On our agenda for this evening, we have two items.

The first is a discussion of the 2026-2027 budget, which is currently under development for approval in June.

Second, we'll be discussing the townwide Hallmark program.

Before we get started, we just want to remind our audience that the format of a work session is different than that of our business meetings.

Work sessions are an opportunity for the council to dive more deeply into specific topics.

These meetings are more conversational and less formal, and we do not vote during work sessions.

The topics will come back to a formal business meeting for a vote if needed.

Finally, we value public input and we do want to hear from the public on these and any other topics.

There will be opportunities for the public to speak at an upcoming business meeting if a topic comes back.

And our next regular meeting will take place this Wednesday, March 25th at 6 p.m.

in town hall.

Another good way to give us your input is to email us at Mayor and Council at ChapelhillNC.gov.

I remember you having your email address.

I know.

Okay.

Item number one is our fiscal year 2026-2027 budget.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

My name is Amy Ollins.

I'm the town's business management director.

We are here tonight to begin discussions on the development of the fiscal year 26-27 recommended budget.

Our goal for this evening is to give you a clear look at where revenues are trending, where our cost pressures lie, and how staff is preparing recommendations that support our core service, our workforce, and your strategic goals and priorities.

So tonight we'll begin by taking a quick look at how we build our base budget.

Then we'll talk a little bit about how our budget is focusing on council's goals and strategic priorities.

Next, we'll look at the revenue projections that are driving what we can fund in this year's budget, and finally we'll take a look at the updated five-year budget outlook.

So we'll start with good news up front because of both property tax and sales tax projections.

We do not anticipate recommending a tax increase this year.

And we'll share some additional details on that later in the presentation.

We'll start by providing a quick overview of how we shape the base budget.

It's a focused, transparent approach to developing our recommendations.

We start with revenues for fiscal year 27 based on projections for each major revenue source.

This information comes from the county, economic data, and department fee estimates.

We collect departmental based budget submissions, and we prioritize investing in competitive pay and benefit adjustments, both of which are directly responsive to council's organizational and fiscal sustainability goal.

We account for rising operating costs such as utilities, fueled technology, and fleets.

And finally, we align available resources with council's priority investments and departmental budget ad requests.

As we begin to develop the budget this year, we've grounded our work in four key commitments.

Employees, core services, council goals, and long-term sustainability.

Our first commitment is to invest in and support our employees who power the organization through competitive compensation, sustainable benefits, and a workplace environment that supports retention and growth.

One of our biggest cost drivers and our biggest assets is our workforce.

In the fiscal year 27 budget, we'll be recommending a competitive pay adjustment to support both retention and recruitment funding for what we expect will be a significant health insurance increase this year, and another required increase to the employer retirement contribution rate.

The town is committed to sustain our core services.

Those include public safety, solid waste, parks, and other essential day-to-day services that our residents depend on.

We continue to navigate significant inflationary pressures that are driving up the cost of providing even our most basic services.

Everything from small service contracts to purchasing essential equipment and day-to-day supplies.

We're strengthening our technology environment through an enterprise-wide approach that leverages economies of scale, modernizes outdated systems, and directs resources where they create the greatest organizational impact.

And we're making meaningful progress towards long-term sustainable funding for core service areas, slowly closing structural gaps, aligning investments with council priorities, and preparing our organization to meet future operational and capital needs.

We're committed to make intentional investments in your biggest priority areas.

Those include terms of community, housing, environmental sustainability, and organizational and fiscal sustainability, and other areas critical to long-term community well-being.

We're moving from planning to action, bringing complete community to life through adopted plans and fully funded projects that are reshaping how people live, work, move, and connect across our town.

We continue to pursue bold and innovative funding strategies to advance your housing goals, from leveraging local bond resources to federal and state grants to local housing funding sources, so that we can expand access and deliver on longstanding commitments to affordability.

Even as federal funding remains unpredictable, we're pushing forward on your environmental priorities, maximizing available grants, accelerating climate focused investments, and strengthening long-term resilience across our organization and community.

Our work is anchored in a five-year financial outlook that guides key decisions, closing long-standing structural gaps, and steadily moving us towards true fiscal sustainability across our core service and capital needs.

We'll next look at key revenue trends and updated forecasts for fiscal year 27.

Last year, the county the county estimated that about 5% of our assessed valuation post-the revaluation would be lost due to appeals.

That estimate turned out to be much too high.

So actual valuations and in turn our property tax collections are coming in much stronger than we expected, and as a result, the general fund is seeing about 2.85 million dollars more revenue this year than the county projected we would.

The higher valuations are also benefiting our debt and transit funds and will help keep us on track with our five-year budget outlook.

With this strengthened tax base, we will not be recommending a tax increase for fiscal year 27 unless something significant comes up or changes between now and the presentation of the manager's recommended budget.

The value of a penny tells us how much one cent on the tax rate will generate in property tax revenue.

Property tax revenue is calculated by taking the total assessed valuation of all real and personal property in Chapel Hill and multiplying that by the current tax rate, which is 50 cents.

For fiscal year 26, the penny generated 1.321 million dollars, and for fiscal year 27, the penny is estimated to generate 1.41 million dollars, which is about a 6.7% increase.

So turning to sales tax projections, this revenue source is economy-driven.

We've talked a lot about the volatility of sales tax over the last several years.

On a positive note, sales taxes ended last year stronger than we expected, still significantly down from original projections, but that trajectory has continued.

And so if collections hold, we anticipate a 4.2% growth in the current year, noting that this is based on five months of collections.

And therefore, we're then also cautiously projecting 3% growth for next year.

All of that to caveat this good news with the reality of everything that is happening in our world right now.

There are many potential impact drivers for this revenue source.

World markets, the threat of war, the cost of oil that could contribute to a potentially volatile close to the year, and that could extend into next year.

We feel strongly that this is a reasonable percent to budgets, though, keeping all those factors in mind.

Lastly, we'll take a look at our five-year budget outlook.

So we've updated the version of the five-year outlook that we share, have shared in the past, just walking you through how this table is set up.

The first column includes our identified priority funding areas that we've talked with council about for the last many years now.

The second column is a reminder of the amount that staff have determined is the amount we need to sustainably fund each of these priority areas each year.

The third column represents the current, so as of fiscal year 26 funding allocation to each area.

And then we've modeled out what the next four years would look like in terms of opportunities and needs in those areas that would be readdressed each year as we talk through the budget.

We wanted to take a minute to just show some pictures of what we've achieved with funding from these priority areas over the last couple years related to parks.

Here's some exciting things we've done, including a green trailer, the inclusive playground, which was many years in the making, and exciting to have open.

The Southern Community Park rectangle fields, those are some turf upgrades that were made to the fields there.

And the last one is of the Umstead Park Basketball Courts.

For fire, that first picture, which I had no idea what it was, those are nozzles.

So those are new nozzles that were purchased.

The SCBA tanks, and excitingly, two of the new fire engines or 32 and 33.

And lastly, related to facilities, these are before and after pictures.

The first top and bottom pictures are of the community center roof.

Bottom is before, obviously.

And then before and after of the post office cupola.

So some next steps in our budget development process.

We're wrapping up our department budget presentations to the manager's office this week.

We'll review and evaluate our community partner funding requests along with the budget requests from our departments.

We're going to finalize the recommendations for our key priority funding areas.

We'll evaluate all of these requests against the available resources that we have, and then we will develop the manager's recommended budget for your review on May 6th.

So a look at the proposed budget schedule for the remainder of our development cycle.

As I mentioned, May 6th is the presentation of the manager's recommended budget.

May 20th will be the public hearing.

May 27th and June 3rd are scheduled for work set budget work sessions.

And June 10th, the budget will come to council for a vote.

In closing, we look forward to your feedback and to refining the fiscal year 27 budget so it continues to advance the community's priorities while keeping our financial foundation strong.

And now I'll open up for questions and comments from council.

Just turn it on in the haggard.

Welcome to the future.

Thank you for that presentation.

I wanted to ask about the employee health plan contribution rate increase.

What's driving the need to change the rate?

Yeah, uh well, we have seen increases for the last many years.

This is the local government employee retirement system contributions, mandatory contribution for all employers and employees.

There were many years.

What we've heard from them is that there were many years that the plan was not, yeah.

I think uh council member Noeller asked about the health plan.

Did you talk about the not the requirement plan?

Health care insurance.

Sorry, apologize.

Well, it's ultimately based on claims.

Uh so it's based on claims data.

Uh, Blue Cross, our insurance provider takes a look at um what the claims look like from the last period, and um they determine how there's a set amount percent wise that they hope to achieve revenue-wise.

Um what percentage your claims are of that total premium that we pay in, and based on that, that's how they develop what increase they're going to propose.

So we have an insurance broker, Gallagher, who works with the town and um does uh a really great job working as kind of a middleman to help negotiate those rates.

Um so we've been very fortunate the last several years and seen decreases or small increases.

Um it's been several years since we've seen a large increase, but this the claims data have been on the rise, and we know we will see an increase.

It is now a matter of how low they can negotiate down.

So that's still in progress.

We hope to know more in the next month or two.

And thank you.

But could we also go back to the five-year project slide, please?

Would I be right in thinking that the current allocation column is showing the annual yield in the general fund that is dedicated to each of these needs, and that what the future years are showing is uh how much we would increase the annual amount dedicated to each of the roads?

It's a proposed scenario of how we could increase each year to achieve those sustainable allocations.

Yes, and each year that would get evaluated, and council has an opportunity to adjust accordingly, but yes, this is one scenario to try and get us to those sustainable allocations.

And the sustainable allocations represent annual spending, right?

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

This is always the part that I had most confused about.

And I'm wondering that 2.85 million that's showing up in increased revenue that we're expecting.

How does that relate to the three million that we just decided to spend not that long ago?

Was that the three million?

Is that no?

Um the three million is gonna come back to council uh next week to talk about the um proposed recommendation for excess fund balance.

That is one-time monies.

Uh what we are talking about with the $2.85 million is annual property tax revenue because the total assessed valuation, all properties in town, um the county assumed that there would be more appeals than there were, and so our total assessed valuation they thought was going to go down, it did not go down.

And so we used the best information that we had at the time, uh, which was the right information, but it just turns out that that was lower than what we're actually seeing in collection.

So the almost three million, 2.85 million for the general fund will be recurring revenues, which is amazing, um, and is gonna afford us the opportunity to do some really exciting things towards our five-year outlook uh priorities and um other council and staff needs.

Thank you.

Are there council questions?

Yeah, thank you.

Good, good.

Yep.

Okay.

Um the one I would love for us is we reference core services, if we could have those printed out, spelled out for the benefit of our reference, as well as the public who is watching this, so that we're all clear on what we mean by core services.

The second thing is um, we just start that working.

I don't think so.

I mean, we can hear you, but okay, how about that?

No, how about that?

Oh, yeah, much better.

I'll put on my radio.

Um, thank you.

So what I just asked for was um for the core services to be listed so that everyone can understand our benefit as well as the public's.

The second thing is um thank you for showing us how we were able to save the 2.85 million, but we know that there is reality of folks who were taxed whose rebout was very high, and just because they didn't get that doesn't mean that they're not hurting that they didn't apply.

So I'd like for us is it possible for us to consider a greater amount for to award via the county?

You don't have to answer that now, but that is just a consideration that I want to raise because I worry that there are some people who um either didn't get their appeal in on time or their appeal was denied for whatever reason.

I have concerns about that.

And um I always love it when other people go before me because then I lift off of them.

The employee health plan.

I remember early on when I joined, so I'm four years old on here that we saved through our health plan.

And I seem to recall that uh part of that reason was we believed the investment that was made in employee benefits as far as um gym memberships and other things.

Are we maintaining um how we invest in our employees that way for fiscal and emotional care?

Yes, we are always looking at the full well-being of the employee in terms of what benefits are being offered.

We do offer gym membership, there's EAP employer assistance provider that's offered to our employees.

So there's lots of uh benefits in addition to.

We we did a very thorough analysis of our employee like benefits last year, and one of the outcomes of that was that uh we stopped with the employee clinic and repurposed those dollars for um dental care for our employees because we surveyed our employees and asked them what what health related benefits are important to you, and so the biggest outcome of was that we were recognizing that the utilization was pretty low for the employee health clinic, um, and so and what was most important to our employees uh besides the gym membership, which was really important, was that they wanted uh dental because we had a plan offering, but it was 100% employee paid, and so now we are offering that benefit.

So it is uh uh an ongoing uh review of those types of benefits that happen.

Thank you for anticipating the next question, which was usage, um, and our people taking advantage of it.

How are we encouraging them to take advantage of it?

Uh I remember several iterations ago of town manager assessment when we were interviewing, and I was not on council, I was community member who participated, and at that time the query was it was a you know role play was HR has this program, but the department heads were behind it, and so I am curious using that example.

Are the department heads behind this?

Is there anything else that can be done to make sure that folks are taking advantage of these investments that are being made?

Yeah, I mean I think so.

Certainly, there's a new uh employee orientation, uh human resources does a great job talking about our all of our benefits, um, and I think that there's you know, through open enrollment, we talk about all of the benefits that are available each year uh to our employees, and uh we have uh employee forum where they talk about those types of benefits.

So I think that um we really try to encourage the use uh for those uh and we probably always do a better job, but um, I think it it is absolutely supported and um encouraged and uh communicated uh as effectively as we can.

Thank you.

One last thing fire capital, and I know we've looked at these before, but I have to say that I'm a little surprised that you're going to be okay, and that's where we just bought to means that we maintain it.

I'm gonna go back to Theo helping me to understand.

So the fire capital, I know that we don't have enough trucks, right?

And so I'm surprised that we're gonna hold steady there, and that's and we might need to reevaluate.

I mean, I think our original goal was that uh we wanted to reach a one million dollar sustainable allocation so that in a year we could replace a fire truck.

Um costs continue to rise, and so we realized that is probably not enough money, and so the idea was that on an ongoing basis that would allow them to have money each year to replace a truck to replace some of their equipment, recognizing that we do have a backlog right now, um, and we also can't replace.

I think we have right now, we replaced several trucks in a short period of time, and we're gonna find ourselves in a period where those are going to need to be replaced again, and we'll need an infusion of monies.

But I think the one thing about this plan is that it is iterative, and we will review each year, and when changes are needed, additional um sources are needed, those that will be updated.

So, I'm curious.

You believe that right now, based on the knowledge that you have, that's where that line should be.

I think that if we didn't have a backlog, that would be probably sufficient.

So your answer is no, that's not where we should.

It is difficult because there's not enough money.

So I think that we are trying to prioritize, and that's why we've put 500,000 because we know they have a significant backlog, so we're trying to help them achieve a sustainable level sooner rather than later, but that is probably one that needs to be examined, and we might find that that number needs to vary year over year depending on what needs to be replaced.

Just with the knowledge that we've received about fire, and I'm sure that there are others.

I would I'm looking forward to what information you can bring to us about each of these line items.

Yeah.

Amy.

How's that?

I never just always never have a little bit of work.

So thank you for all this.

Um that would be helpful for me.

I know I know now we're still at kind of a high-level overviews, but in the background material that we get in our packets, if we can get a little bit more specific.

Um, some of the examples in your slides you were talking about are to climate action, for instance.

We've done things that I don't I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't know if it's more than we've done in the past, if we had to pull back, or I it's just um I I can't get a real grasp on what that is without a little bit more data.

Um so that would be very helpful.

Um one of the examples that you brought up was the complete community implementation.

And I know our organization has done a great job at bracing the philosophy, but I went back and looked at some of the materials for what we first adopted it, and a big part of doing it was the idea that we were going to become proactive, and that we were going to be looking at demonstration projects and public-private partnerships and working with trying to pull in the developers who maybe had a traditionally thought about Chapel Hill as a place to do work.

And we started a few of those efforts.

We did some good work in Gateway, we got kind of started on that.

We worked on Goodway, um, did some work at 1551 South, one of the Sonda came through, but we haven't really we haven't really achieved that part of the complete community vision, and for where I said, I think it may be because nobody really owns it.

Um, you know, in the way now our urban designer really owns that across in the manager's office and across all the departments, kind of how we um can really make that place making that we want to have it happen.

I think it would be really helpful to think about whether we need somebody in that role, and at some point that's an MTE that we should consider.

Um, because I know complete community really is the philosophy that was one of the top council priorities this year.

So I'd really like to see us take that to level up our efforts and really get to the basic one there.

Uh thank you.

Thank you, Amy.

Am I on?

Uh maybe closer here.

So this all sounds very good, very optimistic.

Um a year ago, I don't think we were in that position.

I'm not convinced that we are in that position now.

Um looking at these numbers, we're all seeing costs go up.

You've you've said the costs go up.

If this is true, I am wondering if we could get a commitment to seeing that when departments give us information on things they want to fund, they're also giving us ways that they're going to save money or be more efficient or somehow reduce the amount of spending that they need for their programs, being prepared for a future where these numbers may not have been conservative enough.

Um so I know in one of the the council questions you mentioned that someone asked what uh what are the approaches to identifying programs that are outdated that will save town money, encourage innovation or lower cost alternatives.

Um I would I would love to see us looking at that, particularly if you do feel very confident about where things are at.

If we have confidence and things are good, I see that's a time to get ahead potentially.

So I would love to see where we're being efficient and being able to save money in in each of our departments.

And that idea of innovation, I think, is very important too, and it might tie in with what um Amy was saying, which is if if things are good, again it's a time for us to maybe focus on innovation.

So are there ways that we're not just going to fund the things as we've been doing them, but are there ways that we can invest in new ideas and new approaches that we're interested in, but also the community is interested in, and I think we all want to want to see happen.

So long story short, I would love to make sure that when departments are bringing us numbers for what they want to fund, there's also an opportunity there to hear where they might be able to save some money.

So it might be an opportunity for the manager's office to help encourage our departments to come forward with where these cost savings might come from.

I had something else, but I'll come back to it if there's an opportunity.

Can I respond to one original piece of that?

So I will say that we are in a little bit of a unique situation this year.

Our long-term budget gaps are not solved with what's happening this year.

I mean, I think what we the position we find ourselves in is that we have an exciting year and opportunity this year because of these additional revenue sources related to property taxes and sales tax growth.

But you know, we are still when we look at property tax growth over time, we're still really from new developments, only looking at one percent property tax growth for this year.

So the growth that we are sharing is really due to this from the reval.

Uh we do see some actual growth.

We were conservative with our sales tax estimates going into this year, and that was because when we were presenting a budget, we were seeing uh uh a decline in um sales tax numbers, and so we thought it was important to really um safeguard um and and just come in with a flat revenue, and so now we're seeing a little bit of growth there.

So the combination of those two is really providing an opportunity to make some progress in these funding areas and in some of our other priorities, and so we can take some of that feedback certainly into mind as we uh work on the development of the of the budget, but um it is not a long-term solution to um some of our growth needs.

Paris, I just remember the other thing real quick.

Can I finish?

Um we were also talking last year about the federal cuts and um other threats.

I mean, you talked about inflation as a threat, war even, which I think is weighing heavy in everybody's mind.

Um I feel like I would love to see a reminder of what these threats are, um particularly around federal funding cuts.

We saw that last year, we saw some numbers tied to that.

I would love to know where we're at on that.

I'm not sure where our community block rent money's at, or just I feel like we need to see to be reminded of where we were last year and what is the status of these external threats that are affecting us.

And I didn't see that in this presentation, and I would love to like specifically address where we're seeing um the threats to our to this picture going forward across the whole camp.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So did we ask for it?

Okay.

Um tech team.

Yeah, um, that's something that I'm very interested in as well.

Um is definitely online.

Another thing that I think kind of ties into some of the stuff that you talked about with regards to uh departments and budgets, and I think uh my question is directed towards you today because in the next steps departments to the manager, um and that is the kind of like behind the scene very regular type of stuff that we aren't necessarily privy to yet when you have on that line.

But um just thinking last year about our asks of department heads, what it would look like in a 10% cut just across the what would that look like and the the reporting back of that, the level of um detail and how sobering that was gave me a really good understanding of just how much our um department heads understand um what's going on budget-wise, like they're really on top of things, and so I'm just really interested in your new, like kind of like um even just kind of like being able to have a glimpse into like the process that you go through, um, how thorough it is or whatever, whatnot is kind of helpful for us in answering the questions that sometimes we have about what did you consider this, consider that, blah blah blah.

I feel like I got a really good glimpse of that from just how thorough it was from our department heads, um, but just understanding the process that you know you will go through with your department is um to help inform the budget that you then present to us, sometimes can be helpful in preceding some of the questions that we may have about what was slaughtered value and whatever, whatnot.

And I'm not sure how that can be presented to us or you know, give us a better understanding of the process and how you get to where you get to presenting things to us.

Am I making sense?

Well, I certainly'm hearing you, and um I'm thinking about what would be a useful way to communicate that work to you.

I don't know that I have an answer off the top of my head, but I certainly understand your interest uh and I'm reflecting uh back on council member member Mc McMahon's interest and sort of understanding the threats.

So maybe there's a way for a piece of the presentation to speak to the environment we're in, the threat environment categorically, and then also kind of how we respond, the types of things we consider and think about.

Um we'll we'll give that some thought because we certainly want you to understand as the governing board that we are um working diligently to try to deliver you value for the tax dollars we receive.

And another is like just another great reminder, too, of um how much federal dollar dollars we have tied up are at risk just revisiting that, um, where that stands, um any trends we see coming through with bills or whatever, because things are just moving so quickly right now, um, and it's hard to keep up.

Um, I'm sure you all are feeling that as well.

And so um, and I'm sure the public also wants to like have a real understanding of the scope of federal dollars and how that ties in with our priorities and the impact on budget.

So that would be really helpful as well.

Thank you.

Um I guess I have a follow-up or maybe a I don't know what, just uh another question for you.

Um Amy too, I guess.

But can you I guess if you can help us understand just kind of the overall process this year, I know you laid out the dates of when things are coming.

Um there were a lot of requests for information at the last budget work session, and so I'm wondering when we even see those um that information and how we I guess you know um I think there's I'm sure a really um reasonable question or conversation about what level of information is appropriate for the council to be at, right?

And I similarly do not want to go line by line, um, but I also feel every year I feel that we are ultimately accountable for the budget that's passed.

Um the voters, the residents expect us to know a lot about it and to be really confident in it and to understand the trends that are behind it or the like you know the threats and the um kind of where we stand in relation to other municipalities and other counties, what kind of the environment is, and I feel like I'm just having a hard time right now because I don't have that information.

So I don't always imagine that I have the perfect idea of what the right lane is for us, but I feel like I'm I guess I'm having a hard time with knowing how we even evaluate the recommended budget without some more information and data points and trends, or even understanding, you know, like if I'm looking at the five year and I know I'm really glad that we're not doing I'm as one of nine personally glad that we're not doing a tax increase this year because people were really overwhelmed last year, and we had raised taxes three years in a row.

So as much as I think that's wonderful, I I do want to use this year to still dig in and make sure that we're getting on a path to a more affordable way.

You know, we can afford anything if we raise taxes.

Um I don't want to keep doing that.

So I feel like we do need to be more seeing more about how we're gonna do that and how we're getting to sustainability.

Um, there's over five million dollars in increase right over the next four years.

Where is that coming from?

Um if this year's fine, great, but how but how does it all fit together?

And are there things we should be doing this year to prepare for the fact that we are anticipating a pretty big gap between what we're gonna have and what we need?

Um I guess I would just like to understand that big picture and and understand more about where we're trying to go.

It just I guess in the answers to council questions, it felt like there was a lot of like explaining that there are things happening, but we never see it, and so it's not that I doubt it.

I think that there's always really hard work going on, but when I can't see any of it, it's very hard for me to know if I'm comfortable with the budget or not, as you know, as just an individual voting number.

So if you could help kind of, I mean, it's partly a request, but also I'm really trying to understand like when do we get really educated and when do we see the big picture trends and when do we understand how we are situated right now?

Uh okay.

Uh we um I I guess my best answer to that is I think we need to go off and talk about what this could look like in terms of sharing information for the presentation to the for the budget.

And surely, council, I'm I mean, I think it's helpful to hear from others if that's an interest as well because I don't want to ask the staff to get a lot of you know the the data or things we requested, if that's like just me, then I can come in and maybe like you know get more information and not have the entire council requesting information, you know.

I don't want to request it on behalf of the board if people don't find it helpful or important.

Louie done maybe make sure I'll hear what you're saying, Jess.

Well, I heard is something that like we're curious and western a little bit more, like just can we get like we want to get more information about the federal rest to our budget to understand how it's gonna work now, what I produce like these threats maybe they're not sure now, but like we're gonna have this problem two years down the road if we do anything now.

Yeah, to make sure that we don't have these problems to do two years down the road.

Maybe we can, but like can we at least start thinking about it?

I think that's part of it.

I would just also like to understand like what are our projections on federal state county funding?

Like what is the big picture of what's coming in and what's going out, and how are we thinking about the five-year strategy?

Great, we're not raising taxes this year.

I I think that's very reasonable, but I'm wondering what that means for the next four years.

Um I think I'm just looking for more trends, more big picture information, and also kind of to Wes's point, like where are the opportunities for changing or shifting or finding new ways to do things.

Um, I still want to think about that stuff this year or advocate for those things this year, even if we're not in a dire situation.

I guess I just want to figure out how we're getting to sustainability in more than like here are numbers and we will get there somehow.

I think that's kind of so it's like more than that, but that's like really good example.

So I think I agree.

I think also people in China Global Five want to see those numbers because the tax increase last year was a big deal for a lot of people, and now we're gonna have different budget picture, like no budgets are flexible.

But I think people want to see like, oh, we thought we're gonna be in this situation, now we're in this situation.

So we can clearly communicate that to the public.

That would be helpful.

Just to hear um to your response, just like looking at staff responses and reading that what I heard over and over was departments evaluate their budget throughout the year.

They're constantly doing it.

Like we might consider it, you know, during a very specific time frame.

And I think what I'm hearing is I don't know, like getting an understanding of just the processes of how when it comes to us, how we get this recommended budget and feel confident in being able to even consider it.

And so and I think my last comments were really stressing how I feel very good about the way in which department heads are so on top of their budget, understanding the shortfalls, the cost increases, this is happening, these trains are coming down the line, we're you know very thin, there's no waste, um, all of those types of things, and so they're doing that throughout the year, and so even before they you know when they stand before you tent and present, um, there's a real grasp there.

I guess we're not in all of that, and so you're missing that's a gap for us in being able to accept a recommendation and how we got there because y'all are doing the stuff.

We just don't see I do necessarily get there, and I think we just want to like think a little bit of that, and then like you know, go back into our lane.

I think that's what I'm just trying to say.

Is that what you're coming to?

Yeah, I don't doubt that staff are evaluating it all year round long.

It's not like uh poking holes in staff's claims, like that's not my interest at all, and I actually am relying on staff's expertise because I don't um know, nor do I really ever want to know, like how are you planning for more, you know, like the bus the bus funding.

Like I want to I want to just see it, and I wouldn't doubt that that is happening, and it's wonderful.

It's just yes, we have to look at it to approve the annual budget.

There will be budget amendments, no doubt, but like in order to feel confident that we are doing our job well, I just need that information along with some other, you know, some other things, and it's not out of doubt or questioning of staff competence at all.

It's just you know, yeah, I so I think I agree.

Amy, yeah, and this I was listening to you guys talking, some of that's really rising to the level of making sure we understand strategies that are going on.

Yeah, so it's really here are the trends, right?

People are talking about what we're seeing, here are the concerns, things that may be coming down the line that are a problem, um, here are our goals, and then now, and then so this is the approach we're taking to to balancing all these things.

I think a lot of that is inherent in Amy's presentation, it's just maybe not spelled out that clearly.

Um I think thinking about it on a strategic level.

So when somebody asks us and says, well, you know, you guys just having to increase what are we doing with it?

It's like, well, you know, we're careful because we've got this coming down the line in two years, so we have to apply for that, and we're doing this other thing, and you know, we manage to catch up here.

So I think it's just really helpful for that kind of more strategic level thinking for us to be real clear about stuff that probably seems very second nature to you when we really do it.

Yeah, yeah, it's in y'all's heads because we can like have to be able to tell.

I just want to say I am curious about the strategies.

And I do want to doubt about one line, but there's that places me in doubt about the others.

Um as we say this will lead to fiscal sustainability.

I did be attention to those words.

Does it lead to does it lead to sustainability for each of these?

You're you're are we just going for we're gonna reach our number?

Or are we going that's gonna help the town be secure?

I don't want us to return to the place and we're not out of that that concerns.

I think that the public deserves to know the reality of where we are and what we're doing towards it.

I'm not advocating for a tax increase, so I'm glad to hear that what I want is to be sure that we're telling an accurate story.

And if it if you were to say, here we're not increasing, but that means that we're going to be this is the pay, this is the trade-off that we're making.

I think that we need to understand when the budget comes to force, the town, the manager's budget, that we understand some of the sacrifices, the trade-offs that we are committing to.

Did you want to add one more thing?

Um, I was just gonna say that.

Yeah, I was just saying, like what Amy was kind of like animal was like being able to like really communicate the narrative of how we got to um that may not always necessarily be clear to us from the hypothesis stuff.

Um we have to be able to communicate with confidence of that.

And sometimes we need a strategy to be able to do that of the why and how we land it, where we land it.

Um S and then VO.

Well, I mean, I mean new year, but I looked at our rolling agenda.

The work session for April 8th doesn't have anything on it.

Um maybe we could come up with using we're in budget season using a part of that work session to do a situational awareness or analysis or whatever it is we're deciding to that we want to hear, strategy, situation, and find some time at that work session um to do that.

Steve I was gonna underscore things I think I'm hearing, one of which is that um for any presentation like this, which is for us and for the public, that a connection of last year's budget presentation is always helpful of what we thought we were gonna see and what we are seeing now.

That reminder of okay, we did a tax increase here here.

I mean, to me, one of the buried lists in here is we needed more revenue to spend on things.

What is the report of all the spending that we did and how valuable it was, and how what the things are that we were providing, uh that that revenue doesn't sort of disappear when people feel it uh or see it on their bill that it it is spent on things or people or whatever.

And it baked into that, I think as I listen to my colleagues talk about how we explain to really interested parties.

I'm thinking about two groups that we know are gonna come and ask us to find money for them.

One of them is the uh bike and productivity group that is put in their newsletter that they're gonna come and make an ask, and the other is the affordable housing coalition, which comes every every year and makes an ask.

And those are both groups that watch very carefully to see what's getting funded, and having any sort of persuasive explanation, I think depends um, I mean, there's sort of two ways to go about it.

One way is to say we have these processes.

I mean, I remember I haven't looked on the on the new website, but on the old one, the business reports for the departments were posted, and I used to read them.

Um, and and they're public info.

Anybody can find them and read them.

They have qualitative and quantitative components that are available that's a lot of level of detail.

I'm not surprised they don't wind up in our packet, but um it's not hidden, it's public, uh, or it certainly was in the old website.

Um, but the other thing I would say is there's some amount of money that I think functionally and who you are will influence your perception of what goes in this category.

There's some amount of money that's like we can't move this.

You know, if we if we move the money, I'll just take an example.

Uh, you know, if we took money that's going to the FTEs for the buses, the buses don't run because no one's driving them.

Like that's sort of unmovable money, or it's an enormous conversation about like why we would make that change.

And that's a perfect example because there's other funding partners whose funding is tied to what we do with transit.

So like that would be a massive decision.

There are probably other things we're doing that are valuable, but the money is more fungible because it's it's value that the council might have a conversation and say this is valuable, and with finite resources, there are other things we value more, and I think being set up to really look sort of broadly at what falls into that fungible category is interesting, particularly given that we know that there are at least these two.

I mean, there's probably multiple groups, but those two in particular are gonna come and say, like that stuff is not actually fungible.

That stuff is mission critical, and I think we often get into this conversation about what our core services are, and they're also, I mean, for each of us and for each of the residents, there are things everybody has their own unique configuration of what they believe the core services to be, and so the more precision we can provide in those categories and in what we're spending on.

I mean, to the mayor's point, a line item budget does not, I mean, I can't imagine the meetings we would have going over a line item budget, but then when we are wanting to explain, okay, there was a tax increase on what we spend it on, unless there is some level of precision, because there is no explanation that's possible other than other than trust us, and I tend to fall on the I do trust side, but then as an explainer and as a former teacher, like it's you know, there's no less persuasive grammatical or mathematical explanation than trust me, like if someone is confused, that is the least helpful thing you can get.

And so I think I think what we're hearing is a lot of people expecting to have conversations with folks who are confused or disbelieving and looking for the information that sets them up to be able to give accurate and intelligible and plausible explanations.

So I hope that makes sense as a thing.

So hopefully that will help for the excess fund balance conversation, if that's what yeah.

So maybe I'm misremembering.

Yes, there were probably some bigger picture budget questions.

We we have responses to all the questions that were asked.

That will go with the next item just so that it's in context for the ongoing conversation for that item, and we can revisit any of that that's pertinent to the ongoing budget discussions.

I think this has been helpful feedback that we can uh take and um figure out how best to accumulate the information so that we can provide some level of response to you in advance of the recommended budget item, uh whether that be in with the packet or ahead of that.

I think we just need to have a conversation about what that staff resources needed to accumulate all of that.

So we can do that, but I think that um the information is very helpful, and um I feel good about having a discussion offline to figure out how best to present this.

Thank you.

And I would I mean it was it's always helpful for me to have it with uh with a deck and with you so I can ask questions.

Um that's just um, but I understand it's a lot.

Um there's definitely uh staffing uh work considerations, no doubt.

Um Louis?

Um just to follow up quickly on the core services conversation.

It'd be nice if we could say those which are legally mandated, yeah.

And then those that we had our expressions of values in chapel hill because those are not the same.

That's right.

Um I also I think um Amy's interest about complete community something.

I I share that interest, and I guess I'm wondering too if there's any other I know that we did our um our strategic planning for the year, and um I'm hoping too that we'll see the ways that the was it four items that came out as our strategic goals for the year.

I'm just wondering if we can see too how those are being addressed really quickly.

I mean, I'm assuming that's coming, but I think it would be helpful to understand what the trade-offs there are or what the kind of proposed way of doing that is because I think there's more than one way to do that, so it would be helpful to understand what the proposed kind of strategy is.

But um, is there any other kind of feedback or information that you were hoping to get from us this evening?

So, like that's plenty okay.

Um thank you very much, and I think overall um we of course always appreciate you, we appreciate all the work you do, and I think there's a lot of um kind of curiosity about getting that bigger picture and the strategy and the trends, but um we can figure that out as um offline.

So thank you.

And thank you to your team as well.

Um next up is item number two, which is our stormwater program.

And I believe Lance Norris and Chris Roberts are here.

Hello.

No, it's not movable.

Can you do the slides?

I can okay.

I can come back and do my books too.

Good evening, Mayor Council.

My name is Lance Norris, I'm your public works director.

Uh I'm here with Mayor Robinson, our community uh education coordinator.

Uh Chris Roberts, who's in the back of the room, who's our manager of engineering and infrastructure.

Also, we have uh Tom Murray and uh Darrell Hammett uh from Madura, formerly known as WK Dickson.

We hear the follow-up on our January 20, 2005 stormwater discussion.

2005, please.

I mean 2025.

Sorry.

No, 2025.

So the agenda of the day is to uh do a uh overview of the master plan.

Um we're gonna talk about um uh green and natural infrastructure.

Um we're gonna have uh data and analysis from Maduro, and um we're gonna have some uh question and answer sessions uh thank you around some of the questions that the council has posed um back in January 2025, and probably some of the emails that we received uh here lately.

Uh we're gonna talk about next steps, and then we can open it up for council any new questions you may have.

Um things we want to talk about, you can try to is um you know we can through this process, we can lessen flooding, but we can't stop it.

I think that's something we just need to talk about.

We'll cover that uh through the uh program.

We've got some experience with that lazy with shot out, right?

Um although our master plan um doesn't specifically call out green infrastructure.

We're gonna talk about how it was in there, and we got a follow-up on it because they did our sub watershed study and can talk about those uh projects and how they fit there category, and then um we want to talk about an interesting part of the land use, I mean the subwatership study and the products that we talked about is really defined by the land that we own.

Um I know we've talked about the different categories of storm, 2010-year, 25 year, 50 year, 100-year.

Um, but we we focused on the land that the town owned, and there's also funding constraints that go along with that.

Um, and so um you can specify that.

I'll turn it over to Meryl to uh give us the master plan overview, and then we'll move on to Endura.

Oh, yeah.

Good evening, Mary Council.

Uh my name is Merrill Robinson.

I'm the stormwater community education coordinator.

I have a background in education.

I was a teacher for six years before I did a career switch.

Um I grew up playing in Creeks, and when I went back to school here at UNC, I got really interested in watershed planning and in stormwater management.

Um so as an opportunity to learn more about stormwater management.

I did my master's project uh on stormwater, and I learned a lot through that process, and I I worked through a lot of the documents that Chapel Hill has that we're gonna talk about tonight.

Um, so I'm at least familiar with those, and I have worked through them on my own and wrestled with them.

Um I love to learn and I love to share what I learned, so I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be here with you tonight.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the master plan was adopted by council in 2014.

It was developed by Jewel and Associates Consulting.

It was informed by a pretty lengthy community community engagement process before it was adopted.

It is strategic and a high level, but under each of the 10 high level goals that it has, there are objectives that are action steps and actionable to help map the road to achieving the objectives.

There are recommendations for implementation included in it.

There are also identifications of funding ease in the master plan.

Goal one of the master plan was create a master plan.

But goals two and three are address water quantity and address water quality.

So address flooding and address water quality.

So those are front and center in the 10 goals that the master plan lays out.

And the master plan does a really good job of representing the goals at a high level and the objectives as ways to get there, but not being overly prescriptive about what needs to happen on the ground.

The decisions about what's gonna happen on the ground are really left open to what fits the context of the situation the best at the time.

Yeah, next slide.

So the master plan is just one piece of the puzzle.

The stormwater master plan is a document that was adopted in 2014.

It's the high-level strategic document with the goals and objectives.

But one of the things that it called for in the objectives, and that means several of the goals, is that we study our subwatersheds and then we find out what's going on in them.

So the subwatershed studies, when we talk about when we use the phrase like stormwater plan, sometimes we mean the master plan.

Sometimes when people say stormwater plan, they're talking about the subwatershed studies, which are planning documents in that they provide the information and the recommendations that help us decide what to do next.

And those are ongoing.

We've completed two, correct?

We've got two completed.

Out of those subwatershed studies come the prioritized projects, which is also ongoing, and those project prioritization lists give us the day-to-day, year to year, on the ground maintenance and construction, what we're actually going to do.

Yeah.

So one of my goals tonight is to hopefully provide some helpful context and background for the types of infrastructure and some of the terms you might find in our various plans if you go digging, which I did, including how green infrastructure shows up in our master plan and some of our other planning documents.

And I think it's useful to think about how infrastructure functions in terms of whether it's controlling the rate of flow, the volume, the quality, all the different things that we could do.

And one of the things that we can also do is give back some of the uh the natural function that the land has, and that's where the green infrastructure piece comes in.

I'm gonna do a little bit of a shift here, and I am gonna ask, yeah, I'm gonna do a little bit of shift, so pause, and I'm gonna go over to the whiteboard and show you some of the terms that we're gonna see in some of our plans.

And I've been instructed that I have to carry the microphone in the place.

This is gonna be here.

I think I have to hold it.

This is good.

I don't really want to block the screen.

Oh, this is all things off like that.

All right.

Yeah.

Oh, that's not a property thing.

It's just gonna take me a second.

I am used to holding things in my future.

Not used to trade.

So we're gonna see how this goes.

Bear with me.

Alright.

Alright, so imagine with me.

Uh, in order to understand the types of infrastructure, the way we think of it in stormwater is that infrastructure kind of falls on a um like a continuum.

And I'm gonna make a line here from sort of the bottom of this whiteboard all the way up to the top.

And I'm gonna have an arrow at the top because it can it's gonna keep going past the very top.

Um, and at the very top, or yeah, at the very top here, outside of this line that we're gonna be talking about tonight, would be like completely undisturbed, never developed land, which doesn't exist here.

But one of the things I really wanted to make a point of is we can take some of the functions that that natural undisturbed never developed land had and give it back.

So we can give back some of that function.

And when we're talking about those functions, we're talking about things like the water cycle being able to run its course.

We're talking about things like uh groundwater recharge.

We're talking about you know, wetlands being able to absorb water.

We're talking about ecosystem services like trees and carbon sequestration and all that stuff.

All that can happen here, and now that we've developed, there are places where we could build some of that back in.

In contrast, all the way here at the bottom where I've got this like line, we're gonna have a section here that is kind of the opposite.

So this is gonna be where we have our um switch color colors.

This is we're gonna have our conveyance only, which means all it's doing is carrying water from one place to another.

It's gonna be made generally of like concrete, metal.

You can imagine.

In the backyard version of this is anybody knowing gutter.

Yeah, curving gutters.

So the curvy gutter system that you see on most roadways, that's strictly conveyance, it doesn't really give any natural function back.

Uh but it is for your purpose, it's moving water from one place to another.

Um, so that's down here on the area that we're gonna say is traditionally called gray infrastructure.

Excuse my E not looking like any gray infrastructure, and most of what we build isn't strictly gray infrastructure, even if it has gray components.

Kind of the next thing up here within kind of this spectrum of gray infrastructure, but a little bit less conveyance only is something like underground detention.

Or maybe even underground infiltration systems, so this would be where we would go in and we would like you know bury uh a volume storage underground.

It doesn't really give the water back to the groundwater unless it's infiltrating, and then maybe it can come out of the system and get a little bit back into the groundwater, but it's not really, it doesn't have plants, it's not really providing habitat, it's not really restoring that all those ecosystem services.

But it does serve purpose, it is detaining water, and it is helping us manage the volume or the rate of the stormwater.

Then getting out of the sort of gray infrastructure, we're kind of moving up here into a pretty big area of what is often called green infrastructure, and I'm using the green marker, um, hoping that it you know nicely corresponds to the fact that it's green infrastructure.

And with angry infrastructure, a little bit up from these, you know, underground detention facilities, for example, would be something like maybe like an infiltration trench, and maybe a bioretention area, like a rain garden, for example, and for context over here.

Oh, could we go to the next slide?

Thank you.

Sorry, I'm gonna have these pictures up for you.

Um for context, that rain garden that we're talking about.

This one up here is at Hargraves, so that is green, it's got plants.

It's got the word bio in it.

The word bio means plants.

And this roadside bioswale, it does have some plants.

But this all falls into what we would consider green infrastructure.

I would go ahead and add like swales of any type, whether they're bio or not.

You'll notice that a lot of these, all of these, tend to be smaller scale.

They tend to treat a smaller area.

And they tend to focus on quality over quantity.

So things like the rain garden, things like the roadside bioswell, this area.

This is going to be treating water from a very small area.

It might help with maybe just flooding on an intersection corner, but it's not really moving the needle on flooding overall.

However, it does have really real water quality impacts.

And that's pretty typical of most of what we consider green infrastructure.

Moving up, we're heading towards something that these are all sort of terms that you can Google, but there's a lot of different terms that you'll see out there.

There's a spectrum of infrastructure up here that we're gonna call natural infrastructure.

And natural infrastructure is about as close as we can get in man-made infrastructure to returning to this natural undeveloped state.

We can't fully go back, but we can do a lot to get close.

So kind of coming up from this green infrastructure, going into the natural infrastructure, we might have something like uh like a constructed wetland.

And for context, this here is uh a mock-up of a constructed wetland.

This may actually be a real one, it's hard to tell, but we are that a constructed wetland is proposed as part of the Legion Road property.

So this is an option that we are looking at as a town, um, and these are things that you'll see in areas like ours.

Um even further.

You would have uh things like floodplain reconnections and restorations, and probably like stream restorations.

And one other thing that's a few things that to note about these they tend to do both, have water quality and quantity benefits.

They also, especially constructed wetlands and like floodplain reconnections where the wire really has more space to spread out, these tend to operate on a larger scale.

So they tend to operate on like a neighborhood or like a subwatershed or even a watershed scale, depending on how big they are.

Um they also like because we're doing everything we can to make these as close to this undisturbed, never developed state, they tend to be a little more self-sustaining.

And by that I mean they don't require quite as much maintenance.

A lot of these green infrastructure uh installations have engineered soils or they have drains that allow the water to come out, especially here where we have a lot of clay.

These take a little bit more maintenance.

These tend to take a little bit less.

There's a little bit more of an upfront cost and investment in those, but they tend to sustain themselves once they revegetate themselves with native plants, once we revegetate them with NATO plants.

Um the other thing that I want to leave you with before we before I leave the board, is that this is the spectrum, and just because it's in green infrastructure doesn't mean it doesn't have a gray component, even if it's in the natural infrastructure, sometimes there's a gray component, right?

Like a constructed wetland like this, is designed to move the water very slowly through this mimicked natural landscape and still come out through outlet structure very often.

Something like a stream restoration may not have any gray components.

It's still man-made, so the distinction sort of starts to become you know very small there.

Um I think I'm gonna um we have to transition away from the camera is good.

Okay.

So here we go.

So this is sort of a summary of what you just heard from me.

Very high level summary of what you just heard from me.

Um there is a spectrum of infrastructure, including green and natural that we do have in our plans.

It shows up in our plans, and that we look to implement when we can, depending on the context.

Uh, if you get really curious, like I did when I was going through the plans myself, um, you can find how some of these different types of infrastructure show up by kind of like I mean, honestly, you can kind of control that some of these key terms.

You can look for things like wetlands, restoration, preservation, stabilization, swales, buffers, bioretention, kind of any of these things that you've heard me talk about and find where they show up.

You will start to see that a lot of the smaller decentralized options show up in the sections of our plans that are specifically talking about water quality.

Um there are a few exceptions to that, but they do that.

That is the sort of general pattern.

You will also find that these more large scale projects, like thick constructed wetlands, like the floodplain reconnection, which actually really like to show you that again.

I didn't point to this, but this is the Booker Creek Basin Park working as it was intended as a floodplain.

So this is where the creek came out of its banks, it flooded, it's passing over all this vegetation, hopefully slowing down, losing some of its sediment.

Um those types of projects like the constructed wetland, like the floodplain reconnection, um tend to show up in the sections that are addressing both quantity and quality, and they tend to operate on a larger scale.

Um I think that's where I'm getting it.

I think to talk more about the options that we have and the costs and benefits, I'm gonna turn it over to Daryl.

Thank you so much.

I guess you don't need to have literally gonna hand it over again.

What's that?

Yeah, just quickly before we I I enjoyed that part, but like climate makes all that different.

Like, you know, questions of climate change makes everything on the board different.

And like, you know, it's I know it's hard, but like explicit consideration of like how climate changes, even like green infrastructure costs and natural infrastructure effectiveness in the long run seems to be like something we also need to like think about.

So, like, yeah, I appreciate the primer, but it's like that's like another factor that's just always in the background to me.

Do you mean because of like precipitation uh changes?

Oh, sorry.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Yeah, precipitation changes, but also if you think about like natural infrastructure, like our climate and our ecosystem zones are changes.

So, like what could have been considered a natural system for this area may not be that natural system in 15, 20 years.

Yeah, it's like if we think about like I can see the cost associated with natural infrastructure as we see it going up and it costs the cost of green infrastructure is gonna go up.

It's already expensive.

Like we don't talk about that enough.

But like I see that cost also going up with climate.

So like that's just an MI background in terms of like general information if we think about like this really great presentation you gave us.

Yeah, thank you for the thought.

I appreciate that.

Um I think I think that's probably I'm gonna leave that one to the experts.

Uh but thank you for the thought and and I appreciate it.

Thanks, Maryland.

Good evening, uh council and mayor.

I am Daryl Hammock with Art Dura.

I'm Daryl Hamlet with Arduro.

Uh having been with Ardura a heck of a long time.

I recently wrapped up a 30-year career with Charlotte Mecklenburg Stormwater Services as a public uh stormwater manager.

Uh I was lucky enough to touch about just about every aspect of that program from designing multi-million dollar flood control projects for around 10 years to leading the surface water quality program and watership restoration program for about 10 years.

And then ultimately over the last 10 years was uh primarily focused on leadership and uh which covered all aspects of water quality and water quantity.

Before we get uh go into the details of the studies that have been done, I just want to make sure that everyone gets a good sense of what a watershed is.

The land area where rain falls before flowing downhill and collects in a small stream is a watershed, right?

Oftentimes they're named.

Water flows downstream typically into larger river watersheds like the Cape Fear watershed.

And so just want to make sure everyone has a general sense of what we're talking about when we describe a watershed.

It's an area that is a catchment that collects water and routes it to a creek or a stream and then onto rivers.

A little bit about Booker Creek, it's around six square miles, mostly residential land use.

So having spent a long time with Charlotte Mecklenburg, I can tell you that most communities do face flooding challenges.

And these diff and these fixes are really difficult in the context of a town that has been developed, has been built upon.

There's roads and residences and private property owners all over.

Some of the challenges that are faced are things like buildings being placed along creeks in harm's way, pipes that have been put in streams long ago that were often undersized when they were put in.

And now as we've added impervious surfaces like roads and rooftops, that impervious uh has only exacerbated problems with those flooding, uh flooding pipes.

So just kind of unwinding these problems in a constructed environment can be very difficult and costly.

So anytime we want to spend money on these things, we have to make sure we have clear benefits and costs associated with it.

So stormwater managers have some tools available to them to address these things.

Uh each solution has its own viable set of things that can be done to fix it.

Sometimes that means larger pipes.

It can mean floodproofing a property by elevating it and raising it above the flood elevation.

It could be buying out and demolishing a building to get it away from uh harm because it never should have perhaps been built there in the first place.

Another thing that Merrill just mentioned a moment ago is stormwater control measures that capture and slowly release uh runoff over time.

Those can be very helpful.

Um but these nature-based stormwater control measures are public infrastructure, and so when you are using them to rely to provide public benefits like flood control and public safety, they have to be maintained, they have to be inspected, and from time to time they have to be rebuilt and reconstructed.

So ultimately, um the availability of low-cost and high benefit projects drives a lot of public investments.

In an urban context, typically that means fitting fewer and larger stormwater control measures instead of smaller ones because of reasons of upfront cost, performance, and long-term maintenance.

So I want to make sure you understand how much space you need to store rain that comes from the sky.

Okay.

If you think about a uh six-inch rainfall that falls and covers over uh Booker Creek, um, most of that's gonna end up being runoff, right?

Imagine a storm that comes really quickly in an afternoon, you get six inches, it dumps on the watershed, um, not a lot of it's gonna soak into the ground, most of it's gonna run off into the creeks really quickly, and um six inches is gonna create 664 million gallons of water, which is enough to fill Keenan five times, right?

It's gonna happen in just a few hours, it's gonna be full.

Something has to be done with that water.

Currently, it goes through homes and businesses.

Um, we hope to find ways to do that differently.

Um, it quickly becomes evident that we need a place to store this stuff, um, and it's very difficult, as I said, in a place that's already developed with a lot of constraints.

Um in 2018 there was a study to address flooding.

Um the microphone, I don't think it's working.

I was asking you to just stand in here.

Oh, okay.

It's hard.

How's that?

Is that better?

You just have to be closer.

Okay.

All right.

So uh in 2018, um there was uh the study that Ardura completed, um, used the available tools that stormwater managers have to them to uh identify opportunities.

Some of those included increased pipe capacity, stormwater control measures as I mentioned.

And then these opportunities were prioritized based on public benefit, public safety, flood reduction, water quality benefit, avoiding tree impacts.

They also considered things like construction cost and land acquisition costs.

And so as you can kind of see from these images, a lot of opportunities were passed over due to lack of benefit for high costs.

Digging into that recommendation a little bit more closely.

It included nature-based stormwater controls that store runoff, like floodplain reconnection and flood storage.

It included larger pipes, completed stream stabilization, and projects like constructive wetlands, which you just learned about.

And so collectively, if all these were built, they would provide partial risk reduction to the flooded properties in Booker Creek.

At a prior meeting, there were several questions that were listed out to be answered.

I'm going to try to address each of those with you for you tonight.

Some of those were what are the cumulative benefits if all the projects are completed.

I'm going to introduce you to FEMA's cost benefit tool as part of that.

What's the performance of Booker Creek Basin Park?

Has been a question.

What's the benefits and costs of Red Bud Lane project is implemented?

And what are the benefits and costs of small scale retrofits?

So first off, I want to introduce you to the FEMA's cost benefit tool.

It's the standard used nationally for evaluating flood mitigation projects.

But I want you to know that most local infrastructure projects will not achieve a benefit ratio over one using this tool.

And the reason for that is that the tool is aimed at FEMA's goals of reducing insured structural damages, right?

This is levered to insurance, right?

And insurance claims.

So in the local environment, a lot of times we're focused on things like flooded streets, things like culverts being washed away during a flood, and other property damages like flooded cars.

None of those things are insured structural damages.

But still, a lot of municipalities still build projects that get benefit cost ratios of less than one for these reasons.

Cumulatively, I want to speak to uh all these projects.

Uh but first, no single project can reduce the flooding that happens at Eastgate.

All right, it's going to take a lot of projects to make a cumulative impact.

So what we're seeing is that if you implement all of these projects, you're going to see about a 2.1 foot reduction in flood elevations, which is substantial, at a cost of around $17 million, which is also substantial.

That $17 million number does not include land costs, which could also elevate or increase that 17 million beyond that.

The benefit cost ratio is 0.8.

And remember that's levered to insured structural damage.

There, you're going to see some pretty substantial reductions in flood depths at these locations as a results of these projects, right?

That's going to be the storms that you're going to see have about 10% chance of happening in any given year.

But as you move to the right, those benefits decrease because those storms are much bigger, but they're also much more rare.

Furthermore, if you need to understand more about how the 17 million dollars was arrived, um here are the the costs, estimated costs for each of the individual projects throughout the watershed.

Can you go back to that one, please?

Will we get these slides?

I think so.

Could we get them emailed to us?

Now can we have them digitally?

You got some of these.

I got your email from Brittany.

Oh?

Never mind.

Keep going.

Oh, maybe that's one of those more.

Yes, sir.

You saw these slides?

Yeah.

I never saw this part of it.

Yes, there's slides.

Yeah, or a couple of things.

Yeah, these are not in that slide.

There were a couple of slides.

I saw this before this.

I don't know where.

Thank you.

We just want to make sure that we can get this info.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Let's move on to one of the other questions, which was the costs and benefits of Booker Creek Park.

An improvement was made here a couple of years ago to reduce flooding at the shopping center.

From our most recent analysis, we were able to confirm that the flood depths there were reduced by about six inches to eight inches.

And that cost of that improvement was around 1.6 million dollars.

Over the long term, as this area re-establishes, they're going to be continued and meaningful benefits to surface water quality here as a result of this work as well.

Speaking of the cost and benefits of the Red Bud Lane project, which is another question.

And that alone, the fact I think Lance mentioned it early on, is that the fact that the town owns these lands already makes it an opportunity to look at.

This spot was originally built as a stormwater control measure decades ago.

And if we invest in it and enhance it, we can get an additional 30% flow reduction by improving it at a cost of 1.7 million dollars.

That's for the Red Bud Lane project, as well as a culvert replacement immediately downstream on Honeysuckle Drive.

Again, the benefits here are less flooding over the street, less flooding in the townhomes to the tune of about eight-inch reduction, and surface water quality benefits.

Lastly, I'll mention that it's also going to need to be a project at Daily Road, also on town on the property, which would further reduce flood damages at the apartments.

One of the other questions that needed to be asked or need to be answered was related to Red Bud Lane.

It's customary for projects like this to try to avoid high quality trees and avoid trees in general and to replant them once they have been removed.

So as the town proceeds with design, what we would recommend is refining the ecological evaluation that's occurred so far.

It's going to enable comparison of current and future values of the ecosystem and benefits of things like air quality that have not been looked at explicitly so far.

It'll also help us identify trees that we can avoid.

It'll identify wetlands, it'll identify sensitive plant and animal habitats.

So ultimately we can balance flood reductions with the long-term gains that we see.

This was a question about to the extent that it can be used to address flooding.

This area of Booker Creek watershed, uh, this neighborhood area was selected as the most conducive to these small-scale retrofit projects.

And the reason for that is the streets are wider, the lots are larger, which allows a lot more room for these retrofits to exist on private properties.

What we did was we analyzed the benefits of three types of alternatives in tandem all at once, which was retrofitting residences with stormwater control devices, retrovitting public streets with stormwater control devices, and retrofitting a portion of the parking lot at the town homes with a stormwater control measure.

And so the result of that was if we are able to retrofit 43 homes with both rain gardens and porous driveways, retrofit seven public street locations with these street-side rain gardens, and I show here in the pictures to the right.

And if you remove and replace the parking area of the town home complex with 7,800 square feet of porous pavement, which is shown in the bottom right, umulatively, all that work would cost around $4 million, but it would have virtually no effect on flooding.

These small devices capture about one quarter of one inch of rain.

As I said earlier on, we're looking to address something like six, seven, eight inches of rain in a single day.

They'll only capture about a quarter of it, and that is not so great for flood control, but it is really good for water quality benefits.

And so these devices would impact our benefit in creeks.

And so with that, I think that wraps up what we had.

Then there's the set the questions and answers that's right.

Okay.

Yeah.

This was on yeah.

Again, uh, good evening.

My name is Tom Murray.

I'm also worth uh Ardura.

I've been uh working with the town for several years on these projects, and we just wanted to uh answer a few questions uh that have been uh posed to us and try to provide some additional clarification.

So the first one is is Booker Creek a basin, is it a floodplain reconnection?

How does it how does it actually work?

And so uh it's important to understand that uh Booker Creek Basin is not a or the floodplain reconnection project, is not a pond.

Uh if you go out on a sunny day, the water is in the stream just flowing naturally.

Uh during rainfall events, the objective is for uh the runoff to be reconnected to the floodplain.

So then the water comes out of the stream bank, uh, it gets into the floodplain, uh, the water slows down, some infiltration occurs, and it creates uh uh again that connection back to uh the floodplain, which is a more natural state for our stream systems uh is again is to have that connectivity.

Um, typically when we talk about a basin or a wet tension pond, uh it usually holds water permanently.

Uh there's usually some type of uh dam embankment or control structure uh that holds back the water.

Uh you can think about some of the larger uh lakes in the watershed like Ellen, uh Eastwood Lake uh and and uh detention ponds for for product development would be uh considered uh considered basins.

Uh typically these structures, again, they hold back water, they collect sediment, uh, and then uh the water is discharged back into the creek.

So obviously uh we know there's been a lot of questions about uh tree loss with these types of projects.

Uh so when you look at uh stream restoration projects, floodplain reconnection projects, to be able to reconnect the streams back to the floodplain, uh there can often uh be required to have uh tree removal as part of that process.

Again, what happens to the streams over time is because of development, because of water moving off of imperfect surfaces quickly, is the streams start to downcut and and erode.

So the stream gets deeper and wider uh than a natural system, and you lose that connection between the stream and the floodplain.

That brings water down the watershed much quicker uh to uh the Eastgate area and to the downstream uh areas that are uh that are at risk.

So when tree, so the first thing we do as Daryl mentioned in the ecological evaluation is look for ways to where we can uh avoid and minimize disturbance to uh the most critical uh features uh within that uh within that environment.

So we do look first to uh protect, minimize and avoid uh the tree loss that is required uh as part of the project is temporary, and then vegetation uh re-vegetation does occur.

So these types of projects have very uh dense revegetation plans.

That obviously does take time for that revegetation uh to occur.

As part of these projects, we do look to uh remove what are called invasive species.

So those are species that uh are not native uh to Chapel Hill and to this area.

So we always do try to identify those invasive species and remove them as as part of these projects.

Uh in urbanized watersheds, uh managing invasive species uh does require uh maintenance uh over time to be able to continue to make sure that uh they do not overtake the native uh the native vegetation that we look for.

Uh this can result in a net gain of forest cover and better conditions for future tree growth, but again, that does that does take time uh for that to occur.

Um you can often uh see results long term for a healthier uh native riparian forest.

Uh and this is uh this is a uh a lot of illustrative uh example of the succession of regrowth over time uh that that can occur in these types of projects.

This is not specific to uh Chapel Hill or these uh projects in general, but this is uh to give you an idea of how that uh succession uh typically occurs uh over uh over a long period of time.

This is this is the one where I get to speak for a second.

So I was talking to a colleague today, and I he said, how you know how's your day going?

I said, Well, it started out at the General Assembly, where I heard some uh state representatives say they just didn't know what we spent our money on, and that we needed to limit towns' abilities to raise revenue because they needed to protect the taxpayers from us.

Um that was a little frustrating.

We we we we stayed in our seats, and we know that that this the same people, these taxpayers, they're the people that we serve every day.

So we I mean we care about them as much as the General Assembly does.

So we also probably more so.

We probably know them better, we may know them better.

Uh, and we deliver direct services to them every day.

So and uh they know who our local elected leaders are and and and tend to understand what we're doing with a revenue.

Um so I started my day with that, and then I had a I talked to another colleague doing later in the day, and mentioned this meeting, and they said, Oh, that sounds like a doozy talking about stormwater.

You got people who are pretty pretty interested in this topic, and particularly some of the folks uh who may have been concerned about some of the projects that might impact their particular neighborhood some years ago, and they might come out, they might share their concerns.

He said, So you're gonna stay out of this, right?

So you're not gonna stick your neck out, and uh they said, don't spend any political capital on this.

You know, let just just sit back and watch, and then uh and and I said, Well, you don't know me very well, do you?

And they were kidding, uh, of course.

Um but what I do want you to know, I I am willing to invest my personal political capital, my professional reputation uh on trying to solve community problems, and this is a challenging community problem.

Uh uh there's there's this fits into the the category that you you all have seen before, which is um there is no one right answer that's gonna satisfy everyone.

There's there's there's there's different values here, uh and there are gonna be some people who are not uh happy with whichever direction you choose.

Uh but this governing board over the past few years has lived that world when it comes to affordable housing, as a big challenging issue, and it still is a big challenging issue, and and there are some people in this community who uh view the work you're doing there as helpful uh uh with a purpose to uh meet the moment uh of a of a very difficult uh affordability crisis.

But I know there are probably some out there who still kind of don't like what's going on because they they envision the community to look a certain way, and you know, we're seeing some big buildings going up in some places, and that that's still got people concerned.

I know you all know this, and you you you live this.

So back to the issue at hand.

Uh whichever way we go, you will not satisfy everyone.

Uh but uh in my opinion, uh the community has spoken that flooding is something they'd like to do to deal with at some level.

They certainly want you to be responsible.

Uh they want it to be you know intentional work, uh and we we've we know we can't solve the big floods, we just can.

It's not possible.

So it's a cost-benefit thing as to what level of investment uh do you uh as the governing board think is appropriate uh to address the the issues that the community has expressed over the years that they'd like to be addressed.

What level of investment do you think is appropriate?

What is the maximum benefit?

Good evening, library patron.

The time is now 7.50.

The library closet in 10 minutes at 8 o'clock.

Please wrap up your work, make your final collection, see a staff member, again it is 750.

The library closes in 10 minutes.

Thank you.

Well, I guess we're adjourned.

Uh so I I just want you to know that I am gonna stick my neck out and invest some political capital and say that I believe that your staff and their engineers are presenting uh thoughtful, reasonable, professional uh recommendations uh to uh speak to the uh ongoing flood issues that it is a well integrated um plan, uh a thoughtful master plan.

Sure, each project's gonna have some design issues that need to be addressed.

Uh I I would expect this to you know maximize uh you know thoughtfulness and and and protection of adjacent property owners, but some people are still gonna be upset if anything's done you know near their home or neighborhood.

That's just a reality.

And so um, but I I think that we're that this is responsible, and then finally you still get to make the call, even if I think it's the right thing to do, and your staff thinks it's the right thing to do, um it's ultimately a political decision, and we are here to serve uh the interests uh expressed to us by council and that you hear from the public.

So, with that framing, uh I would say, do we need a new master plan?

I don't think you're going to get anything new out of doing another master plan.

We are confident that the the master plan we have speaks to the to the issues that we've identified, speaks to the community's interests.

Uh I I don't think that if you spent more money on a different plan with a different consultant, you would get uh somehow a different outcome.

There's there are there are no secret answers to this.

The the laws of physics and gravity and the topography that we have in town, that's what drives where the water goes, how fast it moves, where it can be stored.

Um we've already spoken to the uh alternative ideas of um small scale uh and and localized projects and and agree that those have a place.

They absolutely do, and they um uh can be useful in dealing with uh problems in on individual lots or in individual neighborhoods with particular spot issues, they can't deal with the huge volume of water uh that are that that create the flooding issues.

Um if you have some specific interests in tweaking the plan, uh we can amend the plan.

We've already going to be talking about, I think, in some concluding slides that providing some more technical assistance to to individual property owners uh that might help them with those kind of uh uh programs.

I know we had um Carborough uh you know was referenced uh as a place that has a grant that could provide some technical assistance and some neighborhood level um work uh and so uh you know we can we can uh move in that direction.

Uh we already do provide some of that um staff support, it's not widely advertised, we could do a better job of communicating that.

Uh but again, that's not the big what do we do with the flooding issue.

Uh so with that, I I would say that the subwatershed studies as we continue to move forward and update them and move upstream.

Uh there that's the way to move the needle on on this issue.

Um and and I'm I'm I'm I'm saying to you that you know, in my professional opinion, I've I've I've looked at this, I've I've tried to find, you know, is there some other uh magic scenario that will really do it?

And I I don't it doesn't really seem obvious to me, and I I've been doing this work myself and uh three other uh larger municipalities uh starting in 2000, and I've um sponsored several stream uh floodplain reconnection and stream restoration projects in an adjacent jurisdiction, and uh this this lines up very well with my experience before we get into questions.

Could you help me just with some kind of baseline information, which is what are we what is our goal?

And I get I know that's partially political, I get that, but where I know where I think the worst places are because I went and visited them after the storm, but I don't know, I don't know why we're talking about Eastgate if we keep saying Eastgate needs to do something differently.

I don't know why we're talking about Eastgate if we keep saying Eastgate needs to do something differently, they're private property for example, and then we say Camelot needs a FEMA buyout, but y'all have property buyout uh or front proofing on your slide, but we don't talk about that.

I know we weren't we weren't given a designation so that we cannot access FEMA buyouts right now, but depending on what we're trying to do, maybe 17 million is better spent buying out properties and just getting and then having them be having them be basins, you know, not basins, but having them just filled with water.

Like I don't know how to understand what you're telling me as the solution because I don't know what exactly the problem is we're trying to solve.

I know there's a huge problem, but I also know that we can't solve all of it.

So why are we talking about Eastgate but not about the Ephesus area or Camelot or South SDs or the University Place area?

What are we trying to do?

So um back when we in 14 when we finished the master plan and then did the first watershed study because it's 21 watersheds, I think it's 24.

So we have a master plan, it tells us we've got to do these watershed studies.

The watershed study, the first one we did was the Book of Creek, Low Booker Creek uh watershed.

That gave us the pro the properties that gave us the projects in that watershed study at the time, and you have to go back and I was here when we went through that process, it was flooded.

We had back-to-back, back-to-back flooding.

These gentlemen can tell you there are a number of projects that could have been picked in that first round, but the projects that were picked and presented, because that was a direction we received was to deal with flooding, and so that's how the pro the council back then adopted the project based on trying to deal with flooding.

So this is the first watershed study, and the first the number one project in that whole scheme was the one we just did.

That led to the other part.

So this was a plan to deal with because that was the direction we got then.

Um, and that was how we came up with the project because we needed the project that would address flooding.

So this was not this was a uh at that time a community-led discussion.

Um it was not say I saying, hey, we want to do these projects, it was these are the projects, these are the things we want you to focus on.

And so you're giving me this, like, and and I think you've done what you were asked to do.

Like I 100% get that.

I guess if we're trying like so, if we lower the water and we we make it flood a little less, is that is that what we're aiming for?

Like, is that okay?

How do we compare that to other things?

Because if there's engineered solutions, then there's just buyout solutions, or there's condom, you know.

I I don't know, but like I know we have limited authority legally, like Nick is probably already getting the papers over there when I talk about like I almost said the the C word.

Right.

I didn't.

Um, but like what is what are all of our options and why are these the best ones outside of like your department?

No, I don't say, and I think that those are things that we we have done by out.

We of course you talked about we talked about Camelot.

Um the town can we can decide if we want to target a certain area of bio, we can look at it as using state or federal money.

We could also use our stone water money to do buyouts, and um that's a whole other legal process if we um if we use um our own money to do that.

I'll just add to that that so um the tax value as I understand it of Eastgate and the Murray Caucus land adjacent is 45 million dollars.

So there's a an alternative to use town funds of 45 million dollars roughly.

That's tax value.

We don't know what the um negotiated price would be, but if we were to spend that and buy them out, then there would be the cost to demolish it all and do the big sort of weapon restoration type project there, and then we'd lose 45 million dollars worth of tax base forever.

I mean, I have a hard time.

And then now it across the library.

Now we're gonna have a good night.

Thank you.

Um I just I I can't get to uh a place where I could recommend losing 45 million dollars worth of tax base.

That doesn't count sales tax uh you know and permanently for the whole town, and we could potentially keep that tax base um more solid by spending only 17.

I mean it's a so I I don't know what metric you can use to set that up.

I mean you could put it in a spreadsheet and maybe some uh factors on it that might help you make a decision, but but it but it's all ultimately of a sort of a value judgment kind of thing.

Um I have so many questions that I will uh move on to um I saw Melissa Dio I'm not gonna get there to try to get to them.

So maybe there's one more slide as part of the presentation.

Oh I thought we were doing four more, sorry, five more, sorry, five more slides.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Wait a minute.

Okay, go back to back.

Book the screen back one more.

Go back one more.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, these are all so.

There we go.

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

Um anyway, uh, great questions, and hopefully we'll get those answered tonight.

Um, but uh one thing I wanted to talk about was the uh Booker Creek Working Group.

Um that was assembled many years ago to talk about um the uh options that we have looking at dealing with Booker Creek uh watershed, and you know, what can there other ways we can look at or alternatives or ideas to deal with uh flooding and the watershed?

Um lots of uh lots of meetings to uh discuss options, uh great ideas, and um fruit road discussions about happened during that time, and the uh group eventually landed on uh 10 recommendations, and I want to say too that uh for me I think it's always great to have a fresh perspective on what we're doing.

A lot of good ideas, a lot of alternatives that we you know we have thought about.

And I think uh considering those this picture is a better product at the end.

And so as you can see out 10, we're we're we're definitely moving forward with nine.

I'll incorporate those into our program.

Um I'm gonna explain in a second why it's not 10, but um you can see uh several of them were put in terms of the Lummo process, and players tell me they would prefer to wait to talk with the Lumber Rebirth to start that.

So we'd be looking at that.

Um are already required as part of our MBDS permit, and a couple of them uh you know, we're still looking at what kind of resource.

So each one of these considerations, you know, we have to we do need to look at you know what are the pros and cons of it, what are the resources to you, what costs, and uh what process would be best to carry them out.

Um bottom one, we're looking at moving with the FA community break system, and basically that is a program that local governments can participate if uh they do certain things, certain activities or whatever.

Um there is a potential of getting a reduction on people's uh floating service frequency.

You know, great thing.

Um and uh we're looking forward to that.

I understand that FEMA might be considering or at least the funding for that might be in jeopardy, so we're still ready to hear on that, but we're proceeding forward as if uh it's still okay.

Um and the reason why we didn't move on the tenth one is um we can, but uh it would require improvements on private land, and I think there's some considerations to do with that.

Uh you know, we would need to talk about it.

We wouldn't move forward on that.

But um, we're definitely moving forward on uh nine of them.

So great ideas for having move with them.

So okay, next slide.

Can you say which one is the one that involves private land?

Sure.

It's looking at the the recommendation is to uh look at existing water bodies and how can you use that for flood mitigation?

And you know, the the that's a great idea.

Um the problem is that all the ones that are in town, existing water bodies are on private property.

So you know, we would have to decide if we want to move forward with that, or uh considerations and issues, legality.

Um, Lee was speaking about uh, you know, we had to condemn property, are we willing to do that in case you know one or two people decide not to agree to it?

So there's some things to think about before we move forward that certainly for warning from our legal department of outside and do something that so uh but you know it's open, we just have to discuss more of it if we want to move forward this one.

So back to me.

So our thoughts, our recommendations to continue to educate and engage the community.

Um folks have been asking what we're what we're gonna be doing following the storm.

We've got a few folks say, you know, you gotta prepare us before July so we can prevent the next flood, and that's just not realistic.

We're not gonna be able to prevent the next flood.

Um, but we do need to engage to help them know what we can do, what we uh plan to do, and how they can prepare.

Um we are planning to have a storm on our own house uh in May to go through uh a lot of this information and educate uh and we'll step up our educational content as exhibited by Merrill tonight, and she's excited to do that.

Uh we've got some great volunteer programs if we want to keep expanding those.

Uh those are helpful in cleaning up our watershed and removing native species and and all that kind of thing, but you know, we're not asking people to drive uh heavy equipment and and and do uh reshaping of floodplains, so that that's unfortunately we don't have that many volunteers.

Um and we think we should come back to council on an annual basis, so this can be front to center.

I know one of the things uh well I we used to do this in a couple other jurisdictions I was in, where you would get uh an annual update on water quality and various streams uh so that you can kind of track the natural health of the of the water body, so that's something that we're uh talking about.

Closer to the mic, uh we want to consider an assistance program, which I alluded to uh earlier.

Uh example, Carborough, uh Raleigh has a good one as well.

Um we'll learn from them and uh figure out what the right uh cost benefit looks like for technical assistance programs and potential grant assistance programs for our residents.

Um we'll need to address staff costs, the administrative burden, how much capacity we would have, and an equity lens will be placed on that work.

Uh and as we've already alluded to, we we would need to consider how much we invest there, given the fact that this is really a quantity, I mean a quality issue mostly, but some of them uh will deal with nuisance flooding uh and and you know would have important benefits for neighborliness and um minor inconveniences.

We'll share our findings with council later this year on on this concept.

Um we'd like to continue implementing the master plan, including updating local regulations and compliant with state regulations.

Um some of the local regulations will find are finding their way into the lumen.

Uh we're already installing sensors for data gathering and warning.

We'll do more of that, and we're uh investigating participating in the regional effort there, the the digital twin uh initiative uh that some of you know about uh and we've already visited uh another neighbor in the in the region that has a pretty good system there.

This wouldn't be about um uh you know mitigating the actual impacts of a flood in terms of the water, but it might mitigate the impacts of the flood in terms of early warning and possibly helping people to plan for what level of sandbagging do they need to do, when do they need to do it?

So it's more about response than um uh reducing uh water impacts.

We'll continue to collaborate on that with our regional neighbors.

Uh we'll we'll want to continue to step up our maintenance uh for existing infrastructure and bring forward projects for council to consider funding into designing instruction.

So, in summary, our plan reflects modern nature-based best practices that are uh demonstrated to be effective across the landscape and with many other municipal and county governments with each new project.

We want to include lessons learned.

We certainly don't want people to look over our shoulder and say why didn't they do what they said they would do, or why didn't they do what such and such a place did where they said that worked better?

We want to be part of folks who learn from what we've done before and learn from others.

And then finally, we we believe that doing nothing, especially for flooding is not an option.

I want to correct that.

It is an option.

I don't think it's a very good option, but it's absolutely an option.

The challenge for you, council, is uh to give us the direction you want us to pursue based on what you think the community wants us to do.

Uh but right now we feel like we're in a bit of a whole new pattern.

And so your helpful guidance would be really key to uh helping us to know uh how fast and how far you want us to go.

Let's uh okay.

Um so um I appreciate all the presentations, um, however, I don't really feel like the presentation today really answered the questions that we had asked.

Um the original Dixon report was um in 2014.

I don't really feel like there's a lot of new information here.

I feel like it's a bit of a repackaging, and I have a lot of um questions and comments, and I'll I'll go through them and you guys kind of get addressing later because I don't know that you're gonna be able to address them now.

Um sorry.

Um sorry, I'm looking for my first.

So um the first one is that we have a 2018 study to address flooding.

I haven't seen enough to be able to have access to that.

I don't know where it is.

Um the cumulative benefits and costs of the FEMA benefit cost tool.

I don't I don't know that tool, and um I wonder does it include ecosystem goods and services and the value of those, and does it include life cycle analyses of the of the measures that are taken into account?

Um as the mayor was saying, I have a significant issue with with Eastgate being sort of the metric.

I don't know if that's been put forward as a goal or as an indicator.

I however I have real problems with us looking at um pumping public money into private benefits that will not solve the problem.

And I I appreciate very much that it's 45 million dollars.

Um, how much did we lose while it was shut down after Sean Tal?

Um, at what point are our FEMA and the insurance companies going to decide they're not willing to show out for these repeat claims?

FEMA's faced the same thing on the coast.

I worked on some stuff on the coast with repeat claims, and most of the money was going from things that were set up to be damaged again and again in storms, and then it's um a significant uh disproportionate use for repeat claims and people think that Chantal's not going to happen for another 499 years, they're uh overly optimistic.

Um I'd like to know for even for the Eastgate people what are their what do their emergency they've got little doors or something that they didn't get to put up in time.

What does that control do?

Um the big problem is you know how much do we look at over and over again putting this kind of money into things in terms of the cost benefits of Booker Creek Park?

Um I don't I don't think we've we asked specifically about the value of ecosystem goods and services that were lost and the value of them coming back.

I treat and do a lot of that.

Um I don't feel like it's a really complete project to look at yet.

It's not fully replanted, it's not been um maintained, there's not a lot of regrowth.

Um, if you look at the fourth ward uh basin in Atlanta that they put on top of uh old brown fields.

If you look at the fourth ward uh basin in Atlanta that they put on top of uh old brown fields, um I saw it when it was first planted, I saw it six years later, and the amount of regrowth in terms of trees was amazing because they had actually planted retreats, and it's been nearly that long with the with the basic um reconnection in Booker Creek, and we're not seeing that kind of filling in.

And I'm not satisfied with the pace of old field succession.

Um that's not gonna source ecosystem benefits quick enough.

Uh it has to be managed.

Um we were presented with some of the information we were told by staff that the number of trees that we'd need to take down was going to be less than what proposed earlier, how much less?

Right now it said 70% of the entire area.

How many trees are we looking at?

Are we just looking at specimen trees, saving specimen trees?

Or are we what percent of trees are we actually looking at at protecting?

Because those trees provide an incredible amount of pulling that water out of the soil, um, much better than expecting it to infiltrate through all that clay.

Um so again, long-term losses of ecosystem goods and services is incredibly um important when we're cutting down huge swaths of functioning forest to put in something that's going to create very little benefit downstream.

Um I understand that you're y'all are looking at the small scale infrastructure costs and benefits.

Most of the um experts seem to talk about these days treating stormwater is close to what it could where it falls.

And if we can diminish the amount that's coming from upstream, we diminish the amount of control we need to do downstream.

Have we looked at any um anything?

You know, this seven public street locations, obviously it isn't going to scale.

Have we got any idea of um and the twinning, the twinning projects would be able to that that kind of uh Duke process that they're talking about, um, would be able to allow us to do this kind of scenario modeling, um, which would give us the idea if if we took that 17 million and put it into a network upstream of of you know um vegetated soils and and uh those things that make stormwater go like that undergo what they're called, um how much control would we get out of that?

Um so you know it's a matter of scale, and it's a matter of where we put that scale, whether we're scaling up the small stuff or whether we're you know doing it all in one big fell swoop.

Um so um I I would prefer to see a continuate evaluation of more options.

Um I would like to know how the the issues of our expected Jordan Lake um watershed rules might come into this because that's going to be both water quality and water quantity, perhaps with some money from other communities, but it's coming, whether we know exactly what it is now or not.

Um I would like to see a second opinion of the plan.

I'm not saying a complete evaluation, have somebody else do it.

I'm saying I would like to have somebody who um really understands state-of-the-art green infrastructure to read it and tell us is this is this really state of the art?

Um and um there are some green infrastructure specialists at Etsy State that are working with um the grants in Carborough that might be a good option.

Um I'd like to better understand the quality and quantity trade-offs and um yeah, that's all for now.

Thanks.

Yeah, thanks.

I mean, I want to start.

I I one thing I heard that I think is going to be really important through line is that council will have to make a decision based on what we think the community wants.

And I think what the community wants is for people to be safe and to the extent possible for property to be secure.

Um I think that's the challenge.

Basically, you know, I I I heard initial reactions about why we're doing this for private property.

I think it's worth enumerating going, I think everybody knows this.

It's a sort of shorthand that residential and commercial are two different types of private property, and among the two, I'm my more immediate concern is residential property.

I'm thinking about people who got a broad deal without realizing what they were buying because it's hard to find a home here, and they wanted to be here, they got something on Zillow, and all of a sudden, you know, the first time there's a big rain, they're going, my basement floods.

I'm thinking about people who got a broad deal without realizing what they were buying because it's hard to find a home here, they wanted to be here, they got something on Zillow, and all of a sudden, you know, the first time there's a big rain, they're going, my basement floods, what the hell?

Or not even my basement, my first war is flooding.

And like and there's nothing on Zillow, unless someone chooses to be super transparent that is going to tell them they're signing up for that.

And so one of my questions is just out of curiosity, do what does it look like legally if we were to say, look, if we're contemplating 17 million dollars, what if we put together a five million dollar local buyout fund in the short term?

Is that even legally possible?

Is my question.

Or is that a sort of like you cannot spend public money to do buyouts unless it's coming from the federal like I just don't know what's legally possible.

I mean that that's gonna be you're gonna need a full legal analysis, but my initial just sort of walking around walking around thought is those localities do do buyouts for public purpose.

You just gotta kind of identify that it ties in with this public purpose that I think.

But you I think you'd want your attorney to give you full advice on that.

I I don't know, I I'd like to, I think the rest of the council will tell me how they feel about it now that I've raised it, but to me, as long as we're considering options, and I'll be I'll be pretty like what we see in the report.

Um nothing in there leaps out of me as oh great, we've got a solution I like and that I'm ready to advocate for the public for.

And so if we're gonna need to really sort of turn over our options, I think we should look at, you know, okay, you put together a five million dollar fund, you can buy out four chapical properties with that that are flooding, maybe, maybe you can get to 10.

I mean, let's let's look at the numbers though.

Let's see like how many, if there are people whose homes are doomed or something like that, what kind of buy-out would it take to make a dent in those numbers, how many homes are we even talking about that have serious flood risk.

Um, the other thing that I'm sort of thinking about is what our long-term framework looks like here, like thinking about Eastgate and the tax revenue.

You know, one of the questions that I have is uh I remember the conversation after Chantal this with the property owners essentially being on some level, like we will find tenants who will come in here and do business no matter what.

And the financial pressure, I think if the financial pressure on them as owners gets to a point that they have to change the site, they'll do it, but the pressure isn't there, and so to me it's a sort of I don't know if we're looking at losing assessed value or sales tax value without the 17 million dollar basin.

I'm open to the information that I'm incorrect and that we are looking at that.

But the impression I got during Chantal from the property owners was essentially like you know, this isn't great, but it fits with our business model.

Like we if this happens more frequently, we can handle it.

And if that's the case, then I'm just really trying to figure out if our only options are triage, and none of our options are going to protect anybody meaningfully in a storm with a greater intensity than what we're currently calling a 100-year storm.

Um I do think there's value in improving runoff management in a 25-year or 50-year or 75-year storm, those more common storms.

There's absolutely value in that, but I think that's where I feel still pretty uncertain about a full panoply of options that will that will do that in a lot of places and how many places, what criteria we're using to decide the prioritization of those places.

Um there's a lot to chew on in this report that I will revisit and look at again, and so I appreciate the information, and I and I want to say too to Ted, like I I appreciate you opening this by by being very clear about your confidence in the report because I take your opinion very seriously, and I think it's it's tricky for me to balance the data we're receiving with my really significant hope that there is somehow an option that will meet more of our interests in a cost-effective way that prioritizes what the community wants, which is safety and to avoid property damage.

And I recognize that the answer may be that that's not possible, and I think I think you already know that we're gonna look for every way to find something that you've missed, and I also take very seriously that you uh you know, with gray hair like that, your career may be longer than I am old, so I think you've got a lot of experience.

Sorry, I thought you like that somehow.

Yeah, from chain out.

I have my following.

Okay.

Um listen, yeah.

I think you've both raised really important issues.

Um I'll elaborate on some of them here.

I the first comment I want to make is I want to make sure we're not trading this as a issue for people who have some problems with these projects.

Um there always will be people who just don't like things in their backyard, and that's true, but I think Melissa very successfully outlines some of the real issues that we're seeing with these with these plans.

And I think we need to take them seriously and not not dismiss them.

So my first comment is reductions in flooding only matter if they reduce damages.

So if you the figures that you gave us for East Town, I think were how much they would reduce with that the projects would come in, and so you could see two one and a half less be here or two less fee here.

Going back to your point into the sub watershed report, if you look, so it does it does actually reduce the flooding levels, it just doesn't reduce them full of flood stage.

So I think that's more helpful information for us than what the how much lower it gets, it's important to me.

I don't care if you're only up to your knees in water instead of up to your waist.

Right?

I need to know when your feet are not.

So that's that's you know, I think those figures are important for me to have.

Um Ted, I appreciate your comments about the master plan.

I've actually looked at it a lot, and it's basic.

I think the master plan is very sensible.

The issues that I have is with some of this implementation as we get down to the graduate level.

Um so uh we were talking about the Eastgate numbers, and Thea, I appreciate your comments.

You know, one of the ways to limit flood damages is to get people out of the flood plan.

And I know we had a really good presentation with the Booker Creek Working group of somebody from Charlotte Mecklenburg who I don't remember, but talked about your damage mitigation program, which is really really very impressive that they had in there.

And the the goal there was looking at saying, look, this is what we can invest, this is how much, these are all the properties at risk, and this is how much we can do.

Clearly, they can't do 100%, but they made really big strides in in getting people out of harm's way.

So I think looking at something like that is is really important to us.

And I know that in our source master plan, if you go in the back, there are actual recommendations for specific properties like over in um Colony Woods, and just say, look, this house should not be here, it should be a BMP.

You know, we should have a we should have a little pond here or a detention facility, and that would really help everybody.

So I think those are all important things that we have to look at.

Um right now where I am, I have a very hard time that thinking that spending this amount of money for what really are pretty small improvements, especially as we get to bigger and bigger strokes.

I think is a problem.

Again, if I'm still up to my knees in water, I haven't really accomplished what I what I need to set out to do.

I think going back to the mayor's point of view, I we need to be a little more clear about what actually the goal is here, what we want to do.

And if it's if it's um, I know the Booker Creek Working Group, their goal was to say to minimize flood damages.

So not just a whole water and create places where water can go, get people out of Gorm's way, decide where the places what we can do reasonably fiscally, then to Ted's point, there's just a place we can we won't be able to do things.

Um the fact that tree loss is temporary, um, I won't I won't see those forests.

My kids won't see those forests come back.

So it's I think not that you should never cut down a tree to make progress, but I think you would do it really carefully when you're talking about this extent of this money.

Um again, I would love to see options about other ways we can spend the money once we've decided on a goal as a council.

Um, and Lance, thank you for the history about where how we've got to this place and what the previous councils did.

Um, I think we need to make sure that that discussion from what 12 years ago is still is still valid for us.

Um so yeah, I think we need to have a conversation about what the goals are.

We need to see, we need to see more options, I think.

Um I agree with Melissa, I would like a group of stream restoration experts, and I know NCSU is fairly high, they're very highly required for them to come in and just to do a um a look over of the plan and say, hey, we think this is working, or just you know, if you from real um from the the environmental perspective, we think this would be something we can improve.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, so much more.

Um thank you.

So the question that you pose has seemed really oddly placed in the presentation of do we want the master plan?

And we started discussing that, and then we heard here more to it.

So it was hard at that juncture to say yes or no because we didn't hear some other things and let's think about that in the future.

I am not um I'm not hearing anything from my colleagues who have more experience with this, that we need to invest more money for a new master plan.

What I am hearing is that we need more information on which tactics that are listed in the master plan you were recommending, given how much money you can have to work on this, which ones are you suggesting we tackle which combination?

So we we I heard that there's no single measure that we can take that will fix it, but what combinations would you recommend?

If you go with this combination, this is what you get.

If you go with this combination, but help us understand what we can pull that's feasible from that master plan.

Um it's also important for me as I look, and I would imagine my colleagues, as we look at development proposals, how it fits in with not just the master plan, but how do we how can we trust that what the developer is proposing is what we would recommend, right?

I get very frustrated when we're looking at projects up on a hill that feed into this, and I don't know how that's going to impact.

Um I'd also like to know speaking of development, I'd like to know what efforts workers are using.

All right, I'm going to we can have a little lesson there.

So uh the org with development next to the orbit, and I forget what that development is, has those black um squares there, and while you were talking, Merrill, I really appreciated the lesson.

Very much appreciated.

So I hope to have more lessons, prepetitions good.

But I looked at underground infiltration systems, and I saw these black with holes things, and I said, Oh, that looks like what's stacked right there on SD so people would ask me like I really know, but I think I know now.

Help us understand as developments are happening.

It's a great public lesson for us to see what's about to go underneath.

Um then I'm curious about the grace that we have and these other things that maybe compose the the basins that no one seems to be a fan of that lead to it, not the basins, but taking out the trees and putting in to channel better.

Are we looking at um forcing some meandering?

Is that in the plan?

Did I miss that?

Where we force the water to take turns.

Do you all understand what I mean?

I'll just mention that the challenge that is a best practice if you can because the idea is to slow it down, slow it down and have more distance if you have to go left and right and left and right than if you just go straight.

The challenge for us is we we we have we don't have enough land to do that and wide enough land across the whole watershed to do it at a level that we would prefer to do.

We'll we'll do it to the extent we can do it, but it's it's it's a fairly narrow stream channel.

Okay and associated land.

That is a little bit of what I know of slowing it down.

So I was just curious about that because I didn't see it there.

And one thing that I think that we need to keep bringing up that you already have brought up is we have clay.

We sit atop play, and helping us to understand what we can, what we can achieve.

So that comes back to my original thing, which is help us to understand what our options are, what the combinations are, so that we can say, So, to answer your question, I'm not advocating for a master plan.

I don't see the benefit, the cost benefit for it.

What I am advocating for is a better understanding of the combination of solutions that you would recommend for us based on our budget, based on the land that we already control, and then if we wanted to take over other land, you know, help us understand the increments of you want to spend five million, this is what you could do.

If you want to spend 10 million on land acquisition, this is what you can do.

Just help us get there because we do not have, I do not can't speak for my colleagues.

I cannot, I don't have your knowledge, so please um the primary speaking, which Nero was really good at, and help me get there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um bunch of things here.

I agree with everything my colleagues have said so far.

Uh going back to the goals.

I appreciate what Theo said about safety and property damage, and I would just tweak that to say safety and just expense, like the cost of living and the fact that you know, when you've invested in a home, having ongoing expenses that you didn't expect or didn't many get a really weighing on people's minds.

So when we think about Eastgate as a goal, I was too surprised to see that there.

I understand the commercial value of the property, and I believe we'd be in a different conversation right now if Trader Joe's didn't come back.

If Old Maws didn't come back, but they came back.

It's a different environment than if that we had abandoned buildings there, and we have there were some businesses that didn't come back.

So the conditions are businesses are coming back there, and as you Theo mentioned, I have spoken with them too that said we want to come back and do business there.

So one clear question for you.

I would like to see a report on what has been updated at Eastgate to mitigate future storms.

I know anecdotally that uh Great Outdoor Provision Company went from a wood floor to a concrete floor.

Um I've heard some of the businesses have additional, like they've raised things off the ground.

What kind of new flood level are they prepared for based on the last storm?

I think they've made some of improvements.

It'd be great to know what those are and to know how they're preparing for that.

Um again, we're talking about 17 million.

It's hard to do this without seeing a budget and knowing those numbers and believing in those numbers.

Um, you know, I want to be sold on these costs.

I don't know what year they're from.

Uh it's hard for me to think that those costs are uh a ceiling, I would imagine they're a floor.

The other thing I heard again and again was maintenance cost potentially with these projects.

I would love to know what maintenance costs are.

I don't know how far out we can project, but if we're talking about spending large sums of money, it should include not just the construction of it, but what additional costs would be incurred over a long period of time to the best of our ability.

Um then as we make these choices about what's the best way to use our our money, um the the analogy of the Keenan Stadium painted half the picture.

What I would if we want to go with the Keenan Stadium analogy, show me how much of a Keenan stadium our basin projects would be.

Would it be half an end?

Would it be an end zone?

Would it be one stadium?

Like what what's the what's the other coin of that analogy?

So how much of a stadium do we save if that is how much rain is actually going to fall on Booker Creek?

Um I think all options should be on the table.

Um we talk about whether we're going to put money to help private businesses or private homes.

One of the one of the things we've talked about is even two weeks ago or whenever we heard the project at 806 we did bury, and one of the things that the developer or applicant brought up to us was that the other properties are not, they were never required to put in this infrastructure.

So I would like us to be really creative in thinking how much does it cost to help one of these properties if we can and we want to?

What does it look like to help them retrofit if we're spending millions of dollars?

Would it help?

Just for example, I'm not advocating for this, just as a picture.

What would it cost to help Carroll Woods put in uh flood retention that would prevent uh safety, you know, harm and damage to properties that are off their property.

Like if we're gonna really consider the best bang for a buck, I want to see all those options that we've mentioned.

Buyouts, but also what about these retrofits?

Maybe there's some options there to help people put in stuff that we want to see them have in there.

Um so for me, a big thing is not seeing the budget, not knowing what numbers we're talking about, and I feel like it's it's a good idea, and we're kind of agreeing to take time to think about this.

Um in that context, I would like us as we're heading into the summer.

Maybe Meryl, this is your this is your uh wheelhouse.

While we're figuring out the system-wide stuff, we really do need to help people uh people are stressed and worried and concerned, and so as much as we can do to also with our engaged Chapel Hill really address the short-term things that we can do.

Um that'll be really helpful.

And and um, you know, Director Norris, we've talked privately, but I would just like to say publicly that you responded, your staff came out and responded to um an email from neighbors and a crew came out and cleaned up a creep, that was great.

Chris, you've told us that you're willing to provide technical assistance.

These are the kind of things that I think our community needs right now in this emotional time of July, the first week of July.

It may not happen again, but I'm sure it's on everybody's calendar.

So while we're figuring out how to spend big money and deal with the system-wide issues, really find a way to communicate to the public what resources are available to them as individual homeowners, individual business owners as we head into this period.

And really really focus on a customer service angle to this and making sure that I know some houses weren't weren't supposed to be built where they're supposed to be built.

But we tend to say that about private homes more than we say about businesses.

So just making sure that you know we put a real customer service spin on this and help people through these challenges while we're working out these bigger issues.

Yeah, that that's that's roughly where I'm at.

I I really feel comfortable with the comments that we've made here in the direction that we're giving you so far.

Uh but it goes back to those higher goals.

What are we doing this for?

Why are we spending our money?

And I really think it's our job to focus on that and make sure that we're delivering the value there.

And I thank you all for your work.

Manager, I thank you for your perspective, and look forward to another conversation on this.

Um but before I close, can I just clarify we are at it for everybody?

We're at a position where none of these projects are going forward right now, right?

We're still coming back to us.

Okay.

I just want that to be clear so that when we leave this meeting, we can know that where we're at.

So thank you.

Other comments?

Yeah, I think it'll be helpful.

Maybe this is for the council for the manager, but like we have like this three million dollar one time thing.

We have more details about the technical assistance program.

Like, will we want to put this money into that technical assistance program?

That's like a decision that we're gonna try to make next week, and we're saying like this is a major goal for us.

I can see people in the community being like, oh, after it's based on Chantal, this investment's in great infrastructure projects for like global neighborhoods.

So like I think that's the type of level that that's what we want to be able to make those type of decisions.

And I think to do that, we'll have to see like more details around stuff.

And then like I'm struggling with this conversation because part of it is like people want certain things, but I just don't know how feasible those things will be going forward in the future.

The idea of like having dry floors after a flood in certain parts of town, that may not just be feasible going forward in the future with no matter how much we invest.

I think we need to start telling people that story now to get them used to it.

17 million sounds like a lot, but it's not not for infrastructure.

It's like it's a couple of projects, really, what they're showing us.

So I understand this a lot for our budget, and I think it's worth breaking that investment, but I think we really do need to start getting people in childhood used to like we're living in a changing climate, and we're gonna do what we can, but things are gonna be different.

Where is the where is the 17 million figure coming from?

Or like where would the funds come from for any of this?

Thank you, Mary.

The the primary um method of funding those is stormwater fee program, the utility we try to operate it, you know, as a as a as an enterprise fund.

Um there's not a restriction against using general fund money for that.

You could do that.

You could you could have uh a bond issuance for those sorts of projects and you could finance the debt off of your stormwater fees, uh, or you could just use general fund money to pay off that debt.

It it's it's a much different in the stormwater fund.

Um I don't have an update on the status of the stormwater fund, but um Chris is just Chris probably does um so right now on our plug balance, we have about six million dollars, but um about half of that is dedicated to paying off of service debt that we have for the boss.

So that's we have three million that we can leverage.

It's about three million um five business tell us that you know basically you can use about half of that.

What do you keep about a million and a half there to give us you know six to eight months and founds in case something happens?

We've got about a really about a million and a half.

And um for other reasons.

So 1.5 million could be used to leverage to like use for debt capacity, basically.

We get about uh 3.8 million a year in various revenues that we have.

Majority of it's coming from you know the uh stormwater fee.

But you've got to remember out of that, we have salaries, we have equipment, we have everything that goes into that out of the and the debt service payments too.

So you know, that's all I said.

And that's with our increased stormwater fees.

Yeah, okay.

Umwater fee was to mostly pay for the um increased bond uses that we have service, and also we added another full-time disposed of the stormwater analysts that we get to have for our media permit.

Oh, really?

So yeah, we're gonna rent higher sequence.

And just for perspective, I think I think our stormwater fees for commercial property is on the pretty high end uh on our residential fee, it's in the out in the middle of the pack for comparable jurisdictions.

Thank you.

That's um can you also?

I guess based on the um previous budget presentation where the obviously the valuation of most of our, if not all of our residential properties went up.

When we talk about the cost of any of these things, is there if we were having to buy easements, or is there are we is that an issue with kind of any of this work?

Because that would be more expensive than the original estimates, correct?

Based on the increase in valuation, so to um to answer that.

So for example, when we did the first project, um you're gonna have scope free, you know.

So you're gonna have um we had a sewer pipe that no one knew about.

So when we went to that design phase, and when we found out we had a sewer pipe that was before Wassa was even created that we had to move.

So you you're gonna run into um those types of issues, you really won't know them until we start that design.

Once we start, if we like get a design.

So is there contingency built into these?

Yeah, so we build contingency into the into the into the project.

Um but I've done enough construction to tell you that is probably those numbers will change.

Okay.

Um another question is I I understand I I mean I understand that it's easy is to do things on our town-owned property, but are those the places that you would actually do this work if you in an ideal world?

I mean, is that the most effective thing to do?

Well, at the time at the time we were trying to reduce that cost and use the property, it's it's I don't want to use the word easiest, but it it was the based on the study and the information that came back in the study.

That's what pushed us in that direction to go with what we're doing.

Yeah, I understand there were assumptions in the study that were made, and I'm trying to understand one of those assumptions, which is that that it needed to be on a town-owned property.

I understand there are huge costs associated with buying property in order to do these stream restoration projects or anything else, but I guess what I'm wondering is like in an ideal world, where would you do the work?

Because like I don't, you know, I was hoping we could see a map and you could show me the places on the map where there's like the biggest problems or the biggest opportunities and where the biggest like hot spots are for problems.

Like, are we doing the thing that's most effective, or are we doing the thing that we felt like at the time based in 2014 was kind of the most feasible based on acquisition and cost sure?

I can uh speak to that a little bit.

So uh we do look at property ownership uh while we are developing our watershed plan.

Uh we did not solely look on public property, so there are some projects identified that are on private property.

Typically, we looked at uh parcels that would have a very low uh development opportunity for a range of reasons.

They might be landlocked where there's not really gonna be access to that property.

They may have other constraints that limit their ability to be developed.

So we tried to analyze those properties as well.

We also did do more recently, as part of this reanalysis, we did a GIS exercise of looking at the tree canopy across the entire watershed to see if there were other opportunities that were not identified in the original watershed studies.

And of those opportunities that had a less dense canopy, they usually fell in the three categories.

One category is typically sometimes you'll see a cleared area next to a stream.

Many times that has sanitary major sanitary sewer lines.

So for instance, if you look immediately upstream of Franklin Street, there's a cleared area, but it has a 30-inch sanitary sewer line in an easement.

So it's a significant constraint.

So that's one kind of bucket.

So that might be backyards of residential homes, which is very difficult to utilize those types of properties.

We did assess potential again, I think Chris mentioned with some of the existing water bodies in the watershed, how they could potentially be utilized.

Again, there's a lot of property owner constraints, so then you're not dealing with just one property owner, you're dealing with all of the property owners around the lake and other ramifications as well.

So I don't want it to sound like we only looked at public property.

We did look holistically across the watershed.

I think one comment you made earlier, and really it's uh as a theme is is really understanding what your goals are now.

I think that that is really important.

So when we came into the study, it was not it was really learning from the community, learning from staff, learning from the stormwater advisory group, what are the problems in the watershed?

And we identified a lot of different areas throughout the watershed where there was different levels of flooding.

So some of those may be higher up in the watershed, it may affect you know a couple property owners, it may affect a road that's overtopping.

Those were included in the subwatershed study with the solutions.

However, one of the common themes was what can we do at Eastcape?

So that at the time was a big question that was being asked by the community.

There were several significant flood events right before and even during the study, so sometime in the 2014 to 2016 time frame, there was probably three major flood events that at Eastgate.

So that was a common theme, and the question came out what can the town do to reduce flooding and Eastgate.

So the point is there is a question, there is a goal of what should the town be doing to reduce flooding and eastgate.

That's a that's a very viable question, but the question posed at the time was what can the town do?

And some of the alternatives that are included in the report attempt to address that question.

We're working in a retrofit situation.

You know, this is a developed watershed.

Eastgate is in the FEMA floodplain.

That is the natural floodplain.

Uh there's a large piped culvert going under Eastgate that carries the street.

Booker Creek goes under directly under Eastgate through a covert and then daylights on the other side.

So it is in the floodplain.

It was built before the FEMA floodplain regulations were in effect.

And so again, the question at the time is what's the most we can do, or what's the best we can do with what we have to review to reduce flooding at Eastgate.

That's not the end all be all, and I highly encourage you to re-evaluate what what your goals are as a town.

This is simply a report with solutions to help address problems.

It's important to understand while a lot of the focus is on Eastgate, there were other problems identified in the study.

There were other recommendations identified in the study to look at some of the other infrastructure constraints that you have because it's not Eastcape may be the most well-known or largest problem, but there's other infrastructure concerns throughout the watershed related to gray infrastructure, stream stabilization, you know, water quality retrofits, and it all it all does you know tie together.

Thank you for that.

Um my comments, I I think I'm I'm not gonna repeat what others have said.

I will say that I think that's the place where I think the theme, the struggle that I've had since being mayor has been that we don't talk about our goals before we have y'all go out and do stuff.

And I just think it's a process issue that we have to fix.

Um because I can't imagine how frustrating it is to do all this work and then hear council say, like, what are we trying to accomplish?

Like that should come first, and that's um, I'm not blaming our department directors or in.

I just think that's a real like that's like policy one on one.

Like we've got to do that first every single time because we have to vote on this, and I really do want to hear from the public a lot, but if we don't frame what the goals are and then talk to the public, I think we also frustrate the public because they engage on things that we may or may not want to know.

And so to me, this is just the like repetition of we're gonna engage people, we're gonna go do a report, and it has nothing to do with the council at all, and then we have to make a choice, so that is very frustrating for me.

Um and I just think we have to fix that problem so you all are not doing huge amounts of work and expensive work that then comes and and I'm frustrated too that we're not moving forward.

I want us to make progress.

I want us to do projects.

I don't want to be here like holding us up again, and that's what it feels like.

But I also feel like I don't have a way to know what the right projects are because I don't know what our goals are.

So I really would like to know are there regional solutions, are there buy-out solutions?

Are there I want to see them all?

And you can tell me that it's 45 million dollars, and I'll be like, cool, then that's not a great option for us, but I want to see it because I need to understand it.

I also want to see are there ways that we can work with something like Eastgate to help them move.

I want them to stay in Chapel Hill because they're a critical revenue producer for our town.

But like, could we incentivize them to move to East Town?

I don't, you know, whatever.

I just I want us to think about anything outside of the box that can make people safer, that can reduce the amount of damage, and yeah, I don't want people up to their knees instead of their waist.

Like that doesn't that is not a good goal to me as one of nine.

Um I also would like to know what that modeling looks like on a regional level, and if there are neighborhoods that would work with us.

If we had a matching program, would neighborhoods invest in something?

I don't know, but I just would really like us to determine our goals and then be very strategic and tie it to all these great options that I think you all know and that we don't know as well.

But um, I appreciate you all and all the work you keep doing.

Um I know that you're also very responsive when people need help and where when there is something when there's a storm dream that's you know, there's something going on in someone's neighborhood.

I know that that the um that the customer service is really excellent and that people really appreciate that.

So please thank your staff too for all the work they do, and I just think the longer range planning, the engagement and what we're engaging people on just has to change so that we can do work more effectively and we can solve problems quicker because that's what I think everyone wants to do.

We really want to solve problems, we don't want to keep saying no.

So what is a reasonable time that we could have kind of different information come back?

And you can think about it, it doesn't have to be for tonight unless you have an amazing answer right now.

Uh no.

Um, I think um I first of all, and I I think this is good good information, it's good feedback.

It's the kind of feedback we had 10 years ago, you know.

Um little bit more to red because like I say it was back to back politics, but but um so that there are, and I'm I thank Tom for what he said because um there were different options, and that's the voice sheet.

Um so we can uh we'll get together and talk to uh as you can see, it's a lot of votes, and we'll talk to them and think about how we can um address these questions and also um look at other ways we could leverage our stone work fund, and then maybe think about some regional things we might do.

I don't I don't have anything different to say.

I'm just saying slightly different words, but the point is we're gonna get together.

This is great feedback, we appreciate it.

Uh this has to be um the closest thing to win-win uh to be successful.

I mean, we want to carry out your policy goals, we want to protect the taxpayer, we want to create a safe environment.

You were heard.

Uh we're thank thank you very much for your um attention to all this information.

Um maybe one tweak I would have to all this is that um the work that we based all this on began many years ago, and so it's probably important for us to stay focused on this and try to drive to uh consensus uh in a shorter time frame so that we don't have different players at the table, different events to consider and and all that.

So we'll try to put this um forward as quickly as we can get you good information.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Um can I answer real quick?

I don't want to this moment to pass by the Daryl and Tom, it's great to have you here.

It's really helpful to have consultants in the room.

And I know you're here because you're invited, I assume, by Ted and folks.

I think this is a good model if we're gonna be hearing from other consultants, whether it's the Lumo update or the Parks Master Plan.

I really hope we can continue this thing of inviting our consultants to be here.

Um it's great to hear you here, tell us what you heard.

Um I just I for me it's really valuable, and I want to see more of this in all of our discussions.

Yeah, I can have a question, Merrill.

Like uh I think what happened here is like storytelling that we need to share with the public.

And I'm not sure if that's like something you could do, or does that fall underneath like our broader communication strategy?

Because I think there's like we don't like yeah, this is stormwater and it's complicated, but we don't talk about those policy aspects enough.

Um I'm not 100% sure.

Um I've been here since May, and I'm still wrapping my head around my role.

Um, but I know I've been in a lot of conversations with communications, and we are talking about really leaning into all the tools the town has to offer online, especially, um, but also like you know, holding open house meetings and trying to connect more with the public and let them know we're here and what we can do for them and with them.

Um so that is like that is an area of growth that I'm really trying to lean into, and I think we just started that process in the last couple of months.

Um so I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

And I'm I Susan's nodding.

I'm I'm pretty confident that we can do more storytelling using the tools that the town has.

And hopefully you're involved, because I thought we do it, the whiteboard was excellent.

So I feel like that would be great for more of our public disease stuff.

I really appreciate that.

I um I really enjoy getting to do the interactive things.

Um all right, uh, counsel.

Thank you for a really good work session staff.

Thank you for always being responsive and um and listening to our interests.

Uh I believe we will be back together next week.

Same time, different place, town hall.

But um, thank you all.

Have a great day.