Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to officially call this meeting to order September 16th, and I'd like to start out by asking the Americaners if he would do an invocation and then lead us in a pledge. Everybody please rise. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you today to thank you for the many, many wonderful things you do in our life each and every day. We thank you today, Lord, that you allowed us to make it here safely. We thank you for your mercy and grace. We ask you now, Lord, as we go forth in this meeting setting, that you bless our commissioners with the wisdom to be able to carry out the business affairs of discreet and wonderful county. With one mind for one dupland, we ask you to continue to bless our county manager and his staff as a travel for one place to another, Helen, their affairs each day. And then, Father, we ask you to continue to bless and cover our children as they go to school. And we're asking you tonight, Lord, that you keep those individuals away that has an unstable mind, that has a mindset that want to do harm to our children in the school system. And then Father, we ask you to let the light from the lighthouse continue to shine down on Dukeman County and allow us to continue to prosper and grow in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, let all of God's children save men. Amen. A plate of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, individual, liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Reverend. It's been ugly weather out there today and spatially on your travels here tonight. So again, I want to thank you for taking the time to come out and find that weather and welcome you here. And we will move through this meeting as rapid as possible so that you can get on home before so late. So, all right, let's then see it. Does anybody want to add anything to the agenda tonight? I do not. I do not. I do not. All right. With no ads, I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Got a motion from Garner, a circuit from Branch. Any further discussion? Here and none. All in favor say aye. All opposed same side. Carry. All right. I entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the August 19th meeting. I got a motion from Edwards and a second from Dale. Any further discussion? Edwards and a second from Dow. E-phos discussion. Here and none, all in favor say aye. All opposed, same side, carry. All right, hopefully everybody's had time to go through the consent agenda. I've got a motion to approve from Branch. A second from Garne, any further discussion? Here and none. All in favor say aye. Get down on us. Okay, so that brings us to our first item, public comment. Anybody sign it? All right. Just because the weather was ugly and you know maybe somebody was running in the last minute if anybody really wants to speak even do you have to sign that this is your chance. All right thank you. Moving on to Living on the out of number two is Kennedy Good evening I am here on behalf of Nina Miller She is requesting to change the Lane name of James O Henry Lane in the back swamp township To T. Berry Lane. Okay, I will open up a public hearing to hear comments on that. At this given point, we're in public hearing. Anybody want to make a comment? To or against. Change it as road name. Have you had any comments? Come to here. They're all agreed. Okay. Any comments from the public? All right. I'm going to board. Come on. I got a motion from dial, no second from branch, to approve this name change, any further discussion? We are with our renaming ordinance. We're in compliance. Right. Yes. That's all right. Okay. All in favor say aye. All opposed. Carry. Thank you. Thank you. That brings us out of number three. Angel Fondashia. Good evening. I'm here to hold the public hearing for the fiscal year 26 grants that help fund our transportation system. Currently, we're explaining to apply for the 5311 administrative grant. It helps us pay for administrative costs. That amount is set by the state so they have agreed to $267,095. We also intend to apply for the 5310 grant which is elderly and disabled grant. It's a 5050 grant so they provide 50% federal money for trips that we take for elderly and disabled and additionally we are going to apply for a grant to cover one replacement vehicle. That amount is about $140,000. All right I'm going to open up a public area to close the public hearing. I'll come back to the board. That's a pleasure to board. Got a motion by a dial. Stack it by branch, that we adopt the 2026 program resolution, authorizing the meeting for the grants for federal and state funding and agreeing to share in credit verification related to such submissions and approved local share certification and authorized chairman the sign. Any further comments? Here in none, all in favor say aye. All opposed same side. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. That moves us out of number four. Public here would be held to receive public comments regarding the state grant that would help home owners fix issues that's within their homes. Good evening commissioners. I appreciate you taking the time to allow us here today. I've been in contact with the County Manager, Mr. Brian and it seems that the county's inagreance that they'd like to apply for a grant program to do some housing repair work in the county. This is a CDBG-NR program, stands for Neighborhood Revitalization. It's some funds that are supplied from HUD to the Department of Commerce in North Carolina every year, at least for the last several years. This would be the first of two public hearings required for the grant program and its application. The maximum grant amount that we can request is $950,000. Eligible activities for this grant program are housing, which always has to be included in an application, but it can also encompass some infrastructure related to housing such as new utility services, streets, flood and draining improvement, sidewalks, pedestrian ways, et cetera. It can also include some sort of public facilities, such as shelters, community centers, or recreation centers. The requirements for the housing portion of this grant must meet one of three national objectives and it must benefit LMI persons low-moderate income individuals and it must prevent or eliminate slums and blights and or other urgent needs often storm or disaster related. Homes that are included in the program must be occupied by LMI individuals. They must be real property. And they also must own the home that is included in the grant program. It can't be a rental house. The program can include rehabilitation of housing or complete demo and rebuild reconstruction of existing houses. I have a partial list together of individuals in the county that are seem to be good qualified candidates that meet those those requirements. If the board has any individuals that they feel would like to be included, we're working on surveys which includes kind of going out to these houses, getting information from the homeowners, taking pictures, documenting the issues that they have, and those surveys will be used for the application of the grant program. There will be a need to be a second public hearing held, which I think will be in your first October meeting and the applications are due on October 23rd of 2024. If there's any questions, I'll be happy to answer any of those. And we are open for public comments from the audience. How about you, sir? More than a person on the audience. Those are possible cans as well. Typically, the way that works is everybody that has interest in the house has to sign a heat of trust or everybody that has interest in the house can sign their essentially their ability to sign for the project to one individual. I heard they received the applications. Do what sir. I'm sorry. They seem to have received the application for this. How would the state receive it? You then how would you receive it? Oh, what's the process for getting in that vacation? Well, typically as far as the individuals included in the program. Yeah. Typically when we write these programs, we prefer at least the majority of the names to come from the county. If not, you know, produced by the county commissioners or the manager, at least, you know, that the county, you know, looks at the list and is in an agreeance with the list just so, you know, later down the line, wants the program if it's funded? You know sometimes there has been You know Municipalities that was I would you know disagree with the name on the list so it's best if you know comes from the municipality themselves Or at least agree with the name with the names. I do have a list partial, you know not a complete list to complete a whole application If you're interested in those, I'd be happy to let you know who they are and what addresses they are at this time. You have them where you can pass them out to us now, you don't have to get them to us because you don't have copies. I don't have copies. I'd have to pass them out later. We can get them. Sure. You can get them to Brian, Brian, and get it all. Yeah, I can email him to Brian, yes, sir. Yeah, of course. If someone were us to have the opportunity to participate in the program, and they have a total review, and something was to happen to that individual, death. What happens in terms of there's another family member? What happens with that opportunity for somebody else in the family? That's a good question. So it's really kind of up to the municipality. So in this case, the county, but the grant would allow it to be inherited by another individual. So the way the program works is is it's a forgivable loan but essentially the money is the county's money once the grant is approved. So the state provides the county with the funds, the county spends the money on a house that of an eligible individual and then the individual signs a deed of trust and then the county has a lien on the property for a period of eight years. The lien does not require any payment. It just requires that if they try to sell the home within that eight-year period obviously it'll be flagged and they would owe money to the county. And then those funds could be used towards any other CDBG eligible expenses in the future. So if the individual were to die, I've never had it happen, but theoretically they could, their child or whoever could inherit the property. So there's a clause or a box to check they could their child or whoever could inherit the property. So there's a clause or a box to check to allow that to take place in the process? Well it can just happen. It's kind of the best way I would describe it. It's up to the county. So if the individual or the heir is not LMI or not low in moderate income, the county, if they so wished, could technically, you know, try to recoup some funds. But I've never seen that happen. And honestly, that deed of trust would never be triggered if they never try to change the name on the property during that period also. So I guess the best answer is it's up to the municipality but I'd be hard pressed to see the municipality that wanted to try to get some money back after somebody's parent passed away but Will you say I guess it's in the paperwork, but low to moderate income. Is there a number of ballpark? There is. I don't have that number in front of me, but it's established by HUD and it's essentially 80% of the HUD income would be a moderate income and anything below that would be eligible. I don't have a number in front of me but I can get that to Brian as well. It's a sliding scale depending on how many people live in the home. If it's one person it's less, if it's a family of eight it's a significant amount more. Well, in the last question I believe in terms of the number of people that you can see that are interested so you have on this with that. I have a list that we partially put together just by talking with one of the deputy sheriffs in the county. He had some people that he knew of that seemed to be good candidates and some others who had personally actually reached out to me from other programs I'd done like in Calipso they had asked I guess they had talked to somebody and that some of those people are on the initial list. So it would be successful with that number that you need to. Yeah. Well we like to ask for the full 950,000 and so a complete application to me would be probably four reconstructions and then two alternate reconstructions and an alternate rehabilitation and that's just mainly for budget reasons but we should be able to do four reconstructions and one rehabilitation with those funds. Okay. Thank you. With these funds, we've had an individual that is concerned with the parking. When you mentioned recreation. Yes, sir. The key is to the parking here. I'm of the understanding needs more funding to complete that project. Would we be able to use these funds to complete that project. Would we be able to use these funds to complete that project? That's a yes, but it depends. So I don't know what Dupuen County's, like area wide LMI is. I think the last time I checked it, it was above income threshold. So we couldn't claim area wide, low and moderate income to complete a project like that. So we'd have to figure out who that park's benefiting, is it benefiting the people in this geographical area around it? What's the LMI there? And so it has to be a LMIMI eligible which is over 51% of the people benefiting would need to meet LMI criteria. So the answer is yes but we'd have to we'd have to look at what the county's LMI is and maybe try to get creative on how we call the LMI of the area. You know sometimes you can use like Like census tracks, you know that are immediately around the park and maybe those will meet the LMI criteria, but the whole county won't so that's Yes, but the pins Any other questions? If you will, get your information to Brian so he can get it back to us. Yes sir. We can review the list and we'll just plan on another public area at our next meeting which would be October the 7. Okay I'll also email this to Brian but just as it heads up at the next public hearing or the next board meeting the grant requires a couple documents that require board action. One is a resolution to apply, essentially just the board agreeing that they want to apply for this program. And then another one would be a housing selection committee that essentially will look at the list after the surveys are put together and go through it based off of the federal criterias and select the houses but I'll email all that to Brian as well. Okay. Any more public comments before we close the public hearing? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you so much. We'll see you next two weeks. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. All right. So now we're going back into open session closing public area and that brings item number five. Brian Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Commissioners, I have just a couple of dates for the board. I want to let the board know that we have two RFQs that went out on September 3rd. One was for the EDC, and it was specifically for two shell buildings. We wanted Air Park and we wanted South Park. We also had an RFQ go out for our airport to update two existing T-hanger and well an existing T-hanger and spec hanger. I do want to let the board know that the James front community college foundation's 39th annual golf tournament is September 19th at Dukeland Country Club. There's a rain date September 26th. The 20th anniversary Muscaton Festival is September 28th at the Dukeland Event Center. Tickets going sale or tickets are on sale now. The gates open at 9.30. The event is from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Y'all should have a fire at your seat. It's a save the days the ECC annual membership dinner or barbecue banquet will be held October 3rd at the Craven County Riverfront Convention Center in Newburn. Scott Hamilton, President and CEO of Golden Leaf will be the keynote speaker. If you've never had the opportunity to hear Mr. Hamilton speak, I'm sure we have an event with Tom. He does a great job. And of course, Town and county officials are invited to attend. And I do want to let the board know that we have received a lot of gratitude from our county employees based on the decision that the board made to approve another personal choice day. They've asked us to extend our gratitude to the board for that. So thank you very much. That's all I have. I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have. Any Bob and the board of other questions? If not, we'll move into closed session. Emotion, I'd like to take a motion to go out of the registration in the closed session personnel matters. I'm going to see GS143-311-1811. Got a motion by now. Thank you by garner. Any other comments? Here and then all in favor say ye ye all opposed same side we are officially out of open session in the closed session okay we're officially out of closed session back into open session oh in discussion or any comments that come up that we need to address now into open session. Yes. Okay. Okay. At this time I'd like to make a motion to allow the county managed to create a new position at animal services center manager. So, Lou. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Here none, all in favor say aye. Inanimous. So you should thank any problem. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Thank you, board. All right Anything else that we have for tonight Here and nothing I would entertain a motion to adjourn more recessive First That's some notion the recess October 1st. Commissioner Garter made the motion to go into recess until October 1st. And that would be at 7 30 a.m. At the WM building room 100. Seconded by Commissioner Edwards. Any further discussion here and then all in favor say I all opposed. Same sign. We'll see you on October 1st thank you appreciate everybody's time