Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to officially welcome you here tonight to our May 6th County Commissioner's Meeting. I appreciate everybody showing up at this given time. I would like everybody to rise and I'm going to ask the mayor if he would, to the democation and lead us into the pledge. Thank you. Thank you. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we come before you to thank you for the blessings of the past, the present, and the ones that you are blessing us within the days to come. We ask you to remember to bless our commissioners with the wisdom and knowledge that is needed to handle the affairs of Dublin County and allow them to be able to work fully on one accord for the greater and better of our county. We ask you to remember the county manager and the assistant county manager as they deal with day-to-day operations that you give them to insight and to understand and into discerning spirit that they need to be able to handle their affairs. Then Father, we ask you tonight remember our children as they have preparing for the integrated school tests that you'll bless them with the ability to focus on the things that are before them that they'll be able to come out with better grades in the years before. These blesses the night we asked in the mighty name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that all of us children say amen. A pleasure, allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Mary. I'm going to have to go to the commissioners. Everything to add to the nice agenda. I would like to add a NCGS 143-381411 and personnel commatters NC GS143 dash 31811 Everything you like that mr. Chairman. I'd like to remove The item under my name Brian Miller County manager award bid for Duplock County drinking water systems I'm under my name, Brian Miller County Manager, award bid for Duplock County drinking water systems. As an inventory and asset project, I'd like to remove that. I'm gonna keep the second item under my name. Out of number seven, you would like to remove? Drinking water. No, no, no, no, no, it's a second page under six fifty p.m. It is either number seven. Okay. Anything else? Okay I would entertain a motion to pass the agenda with the changes. I got a motion for approval of the April 15 minutes. Motion Mr. Garne, second Mr. Branch, any further discussion? Here none, all in favor say aye. Carry. Now I would like to get an approval of the minutes from the joint meeting with the James Front College Board of Trustees held on April 16th. So moved. Motion of Mr. Branch. Second, by Mr. Edwards. Any further discussion? Here and none. All in favor say aye. All opposed, same-sign. Cary. Okay. Hopefully you've had a chance to look over at Consent Agenda. I would entertain a motion to approve the Consent Agenda. Motion from Mr. Garner. Second Mr. Edwards. Any follow the discussion? Here and none. All in favor say aye. All opposed same side? Carried. All right. That brings us to item number one public comment Okay All right that brings to item number two and That is put by road concerns. I asked the board first and then I'll come to the public Right concerns. I do have one In the area of 11 11 and 11 19 South NC 50 highway Which is right here the little Kingsville's got a man only address there's a negative bank curve and The drivers or residents that live there when they turn in They have to go up and then down until the driveway and then coming out to have to go up and then down to get on the highway so that it needs to be addressed as a corrosion issue. Go understand where that's at. Got it down or need further. Okay. Steve. I have no. No. No. Anybody from the public got a road concern. This is your chance to speak up and we'll try to get your concerns looked into and hopefully corrected. Feel free to speak up. I'm here for three public hearings. The first one is Richard Patriot. Why to name a lane off at the 700. The first one is Richard Patriot. The first one is Richard Patriot. The first one is Richard Patriot. The first one is Richard Patriot. The first one is Richard Patriot. The first one is Richard Patriot. The first one is Richard Patriot. The first one is Richard Patriot. The first one is Richard Patri hearings. The first one is Richard Pageert. Wanting to name Elaine at the 700 block of NC North NC 111 Highway, Pink Hill and Smith Downsville. Okay, at this time, I'm gonna open up a public hearing. You're welcome to speak to any concerns you have towards this road. Positive or negative? Feel free. This is a white group. Feel free to speak up. All right, here it is. I'm going to close the public here. And I'll come back to the board for recommendation. Got a motion from Mr. Garner. Second from Mr. Dail. Wasn't that we approved this road name? Any further discussion? Here in none, all in favor say say aye All opposed same sign. Okay, listen out of number four. This one's for Abigail Santa Pines At the 31300 block of South NC 903 Magnolia Magnolia Township Averose Lane all right, I'm gonna open back up a public hearing for you to discuss any comments you would have on this road name Here in none I'm gonna close public here come back to the commissioners for recommendation See got a motion with mr. Branch second boat mr. Dough. Yes Any further discussion? Here and none. All in favor say aye. All opposed same side. Okay. I'm number five. The last minutes for Santos Garcia Castro. He's willing to name one at the 220 Hamilton Road Family of Garcia Lane. All right. I'm going to open back up for another public area. The name of the this road. Anyone got a comment? Please speak up. Here and none. We'll close the public here. Recommendations are forward. Got a motion to approve it. Proved the name by Mr. Branch. Second by Mr. Dow. Any further comment? Here in none. All in favor say aye. All opposed same side. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. That brings the item number six. Miss Brown. Good evening. Good evening. Volunteers are an asset to any community or organization. We are here tonight to recognize some of the outstanding volunteers serving in Dupland County. The purpose of the Governor's Volunteer Service Award is to honor the true spirit of volunteerism by recognizing individuals and teams and groups that make a significant contribution to their community through volunteer service. The awards program created by the Office of the Governor in 1979 recognizes North Carolina's most dedicated volunteers. As I call your name, please come forward and I will briefly share information about your volunteer contributions in Giepel and Counting. Mr. James Preston Brown Jr. Mr. James Preston Brown Jr. also known as Mr. Jimmy is recognized for his volunteer service in the following categories. Health and Human Services, Youth Service, Lifetime Achievement, Historically Under-Serve Population and Senior Service. Mr. Jimmy has a passion to serve. When he retired, he became involved with Eastern Baptist Association and soon thereafter with Charity Mission Center. He has been an integral part of leading the Ramp Ministry for the last 10 years. His desire at the age of 75 and the mentorship he provides with the younger generation is remarkable. Mr. Jimmy serves others with love and compassion, expanding outside Dupland County, serving in various capacities on national and international mission trives. The construction knowledge that he has acquired, he shares with others to reach people with limited mobility. Although he does not share the personal cost and effort, it does not go unnoticed that if he sees a need outside of the rent request, he will personally secure for that individual. In addition, Mr. Jimmy's knowledge and partnerships extended to the community, assisting the local senior center to decrease the waiting list for Rant Projects. Mr. Jimmy has volunteered 1,200 hours of service this past year. You may have also liked to recognize you with this pin and this certificate from the governor for your volunteer services, one of the highest rewards that one can ask for in this state. Again, thank you so much. We really appreciate all of what you've done. Let's get her turning around and get a picture. Yeah, like that. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Deemy and that tail is working. Mr. Isaac Leroy D. Whitt. Mr. Isaac Leroy D. Whitt, also known as D. Whitt, is recognized for his volunteer service in the following categories, Health and Human Services Youth Service Lifetime Achievement, Historically Under-Served Population and Senior Service. Mr. Isaac Lee Roy D. Whit was born and raised in Warsaw, North Carolina. He is well known in the community, in fact, all over Dupland County. He attended Douglas High School graduating in the class of 1965. After high school, he enlisted in the US Army. After serving in the US Army he began his career with Carolina Power and Light which later became Duke Power. After his retirement from Duke Power he became aware of the need for volunteers to deliver meals to homebound seniors. Since 2005 Mr. D. Wiet has faithfully served as a homebound meal volunteer, delivering meals in the Warsaw community. Initially, the meals were delivered hot every day, and then eventually the overall structure of the program evolved from the hot daily meals to once a week frozen meal delivery. Quite often, Mr. D. Wiet would pick up an extra rotation to deliver meals offer additional assistance to the senior served, such as a grocery store pickup, or change out a light bulb in the senior's homes. Mr. D. Witt is served as a trustee in the church and still currently serves as a deacon. He was instrumental with the kids' cafe, an after-school program for grades 1-3-8 that was held at first missionary-babbaged church. Mr. D. Witt is very generous with fundraising efforts in the church, specifically with the March birth month rally giving. Mr. D. Wett resides in Warsaw with his wife and is always willing to pitch in and assist wherever needed in the community. Mr. D. Wett has volunteered 520 hours of service this past year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Donna Systems Grubs. Ms. Donna Systems Grubs is recognized for her volunteer service in the following categories, Health and Human Services, Youth Service, Senior Service, and other. Donna has a true servant's heart. She leads her local church mission ministry spearheading several mission projects that serve participants from a variety of age groups. As a retired school teacher, she has a passion for children and adults. In 2022, Donna started the Adopted Tiger program with the local schools currently at Kenensville Elementary and James Keenan High School. The objective behind this initiative is to pair a teacher with a church member that dedicates to pray for the teacher and send cards of encouragement and or supplies and treats each month. Currently this project is blessing 200 teachers and school support staff members. Each week, Donna and her husband Darrell pick up the items and deliver to the schools. Donna coordinated the Operation Christmas Child Project. She created an environment during VBS to foster a sense of caring and compassion for kids to relate to someone of their own age who lives on the other side of the world. A total of 100 and 50 shoe boxes were completed between VBS and Family Night Event. In the community, Donna is active and can be found assisting with the community trunk and treat event, coordinating the Easter Pollusa Egg Event at the local park and maintaining the card ministry at the Keynesville Baptist Church. She coordinates the annual food drive to support the Eastern Baptist Association. This year approximately 300 items were collected and delivered. In addition, she serves on the backpack buddy ministry for school children. Donna is a regional agent advisory committee delegate as well as a member of the senior services aging advisory committee. She faithfully serves in attend meetings locally and quarterly in Newburn, representing Dupland County. Each year from January to April 15th, you will find Donna alongside her husband assisting with the IRS Volunteer Tax Aid Program. She most often will be the one outside gathering the intake and completing the packets. Donna loves deeply and her compassion and dedication in Dupland goes way beyond the 438 hours recorded for this past year. I have a pen for you as well as the tip from the governor. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. We do have one other group but they were unable to be here tonight. The face and see scout ship 55 and we'll schedule them for another time. Thank you, Miss Donna. And I would just like to say, you know, we could not have the results we have in this county, if it wasn't for our volunteers. And we don't give our volunteers enough recognition. And I really appreciate Ms. Dahle, you bringing this forward and let us recognize you all here tonight. And thank you all again so much for what you'll do. the mission and works yes possible we could get a picture of all the commissioners with if they would come back up please the y'all want the board you want to go down in front or you want to just stand up and back up to the to the podium. All right, stay volunteer and do it. Come on, come on Donna. Come on Donna. Melissa. Come forward. Come forward Melissa. 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'm sorry. I Thank you, Melissa. All right. That moves us on to item number eight. Mr. Miller. Commissioners, I'm here tonight to ask for approval to award the bid to NV5 for the commissioning. The detention center project is specifically the MEP system, which is mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. HVAC, domestic hot water and lighting controls. So the total bid was $54,000 with an add-on of $2,400 per additional visit. This was the low bid after receiving bids. It was distributed to probably 65 different companies and to the historically underutilized business community we received two bids and this was the low bid for the project it is within the scope of my project and it is within budget pleasure to board second got a motion Mr. Garner seconded by Mr. Branch. Further discussions. Here and none. All in favor say aye. All opposed. Same side. Carry. Item number nine, Mr. Bryant. Commissioner, as I'm very excited to announce after a long wait that we do have a concert scheduled for July 26th. The entertainer is Tracy Bird. Tickets are on sale now at E-Ticks. Don't buy tickets for the 22nd. But tickets are on sales at E-Ticks. We think it's a great outdoor show. We're really looking forward to the event. We've got a lot of special things planned. Any questions? Okay. Good job, good job. Yep, thank you very much. Amanda works incredibly hard with the person with Ryan Cruz for Romeo entertainment. So as well we have May 14th at 7.30 a.m. We have a meeting with the Board of Education. I want to let the Board know that we did have the Department of Head retreat that we had spoken about several times before Commissioner Dow was able to attend as the Chair for the DSS Board. I think it was a very productive session. We went over a lot of stuff, had a lot of really good questions asked to us. So I think it was a very informative session. We had a really good meeting with the residents of Calco Bay in La Cabin Road about the search grant, about possible sewer solutions and rural water to comments from all the residents that wanted to provide comment. So I think we're positioning ourselves well to move forward with that project. There are any questions about what I went over so far. Okay, the last thing I have for you is, as you may recall, you ask us to develop a survey and put out the survey. I'm happy to say that Jasmine Savage, member of the administrative team has done that and she'd just like to give you an update on the reports. We get on the findings we have this far. Jasmine. So before you, you should have a bar chart with Result on the survey. We wanted to get results as far as ways that we can kind of recruit and retain the employees that we do have now. So we made a list of short-term incentives, medium-term incentives, and long-term incentives. For the short-term incentives, there is a category of personal holiday, which employees would be able to take a personal holiday of choice off. There is an employee discount for lunch at various locations, one meal a week free at James's front and a family fund day. For that category, most folks, most people like the personal holiday, that had 186 folks as the number one vote. For the medium term incentives. Hold on one minute. On this they had to choose one of the four. Yes sir. So in each category they were able to choose which one they would like as their first, second, third or fourth choice. Okay. Just wanted to make clear that it was, they didn't rate them. They had to choose one. Okay. Thank you. Yes sir. For the median term incentives, there was a choice of the annual vacation by bet. The county would buy bet up to 40 hours and the balance of the employees couldn't for their time couldn't fall below 80 hours. The next category is the flex work schedule. Employees could potentially work a half day on Friday. The next category is telework and the last category for the medium term is the cell phone discount. And the last category for the medium term incentives is the cell phone discount and most people for the medium term incentives voted for the flex work schedule that got a hundred and twenty three votes as a number one vote. For the long term incentives there was a category for daycare for county employees retiree insurance, 401k contribution, and APHED School program. So for these incentives, it was pretty much equal as far as how many people chose in each category as their first, second, third, and fourth choice. And we did leave open comment section for employees to be able to provide us feedback. The salary increase was listed for majority of the comments, but we have come to a conclusion that employees were not aware of the proposed increase. After the last department had meeting on May 2nd. The partner is they were giving the okay to me for what we did telling employees about the proposed increase. So they are now aware. So for some of the comments that the employees left, I'll just read a few. One, one person stated that Easter Monday and the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as a paid holiday. The next person stated the number one incentive would be a daycare for employees and they stated that us moms would love this option since we have a hard time finding a safe place for our needs. Another person commented and said more time, add it for sick leave because some parents don't have any help for someone to watch their sick children. And I have just one more. One person stated they wanted to extend, it to be able to extend the gym membership availability to family members on county insurance who are over the age of 16. Anyone having questions? Just so I understand the categories were the categories given to them to vote on or did they come up with the categories? The categories were given. The categories were given but they had the option to provide additional comments or additional perks that they thought would be helpful in recruitment and retention. Do you have the actual numbers on the long term? Yes, I do. So for the daycare for county employees, there were 44 people who chose that as their number one. As their second for the daycare for county employees there were 34 people who chose that. There were 70 people who chose that as their third option and there were 96 people who chose that as their fourth option. For the retiree insurance there were 93 employees who chose that as their first pick there were 85 who chose that as their second there were 37 who chose that as their third option and 29 who chose that as their fourth. For the 401k contribution, there were 86 who chose that as their first option, 92 as their second, 41 as their third and 25 as their four. For the after school program, there were 21 who chose that as their first option. 33 who chose that as their second. 96 who chose that as their third. And 94 who chose that as their fourth option. Now the 401k contribution, what was the difference in that? Was it added amount? What was 401 contribution is kind of broad. So what? There was no percentage given, but it was if an employee, if an employee participates in the 401K program then an additional percentage would be usually 2 to 5% would be included from the county to help boost their. So we want them match. That's if you want one match. 401K match. Okay and they didn't say to how much they just would like to have a match. Yes. Okay I mean I just that was a little bit broad for me to understand. And here again those are the long-term incentives so we think those will take a while to implement to get together to make sure we're doing them the correct. And we'll have many more discussions based on this data. But after the survey has been out for how long? Sure, how long? About 30 years. So but after three weeks, we wanted to get you the data. We wanted to put it in your hands. So you can start making about it. It's 244, and probably is just what responded to the home surveys, that great. That's great. 44 employees is what responded to the home surveys that create that's great Well, it looks like you know short term and midterm It's pretty obvious what some people are looking at and so I Personally, I've speak just for me. This is not speaking for the board. I would just like you to get back with us on the cost of making that happen and let's see what we can pull off. I don't know what the rest of the board will say, but that would be my request as for you to look into the cost of what the county employees are asking for, unless see what it would take to make that happen. to the cost of their what the county employees are asking for. And let's see what it would take to make that happen. Yes, sir. Anybody comment? That's what I'd say. Sounds good to me. When you say the flag's work schedule, you're talking about half a day all for Friday. Yes, for sure. For two of us. Yes, sir. Yes, or whatever the department heads deems as their most advantageous schedule. Some department heads will be able to allow their entire staff to leave a half a day on Friday. So for those departments, it might be a half a day Monday or a half a day Wednesday, along with the half a day Friday. So it'll really be the department's decision on which day works best for the crew. And again, like I said, I think the devil in the details is what we want you to get back to us on because there's some things that you just can't shut down. That's the only thing. And everybody understands that. But I can see it. Just we hear the request. And then let's see what it would take to fulfill the request. And that's what we're asking for. Or I'm asking. But you guys already had that conversation. The fact that everybody can't do it on Friday. They so already. They know that will be a part of 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 will ask for a motion to go into closed session legal matters and personnel matters in CGS 143-38 team dot 11. So I got a motion in a second to go into closed session. Thank y'all for coming out tonight. I really appreciate your support. Thank y'all for your participation in the closed session. I don't know of anything that needs to be brought to the floor but if another commissioner does speak up. I'll miss the late 20th physically. I may be able to call him. Okay. I make a motion with your recess and to the 14th 14th at 7.30 a.m. Yeah, we got a we got a joint meeting with board of education on Tuesday 14th. That's the board of what we know. More elections. All right. We're in elections tonight. All right. For clarity, Mr. Gardner made a motion that we recess until Tuesday, May the 14th, 730 joint meeting with the Board of Education at the Board of Education location, 315 North Main Street, team is booked. North can I? And Mr. Ed would say any further discussion? Here and none all in favor say aye. Thank you.