This was a week of cancelled meetings with the exception of the Mayor’s Association meeting on Monday.

At the monthly mayor’s association meeting on Monday we had a presentation by the John Locke foundation about the disadvantages of light rail. Basically, they concluded that a multi-modal approach without light rail is the way to go in the future. The main reason for this presentation seems to be to give a counter point to the STAC report that also recommends a multi-modal approach but with light rail. To me their assumptions were faulty since their recommendations relied on more roads. Sorry to disagree but we can’t pave our way out of future congestion.

Also discussed at the mayor’s association meeting was the school situation. Initial discussion centered on whether or not the school board members should be elected at large. Finally a motion was made with the understanding that we acknowledge the school system process for reassignment is broken and needs to be fixed. In addition, the motion stated that we would recommend seven districts instead of the current nine. The districts would be the same as the county commissioners and the board would be elected at that time. That motion received unanimous approval which includes eleven of twelve mayors. Absent was Mayor Frank Eagles. This information apparently was blogged on the N&O late the week which caused at least one mayor to be upset. This brings up an interesting question about the discussions in these meetings. That is, are these meetings open meetings or closed meetings. Here is the NC legislation on Open Meetings: GS 143-318.10

…”Official meeting” means a meeting, assembly, or gathering together at any time or place or the simultaneous communication by conference telephone or other electronic means of a majority of the members of a public body for the purpose of conducting hearings, participating in deliberations, or voting upon or otherwise transacting the public business within the jurisdiction, real or apparent, of the public body. However, a social meeting or other informal assembly or gathering together of the members of a public body does not constitute an official meeting unless called or held to evade the spirit and purposes of this Article…

What do you think? To me I would lean toward a public meeting. I intend to check with attorneys this coming week to find out their opinions.

On Saturday morning Cary lost one of its greatest citizens, Kay Yow. I had the fortune to talking a while to Kay in December. What an amazing lady. She touched so many lives on and off the court. I hope every time someone sees her name on the basketball court in the Herb Young center the smile at the sight of her name because of all the good things she stood for. What a fighter with an amazing attitude. She will be sorely missed.

Well that is about it for this week. I will hopefully post again by Sunday, February 1^st. Please feel free to leave a comment on my post.

This has been a week of meetings consisting mostly of interactions with staff and council members.

Monday’s activities included calling all council members (my pre agenda calls) to ask if they had any issues with items on the agenda. Finding out about any issues early allows staff to prepare better to answer any and all questions at the council meeting. Monday evening was the pre agenda meeting to go over the agenda and make sure everyone was prepared for the meeting.

Tuesday was my weekly scheduled meeting with the town manager. Unfortunately, he was detained talking with school board attorneys and staff about issues related to getting the certificate of occupancy (CO) for modular units at Panther Creek.

It is important to understand the factors related to getting the CO for Panther Creek. Here is a letter summarizing the meeting staff had with the school board:

Mayor & Council:

At your direction and as is our practice, we have continued to work with staff from the Wake County School System in hopes of  resolving the issues related to identified traffic improvements necessitated by the addition of modular classroom space at Panther Creek High School.  In fact, Tim Bailey, Chris Simpson, Jeff Ulma, Lori Cove, and I met again just yesterday afternoon with Don Haydon and Kenneth Haywood, to once again explain the Town’s process for traffic studies, required mitigation, the site plan review process, and other such matters as spelled out in the LDO.

Unfortunately and despite our best efforts, we remain very concerned that school staff still seems to be unable to work with us to find a way to support us in our commitment to ensuring that infrastructure such as roads are in place when the need arises and not after the fact.

Therefore and given that they may make recommendations to the Board of Education, I wanted to provide you with the information we discussed related to their questions and concerns.  We reiterated that we continue to be ready to assist and facilitate a satisfactory resolution of this situation.

They continue to raise the following points, to which we provide a brief response.  The attached chronology of events may also help you.

1.      Assertion: The original site plan approved the location of modular classrooms.  Response:  While the site plan the schools system filed with the Town for the construction of the high school showed the location, they were only labeled for “future” installation.  Their original traffic study was done for a high school of 1600 students.  Likewise, other site plan requirements (e.g., parking) were calculated on a school with 1600 students, not one of 2100 students.  The bottom line is that the current enrollment, which is necessitating the need for these modular units, was not included in their original filings.

2.      Assertion:  WCPSS should not have to make permanent improvements for a temporary use.  Response: The traffic study requirements in the LDO do not distinguish between permanent and temporary impacts.  And, as we are all aware, “temporary” classrooms tend to be permanent.  Council recently changed the LDO to recognize this fact and we will no longer treat such classrooms as “temporary” uses.

3.      Assertion:  Traffic from other developments “in the pipeline” that were included in the traffic study is not materializing due to the economy or those developments are not progressing.  Response:  Regardless, the traffic study conducted for the modular additions already identifies a failing situation at the off-site locations that needs to be improved and in accordance with the APF ordinance, only identifies improvements to mitigate the additional traffic generated from the additional students who will be accommodated in the modular units.  Further, those developments are in the queue and have a right to the traffic capacity in the road network because they were approved prior to this site.

4.      Assertion:  The students are already at the school and are not generating new impacts.  Response:  The students were added to the school in August of 2008.  The traffic study was based on traffic counts conducted prior to August, 2008.  The study did not account for those additional 500+ students as part of the baseline traffic.  The ability for the Town to address the impact of those students was only made possible when the site plan expansion was submitted.

5.      Assertion:  WCPSS is only waiting on a CO; permits are in hand.  Response:  A lot more has to happen (as we have said many times) before the modular units can be occupied, including WCPSS’ filing a revised site plan for the Town’s review, the Town reviewing and approving the revised site plan, providing a financial guarantee for the improvements, providing a commitment to complete the improvements in a specified period of time and several inspections to make sure the children will be safe.

Again, I wanted to highlight some of the continuing issues between the Town and the staff representing WCPSS, especially since some of you are in contact with members of the Board of Education.  It is our hope that the Board of Education will recognize the tremendous steps the Town has taken to help them get students relocated into the modular units and that they will take advantage of our continued willingness to help.

Please contact me with any questions. - Ben

Here is a chronological sequence of events related to the Panther Creek modular units:

Chronology of Plan Review Events - Panther Creek High School

January 14, 2009

Action: Traffic Study Application submitted to Town of Cary by WCPSS (04-TAR-154)

Comments: High school for 1600 students analyzed

Action: Site Plan Approved by Town of Cary (Panther Creek High School - 03-SP-104) (http://sitesubplans.townofcary.org/PantherCreekHighSchool_03-SP-104/planindex.htm)

Coments:

• Required parking calculated on the basis of 83 classrooms & 1600 students
• Location of “Future Mobile Classrooms” noted on site plan

Action (8/15/04): Revised Site Plan approved by Town of Cary (Panther Creek HS - 04-SP-088)

(http://sitesubplans.townofcary.org/PantherCreekHS_04-SP-088/planindex.htm)

Comments: Minor “Value engineering” items amended

Action: (5/16/08): Panther Creek Modular Addition site plan submitted to Town of Cary for review (Panther Creek Modular Addition - 08-SP-047)

Action: (06/09/08): First Review Comments sent to applicant by Town staff

Action: (07/15/08): Response to First Review Comments provided by applicant

Comments: The (3) modular buildings are a total of 23,984 sq. ft. with a total of 22 classrooms.  Each classroom can accommodate 23 students for a total of 506 students and 22 teaching staff.

Action: (07/28/08): Second Review Comments sent to applicant by Town staff

Comments:

• Traffic Review Comment: A traffic study was done for Panther Creek High School 04-TAR-154. This study has expired. Based on your response to our first review comments, your addition would generate 208 AM trip and 71 PM trips based on the 506 student number addition using the ITE trip generation manual. A traffic study should have been done prior to the submission of this site plan. Your plan will not be able to be approved until this issue is addressed. Please contact Julie Green for an application for a traffic study. The study will take approximately 6 weeks after we receive your payment and issue a notice to proceed. The traffic study may identify mitigations which need to be included in the next set of site plans.

Thursday was a regularly scheduled council meeting. Before the meeting I received a phone call from the chair of Wake County Schools asking that we pull the item related to Panther Creek so that leaders could discuss this issue first. I explained to Ms. Gill that I didn’t have the authority to remove items from the agenda and that the council would have to vote on this. I did bring this up at the beginning of the meeting and there wasn’t majority support to remove it from the agenda. The item on the agenda was to revisit a decision on November 20^th to all the school board up to 18 months to do road improvements required for Panther Creek. At this week’s meeting we revised the time to begin no later than 3 years and end no longer than 4 years. This gives the school board much more flexibility. Our only other option is to have Cary citizens pay the $1.4 million of road improvements. Our citizens have paid over $65 million in assistance to Wake County Schools since 2000.

The remainder of the meeting was mostly dominated by three presentations. The first was by David King of TTA explaining future transit plans for the county. The second was an update on the town’s economic health by interim town manager Ben Shivar. He reported that we expect to be in the black by $3.5 million for this fiscal year that ends on June 30^th. The third report was from Ted Abernathy who did detailed research on Cary’s economic situation. Some interesting facts from this presentation: Median income is over $100,000, 70% have college degrees, household size is larger than the state average, 2/3 of Cary housing is owner occupied, and median home price is around $280,000.

On Friday the council began the annual two day retreat at the Embassy Suites in Cary. This was the first time the retreat has been held in town for many years and saved the town thousands of dollars. It is a time where the council can plan and discuss issues for the coming year and years to come. In addition, all the directors are there to listen and participate in the discussion which helps them in the implementation of the various directives. In review of last year’s retreat it appears that we accomplished most of what we had planned to. I am confident that this year will be no different given the excellent staff the town has.

Well that is about it for this week. I will hopefully post again by Sunday, January 25^th. Please feel free to leave a comment on my post.

This has been a week of few meetings but a week of significance as I changed my position on public speaking regarding schools.

Monday started with a regularly scheduled meeting with the town attorney. We reviewed current and likely litigation. The town is in good shape in all current and potential law suits.

Monday evening I spoke to the school board in public for the first time. In the past I had a personal policy of not speaking in public because I didn’t want to give people false hope since we weren’t the decision makers. In addition, I didn’t want to damage relationships since we were and are in a lobbying position. But after years of witnessing the harm of constant reassignment I decided it was worth the risk of speaking in public. Without saying more I will just copy my planned written comments below:

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight.

Since I have been mayor I have had a personal policy of not speaking in public to the school board. I took this position because we are not the decision makers and we are lobbyist. I wanted to make sure I didn’t damage any relationships with school board members. Over this past year my citizens have pleaded with me to reconsider my policy saying that to them it was worth the risk of negative perception. I have re-evaluated my policy and have decided that even though it is a good policy it is not having the desired affect and in fact may be causing more harm than good. Therefore, I am here before you tonight.

First, I have come tonight to ask you to reconsider the reassignments of nodes 383.3 and 384.4 for reasons I am sure you have already heard. I want to thank school board member Eleanor Goettee for agreeing to meet this week and discuss these nodes further.

Second, I have come to talk with you about your economic diversity policy. I believe the intention of this policy is wonderful. But unfortunately the implementation of this policy is causing too much pain and disruption.

Many parents have reached a tipping point when it comes to the implementation of this policy. Almost every parent I talk to values economic diversity but they believe there are better ways to implement it. After hearing numerous horror stories for years I tend to agree. In fact this policy is now causing many families to leave the school system because it is not worth the yearly struggle. Reports say the number of children in Cary outside the public school system is three times the national average (20%). This trend is very disturbing.

From experience I can tell you that policies should always be revisited and studied especially when it is viewed by the public as causing more harm than good. While the intentions of this policy may be great, the real impact of its implementation is huge.

I believe it is time to work with the parents and elected officials to come up with a better solution. I believe as public servants it is our duty to listen to our citizens, after all we work for them.

In closing, I want to thank you for your service and dedication. Please understand we all are in violent agreement that we want what is best for the children. Please consider revisiting and studying the economic diversity policy and know that I am here to help you any way I can.

Tuesday’s only meeting was the weekly meeting with the town manager and Mayor Pro-Tem.

Wednesday I had two TV interviews on the5 PM meeting with school board members Eleanor Goettee and Ron Margiotta. The first interview was with NBC17 during the lunch hour and the second was with ABC11 after the meeting occurred.

The meeting with the school board members was also attended by council members Don Frantz and Gale Adcock. During the meeting the school board members and council members discussed several nodes that were being reassigned especially nodes 383.3 and 384.4 which are the MacGregor Downs nodes. I was very impressed with the school board members who were very supportive and seem to being all they can do to help. They pointed out how the school board as a whole is looking at the reassignment of these two nodes. The main fact regarding these two nodes is that Apex is overcrowded and Athens is not. The premise that Apex nodes assigned to Athens might come back in three years may not happen in that time frame because the new high school H7 might be delayed due to lack of funding. These are just some of the issues they are dealing with in their decision. I think for some of the school board members the F&R (low income students) is the main factor in their decisions. Fortunately, Mr. Margiotta and Ms. Goettee are looking at many more factors. Regarding low income students, currently Apex is less than 10%, Athens is around 28%, and Cary is around 40%.

Another topic discussed at the meeting with school board members is the situation at Panther Creek. That is, the school board needs a certificate of occupancy (CO) from the town before the mobile classrooms can be used. They plan to begin using these classrooms on January 21st which is the beginning of the new semester. They are required to do $1.4 million dollars in road improvements before they can get their CO. The town has voted to give them up to 18 months to begin road improvements (basically come up with $1.4 million). So if they sign an agreement that says they will begin these improvements in that time frame then they will get their CO. The discussion on Panther Creek lasted for a while and we all left with a plan to try and get this done before the semester deadline. It should be pointed out that Cary taxpayers have helped the Wake County Public Schools with $65 million since 2000. We also provide them hundreds of thousands in revenue each year through our red light camera program. I am hopeful and optimistic that this issue will be resolved before the deadline.

Saturday night was the official beginning of Dreamfest which is a 9 day celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I briefly spoke to a sold out crowd of over 500 and then read a proclamation officially starting Dreamfest.

The State of the Town began airing this week. You can see it at http://www.townofcary.org/med/video/stateofthetown2009.ram . Here is the text of the address:

Cary is fortunate to begin 2009 as one of the most desirable places to live, even in the midst of a world-wide recession. Your town government is fiscally sound due to excellent planning and a conservative approach to budgeting. Cary continues to be one of the safest places to live in the United States, ranking third safest in the nation for a municipality our size. We have the lowest tax rate in Wake County and the highest quality of life. Our carefully planned communities and office parks combined with beautiful natural surroundings, world class and nationally-recognized sports venues, and top notch recreational facilities make Cary an enviable place to live, work, and raise a family. This year will be a critical time in Cary’s history as we redefine our vision for the future, increase our emphasis on being environmentally friendly, and encourage more citizen involvement.

One of citizens’ crucial concerns during these tough economic times is the financial status of the Town. I am very happy to report that we are financially strong and will be able to continue to maintain our high standard of living. The Town’s expert staff recognized potential economic problems as we prepared this year’s fiscal budget, which took effect in July 2008. As a result, we have taken proactive steps to strengthen our financial position by cutting operating expenses, delaying non-vital projects, and putting a permanent ceiling on debt. To date, we are on target or slightly better with a forecasted surplus of $3.5 million.

Although the Town is not currently experiencing any significant negative impacts from the recession, we are closely monitoring two areas that are directly impacted by the economy: sales tax (20 percent of our revenue) and permit fees (3 percent of our revenue). While we expect both of these to be down, we believe our actions will more than make up for those potential losses.

Another significant measure of our Town’s solid financial health is our approach to managing debt. During this past year, we took two important actions related to debt management. First, we put a ceiling of 15 percent on our general fund debt, which means no more than 15 percent of the Town’s general fund operating expenses can be spent on debt service. Since our debt is already close to this point, the Town will have very little to spend on general capital projects during the next three years. Though the budgets will be tight, there will still be enough to allow flexibility to address small projects and some road improvements. For example, this year we will spend more than $8 million in improvements for Cary Parkway and another $2 million for road maintenance.

The second action we took was to address the utility debt created by the future Western Wake Water Treatment Plant, which will provide us with much needed sewage capacity, some of which we now buy from other counties. This plant’s construction costs could cause our utility bills to increase by as much as 18 percent in one year. To lessen the impact of this debt service, we decided to spread this cost out over several years. While this may mean that our utility bills will increase up to 5 percent a year, it does prevent a single year increase of 18 percent.

Cary’s population growth is another concern for many citizens. As recent as this past summer, we were recognized as one of the fastest growing communities nationwide, based on 2007 data. But the nationwide recession significantly affected Cary’s housing market by the second quarter of 2008, causing a drastic decline in housing permits for the year. While this will cause a slight reduction in the Town’s revenue, hopefully it will allow the Town time to catch up with some infrastructure projects.

Looking toward the future, Cary has reached a point where the Town’s vision needs review. Approximately 80 percent of Cary’s land is accounted for or developed, which means that we will need to rethink how we plan to grow in the future. Therefore, beginning early this year we will start a process to define a new vision for Cary’s future. Citizens will be invited and encouraged to participate in defining the future of their town. I believe we need to protect the beautiful neighborhoods that make Cary great while beginning to urbanize and revitalize older areas like downtown.

Town employees will play an important role in implementing the vision for years to come. Cary’s town manager now administers to more than 1,000 employees. Long-time town manager Bill Coleman retired last fall, leaving the leadership position vacant. Hiring a new town manager will be one of the most important decisions this council makes. In 2008, the council defined a process to select the ideal town manager. We are currently doing a national search for the best possible candidate and hope to name a new town manager within a couple of months. We look forward to the new town manger leading us into this new era.

Cary made huge strides in environmental planning and preservation in 2008 that will carry over into this year. We launched our turf buy back and toilet rebate programs, initiatives designed to help reduce our water consumption. Since the toilet rebate program began in June 2008, 492 toilets have been replaced with high efficiency models for a water savings of almost 4 million gallons per year. Our turf buy back program attracted 78 participants who replaced more than 225,000 feet of traditional landscaping with natural areas or warm season grass, for a possible water savings of over 750,000 gallons per year.

Other areas of environmentally-friendly progress include our recycling program. We increased what citizens can recycle and starting this year, citizens will have roll out carts for easier recycling. Cary also began using alternative energy by using solar panels to power a wastewater facility. Moreover, during the past year we created a team of staff members who are working together with our new environmental advisory board of citizens to look for additional ways to make Cary greener. With their help we hope to continue to lead the state in environmental initiatives.

Schools are still a major concern for Cary parents. While the Wake County Public School System is recognized as a premier school system, its reassignment policies can cause great hardship for many Cary families. As representatives of Cary, the council was very active in 2008 representing our concerns to the school board and to the Wake County delegation of legislators. We partnered with the school system to provide greater resources to the school system and the town such as shared parks and land. Since 2000, Cary has provided over $65 million in support for schools. This year the council will look for new opportunities to be greater advocates for our parents and partner with the school system whenever possible.

Finally, we made great strides this past year in opening up our government and improving citizen involvement. First, we created a new TV program called Cary Matters that runs three times daily to inform our citizens about major issues and answer questions they may have. While this program has been moderately successful in its infancy, it is my hope that citizens will start using this program more to find out about what is important to them and what the Town is planning for in the future.

Next, we moved forward on our initiative to establish Citizen Issue Advisory Groups. This allows a group of five to 15 Cary citizens to come together, study and make recommendations to the Town Council on a specific issue. To find out more about this process, go to the Town of Cary’s Web site at www.townofcary.org<http://www.townofcary.org/> and read about our Citizen Issue Review Commission.

For our third task, we revamped our process for appointing board and commission members; in the past, it was perceived by some as being political appointments. Appointments have been moved from right after elections to the middle of the year and the entire process of nominating, discussion, and votes are open to the public. The first implementation of this new process will be done this year.

Additionally, in December 2007 I created a weekly journal so that citizens can review the work I perform as your mayor. In 2008, Councilman Don Frantz also started a journal to provide information about his service as a council member. The information in these journals not only gives the status of what we do but why we make the decisions we make. I believe we have made great progress in making our government more transparent and hope to continue with new initiatives this year.

While 2009 promises to be a challenging year, our financial position and our excellent Town staff have Cary in great shape. I believe 2009 will be a year of more open government, more citizen involvement, and significant improvements to our infrastructure, all with a significant focus on the economy. It will be a year in which our award-winning environmental initiatives will help our community become even greener. I believe the potential for our town to achieve great things is vast despite the challenges before us. I appreciate your trust and faith in me as your Mayor and with your help we will make Cary even greater than it is today. And as always, thanks for calling Cary home.

Well that is about it for this week. I will hopefully post again by Sunday, January 18th. Please feel free to leave a comment on my post.

January 4, 2009

 

This is the first post on my new website. I hope it is beneficial. It is a work in progress and I hope to add more as time goes on. Now for this week…

 

This week was a holiday week for my non mayoral job which allowed me to focus on just mayor duties. The week included several meetings and a taping and presentation of the State of the Town Address.

 

The first meeting of the week was on Monday with the Economic Development governing board. Members from the Chamber of Commerce presented a quarterly report and then we discussed renewal of the Economic Development contract with the Chamber. The 2006 contract was for ¾ of a million dollars. The new contract is for a little over ½ million dollars. I expressed an interest of having this thoroughly vetted by the Operations Committee. In addition, I asked that this appropriation be done in the budget cycle. This will require us to grant a continuance of the existing contract since it expires in February.

 

My second meeting on Monday was a mid year meeting with the town clerk staff on how to better work together. I struggled to come up with just a handful of points. I truly believe we have the best town clerk staff in the state.

 

Wednesday the staff-council retreat committee met to discuss the outline of the retreat. This year we will be holding the retreat in town at the Embassy Suites. By holding the retreat in town this year we are only spending 1/3 of what is usually spent. This two day meeting is open to the public and I look forward to the discussion as we will be laying out goals and a vision for the future.

 

Wednesday evening was by weekly meeting with the interim town manager and the Mayor Pro-Tem. We discussed a wide range of issues for about two hours.

 

Friday I did the taping of the State of the Town. I wrote this address last week and it was reviewed by staff early in the week for possible errors. The taping lasted a couple of hours as we did six or seven takes adjusting the speed of the delivery and the presentation of the delivery. I believe it will be much better than last year’s.

 

Saturday I gave a 45 minute talk at Glenaire on the State of the Town and answered questions. Questions from that group were on the downtown park, our future water treatment facility, and if we will be considering a women for town manger. In case you are wondering about the last one, of course we will consider all qualified candidates.

 

Well that is about it for this week. I will hopefully post again by Sunday, January 11^th. Please feel free to leave a comment on my post.