Fayetteville City Council Agenda Session - July 14, 2026
Fayetteville City Council Agenda Session - July 14, 2026
The session reviewed upcoming agenda items for the July 21 council meeting, including employee benefits, infrastructure projects, zoning changes, and housing policy reforms. No final votes were taken; the meeting focused on discussion and preparation.
Presentations and Reports
- Employee Benefit Renewal: Todd from Brown and Brown presented the 2027 benefits package. Medical premiums will increase by 7.10% due to 109% utilization (compared to 102% last year). The city will absorb 85-89% of the increase for most plans. High-deductible plan deductible rises from $3,400 to $3,500 due to IRS requirements. Dental, vision, and life insurance rates remain flat. The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) utilization is 13.89%, above the standard 7-10%. Councilmembers Turk and Moore asked about employee feedback, cost-sharing details, and total compensation considerations.
Discussion Items
- Telecommunications Franchise: Resolution to approve a non-exclusive franchise with Ozarks Go LLC for fiber optic cables in public rights-of-way.
- Plainview Avenue Project: Award of construction management contract to Emory Sapp and Sons for $50,500. Councilmember Moore inquired about past work; staff noted positive experience on Dean Street project.
- Walker Park Improvements: Resolution to increase project contingency by $100,000. Project expected to reach substantial completion in early September.
- Citywide Windshield Survey: Award of contract to Post-Oak Preservation Solutions for $79,280 to survey historic properties.
- South School Waterline Bottleneck: Authorization for condemnation of one property as a safety net; easement negotiations ongoing.
- Rezoning (Dean Solomon & Van Act): Updated information on accident data and topography promised; applicant may bring revised bill of assurance. Discussion on whether to split the rezoning into two items; legal counsel clarified it must remain one vote.
- Transparency Ordinance: Tabled from previous meeting. Councilmember Turk plans to bring a compromise amendment. Discussion on timing of amendments; no rule exists for submission timeline.
- Housing Code Changes (C1-C3): Staff introduced three pro-housing reforms:
- C1: Amend definition of through lot to allow utility access without requiring a variance.
- C2: Reduce minimum lot width from 18 to 12 feet in urban and mixed-use districts to enable flexible subdivision.
- C3: Allow planning commission to grant up to 35% additional parking reduction for residential uses via variance. All items received unanimous planning commission support. Councilmembers requested real-world examples and visuals for next week.
- Streamside Protection (C4): Proposed modification to cover a stream with parking deck, adding one story and 10 units. Councilmembers expressed disappointment at losing open water feature. Staff will provide side-by-side comparisons.
- Tree Preservation Vacation (C5): Request to vacate 3,320 sq ft of tree preservation area in exchange for 12,915 sq ft new easement and 46 mitigation trees. Council requested a site tour on July 20 at 4:30 PM.
- Rezoning (Mission Blvd): 0.20 acres from RSF-4 to RI-12; staff provided details on two structures.
- Rezoning (Humont Road): 3.78 acres from NSG to RSF-8; staff opposed (wants non-residential uses), planning commission recommended 4-3.
- Rezoning (West Weddington Drive): 0.55 acres from RSF-4 to RIU; planning commission denied 1-6 due to drainage and spot zoning concerns. Council asked for topography and drainage information.
Key Outcomes
- Site tour for tree preservation vacation scheduled for Monday, July 20, at 4:30 PM.
- Staff to provide additional documentation: accident data for Dean Solomon, visuals for lot width changes, real-world examples for parking reductions, side-by-side comparisons for streamside project, and topography/drainage info for West Weddington rezoning.
- Applications for boards and committees due by July 24 at 5 PM.
Meeting Transcript
Okay, everybody, we are gonna call the Tuesday July 14th agenda session to order. And we will begin. This will be the agenda for next week's meeting. And we will start out with any presentations, reports, or discussion items we have, and then we'll move into the consent agenda. After we vote to approve the minutes, we will have the annual employee benefit renewal. Um it's a resolution to improve to approve the 2027 employee benefits package. Actually, a notice went out from uh HR to staff today. Um, and I want to commend our HR department for working to keep our um increase cost increases low while keeping our benefits robust. So this is vision health, dental, all of those great things. And um Missy Hutchison is here if you have questions for her about that item. Ms. Turk. Uh thank you, Mayor. Um, yes, uh Missy, if you could kind of come up and give us a summary and some feedback that you may or may not have heard, that would be helpful. Yeah, I'm actually gonna invite our benefits broker to go through a brief presentation about this year's renewal, if that's okay, Todd with Brown and Brown. Okay. Is there a it's all up advance? Is there a click next? Oh okay, okay. So uh this this year uh we had a little tough year this year, uh about 109% uh in utilization. Um so so uh blue cross was asking for uh a fair increase, uh 7.10 percent is where we landed. Um last year we had a 2.6 percent increase. Um, and then utilization last year was about 102 percent. So trying to stay a little bit uh a little bit ahead of trend so that next year we're not impacted by as much of an increase. Um questions in regards to that, Teresa. I I guess maybe at the end or whatever, you could explain what the increase will be or how that will work. And I'll so I'll just hold my questions till then. Yep. And so you'll see on the illustration uh on the PowerPoint uh up at the top left corner, uh, year to date through March is when we did the uh that what they use for claims uh uh comparison. So you can see we're running about 109 percent um vision, dental base life, everything else was flat, so no it no impact on those. Really, we're talking about the medical is it was the only thing impacted this year for 2027. I actually do have a question here that I'm looking at on the HSA. It says no employer contribution changes, and so last year we had an increase in our rate, and we also had an increase in our contribution. Can you walk me through what our thinking is on keeping that with no change to the contribution from the employer? Just a budgetary item. So we're picking up the same cost shares of the premium increase. We're gonna pick up the majority of the increase of the premium. So it's just a budgetary item. So what will be allowed though is you'll be able to contribute more, or the employee and their family can contribute more into an HSA by law under the IRS standards for HSAs, but the employer is not contributing more into the HSA. We'll contribute the same amount that we are contributing now, which I think we have a slide directly on that. Oh, okay. I'll I'll hold my comments then. Thank you. Why don't you go to the next slide? Yeah, this is just showing the uh the impact of the increases over uh year over year and then the loss ratio. So right now we're like I said, 109. You can go the next slide. Um so so currently on our high deductible, it's a $3400 deductible, and the plan pays 100% after that. Um for the 2027 year IRS uh has us move up to the minimum $3,500 deductible to to uh keep the plans embedded, which means you just have to each person has an individual deductible. So IRS is forcing us to push up uh the minimum uh deductible on an embedded plan to 3500, and so you'll see in the next slide, I think.
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