responsible for his actions. But when the police officers that we hire with our money create or deny someone their civil rights, we're partly responsible for that because we gave them the ability to do that. There's a big difference between someone who breaks into your house and steals something and someone who the city gave the power to take your life from abusing that power. Now that's the first thing I want to talk about. The second thing I want to talk about is that in his actual conversation he proved bias. He showed us that there was bias because he kept talking about all the violence that was going on but there has been no violence in Ashboro. They have been protesting, they have been protesting hard since Sunday and ever since they started protesting and I have a business downside. We have two, we have three buildings downtown. Haven't had one problem. So do you see that the assumption is that, oh, we need to take care of all of these people who are doing all of this bad stuff, but you're having that conversation in a place where ain't nobody doing the bad stuff These people are out in the streets because they want positive change and Let me tell you I've been out there with them and Sometimes some of the verbites that they use isn't correct But here's what you don't hear you don't hear the verbites that's being thrown at them. And I need us as a city to make sure that it is understood that there is a difference between profanity and hate speech. If someone is walking and says a word that I would not want my daughter to hear, a full letter word, That's one thing. But when a group of people call a crowd a racial epitaph in our city, that should be condemned. Because that is nothing but trying to a site or trying to create a problem when it was not one day before. Now I want to say those two things. And the last thing I want to say is I think that we as a city should look around the state and the country. And we should acknowledge that the young people in Ashboro, North Carolina are doing their best to do it the right way. They're doing their best. They came here tonight to talk to the city. They came with a list of requests. They're trying their best to do it the right way. And we don't need to allow people to look them in the face and say, well, you guys shouldn't even be talking about the police because you need to take care of the riots over there. Ain't nobody rioting. And even if every police officer in our force was perfect, even if they were perfect, we still need to make sure that there's no bias for future police officers. And let's be clear, there is bias. How do I know that there's bias? I can look at Ashboro High School. We did with the NAACP two years ago, maybe three years ago, they looked at the discipline of the kids at Ashboro High School. They looked at the kids who got sent to the principal. When they looked at the kids that got sent to the principal, there was a high number of blacks, there was a high number of Latinos, and it was a small number of ways. Then they looked at the kids that got detention. It was a high number of blacks, even higher. Smaller number of Latinos, and even smaller number of blacks. But when they looked at the kids that actually got the police called on them, they were all black, or Latino, I think. It was either all black or Latino, or just all black. It was about two years ago. Y'all went to ask for high school. Every one of y'all went in high school at one point. You can't tell me that in a school as big as ask for a high school, that no white kid there did anything wrong through the whole year. It is a bias in the way the incidents are dealt with. And I'm not saying it's intentional but I'm saying that these kids are saying that it's there and it needs to be addressed. And as their city we're as citizens in this city I think they have a point. And I think they're going about it the right way and that needs to be acknowledged and supported. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you Mr. Files. Are you ready to have anything else? Good evening everyone. My name is Maria Fals. Pull the microphone down. There you go. I have grown up in Asherwood, my entire life. Now what we are saying to the police is we are not blaming anyone, but we are making sure that kids like me and my little sister and my little sister and my little brother will always be protected. Is too is not acceptable that when something bad happens for everyone to say, I wish we could have done this or I wish we could have done that. We need to prepare for future generations so that nothing like that could ever happen. I have dealt with the police before, not in any bad way, but I have seen them, I have seen them work and I will make sure that I will always say thank you for your service. That's something me and my family stand by. My papa was in the army and we respect all officers, but we need to make sure that whatever happens, whatever interactions that we ever have are respectful and peaceful so that everyone can feel safe in their community. We have that freedom as an American citizen and as a human. Thank you. Thank you. Very well done. May I just add that that's an eighth grader from Southwest Middle. Very well done, Maria. Yes sir, you're next. very well done, Maria. Yes, sir. You're next. Good evening. My name is Charles Ansonori. I'm not from Ashbury my whole life. I moved here about three years ago and I'm hoping to open my gunsmith shop here and really I just came here today because I feel like there's been a lot of division here and I've moved down here to try and avoid that. You know, I agree with everything everybody said so far with the exception of taking down the statue. I do believe that office should be held accountable for their actions. I do believe that we all should abide by the Constitution. You know, and I believe that those founding documents are colorblind. I believe when they said that all men are created equal, they meant man, woman, black, white, Asian, everything. And I do believe that it's a very good document if you read it that way. The reason I would like to see the statue remain where it is, is because that is a part of American history. There are good parts of American history and there are bad parts of American history. And people here felt that it was necessary to memorialize it at the time it was erected. And a lot of people from around here, you know, as the man said before half skin into game, you know, they are sons and daughters of the Confederacy and they are American today. They should be represented. I also think that though that we should put up a equally large or larger bus of civil rights activists. I think it would be even more symbol of unification if we had both statutes showing how the evolution of this area came to be and show that we are all trying to be equal. I think that that would be the symbol of that having both statues equally as large standing in contrast to each other. That's really all I had to say tonight. I hope you guys take my time. Thank you, sir. Would you repeat your last name for me. Antenori, that's ANTI and ORI. Thank you, sir. So I'm ready to hear. Yes, yes, okay. Thank you, sir. Next. Chip, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you in June to take seat in the hall and so they can stage the next speakers. But you're welcome to stay and listen. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Todd. Good to stay and listen. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mr. President, please. Good to see you tonight. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Lesson to be here. I'm not going to be with you just for a moment. I just want to make a statement that racism has been rightly called America's original sin. It remains a blot on our national life and continues to cause acts and attitudes of hatred as recent events have made evident. The need to condemn and combat the demonic ideologies of white supremacy, neo-Nazism and racism has become a specially urgent at this time. Our efforts must be constantly led in a company by prayer. They must also include concrete action. Everything that I've heard tonight has been, I was there Tuesday night and I watched as 150 to 200 young people came and exuded such passion. As Chip has brother Chip has said, some of the language was harsh, but the passion by which these young people protested. To me it was just, it was amazing and properly channeled, very encouraging as it relates to the welfare of our city, but my component is the component of prayer. I think that the enemy has done a lot to try to divide, and I feel like it's necessary to call together a group to do a prayer walk and to spend some time praying over our city. So on June 14th, from 5 o'clock to 7 o'clock p.m., we are purposing to do just that. We want to march from probably the courthouse down to Brewer Street Park where we're going to do prayer initiatives Because one thing that we have to do is men and women of God is to blanket our city in prayer So I'm just here to to ask for whatever Whatever I need from you to ensure our safe passage because we just want to pray. We need to pray. Everything is going on in our nation. Our nation is divided. And there's an attempt to divide our city. And I just feel like my responsibility is not only to do everything else but to cover our city in prayer. So we're setting aside that time and inviting everyone to come. No signs, no flags, we're praying because we need God to intervene in everything that is going on. So I'm here to announce the date and to extend an invitation. This will not be in any way political. We want you to walk with us, but we'll have any talking heads. We're going to gather and we're going to pray. So I'm just submitting that time to you, that date to you, because the issues are very real. And we cannot act like they do not exist because they do. So that's my piece. I just want to extend an invitation. I want to say to you that that's the date that we will use, and we are going to pray. And I extend that invitation to you and to come to be with us. Sir, if you will, get me a copy of your route. I will make sure the police have it and map out a safe passage and do traffic control and public safety for you on your march and we'll do anything we can to help facilitate that for you. Very grateful. June 14th was 5 to 7 on the 14th. I have to 7pm and you're planning June 14th. 7. 5 to 7. And you're planning at this point is to start at the courthouse and walk to Brewer Street. Yes, sir. Okay, that's down at Hill. That's good. Yes. Yes. And we're asking several of our pastors to bring vans in case someone needs featured in that. Drive if you can't walk this. Absolutely. Yeah. If you're not able to to walk, please drive. But prayers just prayers just, that's the burden of my heart. Thanks for so much. Thank you. Thank you for your time. You're welcome. Next. Well, this is kind of, doesn't really have a point to it. It's just kind of a ramble, but I figured I'd go anyway. One of my arguments is that... I'm sorry, you need to introduce yourself to... Oh sorry. Adam Goodman. Like Adam Sandler and John Goodman. Adam Goodman. Yeah. Okay. Nice to meet you sir. Go right here. I didn't meet you. It's okay. I argued that hatred is unfortunately human. It's like toes, it's like shoes, it's human. Really, it's how you deal with it. My dad is from Cleveland, and their rivals are to Pittsburgh Steelers. My dad has never shot anybody from Pittsburgh. He is of Jewish heritage. And that comes to my next point that part of what I'm seeing, or I don't think that prejudice or hatred should be like a competition. I could argue that the Jews have had it worse because we were put into ovens and stuff like that. But hatred is hatred no matter how you look at it. It just depends on how you deal with it and whether or not you learn from it. I don't think hatred knows any boundaries, nor prejudice. My father, white man, has been called not racial slurs, religious slurs because of being a Jew. But that doesn't make him any different from, you know, anybody else. I've never been called a slur based on my religion, but that doesn't make me, you know, any different. Like I said, just a ramble here, but I guess my point is what we need to do is I know what I was going to say. Okay, about two nights ago I was at the protest and I was left the opinion that the people guarding the statue were a bunch of no good Nazis or evil and bleh. But what changed my mind is a gentleman came over to me and we got to talking. That's what you have to do. You never really know a person until you talk to them. For all I know, like the girl I like, I think I like her, but I've never talked to her. So how do I know, you know what I mean? You got to talk to somebody to get to know them. You can't base an opinion off of somebody from something they can't change. We can't judge somebody from the color of your skin. You can't judge them from their height on 5'7. I should know. You need to judge somebody on their behavior and their moral character. Because if I'm a jerk, I can become nice. People can change. And like I said, a rambles. So I'll also talk. Do I write my name here? Just print it so we can put the record just because we don't always understand that somebody pronounces it in a microphone. We just want to know that we've got it right in our record. Okay. Mr. Goodman, thank you very much for taking the time to be here tonight. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, Senator. My name is Helen Gaines-Settle. I am the president and found out the Randolph County Concerned Citizens Against Crime. I guess I can take some asses from that. I have a proposal. The proposal is that we are aiming towards a peaceful, peaceful protest for healing, hope, and restoration. We are hurting not only as a people, but as a city, state, and nation. We must come together on one accord and help protect one another. We want everyone involved, no matter the race, religious, we believe, backgrounds, occupations. Unity is important in times like these. Again, unity is important in times like these. Again, unity, unity is important in times like these. We want you all, the churches, mayor, chief library, chief seat boat, law enforcement officers, any and everyone that can walk in peaceful walk to be with us. As a right now mayor, I don't have a date or a time because we were going to be involved in the same one with Bishop, but Bishop nice talked about it and he think that we should do this and they do that prayer. So we will get a date and I will contact you. Please do. We'll do what we can to help you put this together and we will provide the safety if it's a march and traffic control and whatnot. Yes, sir. And I appreciate your time. And I just wanted to say that we all are going to have to stand on being the knees. This is a trying time. And I just say it's just a test of our faith. God loves us all. And we know that. So let's just stand in prayer for each other. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Rechate you being here. Yes, sir. Thank you. Kind of blessed evening. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Demetri. I'm a pretty sure a lot of y'all are trying to figure out who I am. I see you. I put a name on the face together because we've talked. I got kind of figured that'd be good for you to know who I am. I just wanted to all let you all know. I'm part of the team, mainly the main person that's organized this March for Saturday. I appreciate the mayor, excuse me, kind of nervous you all have never did this before. First stepping up and allowing us to have police assistance with this and the waters that you're giving us. I also want to let you know we are having a member of the NAACP coming out to speak. His name is Donald Matthews. We are taking, I don't know if you guys know the route from the park and coming back around from the courthouse and any get here at City Hall. Sorry that we're coming up here, by the way. Well, it's fine. And just, you know, you understand that I cannot leave there because you changed the date and I have a obligation. Oh, it's like I told you it's okay. I just appreciate you doing what you're doing to help us. It's to be there and I'm sorry I can't. It's okay. If you can come by when we're doing posters at 12 if you want to that is totally fine Yeah, we're doing posters at the calf before at 12 before the parade so if you want to come by and join us At the cafe on Lodge. Okay. I'm afraid of McLean's calf. Yeah Yeah, I Was not prepared to speak today, but there's a lot of people in the group that we created for this March that wanted me to speak on behalf of them and shed some light on some issues. Number one is FBI background checks for all officers, old and new. They want psyche valuations monthly. I know that's kind of pushing it, so we decided if we could do it quarterly, that would be awesome. List of affiliations with group should be, for the officers, should be public information. A complaint board that tracks records needs to be kept. Body and car cams on our officers should start as soon as their shift starts. Set precedents for races, removal of the Confederates at you. And based on what he said about it being a part of history, I understand that, but there's a nursing home on Brewer Street that used to be a high school. So why is it a nursing home and why are we not taking care of it? You know what I'm saying? Why is there a Confederate statue here? But there's no statues to represent the black people that have stood up for us as far as Doris Atlas, Martin Luther King, anything. You understand there are people that are from North Carolina that have made changes in the world and we don't have any statues of them. Community concern, community concern, community that meets with the mayor and chief of police monthly, all races. There's a lot of harassment on the east side that a lot of people are complaining about. And maybe in African-American I've never been in trouble with the law that seriously. I mean, I might have got to speed and take it once or twice but I see it. You know, I'm saying I have my sister as five kids My nephew we did not raise them to be like that and my eyes I don't judge anybody because they were a bad as long as you respect you respect me, I respect you. Officer Vincent, I love him. I've known him since I was little. Officer Cox, I grew up, my mom went to school with police so I know a lot of them. But my nephew, when he sees police officers, he's five years old, doesn't even want, sorry, seven years old. Doesn't want anything to do with them because of what we see on TV. The So, there's nothing to do with them because of what we see on TV. The unnecessary checkpoints on the East side, they won't rid of that. Also, sorry, I've got a couple of papers here. A use of force continuing one for any police department in the country, messaged their at least six levels of steps, with clear rules on escalation, a open record act ensuring officers misconduct, misconduct information, and disciplinary history, are not shielded from the public. And a lot of people want the statute remains, really that's what it boils down to. But like I said, that's really not my main concern. My main concern is my march, and I'm proud of what we're doing and the people that have stood up and helped me do this because I have just today made a thousand dollars for donations for this march and I've had so many people stand behind me and the city stand behind me and it's honestly been a blessing and it's made me feel good and I'm glad to be a part of this. So you are going to the courthouse and then coming here. We're coming around. OK, all right. Because I sent it to you. I got here. Yesterday I couldn't figure that out. I looked like you stopped at courthouse. I sent him a message saying my finger was too big to continue the line. OK, all right. So I just wrote down the streets for him and I send a picture of it to him. That's great. This is a list that you just enumerated. Yes, sir. You might email in that to me. Of course. I couldn't follow. It was a long list. I taught really fast. I'm so sorry. I could not follow, but I'd like to see the list. Okay. I definitely will send it to you. Thank you so much. Even though I cannot be there, my heart will be with you. I am horrified by what happened. It has been a soldier to George Boyd. I believe that was a senseless murder. And what terrifies me or hurts me the most about that, personally, is that not one of those other three officers had an ounce of compassion when that man was lying and begging for his life and not one of them said, hey man lay him up or stop that. And I laid on the ground out there at the police department when even for nine minutes listening to the people around me, say I can't breathe and call for it, mama and whatnot. And that was an excruciating nine minutes for me. I can't imagine how long that nine minutes was for the man that was fighting for his life and ultimately lost his life. I am horrified that any person in America has to go through that. And it shouldn't have to take 50 states and 18 countries to step up into protest for office workers. I will promise. We do not train our police officers that way. In that manner, we have never once ever trained our officers to have that kind of control. And our policy is just opposite. Once we get control, we get the person up. We get him in the car. And if he's got a scratch, our policy is just opposite once we get control, we get the person up, we get him in the car. And if he's got a scratch, our policy as he goes to medical attention. So I'm comfortable saying to you that we don't train people that way, and I can't say that it will never happen, but I'm comfortable saying there's very little chance that will happen in Ashboro. Yes, I am. And thank you for your work. Thank you. And you're talking to you on the phone though. Thank you. Next, I believe you were up next. All three are together. I'll prepare you together. Hello, my name is India Little. I am. Sorry. My name is India Little. India Little. Yes. And I'm here with Amber Smith. We're both native to this community. I am a rising sophomore at Duke University. And I'm here to present a list of demands or goals for you all to consider. Some of these demands and goals include body and car cams on all officers, blacklisting officers committed of violent crimes, demilitarizing police through training that decreases the use of weapons, longer and more in-depth training for police officers, increasing positive community engagement with the East Side and predominantly Black and Latino communities, decreasing and working to eliminate the school to prison pipeline by preventing bias in the school system, with emphasis on Black and Latino communities as well as those that are lower income, taking down the monument due to the negative image it presents because of its relation to the Confederacy. Additionally, the presence of the monument has created tension and controversy between communities and it has made non-white community members feel uncomfortable. It is our hope that you work towards achieving these goals effectively. Thank you. This little, would you mind getting me a copy of that list? Yes, you can have your email. You may. I'll write it down for you. OK, thank you. And I just like to be able to read it because a long list. Let me say this just for the record. We are testing body cameras now. We have been and we're checking different vendors we're testing some. So you may see body cameras in our city police sooner than you think. Okay, sounds great. They're in the budget for next year. Budget, we're gonna work on tonight. And I personally believe that that is a necessary tool for our police. Not only does it protect the citizens, it takes our police. So we are late to the day, but we are testing and trying to find the best. So I'm writing. I'm trying to write all the things. If you walk right up here, I will hand you my email address. And that's, I print the caps. Put that is over case. Thank you for being here and good luck in your studies at Duke. Thank you. Yes ma'am. Okay. Hi. My name is Madison Perdue and honestly I don't have too much more to say other than what my friend has just said to you. I'm kind of all there with her on everything that she just said. I just really wanted to come to say that I'm just here to speak for the people that I love and the people that can't be here today to speak for themselves due to the fact that they have lost their lives to poohly brutality and there's just one point that I really wanted to reiterate that from the list that she had just gave you and that is the increasing positive community engagement with the East Side and predominantly Black community and decreasing and working to eliminate the school to prison pipeline by presenting bias in the school system. And I just wanted to really speak on those two points because I think those, for me personally, I'm still in high school. So I would just really, really like to see those changes being made within high schools and stuff. Like, I don't, I hate to see the kids that I go to school with be put in prison for things such as like a small marijuana charge or like these kids maybe in certain circumstances they just made a mistake I mean we're children like I just I just hate to see it so yeah I just really wanted to reiterate those two requests that she had made I'm sorry I'm really nervous. Well you're doing fine you don't need to be nervous. Thank you sir. What year are you at school? I will be a senior in August. Thank you, sir. What year are you at school? I will be a senior in August. At. Random. Good for you. Good luck for your senior year. Thank you for being part of this and taking the time to come speak to us tonight. I will say that I was out on the street last night for an hour, so late. And enjoy my visit with the people I talk to. That's good. Thank you. Everyone have a good evening. You're welcome. Thanks for coming. Next. All right. Japanese homes and do we have anybody outside? There is. Big crowd. Okay. Yes, ma'am. How are you? How are you? Introduce yourself to the microphone please. My name is Kristen Bailey. Kristen Bailey. Yes. Thank you. I am also a native of Ashboro. I grew up in Ashboro, went to school in Randall and how that goes. But what I wanted to speak on is there's definitely been a divide in the community. And it makes me so happy to see so many of the young people coming up to speak to you guys having the courage to come speak to you. I recently just graduated from the University of Pembroke with my BSW and it has always been a goal of mine to come back to Ashboro and contribute to my community. I've been out on the front lines since Monday, protesting with these young people, and by the day we are growing. By the day, the passion grows. By the day, we gain more knowledge about what we're actually standing out there for. And I just want to say with all of the concerns and recommendations that they have brought to you. Please consider because eventually they will be the ones, you know, sitting in your seats as the goals to keep the ball rolling, growing, learning. And as a member of the Black community, I have experience firsthand systematic racism, things of that sort, and it's uncomfortable. I am also a former detention officer, and I have never been in a predicament to where I just felt completely comfortable where I was, but I do love some of the people I've worked with. My old lieutenant, Miss Carol Benfield, we speak weekly. She checks on me, she supported me through school. So where a lot of them are saying, you know, this strong bourbage and F the police and things like that. I'm constantly reminding them that it's not all police. And just like we don't want to be classified as it's all black people, we have to give the same respect. So I'm not going to keep reiterating points, but I do want you to really consider what these young people are saying. Consider their voices, really remember what they said when you go home tonight because just like certain people want to be heard so do we. And again, as a native here, it's all I've ever wanted to do is for the community to be a good place for people to become through. And thank you guys for your time and I hope it all goes well in the future. Thank you miss. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Last time my name here. Thank you. You can print. We just want to know how to spell. Gotcha. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Is there anyone else in the house that would like to address the council? Downstairs? Anywhere? You're all up here now, Mayor. Okay. Let me say that I appreciate you being here tonight. We have heard your comments. We have heard the concerns this week. I have a couple of comments that if there's anybody still out there to hear them, I'd like to say that our mission this week in Expo has been to allow the public to have their to celebrate and to exercise their First Amendment rights in complete safety. Our police department primary mission this week was the safety of the protesters. I will say that the fence erected at the courthouse in front of the statue was not meant to keep anybody away from the statue. It was meant to keep the two groups safe from each other to separate the two groups. If you looked at the fence, you could see that it was very easy to walk around the fence. It was not built to keep anybody out. We had a lot of comment about fencing out the public. That is not the case. And I will say that I have been out there most nights this week. I have worked with our police and our incident command staff. And I want to say that I stand behind our police as much as I support the rights of the protesters. Our police have done a good job of ensuring public safety and not being intrusive or threatening. And that's by design this week. We have had a good plan and I believe we have a good police force. So, thank you for your comments tonight and we will move on to the rest of our agenda. Ms. Reeves, the finance officer, she has six items, five items here. And item A is a discussion of the impact on utility building operations for the COVID-19 pandemic. And they went to get her. She has sequestered in her office because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I guess. I'm sure she's not getting the broadcast, so she wasn't prepared to come on out Me and the station to turn off the YouTube live feed Me and station to turn off the YouTube live Mr. Penn came I appreciate you being here tonight. You could have very easily watched it on YouTube and written your article from the distance. As raised, you have been introduced for item 5A, discussion and impact of the coronavirus on your utility bill. Okay, our office closed at 4 o'clock PM on Monday, March 16th, the city manager made that order, and then the city manager made decision not to charge tier two late fees on the 25th of each month, and he also made a decision to not cut off services. So we did not charge late fees in the end of March, nor did we cut off water services at that time. And then of course the governor made as an executive order not to charge any late fees effective March 31 through June 1 and that order has now been extended to July 29. The billing office environment has always been a very busy environment. We probably only have one down day of the month which is right after the horrendous due date of the 15th. But we have transitioned from face to face interaction with our customers to over the phone. We're taking services all over the telephone. Customers are paying their deposits online. They're emailing us their applications, their identifications, all those things. And if someone does not feel comfortable with the online environment, then we are doing curbside service by appointment. With regard to payment traffic, obviously the office is close to the public. So we have sent notifications out to all the customers in their utility bills. We've posted online, Facebook, about the variety of different payment options available to our customers. We had a lot of different electronic payment options available to them in the first place. We've just been encouraging them to use it. In from a traffic activity for the different payment options, in April of 2019, we had 2005 transactions at the kiosks. In April of 2020, we had 2009, 173. Are what we've received dollar-wise in the kiosk went up from 134,000 to 205,000. So the kiosks are taking a lot of that. And we're pretty much consistent with the same level of traffic in May of 2020. Online bill pay has gone from 2000. The regular versions went from 2046 and 152,000 to 2461, about 177,000. We've introduced a new with our new billing software that we just switched over to last month in April. That was two months ago actually. We've got an online bill pay portal. 776 customers have used that. Our mail traffic has gone up from 2448 to 3552. So a lot of older people who are not comfortable with the technology, we've encouraged them to mail in their payments. And they are doing that. In the office, we usually would have anywhere between 26 and 2800 customers. Now we don't have any of those in the office as far as from a payment traffic perspective. They've all switched to these other methods. It does not meet the need of everybody. A lot of people still wanna come in and do the face-to-face, but they understand that this is the environment we're in right now. My staff, the finance staff has gotten involved and we are out there regularly helping customers process payments of the kiosks. On our first due date, we had two of us were directing traffic and another one was actually at the machine running the payments and then we started getting the payments from the customers in the line so that as the customer before the customer even got to the chaos their payment had already been transacted and they could go on because they were in the lines for a long period of time. We just as normal on due dates if you're ever here we do have wind lines out the door we had cars down the street. Do you need some big dates? It is. Now for our May 15th due date we enlisted the assistance of the police department and they managed, helped us manage traffic control. It's amazing how much more receptive people are to an individual in a uniform than they are to us. But we also changed our methodology. We had the kiosks hand, I had one of my employees out at the kiosk handling credit card transactions. And then two of us were in the parking lot running back and forth cash and check transactions. We had those customers park park and parking spaces, and then we had our billing staff inside processing the payments and still continuing to handle the telephone calls, new applications, and things like that. On that methodology was a lot more effective. I got, probably about 20,000 steps in that day. But we were able to keep the line from going out into the street quite as badly. It really wasn't nearly as bad. On the first due date, on April 15th, I was here till probably 616630, still with customers, transacting, making sure they understood how to use the machine, how to make those payments. And I did, I think we're here till 535-45 on the 15th. Or that was that we had added digits to the account numbers. The account numbers? People did not really understand that. And that is one reason why we were at the machine processing them because the time it takes a customer to try to figure out after multiple tries. They get frustrated. They're not even though we sent out notification in their invoices. We've been telling them in person. You know, a lot of people do not read their invoices. They go to the machine with their number in their head and keep putting in their number. And I put signs on the k key ask. You can see the signs that we have around City Hall, but people still just tend to go into their normal routine. And so we were there to try to help them through that. We still do have customers who are adjusting to the new account number structure, but not nearly the issue that we had the first month, which is understandable. We expected that there would be a transition period. But we have been there, you know, both finance and billing staff have been going out there to help the customers to assist them in that way. How has this impacted cutoff? Well, obviously we did not run cutoff in March. We did not run cutoff in March. I would have if I ran because we had closed the office and people couldn't come in to pay. I would have had 380 accounts on cutoff and $35,376 of past due balances represented by those accounts. My usual cutoff is 125 residents a month. But a lot of those people, I mean, I'll have 200 people pay in the last 24 hours before cutoff, just like we have the huge volume before due date, the 15th. In April, there were 452 accounts on the cutoff report. These represented February month end bills that were not paid. That was an addition of 72 new accounts that had not been paid. And our total past due balance at that time was almost $68,000. One of the reasons for the large jump in the past due balances is because there were some businesses in there that were on the cutoff list and businesses typically have some larger balances. These were representative industries that were just struggling in the change of environment and had not probably not gotten through their small business loan process at the time, so they did not have revenue available to pay those. As of May 28th, oh, first of all, the all the accounts on the 428 cutoff report are actually non-COVID balances. They're all balances that came due prior to the governor's order, and therefore they are not subject to a payment plan. The new accounts that were on the report as of 528, which were the March-Month End Bills that came due on April 15th. There were 88 new accounts there, and those are COVID-19 balances that we will be looking at doing payment pay planned with once the governor's order ends and once if the customer wants a payment plan. Some customers may be back at work. We don't know. We're educating them right now telling them that we will be making payment plans available, telling them what the structure of those payment plans would be so that, and asking them to call and let us know if they're, if they need that. We've also developed some form letters that are going to be going out to those customers at the apical time. We are actually ready to push the button on June 1st and then on Saturday before we type type of all those letters Saturday before the governor extended those. So I've got a lot of scrap paper that I can use. As far as our billings, our revenue is down. Our billings are down. By category, our usage in the residential area has increased which makes a lot of sense because you have people all at home not leaving. But our businesses have as understandable because they've been closed, their revenue has gone down. In May of 2019 I build about $1.00 a little bit over a million dollars in water and sewer. May of 2020 I build 875,000. So just in that difference in the period that's about $175,000 of loss revenue just that one period. That's all right, losing a die house. It is. Other areas of loss revenue are late fees. Obviously we are not charging those late fees. I usually have about 2,000 late fees on the 2,000 to 3,000 late fees on the two to three thousand late fees on the 14th and about 1500 late fees on the 20th 25th. So we've got that lost revenue and I'm sorry, I left that piece of paper with the revenue figures on them. Trying to determine the long-term impact is hard because all the information comes after the fact. I mean, this is the first month I've had a comparable because you've got a whole month closed to a whole month of when we were open in the previous period. So it'll be interesting to see how our revenues change. Now that businesses are starting to go back open. Since I can't cut people off, I don't know who has skipped town or who's still living there, what businesses have gone out of business and we're just still providing water to those locations because we can't cut them off right now. So there will be an update later on, I'm sure. Do you guys have any questions from me with regard to that? It's not really relating to our COVID things and the cutoffs of billing. There is a lot of consternation about some billing issues that have laid in the last week. You could get that. I'm thinking. Am I allowed to say yes to that? I would like for you to brief the council. On short, you know, the short version of what the problem is and how you're fixing it. So because they are getting calls from people saying, and I was just going to share one with you. This guy's bill went from last month $74 to this month $356. And he emailed me and said, what's the deal? And I said, emailed him back and said, we're having a billing problem. I cannot tell you because I don't know what that is. But if you'll call water Billing tomorrow, they'll try to fix it. And he sent me this message, I wanted to share with you and you share it with your people. They got it fixed. Great customer service down there. Well, thank you. So, I want to share that with you. It is difficult. It's all over Facebook that the water department strikes again. But just so we know what to tell our constituents. Please give us the short version. Well, if version is that recently we found out that one of our meter readers was estimating bills, which means they were not going to the residences and looking at the bills. Therefore, customers were not getting billed accurate. I want to look at the meters. Yes. The manual read meters. They weren't looking at those. This came to light when we did meter change outs this last month because when you go into a meter change out you pull the old meter out of the ground. You have another person looking at that reading and giving us that as a billing reading and then you start with your new meter in the ground. The ordinance says I have to bill for all water usage through a meter. So I had to bill it even though we knew they were high. We rechecked every single meat reading. We keep we we tell the meter department to keep those meters when they pull them out of the ground for a certain period of time because if there any questions we want to be able to go back to those meters and see those meters and have accurate information. So they wait for, I think, three months before they destroy any meters, they take out of the ground because they don't reuse the manual read meters. So all those accounts were just got billed. And we identified this before. Unfortunately, we don't move as fast as Facebook. And we have been going through every single account and adjusting accounts. I went to the city manager before this and before the customers got their bills. And I had already started adjusting the bills based on a rubric of a policy that he and I have developed. And but that was not as big of an adjustment. So I spent a day or, I think it took me about four or five hours to make those adjustments. And then I've told him that looking at these accounts, I felt like this was a bigger concern and we might need to look at a different approach in which he approved a different rubric of adjusting those accounts. And basically that was adjusting accounts down to their bill, their last bill, which was the April bill. So I've been the past couple days, I've been going through all of those accounts and redoing all of those adjustments so that those bills are down. We can't, I couldn't figure out a way to send out notification to just a small group of people that says we are working on this. I- Well, I'm not real well-versed on Facebook, to be honest. And- We- City has Facebook page and Trevor can put a note on it that says we understand there's a problem. Be patient, call, call in, you know, something, but go ahead. I'm sorry. So as customers have been calling, my staff has been educating them, trying to educate them as effectively as possible about what the issue was and that we are working through resolution. But a lot of people who put it on Facebook without calling our office and jumped to different conclusions, I don't really know. I was, honestly, I was out of the office on the day it blew up at the Animal Hospital in a couple hours away from here. So I was not here for the big blowup and I felt bad about that. But everything seems to have calmed down a lot more. My staff says that a lot of people have, they're getting fewer calls. There's better understanding out there. Again, Facebook blew up and we had a plan. It's just that Facebook blew up faster than I could implement the plan. Well, thank you. I know you've got to handle it. I appreciate it. It's nice to hear good customer service. I appreciate him letting me know that. And you have a good staff down there. I know you can handle this. I appreciate that. Yes, I have a very good staff down there. I know you can handle this. I appreciate that. Yes, I have a very good staff. They are positive. They are friendly to our customers. Although everybody says we're not, I don't know that anybody will ever be happy. How they're everybody. Yes. And they're very hard workers. They do not put a lot of downtime. And throughout all of this COVID stuff, we also have been switching software systems and trying to adjust to a new way of doing things. And I'm still trying to figure out how to balance things because all the new reports are all different. But we're navigating through it. Thank you. Let's move to I&B consideration of ordinance amending section 500.006 paying service charges. Okay. The ordinance before you drafted by the city attorney amends the a section of the ordinance that governs a lot of what I do in the water billing department. It sets forth the application of how we apply payments. Our system is set up to hit different types of payments in a certain order. It also adds to the ordinance the availability of how payment plans are going to be handled because now with the governor's order we are now in a position that we for the first time ever we are going to be offering a mass amount of payment plans. We're in the past. We've worked with customers one-on-one and it's a very manual process but this sets forth a long-term operation because the governor's order is that we offer to extend payment plans up to six months and that was not in our ordinance. So the city attorney researched and drafted this ordinance accordingly so that we will be able to implement payment plans when the governor's executive order expires. So you have a resolution? That was this that's what this ordinance is for. All right. I recommend adoption by reference. Okay. Do I have a motion to adopt by reference? Mayor, I move the adopt the ordinance to amend Section 50. Point zero zero or six by reference. I have a motion, but Mr. Bell, do I have a second? Second. Second, Mr. Berks. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Ms. Carter? Thank you. Motion carries. Item C. I have a consideration of resolution of brewing. Estimate financing agreement terms. With truest bank. Still there? Okay. As we do every year, we have or we have last several years, we appropriated funds in our operating budget for this year that was going to be from installment financing. You guys signed an, you guys authorized approved an ordinance early in the year that would allow us to go out for financing and reimburse ourselves for financing proceeds. We did go out to bid for financing of about $921,000 up to $921,000 of equipment that you approved in the budget. Three banks responded to our request for bids, for request for proposals. And Truist Bank, which was formerly BB&T Bank, and they merged with another bank. I can't keep up with them. Truist Bank came back with the most competitive bid as far with a rate of 1.99% for 59 months. This is a resolution approving the truest installment financing terms, which will allow me to proceed with the financing, excuse the financing documents. I recommend adoption by reference. Thank you. In questions? I mean, I have a motion to adopt by reference. So moved to adopt by reference. I have a motion by Mr. Moffe. May I have a second? Second. Second, Ms. Snugs. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Ms. Carter? Aye. Thank you. Motion is approved. 5D is consideration of a budget ordinance amendment pertaining to General Fund for fiscal year 1920 During the month of May there were several expenditures expenditure decisions that needed immediate budgetary action as a result the city manager exercised this authority to adjust the budgetary expenses between Departments to meet those needs the budgetary expenses between departments to meet those needs. The budget ordinance adopted 2019-2020 gives him this authority but it also outlines that these budgetary changes need to be presented formally to the City Council at the next budget meeting. The items that are outlined in this ordinance is provided pain for providing high-speed internet by Centennial Park and Downtown. City share of contracted legal expense advice relating to the Randolph Health bankruptcy fire department wanted initiated a new training program similar to the police office or training program and wanted to hire some individuals so we had to appropriate funding for the salaries, feasibility studies and design work at McCurry Ballpark for future improvements and some engineering budgetary department items. The ordinance before you outlines all of that and formally recognizes to you guys that this was the action that the city manager authorized and now we ask for your blessing. As for your adoption by reference. Questions. I'll entertain a motion to approve of a reference. May I move we approve the ordinance to amend the General Fund for reference? I have a motion by Mr. Bell. May I have a second? Second. Second, Mr. Sawyer. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed. Mr. Carter. Thank you. Motion is approved. And now you have a so I'd show on you budget. Yes. Okay. Short version. I will try to give a very short version since it's in writing. There is no such thing. I can try. I will not say every single number. In the 2020-2021 proposed budget, the fund allocations total between the two funds is 48,249,510. I am going to say that number and the individual allocations to the specific funds specifically so that because that is how we're adopted. This is broken into the general fund which is $31,829,273, and the water and sewer fund for $16,420,237. In these, the next few slides represent the different categories of revenue. All of you guys are familiar with these categories. About more than a little bit more than $16 million coming from property tax and interest in the past. We used to have penalties on there, but we learned that the penalties go back to the school system. So we do not get that revenue anymore. Solid waste disposal tax and tax on short-term vehicles about a little bit more than $50,000 comes from there. Sales tax, 5.7 million, utilities, franchise and video programming tax, 2.4 million, ABC Board revenue or alcohol based revenue $340,000, how bill allocation for taking care of our streets, $622,000, and then we have some various permit revenue, building permits inspection fees, cable franchise fees, rezoning. And I know that Mr. Auburn in the past has gone through all of these categories, so I'm not trying to define all the different categories, because I know you're well-versed in that. Recycling and Refuge Collection, 1.8 million concessions, 48,000 program revenue from the various culture and recreation areas, 289,000, contracted maintenance, DOT, $10,000. That figure used to be a little bit more, but DOT renegotiated their contract and is no longer going to reimburse us for, I think it was six rounds that they did public money. They're not going to hurt you or anyone. Now they're doing two. There are six mowing. So the buy pass a year and now they're only going to pay us for two. Right. And we actually do more than six mowing because that is what we need to do to meet our standards and expectations about what our bypasses look like. So we'll start absorbing those costs a little bit more. Ashbrow City Schools, SRO officers, installment purchase proceeds about at the same level that we did this last year, which was $933,000. The vehicles that we, the things that we are purchasing on installment purchase are police vehicles, a garbage truck for environmental services, $297,000 for the street department, vehicle for fleet maintenance, vehicle for human resources, and a mower for facilities maintenance. And I'll go through, you'll see that detail a little bit more in a minute. We are appropriating $2.3 million from fund balance. It's actually $2,311,236. When you look at our revenue breakdown, you see that property taxes consist more than 50% of our revenue and then in our governmental revenues, other taxes and licenses which is our sales tax is the next largest area and then we've got some smaller local revenues. Our sales tax revenue, I do not know how to expect what that revenue is going to be because it is an estimate. It is lower than what I would have expected at this time if we were not in a COVID environment. But I will not get revenue evidence of the impact of COVID on us until September. It will be October that I'll know. You run two or three months. It runs a couple months behind. We don't get new revenue for this new fiscal year until the October month, because July, August and September, revenue all comes back to this. The sales numbers are not released for two months. We can't even guess what the sales are going to be. No. In this fiscal year, I will not have any evidence of this really how this is going to impact our future year. And I don't have any good evidence on how it's going to impact us now. So we'll have to really closely look at how we cover our year end budget amendments because there's a whole lot of unknowns that we may be planning on, but we may not get the revenue we're expecting. And that's why it's good that we have a large fund balance. Good. It is good. And we know what shortcoming or disaster or crisis you can have. That is the reason why you have a fund balance. Now, if worst-case scenario comes around, we will not have that healthy of a fund balance. Now, if worst case scenario comes around, we will not have that healthy of a fund balance for a little while. We'll just rebuild it up like we did 10 years ago when it was also not healthy. In the areas of general government, you have the mayor and governing body, the city manager's office, the finance office, the legal and city clerk, IT, manager's office, the finance office, the legal and city clerk, IT municipal building, planning community development, fleet maintenance and human resources. Those individual departments, you can see the individual department allocations there, but the sum of all of that is $4,370,155. The reason why I'm displaying those numbers, even though I'm trying to be quick, is that all of our departments are balanced, are adopted on the bottom line for each of their departments. It's a departmental budget, not a line item. I mean, departmental budget, not a line on a budget adoption. Public safety is, as you guys are aware, is the largest sector of our expense. It's $15,794,590 with police being $9.4 million and fire being $5.9 million, almost $6 million there. Transportation consists of Operation City Engineer and Airport Authority, and that is $1.7 million. $1.7, 1,724, 299. Environmental Services and Street Department is $5,411,000. $9. Culture and Recreation is $4,529,220. And again, you can see the individual departmental allocations on the slides before you. And this is just a picture of the expenditures. The pie chart shows that public safety, which we all know, is the largest part of our budget. Water and sewer fund budget. Back to the general fund budget, I must have skipped over this. We are not recommending any tax changes, any tax rate changes for the general fund. And just like that, in the Water and sewer fund, we are not recommending any rate changes for the general fund. And just like that, in the Water and Seeker Fund, we are not recommending any rate changes with regard to the water and sewer consumption rates for individual and commercial properties. The rates are the same, and these are actually the same rates since, let's see, we've had these same rates for six or seven years. Outside city limit rates, we are not recommending any changes there. The Water and Sewer Fund is, as I said earlier, is $14,718,735. 6.2 million of that will come from the sale of water, 4.7 million from the sale of sewer charges. These are soft numbers. They are a little bit lower than, as I said, in the other, in the general fund, a little bit lower than I would have expected. And it's really hard for me to determine exactly what the long-term impact is going to be. So again, this is something that we are going to have to be watching closely. But I'm very hopeful that the impact will be short-lived. A picture of our revenue breakdown, water comes and supports majority of, is our largest revenue source. And then here is a list by, a listing by department billing and collection, 160,000 water meter operations, 838 water maintenance, 1.4, wastewater maintenance, 1.4, water resources division, the wastewater treatment plant is the highest expense and followed by water-true implant, which we've always known, and then system maintenance is the next highest, which is at 3.9 million, and that is taking care of all of our lift stations, and then you've got technical services and water quality. The total expense is $16,420,237. And visual for that. Now all that you're exciting for, all that you've been waiting for, what is in each of those departments? We've got $110,000 grant for downtown development, $206,000, almost $207,000 appropriated for a variety of planning and zoning initiatives, including the Habitat for Humanity Program, Industrial Park, Industrial Park sidewalk design and historic district application redevelopment plan some special projects called Square on the church the church which I'm not sure what that is so I'm sure the trouble will be letting you know about that later on and Hopefully some allocation for the the hopeful senior housing project next door. $50,000 that we're going to be putting towards code enforcement initiatives. $134,450 for City Hall for an HBAC replacement and ongoing office renovations. I think on the second floor, the finance office is the only office in the map room are the two offices that have yet to be renovated. $230,000 for the proposed North Ashbro Police Station. This includes HVAC, Roof, and some minor office renovations to be able to get that facility up and running. 85,000 building maintenance and phase remodel at the police station. This is going to be an ongoing thing, just probably with all of our facilities. And then we've got $80,000 for some building maintenance and phase remodel at the fire stations. In recreation, which we touched on before, you've got $240,000 for different programming. We are gonna be replacing the floor at the Sunset Theater. We do need to get an air conditioner for the Recreation Office. And a few years ago, we repaired the Memorial Park Tennis Courts and now we're trying to allocate some funds to pay for the repair of the North Ashboro Tennis Courts. In public safety, we're allocating funds to purchase 10 vehicles. That's 320,000, 174,000 for small equipment and safety equipment. $240,000 in the fire department for safety equipment and gear. If you recall last year, we appropriated a little bit more than $1.4 million for the aerial platform truck that's paid in two installments. This is the second installment for purchase of that vehicle. And 120,000 for a used rescue truck for the fire department. Public safety, just for FYI, public safety department budgets encompass $15.7 million of our $31.8 million budget, which you've seen visually. It's 50% of our budget. In the areas of engineering transportation, I know that you guys have had a lot of conversation in this council chambers with regard to Dixie land acres. We are continuing to help make positive change in that area and we're going to have a traffic study there overseen by the engineering department for $85,000, $50,000 for professional services at the airport, $14.4,000 for airport fuel truck leaves. That was something that we were wanted to, we were going to try to purchase or lease in our own name and we ran into some issues regarding I believe insurance in that area and therefore this fuel lease will be going to the FVO. The airport also needs an HVAC replacement. It seems that a lot of our facilities are needing that this year. And then 20,000 for a jet A pump card reader which my understanding is that's for them to fuel the the the planes. 550,000 for street lighting, 218,000 for leaf truck in the street department, 79,000 for a service truck in the street department 79,000 for a service truck in the street department We do need to repair our sweeper And we are allocating some additional funding to doing ongoing concrete sidewalk improvements if you notice you go around town You can see that we've worked on some of them, but we've got lots more sidewalks to continue to repair That's why I run in the middle of the road. In water and sewer, we've probably spent about $1.5 million on Ray-Reed meter technology over the past three years. The 150,000 is allocated in this budget as the final installment. My understanding from the meter department is they've got about 500 more meters to change out and we expect to do that have this project completed by the end of the first quarter of the next operating year. 865,000 for chemicals, 970 for utilities. Those are in line with what we've had every year. 2.250,000 for professional services for water infrastructure studies. This is required. It's by, it's the environmental service. I'm not sure if I typed that if it's EPS. I don't, I think that's a different, it's a different acronym and I misrepresented on our apologize. But we have a grant of 150,000 to pay for one of those studies and we are pursuing additional grant funding. We just don't have one approved at this time. You've got equipment, maintenance and repair at both plants, money allocated for sewer line refurbishing. And again, another air conditioning unit. For safety reasons, we want to install a buoy system at Lake Greece. I continue with our plant repairs. North plant needs $600,000 for lead abatement concrete repairs and then what you've got listed there is a variety of other equipment in the water and sewer water resources division there's two million dollars allocated for a pump station upgrade we have we are going after grant funding for this and we have appropriated in the revenue side of the water and sewer fund the $2 million grant funding to offset this expenditure item. If we don't get the grant, we will have to revisit the upgrade, but it is a much needed pump station upgrade. It is one that with all the rain we've been getting has been flooding and we need to upgrade it in order to avoid some pretty heavy duty fines down the line, possible fines down the line. And then repairs it to the different lift stations. Our budget dates today was our budget introduction. Our budget public hearing is next Thursday on 11th and we have scheduled the adoption for June 25th. All of these meetings are at 7 o'clock PM and a copy of the budget is available with the city clerk. It is also posted online for your reference. Okay. OK. Question. I tried to go fast. I'm sorry. And you did. Thank you. It has watched. We all have a copy of this budget, a budget notebook with lots of details. So any questions that you have, research a little bit in the book, and then call David and get her to explain it. And if it's one of the way water resources thing, I'll have to get you to have Michael explain it because that's much more scientific than I am. Okay. Is that all yours? Yes, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you. You do a great job, boss. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Council moving on. You have the consent agenda in front of you. Is there any item on the consent agenda that you would like to remove for individual discussion? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Mayor, I move we approve the consent agenda as presented. Thank you, Mr. Burke. Do I have a second? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Beall. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Mr. Carter? Mr. Carter? Mr. Carter. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Carter. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's fine. I was really taking nap during that. There we go. Okay. Now, we will move into the zoning case of community development. And as we get started, let me apologize to everyone that's had to wait. This has been a very unusual night. I'm sorry you've had to wait. And we'll try to get through this and make everybody happy in the next 10 minutes. That's not going to happen, but we'll try. So you can. It's up to you happen, but we'll try. So, it can accept the y'all. Mr. Nuddle? Go right ahead. Seven a.m. sorry. RG 20-105, I will open the public hearing. Thank you, Madam. This is a legislative matter before the council. A request to rezone property from R.A. 6, high density residential to office and institutional. Reson, property from R.A. Sixth, Identity, Residential Two, Office, and Institutional. This is property located on East Bailey Street. The applicant on this request is the property owner, Valverbatist Church. Again, we're looking at property on the East Bailey Street, approximately 600 feet east of the Bailey Street, Fayetteville Street intersection. Again, the request is to move the property into the O and I, Office of the Institutional District from the RA6 District. There's one parcel number involved in the request this evening, just under six tenths of an acre. Presently, the property is undeveloped. Looking at the overview map, the subject parcel was outlined in red. It actually has an orange shading to it which denotes the high density residential district. You can see the yellow to the east which is the residential neighborhood to the east. To the west you will see office and institutional property that the church recently within the last year or two has rezoned into this requested district, office and institutional. This is the last, I believe, the church property that is being requested to move into that office and institutional district. The red obviously is commercial designations along North Fayette Street. I'm assuming a little closer, give you an idea of the zoning in the vicinity again. Partial A is what we are looking at this evening. You can see other church property in the vicinity and the adjoining land uses on this map. Looking at the topographic utilities map there's really nothing of note related to topography out there. The property isn't the city limits and you can see we do have city services available to this property. There's an aerial map of the area. Subtiparso outlined in red. You can see the houses to the southeast and then the church parking to the west, and structure further to the west. This is a view of the subject property. We're now looking back towards a favel street along East Bayley Street. This is now looking East along East Bayley Street towards the residential development, East of the subject parcel. Real quickly looking at analysis, again, this parcel is in the city limits. The city maintains East Bayley Street. It is approximately 18 feet wide in this vicinity. We view this as a collector street that moves traffic between North Bayble Street and an old Liberty Road. The requested ONI district is intended to produce moderate intensity office and institutional development, serving adjacent residential areas, and to provide a transition from residential and commercial land uses. Normally, the preference is for ONI to be located with access to a minor classification or higher street due to some of the office and institutional developments that can occur there. In 2019, as I noted, part of the abutting property to the west was moved into the same requested district, O and I, from the R10 district. And we recognize the property is located between commercial zoning and uses to the west and that neighborhood, residential neighborhood, to the east. Looking at the land development plan for some direction on this request, the proposed land use map does recommend the continuation of residential use on the property. It is within the northeast small area plan. It is a primary growth area. While the proposed land use map does not fully align with this request, we do believe that there are five goals and policies within that plan that tend to be supportive of this request. Two that we note are not a supportive of the request. But overall as we think about consistency with the city's plan, development plan and whether this request is reasonable and in public interest, we do note that this is a transitional location between that commercial corridor to the west and those residential uses to the east is a sandwich right in between those uses. Obviously, there's a longstanding institutional use but about for Baptist in this area and this is continuing that would allow that use to continue. There are a limited number of non-residential uses and while we have some we would ideally like East Bayley Street to be wider in this location to support what could be Office of the institutional development. We do think that the limited scope of the O and I does help with that with the classification of the street and we'll note O and I district requirements no matter what happens on this property you know in terms of buffers and landscaping, lighting, things of that nature, we do believe help to mitigate external impacts on adjoining properties. This request went to the planning board last month. It received a favorable recommendation by staff to the planning board concurred with staff's recommendations. So before you use a recommendation to approve, we've provided a consistency statement. Your actions are to consider that statement as well as the rezoning request. Mr. Charles Allen is in attendance this evening representing the church. Okay, any questions or Mr. Novel? Okay, this is a public hearing and Mr. Allen would you like to address Council? Yes, Mr. Mayor and Council, thank you for your time tonight. Sorry. Last year this time we decided to change or try to get an ordinance for all of our property be consistent. And somehow this little triangle got left out of that. You approved last year, O and I, on all the other property, except that property that fronts on the field of the street. So what we're trying to do is because of a growth of our church, having over 180 members added in the last year and a half, we're needing additional parking space behind the church. And that's, I was not consistent with the use of the land now as it is zone and RA6. So that's why we're asking to take this as an opportunity to expand our parking area back there to accommodate our growth and membership. And so we're trying to get all of our property into that same zoning so that we can have consistency with what we do with that property. Not only there, but the rest of our property too. So that's the reason we're coming again to you to ask for that rezoning and get our property consistent throughout. And that's the reason that I am the chair of the Deacons and the trustees and that's why I'm coming before you tonight to ask for that recommendation. Thank you. Any questions, Mr. Allen? Is anyone else here that would like to address the council regarding this request? Okay. We'll move to the deliberative phase and ask the council for their thoughts. Mayor based on the staff reasoning and the consistency statement, I move that we approve the resounding request. Mayor based on the staff reasoning and the consistency statement. I move that we approve the Resonance request I'm a motion by mr. Bell to approve this request Second by mr. Moffitt Any discussion On favor say aye. All opposed Miss Carter Thank you very much I will oppose. Ms. Carter. Thank you very much. Motion is approved. Request is approved. Thank you, Mr. Allen. The next case, open and quasi-judicial hearing on the application to Resonant portion of property 801-S Avenue and this is case RZ-CUP-20-06. I guess that was one of the headquieter few earlier. Okay. Mr. Donald, hammering. Thank you, Mayor. This request doesn't involve a quasi-judicial proceeding. So now would be the appropriate time for the clerk to administer the oath to anybody who wishes to speak. Okay. Anybody in plans to speak to this request? Just standing in place and we will affirm. Thank you. And I do apologize for your hard work so long tonight. The applicant on this rezoning and conditional use permit requested, Bayville Properties LLC. We are looking at property at 801 sunset avenue. This is property owned by Ashbrook Community Church, it's formally used by the church, which has a sanctuary in a fellowship hole on the property. which has a sanctuary and a fellowship hole on the property. Ashbrook Community Church has signed on to this application, I will note. This is a request to rezone the property from office and apartment to a conditional use mercantile zoning district. We are looking at a portion of this property that is owned by Ashbrook Community Church. So it's 1.07 acres of the just over 1.5 acres that is subject to this consideration here this evening. Formerly we had the place of assembly non-commercial. The structure is now vacant. I do want to point out as a looking at the report, legal notices pertaining to this request were mailed to adjoining property owners on Tuesday, May 19. Up on the screen, you'll see outlined and read the subject, the portion of the subject parcel that is requested to be re-zoned. As I zoom in a little closer, both A1 and A2 comprise the whole property that's owned by the church. Only A1 is requested for rezoning this evening. So A2 with the former sanctuary would retain that OASix Zoning designation up for consideration this evening is a rezoning to Merckenthal for the A1 portion of the property. And that you can see it essentially falls between the former fellowship hall and the sanctuary includes a large portion of the existing parking area as well. Of note this property is within the center city planning area. I believe this is a tier three of that area. So on top of the customary zoning codes that apply to development, there is also an overlay of additional requirements specific to the downtown area and development within that location. The portion of the property, request of rezoning is outlined in red. You can see we're between MacRerry and South Cherry Street. We have existing services in sunset avenue that currently are provided to the property. This gives you maybe a better idea of the area requested for rezoning. You can see the fellowship hall in a good area parking to the west as well as some area parking to the east of that structure as well. It does include the entirety of the property from that line between the two existing structures all the way west to the western most boundary of the property, including what used to be or still is the basketball court. So this is the subject property as seen from Sunset Avenue, that first structure in the foreground is the former fellowship hall. That structure is included within the request, the structure in the rear is the sanctuary that would not be included in this request. This is looking west towards the bypass on Sunset Avenue. This is looking back towards downtown east on Sunset Avenue at the Cherry Street intersection. We're now looking north on Cherry Street towards Sunset and looking south along South Cherry Street. towards sunset and looking south along South Cherry Street. In terms of analysis for this rezoning request, again, the property is located in the city limits. It does receive the full array of city services. Of note, both sunset avenue and South Cherry Street are state maintained minor thoroughfares at this location. of the city. I think that's the key to the city. I think that's the key to the city. I think that's the key to the city. I think that's the key to the city. I think that's the key to the city. I think that's the key to the city. I think that's the key to the city. I think that's the key to the city. I think that's the key to district, the Mercantile zoning district, probably within the last 12 or 15 years. We haven't seen a whole lot of cases requested to go into this district. So I do want to point out that within this Mercantile there is a maximum of 6,000 square feet of gross floor area for all permitted uses. So there is a cap on how large of the structure within that district can be built. It also restricts some drive-through services so food drive through restaurant drive-through services are not permitted. It does prohibit open storage and also requires some additional pedestrian connectivity. Obviously, there is a condition used permitting element with this request, so council has some additional authority as part of this approval. The district, the requested district, is intended to provide for a greater number of potential business activities than the B1 zoning district, but not as many as permitted in the B2 district. So it's distinguished from the B2 by excluding uses that are likely to create the greatest external impacts. So we view it as essentially a light B2 zoning district. According to the ordinance, these districts should be located at nodes along minor thoroughfares or higher classification streets, said that both those streets are minor thoroughfares maintained by the state. The area does contain a mix of single family, multi-family, institutional, and some office uses as well. Again, we're only looking at a portion of the property that remaining portion of the property, whatever happens this evening, would retain that OASX District. Looking at the land development plan, recommendations, it is within the city activities center area, so the land development plan recognizes and encourages the continuation of a mixture of compatible uses in this area. It's a part of the central small area of plan and a primary growth area. As we look at the recommendations of the land development plan for more further guidance, we feel that there are six policies or goals that tend to be supportive of the request, those are outlined up on the screen, as well as in your report. We believe there's one that tends to be more negative towards the request, which is up on the screen. Overall, when we think about consistency and whether this request is reasonable and in the public's interest, we note that the guidance from the city's plan for the city planning area is to create pedestrian friendly focal points that contain a mix of uses. We already have a mix of uses in this area. And in fact, we have more permissive be to general district zoning through the west of the subject parcel. We note that the mercantile designation does prohibit more intense development that would be more prone to being out of character with the existing residential neighborhood and with this being a conditional use permitting requests you get those additional protections as a part of that process. The planning board heard this request at its last meeting and recommended approval of this request staff Staff Life was recommended approval. Moving into, quickly into the specifics of the permit, the plans for development for this property, specifically the applicant is requesting a permit for a banquet and reception facility out of the former fellowship hall. That site plan before you shows additional parking that would be provided to support that use but no building expansions to the former fellowship hall for that particular use. So that would occur within that existing structure and not exceed that 6,000 square foot cap. Again, the former sanctuary is not including this request. The site plan does show that the existing driveways along Sunset Avenue are intended to be used that will have to go through the DOT for permitting. There is also, as you can see, on the site plan, a proposal to create a access from Cherry Street. That is on the plan for illustrative purposes because that's not a part of the request. But we did want to show context of what might occur there. The proposal for meeting landscape requirements along the front yard of the property include, and you'll see that in the plan, a combination of existing trees and new plantings, parking lot landscaping, and as well as extending fencing on the south and west sides of the property that would provide screening to adjacent uses. Of note, the applicant for this plan to move forward and be presented and for us to report that it does comply with the city's owning code. There were two variances that the applicant requested and obtained from the Board of Adjustment just this past Monday, they pertain to some parking setbacks as well as a just slight increase above the maximum impervious built upon area that this center city overlay permits. So their plan is just above, would add with new and pervious area would result in somewhere around 56% coverage built upon area for this property. Again, those variance requests were heard this past Monday and granted. So in terms of staff's review of the proposal, we do offer some conditions that we think are helpful to ensuring compliance with the city's development codes. Noting that existing vegetation can count towards required vegetation. The site plan does not show any new outdoor lighting, but we always want to put applicants on note if there is outdoor lighting proposed at a later date. That information needs to be submitted to the city staff for review to ensure compliance with your lighting standards. See as a typical standard which asks that the state driveway permit be submitted. Even though those are existing drives on sunset avenue, because there's a new parking area added and the potential for new additional traffic volumes into the property, the state will still have to approve those locations. So staff would recommend a condition that requires a driveway approval to be submitted, a product to us releasing permits, and then final decision document covering the requested variances to occur. Lastly, I think letter D is probably the most substance here is that the plan does not show a location for a dumpster. We've had discussions with the applicant and our folks about whether you can get by with individual kins for development on this property. We feel strongly that a dumpster is really going to be necessary for this property. So we would ask and we've discussed this with the applicant who I think is agreeable to this. For this plan to be amended to show us the location where dumpster would make sense for the property and meet the requirements in terms of being outside of setbacks along property lines and things of that nature, just to ensure that it's properly screened and we can handle solid waste generated from the use. So condition ease, the standard execution of the land use restriction memorandum. That concludes my remarks. The findings of fact are up on the screen. The applicant and council is here to address these findings and I will turn it over to them. Questions? Thank you, Mr. Miller. Thank you. Mr. Noe. Thank you. Good job. This is a public hearing and you've all been sworn in speaks first. Good evening. My name is Baron Thompson. I represent Babyl Properties LLC. Again, this is an application to rezone the property from office apartment to conditional use mercantile as well as a conditional use permit for the banquet and reception facility with me tonight are the two member managers, Mr. Ben Tuggle and Travis Baines. At this point I'm actually going to defer to Ben Tuggle to go over the site plan just a little bit and talk to you about what they're hoping to accomplish through the rezoning and the conditional use permit and then after that I will speak to you about the rezoning and the conditional use permit. And then after that, I will speak to you about the rezoning and go through the fourth part test for the condition of use permit. And then we'll, all three of us will be available for questions. Even as Baron mentioned, my name's Ben Tuggle. Again, this is Travis and we own baby ill properties. We also own Benjamin James properties, which you might be a little more familiar with. But basically, as has been mentioned tonight, where our main request or our hope is to purchase the property and use the church building, just to give you an idea of what we're wanting to do with overall plan, is to take the church building and do some pretty major renovations to it and use it as our offices, similar to what we did down the street, couple of blocks closer to the interstate 10 years ago to 9.29 cents where offices are now. We're just simply out of room. And so this property obviously gives us a lot more size and a lot more room. So that's our hope is to do that to do so again, some pretty major resident renovations to the church property. Bring that up to hopefully improve the neighborhood and improve the outside of parents' oven and interior. But while we're here tonight is for the fellowship poll. As mentioned, we'd like to take that portion of the property, make it an event or banquet center. We're, as Trevor mentioned, adding parking to make sure we don't create any kind of issues as far as offsite parking and that kind of thing. But the happy to answer any questions you have after the bear is done and we appreciate it. Thank you. And I will be brief as to the rezoning part I think Trevor pretty much said most of what needed to be said. Again it is part of the city activity center and the goal there is to create a pedestrian friendly community focal point. And that's what they're wanting to do with this currently vacant property is to help create a community focal point by means of a banquet center. Again, as Trevor already pointed out, the mercantile district does exclude greater developmental uses that you would see in a business district. There are additional protections for neighboring property owners through the conditional use permit process and the conditions that have already been outlined. It has been mentioned and already complies with proposed land use map and growth strategy map. One of the things that I think that's important to keep track of is that, historically, this has been a church fellowship hall. Well, what are you doing at a church fellowship hall? You have birthday parties, you have receptions, wedding receptions, things of that nature, and the long-term plan for the banquet center. Those are the same types of uses that you would see. Receptions, birthday parties, things of that nature. The staff and the planning board have both recommended approval of the rezoning request. We believe that the conditional use mercantile district is reasonable and in the public interest. And lastly, as far as the rezoning portion, I would say that this would move the property from a tax exempt status as a church to a tax generating property since it would be changing uses. As far as the conditional use permit for part test that we all know and love, I'll begin by saying that the applicant has reviewed the suggested conditions and they do not have any objections with the conditions that staff has proposed. They've been over those and they do do not have any objections to those. One, the use will not materially endanger the public health or safety. If located where the proposed and if located where proposed and developed according to the plan submitted and approved. My question for staff then would be have you received any information from any city services such as emergency services that the plan used would endanger public health or safety. In the absence of that information that that first prong is met. Secondly, that the use meets all required conditions and specifications of the Ashburr zoning ordinance. Again, my question for staff would be does or will the use meet all required conditions and specifications of the Ashburr zoning ordinance? So that prong would be met as well. Thirdly that the use and if you have questions no Mr. Togglecat would be happy to speak more about this but that the use will not substantially injure the value of a joining or budding property or that the use is a public necessity. Currently the property is not being used at all. It's vacant it hasn't been used for for a public necessity. Currently the property is not being used at all. It's vacant. It hasn't been used for a little bit of time, and it is beginning to go downhill a little bit, but because it isn't being used. Again, the former use was a church fellowship hall. The new proposed use will be for banquet and events center. Again, that is similar to its former use. Hosting things such as wedding receptions, birthday parties, and the like. Because the future use is consistent with a former, we certainly do not believe it would injure the value of the property the use has been consistent. And if anything, the property is currently vacant and it would become an event center. So again, we believe that would actually work to improve property values in the area when you take a vacant property that is in the process of becoming run down and becomes a useful piece of property again. So the third problem would be met. And then lastly, that the condition and character of the use, if developed according to the plan that's submitted and approved, is in harmony with the area in which is to be located and in general conformity with the plan of development of Ashbur and its avarice. Again, historical uses as a church fellowship hall, the uses will be very similar as a bank-witting center. That church fellowship hall has been there for decades. So again, we're going to be continuing with a very similar type of use and that it complies with the proposed land use map, Ingrid Strategy map. And last, I want to leave you with this. Many times when people come before you seeking a rezoning or conditional use permit, you look at their presentation, you look at their professionalism, and you have to step out a little bit of faith that those plans are going to be followed through with and that it's going to be a nice property or it's going to be developed according to the goals and aspirations of the applicant. In this case you also have a record. You have a record of they built properties and Benjamin James properties and examples of what they have already done in the city. Case in point is their current office location on sunset where they took a rundown piece of property and they turned it into an attractive piece of office space and they've been so successful at that Success story that they've outgrown that space and now they need to move on to a new space And that's what they're seeking to do in a larger scale here at this side as well as add a community focal point For people in the community to be able to use and again, we'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Is anyone else in the building that would like to address the council regarding this request? Okay. We will move to the delivery phase and ask the council for your thoughts. Mr. Mayor, I think it's a pleasure to have someone who really develops as a unique property for the interest of anybody. Oh, I'm sorry. I promised I had a call this afternoon from a neighbor on little street. I told him I would forward his information. He asked if there was any way, and I see on your plan, you plan to keep the basketball course right okay well he just and I explained to him that we probably could not require that but that you keep in the pad I told him I would mention it to you and so I have he was was, he's a name on Blue Street and it felt like that was a community amenity that he would like to see continue. So, all right now. Honorable good. I'd make a motion to approve the consistency statement based on the recommendation of the planning board and the staff and we approve the rezoning as a question. Okay. I have a motion by Mr. Muffet. I have a second. Second. Second, Mr. Berks. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. All opposed. Ms. Carter. Thank you very much. Motion is motion to approve is passed. So congratulations. I'm sorry and the permit. I forgot that earlier. Okay. May I have a, and the permit. I forgot that earlier in my suit. Okay, may I have a motion regarding the permit? Mr. Mayor, based on testimony that the conditions proposed are acceptable by the applicant on my commotion, we have prison conditions to use permit. And the conditions are acceptable. Okay. Do I have a second? A second. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bell. I will motion Mr. Moffeck and second of Mr. Bell any discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed. Ms. Carter. Thank you. Motion carries. Congratulations. Mr. Carter. Thank you. Mr. Carriots, congratulations. We're excited that you have it, and you track records. It shows us that you will do something nice with it. So, good luck. Thank you. And thank you. Thank you. Well, we got a little bit more day. Mayor just. Yeah, we want to introduce you again now before you're a bit of a slow time. Mayor, I want to thank the Council for, I mean, not second, second council meeting in a row. I've not had to be at the day. It's, I'm ready to sit back up there, surprising. I must take this moment to thank our IT Department, Todd Stout and his team for figuring out how to get us on YouTube and all this recorded and all. I want to thank the City Attorney and Mr. Sugg for weeding through the government's executive order to figure out how this works. And the engineering department for getting all this measured out and moving the furniture so we get enough people in here tonight. One thank you, Ms. Carter, for our continued support on the phone. We miss her and we'll get her back soon. Just one note, Mayor, just some quick items for the record. soon. Just to one note, Mayor, just some quick items for the record. When we do hire police officers, they are going through a mental health evaluation. While our own duty, we provide them full training required, as well as additional training opportunities. We do have an employee assistance program if they have stress or mental health issues that's funded by the city and we do have health insurance that also Carry says Just as a matter of record to mayor Smith has sent to As signed with about a hundred other mayors a letter supporting the Floyd family and stating we The city of Ashburd does not in no way Know how Anyway anyhow family and stating the city of Asperg does not in no way, know how, anyway, anyhow, condone what happened to Mr. Floyd. That's a technique we don't train, we don't use, and we don't need. We got, maybe Mr. Sugg could help me as a former police officer, but I can think other than a life-saving measure of a police officer, there'd be no need to have that technique. I'm proud of the men and women of the Asperer Police Department would have had a long week. I called Mayor Smith Sunday at 11am, last Sunday, and he and I basically have been on the go since then. I just want to thank Mayor Smith for his leadership. He has met these young people. This is democracy in action. This is government of the people by the people. For the people and by the people. I made him wear his blue blazer the other night. He didn't want to, but I made him. He said, well, I said, because you don't want to look like anybody else. You don't want to look like the mayor. So he did. And we continue to have that. We're excited about Saturday and the chance to support our citizens as we always do here at the City of Ashburg. We're fully committed to support our citizens in their exercise free exercise of their constitutional rights. I'm proud to say that Katie Snugs, our Center Council member, friend, retired employee, remembers an era and helped change an era when that wasn't always the case. And we thank you for that. On the one budget item, as Mr. Priest did mention, I'm proud to say too that you remember a few years ago we began the police officer recruit program where we paid him to go to BLET. We've got a much more diverse police department now. Looks much more like the folks at that table and the folks that were here tonight, we're doing the same thing with fire. So our first fire cadets started today. Some of them might be out there on detail this weekend, so a welcome bit of fire department. So we've got a lot going on. COVID continues to affect our programs. The pools are not opened. We regret that. The gym is still not open. We regret that too. As soon as we can get them open, if we can, we will. It's just not as Jonathan is reported in the paper It's just not the cost effective to have a pool and only have 40 people or 38 people that can get in it just it just doesn't work I don't know when will be in phase three And I don't know when we'll open water building downstairs again We intend to so as we get back we're allowed to We have put sneeze guards up the screens and we'll open back up as soon as we can You've heard a lot tonight. I won't belittle anymore The last thing I'd mention is along with our police officers The city chief, chief lineberry belongs to North Carolina Association of Chief of Police, they have a code of ethics, not just the legal requirement, a code of ethics that they agree to support diversity and all the requirements of the Constitution. Mr. Sugg, his city attorney has one the same. I, as a member of the International City of Managers Association and the North Carolina City of Managers Association, Mr. Sugg is a licensed member of the North Carolina Bar and the U.S. Bar. He supports him as well. So I'm proud of that and we remember when we hire our young officers and they get promoted, they take that law enforcement code of ethics and that requires them also to support the diversity of our great city. We live in a trying time. I would like to enter into the record the North Carolina Mayor Statement of Murder George Floyd, which I signed and the North Carolina Association Chiefs of Police Statement, there was issue that our chief signs and a copy of the law enforcement code of ethics. I would like to pass these to the clerk and then those into the permanent record. In a little of a statement of position, we discussed this week having a statement of position and we all can do what happened. And we've signed statements and whatnot. We elected to not draft our own statement tonight. But we all know how serious this is. And we heard tonight from some really passionate young people that have given us a lot of food for thought. And so we will take that and move forward with some positive reinforcement. I know that we have a lot of changes to make, but anything we can do to improve the safety of our officers as well as the safety of the people. Absolutely. And on a personal note, I'd like to announce that Mary Ogburn, formerly of 537 Shannon Road here in Ashbur, is engaged to Ryan Hillary. And I guess my retirement date moved further on since. I don't know. Thank you. Congratulations. We're excited. We couldn't have a more excited, and we're excited that she's going to be a Hillary. We'll see how excited he is when he becomes a hog bird. We're coming. Sit down there and we'll see the party. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Do you have any upcoming events? Okay. Saturday June 6th at 5 p.m., Civil Rights March, East Side Park. And you heard me say this earlier when they planned this for Friday. I reached out to Ms. McSwain and told her I wanted to be there, and that we would coordinate traffic safety and We would provide water John would back on with the water because they are coming here Yeah, okay And then they changed it 7 o'clock Saturday and that didn't work then change it to 5 o'clock at the request of Donald Matthews. And so none of that works for me. If any of you that would like to attend, I would encourage it. It will be a march from East Side Park to the courthouse and then ultimately to City Hall. Thursday, June 11th, public hearing on the budget. The 25th is special meeting budget adoption. The July 3rd, the city office is closed for independent day. The 9th of July is regular city council meeting. And as Reverend Choggen, Bishop Choggen said, prayer march on June 14th from 5 to 7. And the settlement is scheduling the march. March on June 14th, 5 to 7, and the schedule in March will be looking for that. I have been out on the street this week, Sunday night, I think I scared John. John made me get into the police, fire coming in, vehicle and leave. But we've had an interesting week. And I have enjoyed my time on the street with some of these young people and the ones I met and had conversations with. And I will say once again, our officers have been totally professional. Our command staff has had a first class response plan in case of any circumstance that would arise and I feel very comfortable there. We could have handled anything that came up and I'm fortunate and glad to say that we did not have to handle anything and officers out there in their daily uniforms in the crowd without threatening and intimidating gear, the tactical gear, the helmets, the batons, and all of that stuff really helped to calm and to fuse a lot of stuff. And they were a giant on the spot when there was some angry exchange of words, I am just so impressed with our police. One other thing that we do in our training, we send most of our officers to Christ's intervention training. See, IT training, and that is very helpful. That gives our officers some real compassion. So John, what mentioned, Ms. Reeves talked a lot about COVID. Obviously the other unknown in the next three, five months is you're all well aware of random health, random hospital is in bankruptcy. They're moving through that process. If there's not a successor, we just don't know what's going to happen. Mary and I have Smith and I, Chairman Frye and County Manager Johnson have worked diligently on this since October of 2018. I wouldn't say it's, we're bleak. We've made you the Hail Mary here. You know. We've thrown up a couple of Hail Mary's already. So there is another consulting group searching it, but we're on the clock with the bankruptcy court. The bankruptcy court has sent the paperwork to Mr. Sugg. For those of you who don't know, utilities can't be turned off for non-payment, during a bankruptcy period. So he's communicated that with the court system. So, we're not, I mean, we'd much with our hospital need to water bill. I mean, come on. But that's, so they are moving pretty quick down the bankruptcy path. And I have, before we get back together, again, far, far too long meeting, I have a need replacement scheduled in the engineering and just hoping to be able to get that done. So start down over there with Mr. Birx. Thanks for living here in Ashboro. Thanks for our police department. Thanks for everybody that stepped up and made this a safe place to live. As the young man set up there earlier, you don't really know anybody unless you talk to them. So thank you mayor for what I'm talking to people. Appreciate that. On the COVID scene, it seems like a month ago. I think we were at number 306. I guess we're over 700 now. My brother is wife and it turned out my niece also were victims of all this and they're all doing well. So thank you for your prayers and with that Reverend Trogden was talking about the need for prayer and there's never a time where you don't need prayer. So do keep our city and prayer and our staff and everybody. So thank you for each and every one of you for what you do. Thank you Mr. Burke's, Mr. Schwares. I appreciate the being back with everybody tonight. I missed y'all. I was impressed with the speakers tonight. I didn't really know what to expect, but I think everyone was polite and thoughtful in their comments and I appreciate that. Mr. Pell. Mayor, I wanna thank you for your leadership. I've heard very good positive feedback from your interaction with the folks to Alan Street and I think that means a lot. We have a positive response to that and are trying to allow folks to address their concerns and if they're not just forgotten, they're actually being heard. And I'd like to also thank you and John for your hard work with with hospital issue not where we want it to be but I want you to know y'all to know that's your efforts didn't go unnoticed or I appreciate it. I had an opportunity six weeks ago to watch the culmination of a plea that happened, an incident that happened probably two to three years ago, when our officers, including one of the officers in the hall, I believe, were involved in an altercation and shot at. The individual who was shot at was wounded by a retired benedatus. And they came together to resolve the batter. And resulted in the young man having a fairly substantial jail sentence, prison sentence. And at over time, as they were talking to his father, he talked about the difficulties of the mental health issues. And this long story to basically say, what he said was his son has had a number of run-ins with law enforcement agencies because of his history and everything like that. And this man, as his son was getting ready to go away for 15, 20 years, said, bar non, the Ashpur police department was the best that they could he'd ever dealt with. And when you can say that on the stand, as his son is getting ready to be sent to prison, I think that says a whole lot about our police force. I appreciate it hearing that. I had an unusual occurrence this afternoon that I think compliments and mirrors everything that we've discussed and experienced, the statement for this, this, this horrific event that that that brought us on. I had a citizen come to my house and which is fine. And I guess it was petitioning me in addition to asking a question of why we weren't going to, why wouldn't Asperger doesn't currently have a curse to you and that it should be a dark and wanted me to institute one tonight. I think it's the mayor shared with someone else during this, you know, while it was flattering, there were a restimation of my powers. But I was very proud to be able to say that, and why would we need this curfew? What specifically is going on to bring this on? Well, we need to prevent all this, the potential of violence or rights. And I said, well, I can accept that as a premise that in our society, and especially even based on recent behaviors, this was a premise that we hadn't had an example of behavior. It would be different, but everyone's acted fine. You know, express themselves. And the protesters are being heard, and I think they're doing what they're supposed to be. I'm not sure this person left entirely satisfied, but I don't think they were indignant or upset when they left, you know, in reason through. Well, we don't have anything. Something goes the matter, which I don't think will, based on proximity and compines of it. You know, and I mentioned that the leadership that our mayor has had in working with the groups up there and I'd compliment you on being the best mayor for the best time in this morning. Thanks. Thank you. There's probably somebody who didn't give curfew from me. I've had a dozen people ask me for a curfew, and my response. So you'll know is that curfew is not warranted at this point. Curfew is usually a response to a crisis declaration, emergency declaration, and violence and damage. So, John has advised me well here. We, together decided, you know, there was just no reason to consider one. One other thing I think you guys need to know an official response. We have, you've all seen the picture of the Jeep with the guys in the Hawaiian shirts holding their assault rifles. I couldn't be more proud. They are not breaking the law until they use those rifles or point those rifles at some way they are not breaking law. All are not breaking law, am I right? All they're not in the protest, and Kim and Prima. That's what I am in the protest. Okay, all right, so I have had dozens of emails and calls asking why you don't arrest them. Why are they not arrested? Why are you allowing that to happen? And I'm sorry, we're allowing these people their second amendment rights, their first amendment rights and our mission Captain Thompson will attest to our mission has been keeping the peace and making sure everybody is safe and a curfew and Certain other actions that some of our citizens are pushing us for or nothing but fuel on the fire. So Stating citizens are pushing us for or nothing but fuel on the fire. So, Stady? I, the young people on the east side did not know you, but they do now. And they think you are the greatest. And the point of young guy was talking about, you know, talking so you don't know a person Tell you talk to them and some of them had never seen you or talked to you So this week made a difference with the young people on the east side of town Getting hot dogs dating no me I don't know where he's trying to turn hot dogs today. Pre-launch. And to our police department, I think we have a super, a great police department. But like I tell the young people, you got to, you know, you got to give respect. If you, if the police have a warrant for you or you've done something wrong and they come to arrest you, don't start the profanity. And all the stuff that some of them can, you know how some of them can act. I mean, don't do that. You're wrong from the get-go. That does not make him be a bad officer. You did not give him respect. And so you gotta give respect or to get respect. And that's what I try to tell the young people on the east side of town. You know, you've done wrong. So give me, you got to pay for doing wrong. If you're sold drugs and they come and get you, you just go on and don't do it. Don't you just not do it, please. That's right. You don't want soda drugs, you know. No. So thank you and appreciate your leadership. Oh, I just don't know. I do. I do. All right. Oh, that telephone. Thank you everybody. I spent a long meeting. I appreciate your patience. I appreciate the police security tonight. Thank you. I hope everybody continues to stay safe, meaning where you're mask. We're not done. COVID cases are still increasing statewide. And there is some discussion that the governor may go back to phase one. I mean, that's not official, but if cases continue to increase, he will consider it. Mayor, that brings up. We don't know if the RNC National Republican National Committee meeting will be in Charlotte scheduled for August. We will have some officers go if it is there, part of the federal task force. We had officers a few years ago when President Obama was at the DNC was in Charlotte. It's whether you're a public and Democrat, independent, nonpartisan, not registered to vote. It's a great honor to guard those events and protect those people. Our officers will be lucky to see both the Elacin Presidents. Yes ma'am, Ms. Carter, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just totally forgot you. Go right ahead ma'am. I'm going to take one comment. I don't like to make earlier in the comments that it talks about, you know, having meetings and other fine people and things like that. Well, change has done some help standing job with the meeting to watch programs on this side. She says people, she's set up for our meetings, come to the churches, you know, trying to get the people in the neighborhood, in the residence, bringing officers in, and to put those on the people in the neighborhood, in the rest of it, bringing the officers in, and, you know, what they want them to talk about, bringing the people in from the city that came to the place those things. Something, you know, should be bringing them to that, because it has been going on for a long, plenty of energy watch. Should this lead right there? We would not have a community watch on East Side, if it worked from Katie Snooks. And to be back to writing, one under 30. And the white paper on these sides, I would like to put it about, I'm still not interested'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I think they said things that they heard or what you can, they don't be fast. We're doing a study on those lights, Miss Carter. And I forgot to mention also due to COVID, I'm sad to report that I don't think we'll be able to have the rust murpy football. You've been. That's a real sad. They may still have the golf tournament and a fundraiser, but the youth out there playing football and cheerleading, I'm not sure we'll get to do that. Going forward, we need to start thinking about the possibility or possibility of having a cancel our National Night Out in August. Well, and we have the... I know the Screensburg has announced last week they were going to have theirs. And maybe there's a way we can have these with social distancing and small neighborhood parties and whatnot, but we need to start working on that. And we hope, we hope there'll be some games in McCrary Park this summer. Beginning July 1st, Copperheads and a version of American Legion it's North Carolina baseball or something like that. We just don't know at this point. We don't know about the fireworks at this point either so I don't know how you're going to have games at that park and social distance. I know it may speak way of it, but it just didn't evolve. They just, yeah. Well, I need to know as soon as we can if we're going to have the National Library. That's the first Tuesday in August. First. Isn't that right? First Tuesday. First Tuesday. First Tuesday. All right. So we'll get on that, Mayor, see if we can't dig into that from this and we're completing the traffic this I mean this straight light study on the east side. I know what I was going to ask you this I did not see this in the budget but you're doing any training engineering study in Pinecrop. We're asking for a from an engineering firm for that right now so we hope to award that June the 11th or June 25th. We had an extreme two extreme flooding events in pinecrop as we can. And Mr. Robinson neighborhood., Laurel Drive there. So rather than do a bandaid type fix, we just, it's flooded before and it's unfortunate, but we're having these 100-year storms every year now. And so we're going to ask the engineering study firm to do a study and give us a real professional opinion on how to fix it before we go out and try to fix it. And the same thing we did in Dixon Land Acres. And we're on the track in Dixon Land Acres of fixing that. That required three detention ponds and we built one and we're things are better. Substancelley. Yep, so just so you'll know that's what we're working on. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience tonight. I'm sorry we kept you so long, but I think it was productive. Certainly went a long way to manding some fences. So, I'm impressed with you. So you got one? That's a nice one. Yes, I got one.