Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park to Park All right. We ready. Everybody ready? All right. We're ready. Everybody ready? All right. We're ready. Everybody ready? All right. We got what's out of our hands. We're ready. Everybody ready? We're ready. Everybody ready? Everybody ready? We got what's out of our hands. We're ready. Everybody ready? Everybody ready? Everybody ready? Everybody ready? Thank you. Thank you. Just a little bit of quality. A special lady in the ward. I appreciate all of you being here. Most of you are here to support the effort to build stock and park management. We'll get started on stage. It is an excellent authority for the city of Rashford. It's just one of those things that would not be able to hold. So we're here now and support. We can hold it all. So we will start the agenda tonight with a presentation by Mr. Will Valentine. Go through my call right now there. And have a thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and City Council. and everybody in the audience. I appreciate the opportunity to stand here and talk before everybody. And I'm here to talk about tonight is a new police department. I think that the old police department, when I was a police officer back in 77, was way too small in for 30 members of the police department. Now they have almost 90 members and employees at the police department. Everything's stacked on the top of each other. There's no extra room in the police department. And if you know where the police department's at, there's no growth area there. There's no way they could build on to that police department. It's just landlocked. In fact, part of the parking lot's across from Cox Street. So let's go ahead and get started with this PowerPoint presentation. And if I put a surround button, y'all will know it as I will know it. So it may be entertaining. The Ashboro Police Department headquarters has located a corner of a lot of Cox Street and a Cadden Street here in Ashville. Building was built in 1978, currently making it 38 years old and potentially too small for a 30 person employee unit. I remember that's what the employees was in 1971, when they moved into it, with 30 employees. Asheville Police Department currently has around 89 employees, a need for a new facility may, and I would say does need to be done. That needs to happen. Current issues are at the police department. There's no privacy in the conference room due to the accessibility of the main lobby. The conference room holds around 20 to 25 people. There's not enough parking for all the employees. There's no training rooms at all. All rooms, offices, and closets are in use. No room to expand on that current lot. Now this is interesting here. There's seven evidence rooms holding 10 to 12,000 pieces of evidence. And what are they going to do if they need another evidence room? There's just no place there. Four of them. No room for a meeting with all the employees. There's no shower for Washington Hathesmat and materials or other contaminants off in case they enter into a Hathesmat situation. There's no way they can do that. And you're told in law enforcement, you can't care that stuff home with you. If it's a hazmat problem, and you thought in your washing machine, you contaminated your washing machine then, or you're dry, or whatever you happen to do. So those are things that need to be looked at. Those are things that need to be looked at. The following is shared offices there at the police department. Lieutenant's office has four employees. The sergeant's office has four employees. The detectives are sharing with eight employees. The animal control is with two employees. And I'm not even sure where the park rangers are at. We didn't get into that when I toured there, so the park rangers are someplace. It's on the way. That's Central School. Okay, they're in Central School, all right? They're actually in the parks. The patrol room, that's where the officers come together in between shifts and discuss what's going on from one shift passes it on to the next shift and that way you're up to date on that on camera shift to just have a hot area in town or a part of town where they have an issue going on. They're aware of that. The patrol room was used for the changing of the shifts and patrol meetings with a hold around 20 people. I was in there in 19, probably 91, 92 right in there doing a drug round up here in Ashburn. We had, it was packed and we had a lot of people in there but it was standing room only and it wasn't conclusive or it wasn't a good situation to learn about things. The storage room is for uniforms. It's a very small closet like room. It's not large enough to have more than two officers in there looking into uniforms. That's where you'd go to pick out your uniform if you're new or you need some new uniforms or just need some additional things but only uniform. There's no shower room again for the officers to use in case of a needed shower before going home because of encountering hazmat materials, other contaminants, we say don't want to carry home. Employee parking area and parking area for police vehicles is not in a secure area. This needs to be a secure area for protection of the vehicles and the employee. The secure area would also be used for loading and unloading prisoners after they have been interviewed and charged. That's a real concern, the safety of the police officers and the safety of the people that's arrested by the police officers and the non sworn people that work with the police department. You know in today's world, it's just a concern. I'll leave it there. You know what I'm talking about. It needs to be a safe area for everybody. There are police from it. Anybody has access to that parking lot now. What do we go from here? I understand the complexities of finding a location to be able to along with the creation of the funds to build it with. I do think that today, this year, it's a time to start a plan to hopefully have a groundbreaking ceremony in the year 2021 for a new building built for the police problem. I understand and I think everybody in here understands that's not going to happen tomorrow. A new police department's not going to happen next year by no means. But now it's the time for the City Council to start talking about this. To try to find the funds, or down in the future, it can be done. Nobody expects something to be done right away. I certainly don't. I know how the government works. So, I just don't expect it to happen right away, but it's something to plan on to look at, to get in your minds and to think about. This is a plan that I drew up. It's a simple plan. The City could adopt it, throw it away, come up there, I don't know, it doesn't matter to me, but it's a talking tool. I have a five year plan in which you can raise one and a quarter million dollars towards a new police department. I have no idea what a new department would cost, including land purchase. I'm guessing it will be expensive for the cost in over two to three million. I would say it could be as high as five or six million. I do not know. I don't know what land prices are. I do not know what construction prices are, but I know what's high. But again, it's something that's gotta be tackled. This City Council is gonna tackle it or another City Council in the future is going to tackle, but it's something that's going to be done eventually. The upcoming 2016-2017 budget year and each year there are after for the next five years, the City of Ashburts should put into account $250,000 just to be used for the building and buying of land for the police department. This is only 0.009% of the current budget not counting the water and sewer funds. As you know, the water and sewer funds can't be used in except water and sewer projects. So that's a very small percentage of that budget. At the end of the five year period you will have accumulated one and a quarter million dollars for the department and land to be used to our purpose. During this five year time period you can be serving for land to buy. I believe the police department should be built on land located between Kiddett Street and Preston Street. and should have frontage to Federal Street. This will give an easy access to the department by anyone, our local citizens and visitors to the police for other police departments, and self-tenant to come to the department for business. During this five-year period, the city will be paying down some of the dead that have accumulated in the past. By doing so, the city can look at building where they know or minimal change to the tax rate. Of course, it'd be great if you could do this with no tax rate increase law. I would be the perfect scenario. It may be able to be done. I don't know the financial part of the city of Ashworth. I kind of doubt it, but it may be. But like I said, it's just got to be done, whether it's raising taxes or not. And I know that's not a popular thing, but it's just one of those things. Here's an example of just some money that's going to waste here, but the city that I uncovered. The theater, sunset theaters losing an average of $1,500 per year since 2011. That's an average. However, this amount is going up each year. In 2015, a loan to theater lost $30,000 in operations. If the city could find a way to stop this bleeding of funds from the sunset theater, then that's a possibility of funds that are being lost that could go towards the $250,000 each year for the police moment. I don't say that to say anything bad about Sunset Theater or any of the employees. I say that because we all know that in government there may be ways to cut spendatures that can add money back into the general budget. And I know there's been through some tough times downtown as well. New police department should be built so it can be expanded. It should be able to be expanded either up or outwards, depending on the land which is purchased. Grant money should be looked at to help in the cost of the land and the police department. I've contacted Congressman Mark Walker's office and was told there were probably competitive grant money available for the first department projects. We all know that. There's grant money out there. It's going to be competitive with other cities that apply for the same grant money. But you know, unless you try, you don't know, you might get it if you try it, and that would be a big help. This is the conference room in the police department as it is right now. When you walk in the front lobby of the police department, there's a door directly in front of you, and the lobby is not a very big area at all, but you open that door and you're right there where this picture was took at in the conference room. Anything that goes on in that conference room can be heard by anybody out in the lobby area. So if they're in there talking about personal issues, if they're in there talking about aiming up coming raid or something like that, if there's anybody in that lobby area, they can hear that. That's the closet that I call the closet. This actually a uniform room where they have the uniforms. You can save the uniforms there. You can save up the little bins, their badges, things like that are in it. On the back they have some other supplies there. That's a very small space that they're using right now. It's not a lot bigger than a lot of your walking closets are at homes today. This is a look at one of the offices in there. You can see the offices are kind of stacked in on top of each other with the desk and all that. There's no privacy there if they need privacy for speaking with someone. This is the troll room that I was talking about. Now, on this side of the troll room, there's another set of tables like you see here and the most you can get in there And I think I counted was about 20 people comfortably You might be able to squeeze a few more than that in there, but 20 people is about it right now This is the CSI office Again, it's just inadequate, very crowded, you see two desks or two places for two officers there. It's just not good for doing your evidence and putting them up. Again, this is your temporary evidence lockers. What happens here, how's just a small room there? What happens here is the officer will come in, he'll put it, he'll tag his evidence, he'll put it in one of those lockers, he'll lock the key up in that locker with the evidence. And then the next day or whenever the evidence team comes in, the evidence tech will go in there, open the locker up with their master key, take the evidence out, document it, take it down to the evidence room, and lock it back up in one of the larger rooms where it's kept on file there. Now evidence is a funny thing. Just because your case ends today, and let's say it ends in a conviction in superior court, that evidence can't be destroyed right away, because yes or no, they have the right to appeal. That evidence can't be destroyed right away because, yes, why? They have the right to appeal. And so let's say six years from now, the appeal goes through and the judge says, you know, you got to bump deal. Let's retry. So that's six years you've held on that evidence plus a time period before the actual first trial. So now you're going to hold it again for a while longer and then you got that process all over again. So hopefully there's no evidence in that evidence in the evidence rooms now that I put in there. I should all be gone by now. Thank you so much. It needs to be done. I think the City Council agrees that it needs to be done. I think the problem is going to be coming up with the funds. And I understand that. I understand that money is a big reason. A lot of things get delayed and don't get done. But I think this one's been delayed long enough. It's been, when we moved in, when that department was moved into in 1991, we were told 10 years max. And some people's masks a little different than mine, but it's been longer than 10 years. Does anybody have any questions with the city council? I'd be glad to try to answer probably not the right person for that, but I'll certainly give it a shot. Well, Mr. Malantin, it's very evident that you put a lot of thought into this and that you have a background in this type of work and having been a police officer for the City of Ashboro years ago. We appreciate that you presenting this to us. It is a concern. One thing that I realized when I came on council after removing this building was that in the life of a 200 plus year old city, a 5 or 10 year plan is not adequate. So when you buy or build a building with it, if a fire department or a police department or anything else, you have to have a plan for 25 or 30 year lifetime or even 50 years. So we didn't know that we have an issue over there and we have different departments spread out. As I mentioned, the men that go, the park rangers are assigned to an office space over at the Central School. Yes. The good news is, there's been a lot of time there. They spend their time at the city lakes and holding the parks. They have to let it convince them what not. Our drug people are in another location. So that's not always the best arrangement either. So we will take this under advisement council. Do you have any questions? I just, where, what do they, if something happens, and I don't know that you can answer this, where they go out and, and are exposed to a lot of drug paraphernalia where somebody's been up some in an apartment. What did they do as far as now as far as deconamination? The fire department had deconamination equipment. I would think that they would end up going to the fire department inside deconamination and they would have that done like the mayor said on site. We had a chance over there on Dublin Square. There are four years ago where our guys were exposed to someone in the fire department responded and did what they're trained to do also. There's a balance times overall when you stick to the important stack of the budget. The point about having a trial, six years later, the Billette Court says to retry, that it's not that uncommon occurrence. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate you coming to our council meeting regularly and paying attention to what we're doing. Thank you, sir. Okay, the next item on the agenda, I would, if there's time call on Patrick or Harold Y. 28 to come up and do your presentation. Introduce everyone in your support. This is a test. Yes. Mr. Mayor, before Patrick was able to answer, Mr. Ford has currently sit on the second committee on vice president of the YMCA. I derived an financial consideration for that. I did want the council and the citizens know that I do sit on the YMCA board. So, short term and the interest of this meeting tonight is being determined. There is no conflict about just so you keep you safe. Thank you. Well thank you. Thank you for letting me come and talk and let me bring my friends. Just to let you know we only allowed the first hundred people that signed up the other 500 people we had to tell them that they couldn't come tonight because you didn't have the room. Very proud to see this group. I want you to understand there are some YMCA boarded directors here. There is some YMCA staff here. There's Central Carolina, wreck players and parents here. There's Central Carolina challenge and classic parents and players here. There's lacrosse which is getting very big here. And there's Parents and players here. There's LaCrosse, which is getting very big here, and there's some volleyball people here. Now, just in our soccer program, our rec soccer program is twice a year. We have over 520 kids one time. So that's over 1,000 kids that's playing soccer. In our Challenge and Classic right now, we have 225 kids 15 teams twice a year. That's close to 500 kids. LaCross fastest growing sport right now in the United States. Asheville High School's got a team getting better and better. A club soccer team has started. They have 25 volleyball. We started youth volleyball league at the YMCA this fall. We are expecting 50. We had 125 girls signed up. So many girls signed up that we were able to do another one in the spring where we have close to 100 girls. Sometime very proud of, we had two high schools, two high schools that went to the championship ballgame of the 2A of the high school, volleyball league, and 3A. And that was Wheatmore and Ashboro High School. It's growing guys. If you add all those kids up together, you're looking over over 2,000 kids. And that does include the volleyball kids who are playing J.O. or the cross kids that haven't even learned to sport yet. Our children are our future. They are our future. They are also these kids, obesity is rampant. We have got to stop that. We're trying to do that at the YMCA. We do it with our programs, soccer is doing it, lacrosse is doing it, volleyball is doing it. We need a place so where these kids can go, but also a place to where we can bring in people to our city. So that they can see what's going on. That they can go to the zoo, that they can go to our restaurants, they can stay at hotels and stuff. So that's what we're doing. We are proposing this sports complex to you. Come on up, John. That's my technology, that's my staff will laugh. Okay. Old Cox Road and Zoo Parkway. This is the land that the city owned. Times got tough, they weren't able to do it. This is still the land that they own. This is what we're proposing. As you can see, we're looking at four soccer fields. A lot of parking, we're looking at a track to walk around. If you have not been to the track at the YMCA, there's somebody there 24-7. These parents, when the rec kids are practicing or the challenge kids are playing stuff, parents are walking and they're walking with their kids. So we're killing two birds with one stone. We're actually giving exercise to the parents, giving exercise to our kids. You're also looking at three outdoor volleyball courts. Outdoor volleyball is the fastest growing sport out here. There are thousands of kids, a friend of mine, her daughter just played down in Florida. They had over 1,500 girls sign up for outdoor volleyball tournaments. And that's four on four. That didn't include the boys. LaCrosse, these fields and what's great about is that the soccer fields and LaCrosse fields can share. Right now, Asheville City has youth football. They really don't have a home place to play. So guys, we could actually have football, LaCrosse and soccer on these fields. Imagine if you can can imagine all those fields being full with games plus a volleyball tournament plus people One of the things that we're talking about having there, of course, is we have to have bathrooms. We also have to have, okay, we also have to have a concession stand. This is some bathrooms that we're looking at. It will be handicap accessible. And also for these bathrooms that we'll be able to be able to touch everybody out there. There'll be enough bathrooms for the kids for the parents and everybody out there. These are modular bathrooms. Yes. Yes. These modular bathrooms. Let me go back one. This is our concession stand. Need to have water there. Need to have food there. Can you imagine if we sit there and we start playing at eight o'clock in the morning and we end at 10 o'clock at night, how many people we can feed? Healthy, healthy snacks, okay? Yeah, you're laughing. I know you are going, yeah, right, Patrick. I'm going to tell you that. Healthy snacks, but with this concession stand, we'll be able to at least help some people, help the kids. Now this is what we're looking at. We're looking at asphalt, and we'd have to asphalt the driveway coming up. We'll have to asphalt the parking lots. We're also looking at having water up there. There's no reason to have nice fields if you don't have irrigation. There's no reason to have nice fields if you don't have water going into the bathrooms of the concessions in heaven. But ball fields are going to get wore down. Irrigation, the fields being taken care of, we can actually be able to do this where we can have one field going out for nine months, it can rest and another field will pick up while that field's not being played. So we can pretty much do this, except for the winter months of course. Putting a load of sewer punts stationed up there in John might be able to explain about that but why am I doing this? Why am I hitting wrong? This is my fat finger. I have a fat finger. Okay. This is how we plan on getting the money. Quarter of a million dollars from North Carolina, part F grant, and that's through the state of North Carolina. Quarter of a million dollars from Randolph County. Guys, we have already got a committee going. We have a committee of soccer people and lacrosse people. We've already, we have met about at least 10 times. We're ready. We're ready to go on this we can raise this money I really believe that we with the three of us we can all raise this money We're looking up major foundation grants grants that have touched the lives of Randolph County here before We're going after them and then the city of Asheville 400,000 dollars That's what we're looking for. Altogether, it's 2.4 to 2.9. That will give us our four fields. Now, we raise more. That's more fields. The great thing about this is that we have extra land at where we can put some more fields. We can do some more stuff. But we have to crawl before we can walk. And that's what we're believing. Alright that's our next steps and we are right now we're meeting before the City Council and everything else the fundraising committee we've done our brochures and I want you to understand everything the brochures and stuff, all done by volunteers. This fundraising will be done by volunteers. We will not go out here and hire somebody to do that. It's going to be all done by volunteers. People who are looking forward for these fields, not for their children today, but for children for tomorrow. My grandchildren, that's what I'm looking at. I'm looking for my grandchildren, and I think a lot of people are here. They're looking for places for their children to play today, so they don't have to travel down to Charlotte. They don't have to go to Pinehurst. They don't have to go to Winston-Salad. We can stay here. Stay in our home area. Call it our home. But also for our future. Because kids will always be around it, and they for our future because kids will always be around it and they are our future. Mayor, if I can follow along with Patrick said with a record, I remind the council that our rec master plan is still in play. This is the last project in our rec master plan we did 20 years ago or so. The last two projects were the water park and a park south of Dixie Drive we have don't have any parks in our system we have 19 parks in our system we have no parks south of Dixie Drive that's what we bought the property where it is we did not build the water park. It didn't make sense in a town this size to have two water parks with the city only one and the wild one. We partnered with the Y on our water parks. They now train our life guards down there, which really works good if you take water saving life, life saving in April and May, Memorial Park that water is cold. So it's hard to get, hard to get people to graduate when they drop out the class because of water 60 degrees or whatever. We're not in a Navy, Navy SEALS training. So this is the last project in our master plan. It is still a significant economic driver we think. Our strategic plan calls one of our four hallmarks. Our standards is quality of life. This is an important part of that. And we do think we can have tournaments in all. And if you've had children do soccer or lacrosse, I'm like Patrick. I'm excited about my grandkids having come in too, but not too quick. Let's let my daughters get a little older first. Your son's too, right? Yeah. But this park will be a generator of activity for our hotels and all that too, as well as it's right up the road from the zoo and other reason why we picked it. Now, two months or so ago we heard Pat Simmons executive director talk about her plans at the zoo. And our original plan was much greater than this. If you remember back, our original plan in about this area had a community center. We took that out of this plan and we had an amphitheater down here. We were really putting those in for part if points. No need to have an amphitheater now when her master plan calls for one and she's going to have the facilities down there to have it. And our community center with our experience at the senior adults we now know that if we have or do a community center outside of sunset theater, it needs to be more century located. So that's it. This, we're having tonight at a great presentation by Mr. Valentine, a great presentation by Patrick, but we're really looking at the four sectors of this century's economy. If you think back a little bit to our high school history before the World War II, there was basically three sectors. There was a robust private sector. There was a robust philanthropic sector. That's why Stanford University's name for Leland Stanford and Vanderbilt's name for the Vanderbilt family and the Rockefellers, the famous people. Post World War II, the Depression, the federal government became more active in everyday life, the state government became more active, and we have in North Carolina a robust local government. The philanthropic sector kind of got pushed to the side and the rise of the non-profit sector, like our hospitals and nonprofit, the senior adults as a nonprofit. The philanthropic center sector is back. And if you look at the wise and the city's experience, the wise with the arm-film foundation and our experience with the Armfield Foundation and the senior adults with Armfield and Technomark and the Steadmans and Wavy Presinal. We think this project will be important to them. So we do think there's an opportunity to go raise this money. Be all made a great presentation, but this opportunity won't exist for a police department or a fire station, just to do what? So we have to think about all the sectors, the economy, and how to use them. So they're excited about this project. This is further along the road than we've been down this way in a long time. And the limiting factor, of course, is going to be how much money is raised. If you look just quickly, for your body and audience, I think I'm going the wrong way, maybe. All right, Michael. Do it. I'm glad I didn't give Michael the night off almost did. The limiting factor is a lot of that was grading. How much is grading in their market member? 1.4 million. So about 1.4 million to grade, this property is not flat. If you think about Randolph County, there's nothing flat left that doesn't have anything on it. The flat is spotting Ashbur is downtown in the airport. And we got stuff on them already. So I'm Patrick, I'd be glad to answer any questions, Mayor. Any you may have some people have comments. Thank you John. Any questions or Patrick? Thank you John. Any questions or Patrick? I have a question or comment with our original plan. I'm in the Kiwana Club and other folks here are as well. The Kiwana Club has dedicated $100,000 towards playground. Right. playground equipment. I know the Kiwana Club would still like to honor that and so make sure well and if it's not it's not in there but if it is it would be great to be great up to you do it is going to work with the Corners Club again. Yes you're not the Corners Club is not listed on that cheeky but the playground for $50,000 is. Yes. The playground that is facilities in that. Okay. And the purpose of that, 100,000, the play of the Equal Honors was to make a good playground, a great playground. Yes. So I think that's still in play at 100,080 speaking for the Orange Club. So everybody heard it. There are a couple of things that I'd like just to comment about for the identification of the audience. We bought this piece of property specifically for a soccer park, a full steel park that had a walking trail, a tall park, a community center, an amphitheater, and the soccer fields, and basketball and volleyball, and everything else in the playground. We qualified at the time, well, back up. We had some guilt and associates, and I was sure I was out in the park, and the team didn't send to me, and I was, a lot of that was the infrastructure, the parking lot, the pump station, the water sewer, the restrooms. There was about 100,000 required for less turn money that the OT's going to require. So the project is pretty large, undertaking even as we speak of it tonight. At the time, we're qualified for a $500,000 grant or awarded that grant from Parker, Erawie, the Park Directoration Trust Fund. And when we, when we economy went south, I was, we put that project on hold and returned that $500,000 grant for all. Now, that hurts. Our commitment to this park is still in place. The economy has really had us at the point where we didn't know how to proceed. So you guys have, I think, speaking of the council here, you're support the Cyber Association and the Y. And all the people here that like have really given us the momentum and emphasis to see this through to completion but it may not be the sixth meeting the other park will be really wanted to build it doesn't have to be but if we can get out and raise the money we can build three to have three three half mean we have a really nice park that as John said will be an economic engine or travel tournaments it will serve the need for the local children those many many be bored and many that are well into graduating and living on the other things but this is something that we're committed to we want to say is done challenging you guys. I know you're here to challenge us, but let's just all agree to make this happen. I want you to know, Mr. Smith, that's already giving me the first $20 to go towards our campaign. Real quick, if you're here for this sports complex, please stand. I want to thank you, thank you, thank you, and my grandchildren who are not here yet. Thank you and the children who are here, they thank you. Very, very much. There's members of the YMSA here. There's neighbors here. And just people who just want to see this done. So I want to thank you very much. I have an aunt and uncle here. You met your aunt and uncle. I have an aunt and uncle here. But they're here to support this. There are people here who don't have children actually. So thank you, and let's get work. Thank you, guys. Any questions? Thank you very much, guys. Thank you. Mayor, we have a... We have a sales... We're going to... We're going to... We're going to send for maybe you guys very late.