Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to call this commissioner's meeting the first one in 2024. Tonight on Tuesday January 16th at the order. Thank you for being here. Hope everybody had good holidays, good Christmas, and we're going to start tonight by asking permission or branch if he would give us an invocation and lead us into pledge. Everybody please stand. That is Prairie. Do wise and precious God. We thank you for this day. We thank you for good health. We thank you for a mind to help us realize who and what we are and why we all here. Thank you for waking us up this morning and start us on our way. Father, we thank you for this new year, 2024. Thank you for bringing us through 2023. We actually all that you allow us to briefly look back every now and then just to help us be reminded of all the wonderful things that you've done. But, Lord, as we go into 2024, we ask for strength, we ask for understanding, we ask for guidance, and the continued courage to do those things as necessary to bring your kingdom glory. Father, we thank you for all those assembled here this evening, to hear those things that are important to the upkeep in the direction of Dupin County. Thank you for the leadership, Lord. Continue to watch over them and give them those things as necessary to guide them through some challenging times. But Father, we just thank you for your son, Jesus, that gave the ultimate price so that we could all have another opportunity to get it right. Father, help us in this new year to truly be models of what unity truly is. We are the leadership and the expectation of us is to do those things as necessary. Father, I said you continue to walk with us and guide us and always whisper in our ear Lord when we're doing those things that don't bring you glory. Continue to help us to work together, collect through the other team. Continue to support all the dupland county government as we do those things as necessary for the people. Father, help us in those times when the decisions are challenging, but continue to reward us with your glory, with your mercy, and with your love. Watch over this evening as we move forward. And then when we leave this place, we ask Father that you give us traveling mercies and allow us to arrive back to those locations, finding all things decent and in order. It is in the precious name of Jesus that I do pray, let us all say amen. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States from America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and the visible liberty and justice for all. Thanks, sir. All right, hopefully everyone's had a chance to look over the agenda. Just now you need to add anything. I like to have traffic concerns if there is in the public and to do so first meeting in every month. Now for... Never be after the public comments that could be just trafficpping sounds for the count. Okay. So much for him? Good. Great. Mr. Varron? Good. Clerk or manager? We need to remove Mr. TD Hill with RHCTA. He cannot be here tonight. He's in illness. He was to present the 2023 fiscal year audit that he will be here in the fall of February 50th. Anything else? I entertain a motion with these changes. I got a motion in a second. Any further discussion? All in favor? All opposed? Pat. All right, the next thing that I would ask for is a motion to approve the minutes from the December 18th for Board meeting Most two approved. So you got a motion. That's right. See that. That's doubt Any further discussion Here in none. All in favor say I. Okay. Okay. All right. So, I'd entertain a motion for the consent agenda. If everybody's okay with it. It's a move. Okay, I got a motion in the second at the same time. So, any further discussion? Here and then, all in favour say aye. All opposed, same sign. Here. All right. Do we have anybody signed up for better comment? No, we have someone signed up. All right. Do we have anybody sign that? No, we have somebody. All right. We had nobody sign it, but if you want to speak, now as you time, we will lay three minutes. If you want to come up and tell us how good we did in 2023 and we're just going to be better in 2024. We would listen to that. All right so now we'll move on to the add-on item of DOT. We're going to be road concerns. Y'all have any commissioners? Unfortunately I do. Winterhead was rode the cattle signs disappeared a long time ago and they not come back. So they were who borrowed them, decided to keep them. And at one end of the road to where I had personally worked on it the way you cut and nunch for it, they got pulled and out. But if they could get some cattle crossing signs back out there, it would be nice because we do that counter crossing that road Thank you all right public Do I have any road concerns this is your time Nothing All right, well, thank you We'll move on to item number two. There's Kennedy. Good evening. Good evening. I'm here to conduct the public hearing on behalf of Richard Miller to name Elaine at 143 dog with Lane Rocio's T.L. Roe's Township Miller Lane. Okay, I open it up for public. The H.I.T.A. Public here. Do I need to form an H.I.T.A. Public here? I don't. I thought we'd already had one. I mean I thought this was a public area. Is this a public area? Yeah. So that's what I was asking for. Yeah. I mean we're we're we're open up for the public for the public here and for this road. Excuse me for not being clear. That's what I was asking for from the public. Right any concerns from the public. This is your public hearing on this road request. Hearing none, I will close the public hearing and we'll go back into the open session. The missioners pleasure. Much to approve. Sick. I got a motion to approve. A motion and a second to approve. Any further comments on the road name? I have one question. Yes. This is not, I noticed this is a lane off a lane. This is not trying to circumvent our subdivision ordinance. Is it? They, with the new, he's not here easy. I don't know where it stands at. We went to him and he said we had to do this, but it's family. I'm not sure where that ornette stands at right now. Because it's my home's. Cut it away, I understand it. If you've got a lane, you can only have three mobile homes on that lane and now you're going to put another lane, you're going to have three more, you're going to put another lane, you're going to have three more. Where do you stop adding lanes off of lanes and then you got your circumventing the subdivision ordinance? Is that the way I see it? We can certainly have our county planner look at it and go out and visit the site and make a determination. And if it indeed is in violation of the subdivision ordinance, we'll bring it back before the board. Would that have to occur before it? I mean, how do you know what a person in tents are with until it sexually exposed? I think the planner can have intense one thing, but he can inform us of his intent, hopefully moving forward. And hopefully we just have to trust that that's a truthful conversation. But we can certainly have that conversation. So if it be if it suits the board and the board would like to approve this based on approval by the county planner That's one option. I think yeah Just contingent contingent on approval by the county planner. Will that require amendment in the motion or? Yes by the county plan. Will that require amendment in the motion or? Yes. I'm sorry. Mr. French. What is this thing? Just table it until he makes a determination. That's definitely an option as well. That way it will be a question. I'll be fine. So you can do that. Just table it until those matters are answered and respond by. The fact that we had the motion in the second on the floor open up for discussion and in the discussion it come up with the table and the guy that made the motion is re-ind of that. And we stopped right there. Yes. Okay. So. All right, just table. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Now, because she's here before you leave, thank you. The fact that she held this public hearing, and we tabled it, but we didn't have any comments from the public when we get the planner approving it. If she got to come back for another public hearing or we can just put it on. I want to clarify that why you were still here. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We move on to number four. Miss Queen. Good evening. Good evening. I'm here tonight to present four grand opportunities through the North Carolina Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund. Last spring I had four applications for these grants and on behalf of the landowner, so I applied. This program was established to preserve farmland and to protect it from development. I've received notification that all four grants have been awarded. Dupline County currently holds conservation easements on four other farms in Dupline County. The first one that I have tonight is for Anthony Clay-Buts in the amount of $65,000 on 39.15 acres. And I would like to ask that you accept this grant and an allocation to fund the budget for the grant and to allow Brian Miller to sign the paperwork. Pleasure to board. Got a motion in a second. Any further discussion? Here and none. All in favor say aye. All opposed. Same sign. Kerry. Thank you. The second one that I have is for Mitch and Marlena Page in the amount of $137,900 on 83.89 acres. And again, I would like to ask that you accept this grant and an allocation to fund the budget for the grant and to allow Brian Miller to sign the grant paperwork. Got a motion in a second. Further discussion? Period none. All in favor say aye. All the folks, same side. Kerry. The third one I have is Murray Agriculture East in the amount of $293,681 on 278 acres. Again, I'd like to ask that you accept this grant and an allocation to fund the budget for the grant into a labrymeller to sign the grant paperwork. I got a motion in a second. Fall discussion. Here and none. All in favor say aye. All opposed. Here and number seven. The last one I have is for Murray Agricultural West in the amount of $330,292.50 on $315 acres. I would like to ask that you accept this grant and an allocation to fund the budget for the grant and to allow Brian Miller to sign the grant paperwork. Pleasure to go on. I got a motion in a second. Father's question. Here you are. Nothing. All in favor say aye. All opposed? Carried. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. That brings us to item number eight, any more? Good evening. Good evening. I won't be before you long. Before I begin, Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce my management team at DSS. I have Sarita Sutherland with me who is the Program Manager of foster care and adoptions and adult services and the interim Program Manager for Child Welfare and I have Wendy Henderson with me who is the Incogniteness Administrator for all of our incogniteness programs and then walking in now is Dana Bonneville who is my business manager and I would like to recognize one of my, well, two of my board members here. Ms. Angelou Mainer is present and also Mr. Jessie Dow. I would like to just give you a departmental update on Medicaid expansion and staff and DSS, as you all are aware, Medicaid expansion began December 1st of 2023. As of January 11th, 2024, there were 312,000 beneficiaries receiving Medicaid expansion statewide. The numbers for Dupland County, for total applications received for the month of December was 439 applications. This was a 54% increase when comparing number of applications received in December of 2022. There were 1,468 family planning cases that automatically rode over into expansion Medicaid. A little over 70% which is 300 and 4 Medicaid applications were received through EPS and other online capabilities. 30% of those applications which is about 135 was a result of individuals applying in person. As expected there have been an overwhelming increase in telephone calls and an increase in applications for other programs such as crisis and work for benefits. As of today, we have filled five out of the 13 expansion positions. Thank you for approving those additional positions and the department is actively working to fill the remaining positions. My concerns for the department centers around staff and at excluding the expansion position I have 18 vacancies which is a 14.87% vacancy rate overall for the agency. Focusing on individual's programs the programs with the highest vacancy rate is child welfare, adult services, food and nutrition, and children's Medicaid. I currently have five supervisor positions vacant. Two of five of those positions, the employees accepted jobs with the higher salary. When attempting to fill these positions, the employees accepted jobs with the higher salary. When attempting to fill these positions, applicants that has supervisory experience decline the job offer because I could not meet or match their requested salary. I lost my only season Medicaid supervisor to a neighboring county for a little over $10,000 more. And some of my line staff have left the agency for more than a $10,000 more increase. Losing experienced supervisors and staff regresses the agency and makes the agency vulnerable. Losing our supervisor and line staff with the plethora of knowledge, weekends our ability to process applications and redetermine cases timely. And it also impacts the services department when investigating and assessing reports. We are also at risk of making errors that could lead to a substantial county payback. The work is stressful. Time frames are demanding, and there are always changes in policy which causes us to change our way of doing things. However, we have a lot of staff capable and willing to do the work. My concern is that we have lost some of these individuals to neighboring counties for more pay, which is causing the remaining staff to question whether they should stay or leave. I like to think of DSS as the economic powerhouse. A lot of people only see the side that we give out benefits. But I often wonder if there wasn't a duplicated DSS, would our family oriented establishment survive with monies received in food and nutrition benefits and Medicaid benefits? And let's not forget about our daycare providers who are self-employed. Benefit shares from these programs receive millions of dollars each month and a sizeable percentage goes back into the county. Staff employees have a role to ensure that benefits are received timely and programs are ran accurately. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to present to you tonight. Welcome. Thank you all for attending. Okay. That brain is dialed number nine. What's the matter? Commissioners, I have several, have several updates for you this evening. First I want to give you an update on the transportation building. They are to begin paving this week, weather permitting, and the certificate of occupancy will follow shortly thereafter when that occurs. Obviously, we'll move those folks into the new building. And the animal control building, I want to update the board that all panels have arrived and an inspection and schedule for this week. And it should be completely finished within four weeks. Any questions on those two buildings? Did that panel was a gold plate when it come in? It gold plated diamond in Christ. Yes. The NCC district meetings for district three, as many of you know, they usually have a spring meeting just to find out what's going on in the counties to determine what's best to be discussed at the district meetings. Well this year they switched that from a dinner to a lunch that's going to be held on January 25th from 12 to 130 at the Green County Operations Center. It's about an hour away in Snow Hill. Anyone that would like to attend that luncheon, please let me know by Thursday. Once again, it's going to be on the 25th of January, 12 o'clock to 130. If you'll let me know if you plan to attend, I'll make the necessary arrangements. If you'll let me know if you plan to attend, I'll make the necessary arrangements. We, as many of you know, we had the bid opening for the detention center project today. We did receive four bids from the four pre-qualified bidders. You have the tabulation sheets or unofficial tabulation sheets or at your desk. The unsertified apparent low-bitter was Daniels and Daniels and the bit amount including all alternates, including the third pod, was $40,233,100. That number does not include the architectural fees. So what we'll do now is we'll prepare options for moving forward and present those to the board next month along with the recommendation. Any questions? So the economic development committee, they've requested a joint meeting. They've requested that we have a meeting with the Board of Commissioners on February 20th at James Brunt Community College at 7 a.m. If the board is agreeable with this time and date, we'll move forward with setting up and scheduling the meeting. But it would be a you would reconvene from the meeting, your meeting the night before and reconvene the next morning at James. Now what was that date? February 20th at 7am. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm not sure if I can do it. I wouldn't have any interest in starting the other with it. We can always ask. I just asked. So you want us to move forward with schedule? Yeah. I mean, our rest of you are OK on the 20th. Yes. Always out of your schedule. Yeah, I mean, or rest of your okay on the 20s. Yes, always that is good. Is that a dare point? I mean, it'll be held at James Brown Community College. Okay. I will probably have to leave early. I've got an eight o'clock that I possibly can't delay. I'll see if I can delay it a little bit, but I'll be there for seven. Okay, but you know I may have to leave before so Okay, but like I said I'll I'll see if I can push my other one back a little bit. Okay If it's good for everybody else who have without you there not So I was good everybody's We'll take care of it. Yes, sir, that's all I have. I'm happy to answer any other questions that you may have. Okay. What I would like to say is, you know, I'm really pleased that what you found out in the bit openings, what I would request, and the information is still different. That's fine. You know, I'll let them voice their opinion. But I would request that you do all the diligence that you need to, and as far as the building, the specs, the architect checks, and the pay structure of how we can fund it. And have it back to us for our next meeting if that's possible. And if that's okay with the commuters, I would say that if you think you can do that, let's plan to have it. Let's plan to move on it at our next meeting. We've been waiting for this a long time and there's no need for some drag or feet. I'm very pleased with how to me the lack of spread that's in these numbers make me feel real good that that it's it's good numbers because you because there's not a tremendous amount of spread between the four. And so I think it's time to make sure that it is correct and make sure how we're going to fund it and we take action. And if you can have all that done and have it in the next meeting, that's my request. Do other commissioners and agreements with them? Just for clarification, did I say that was the include in the three parts? That's correct. Thank you. That was the only thing I wanted to bring it. We can certainly work towards that. I don't know what roadblocks or challenges will face, but we'll have as much information to the board at the next meeting as we possibly can. Anything? Any other comments? anything? Any other comments? What could possibly be a foreseen roadblock? A couple of the things that we'd like to do is, as many of you know, the Entral County Manager was involved in the project. We want to meet with the interim county manager. We want to meet with the financial, the county's financial advisors and make sure that just found out what their opinions are, what our options are from their perspective. And their schedules may impact our ability to do that, but I don't think so. We do plan to meet with Mr. Wood next week. That meeting's already been set. The financial advisors we'd like to meet with soon thereafter, but those, any other roadblocks? As originally done, their check? Seriousblocks has mostly done their check. Sarah's again receiving the certified bid time. We think that will probably be here within the next couple days. But here again, that's the architects and engineers. If we haven't received it, we'll push very hard to get that, but it should be here within a couple days. It mostly has to do their checks to make sure we're comparing apples to apples within all these beads correct. Right and that's where they go through and certify everything in that they'll do that over the next couple of days. And the architect front the fee is not in this too correct? No that's correct. It's not. It's not So we'll have all of that information back to you at the next meeting I just know the chairs are in the ghosts don't want to hold them up Here we'll spend money, he get it for changes his mind. Hey, man. But he's careful. He's right at that. Any other questions? That's all I have. Permacioners? Anything else? Chris, join this disease. I'll discuss the subdivision round. Chris. Yeah. I'll discuss the subdivision round for this. I think since we tabled it, it needs to be brought up in the next meeting anyway and it would be better for them to probably discuss this themselves. I make a motion that we adjourn to February 5th. I got a motion in a second. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. All right. We're adjourned. Thank you so much.