This week’s major focus was the budget but also included a lot of emotional issues.

Monday began with a typical agenda meeting. The biggest item on the agenda for this meeting was the budget. Later in the week the traffic issues at Green Level to Durham Road and Cary Glen became an issue and was added to the agenda.

I think it is very important to say that the loss of Ms Birdsong’s life caused many heavy hearts at town hall. It especially resonated with me since I have a 16 year old daughter who, by the way, got her drivers license on Friday. Town council and staff received many, many emails about this intersection. Some of them were very cruel and stated that we don’t care unless it involves one of our family members. I can tell you that of all the council members and staff I know, that is totally false. We care deeply about all our citizens and mourn any loss of life. We have been and will continue to be working on solutions to this intersection. This includes trying to influence the NCDOT who has the ultimate authorization for anything done at the intersection.

Monday night Cary hosted a Public Session held by Triangle Transit to review future plans for transit in the region. I think it is important to understand that 1.5 million people will come to this area within the next couple of decades. We need to be proactive about transportation solutions and we all need to participate. I believe it will require a multi-modal approach starting with increased bus service and eventually include rail.

Tuesday started with a weekly meeting that included the town manager and Mayor Pro-Tem. While we discussed a variety of issues, we also discussed the traffic incident at Green Level to Durham Road and Cary Glen. During our conversation we received a call from staff about the second accident which was captured on tape by WRAL. Investigators later revealed that the lady involved in that accident said she was distracted by the media.

Tuesday night I welcomed a group at the kickoff of the USTA Community Tennis Development Division. Cary has the attention of many high profile organizations including the USTA and the NCAA that are bringing national and international events to Cary. This translates in to millions of dollars a year in money spent at Cary hotels, restaurants, stores, etc. which is returned to Cary in revenue from sales tax. And that means Cary citizens will pay less in their taxes.

Wednesday council member Don Frantz and I taped the July version of Cary Matters. Don is a natural in front of the camera so it is a lot of fun doing episodes with him. The main topic of the July episode is the reasons for building the Western Wake Wastewater Regional Facility.

Thursday’s council meeting was attended by several people from the Green Level to Durham Road and Cary Glen area. Staff gave an update and council asked several questions related to the issue. As stated earlier we will continue to work on this issue. We also approved our Fiscal Year 2010 budget which was very close to the town manager’s recommendations. The fact that this budget was unanimously approved with only three work sessions is a reflection on the great job done by the town manager and his staff. They understood the economy, the wishes of the council, and the needs of the public and created a great budget. Cary still has the lowest tax rate in Wake County and the highest quality of life. I am proud to have been a part of the group to approve this budget.

Emails this week included several on the Green Level to Durham Road and Cary Glen. It also included problems about a drained lake, a double wide being placed on a vacant lot, and several requests related to the budget.

One note of personal interest… I received a death threat several weeks ago. I was informed by our police department that they were issuing warrant against a man that is in custody for threatening Mayor Meeker, Governor Purdue, and President Obama. Please pray for this individual as he obviously needs help.

Well that is about it for this week. I will be on vacation next week but will do a very short post on Saturday, July 5^th.  Please feel free to leave a comment on my post.

With the exception of one event, this week was all about meetings.

Monday night I attended the Mayor’s Association meeting. All the mayors of Wake County were in attendance except Mayor Faulkner and Mayor Meeker. We all talked about our budgets and how our towns are doing in this economy. Based on the mayors’ information I would say that Wake County towns are doing fairly well. While there are cuts here and there in almost every town, very few are planning layoffs, and all are moving forward and all are still growing.

Tuesday I met with the town manager and Mayor Pro-Tem Robison to go over several issues that have come up recently. This included odor at the South Cary Wastewater Plant, storm water issues, long range water plans, and fiscal year 2010 issues.

Wednesday I spoke to realtors at the Association of Realtors in Cary. About 30 or 40 realtors were in attendance as well as Mayor Faulkner from Morrisville, Mayor Sears from Holly Springs, and Mayor Williams from Garner. My talk lasted about 15 minutes and included some of the latest data from staff.

Points of note from this talk included results from refinancing bonds that will save Cary citizens an average of $290,000 annually on utility interest expense and $300,000 this fiscal year and FY2013 in general fund interest expense. This is just another example of the great staff that Cary is so lucky to have.

In this talk I also pointed out the most recent information on the town’s growth. From April 2008 to April 2009 Cary grew by 4.7% or 6066 people. That puts us at a 5 year rolling average of over 4.6% which is above the growth rate set by previous councils. It was also interesting to note that in May of 2009 Cary issued 129 single family building permits which is the most since last July and actually exceeded those issued in May 2008. I am hoping these are signs that Cary is starting its way out of the recession. It is my opinion that Cary is positioned well to be one of the first municipalities in the region to recover from the recession due to our financial position and our conservative approach to budgeting.

Wednesday afternoon I attended the Transportation Advisory Committee meeting of elected officials. That meeting was mostly receiving reports from various staff members. One motion of note was to invite Louisburg to be a part of CAMPO which is the planning organization that towns in this area belong to.

Wednesday evening I attended the Wake Transit Leadership Team meeting. We are hopeful that the state leaders will give this area the option to hold a vote on whether or not to use sales tax to fund transit. We are also hoping to go out into the communities to get their ideas on how transit should progress in this region.

Thursday afternoon I attended the Economic Development Governing Board meeting. There were several items of interest presented at this meeting. Here are some that were included:

• In April, Business Week named Cary as the best location in North Carolina for entrepreneurial startups in the smaller city category.
• Raleigh-Cary area grew by more than 4% last year making it the fastest growing metro area according to Forbes magazine.
• Cary’s unemployment rate has been level or lower since February (figures through April).
• On April 14^th ABB announced that they would relocate their North American headquarters to Cary from Norwalk, Connecticut. This will eventually mean 100 jobs will shift to Cary.
• On May 27^th Loparex announced they would move their corporate headquarters to Cary from a Chicago suburb. They will invest $1.5 million and employ 60 individuals with an average salary of $93,000.
• Also in May Carolina Advanced Digital announced they would relocate their operations to Cary.
• Cary is currently tracking 16 more “projects” to hopefully move to Cary with 6 seeming hopeful.
• Cary’s sports venues held several national events over the last couple of months including the Division II College World Series and the National Black Heritage Championships. Estimated economic benefits from Cary sports venues average in the millions annually.

Thursday night I met with a group of citizens who are interested in the town funding decorative lighting. Staff was directed at the last council meeting to investigate the feasibility of this request.

Later Thursday night I met briefly with the building team of Ric Richards who is creating the LEED certified (environmentally friendly) McDonalds on Kildaire Farm Road. This restaurant has a bunch of cool features. You will have to check it out once it is open.

Emails this week included complaints about on street parking, water conservation, odor and noise pollution at the South Cary Wastewater plant, the lack of an indoor tennis facility in Cary, and the overabundance of geese in Cary.

Well that is about it for this week. I will plan to post again on Saturday, June 27^th.  Please feel free to leave a comment on my post.

This week was dominated by the budget, a council meeting, and high school graduations. Last week was a week of vacation. My daughters and I spent a week in Hilton Head which is my favorite vacation spot. It was tough going back to work and getting back to mayoral duties after a week of fun in the sun.

Monday started with a round of calls to council members to see if there were any items they would need more information on to prepare for Wednesday’s council meeting. That evening I met with the town manager, town attorney, town clerk, and directors to review the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting and there were no unexpected items of concern.

Tuesday started with a lunch meeting of the Lion’s Club. We discussed our Charter night which will come up on July 19^th. If you are one of those people that like to help others it still not too late to become a charter member of this Lion’s Club. Let me know if you are interested.

Tuesday afternoon the council met for our third and last work session on the budget. We agreed to accept the manager’s recommendations with the exception of delaying the renovating old Cary Elementary. The reason for moving ahead with the renovation of old Cary Elementary is that it is close to structural failure and it will not cause additional debt. The reason the town manager recommended delaying this project for one year was to give us a little more “insurance” in case the state decides to withhold money due to municipalities. We currently have our four month reserve and an additional $12 million to handle that potential situation. Although we agreed to move forward with Cary Elementary we still have the opportunity to delay this project before we actually accept bids which should occur sometime around October. The council will formally vote on the budget at our June 25^th meeting.

Tuesday night the council went into close session to discuss performance of our direct reports, the town attorney and the town clerk.

Wednesday morning I was honored to give the commencement address to West Cary Middle School. There were over 450 graduates moving on to high school. My message centered on accepting challenges but measuring risks and realizing that they can do anything.

Wednesday night was the council meeting. I requested late last year that we move the council meeting this week to Wednesday instead of Thursday so that I, and other council members, could attend the Cary High School graduation. From what I understand, the mayor of Cary hasn’t attended a Cary High School graduation for several years.

The open session of the council meeting was very quick but our closed session lasted for about two and a half hours. One item of note at the council meeting was on roads. This item proposed to swap road responsibility with NCDOT which they have preliminarily agreed to. One of the roads is Cary Parkway. For the rest see http://www.townofcary.org/op/en09-092.htm . Another item of note is that Cary agreed to reinstate a moratorium on annexation into Chatham County until this fall. In the meantime a subcommittee of both boards will meet to work on a more permanent solution. In closed session we addressed five items which included the formal reviews of our direct reports.

Thursday evening I attended the Cary High School graduation. Joining me from the town council was Don Frantz. We had the privilege of not only watching all graduates receive their diplomas but watch Don’s son Whit receive his. Don even gave his son a hug as he went across the stage. How cool is that? Being a part of ceremony was a lot of fun and the expressions on the faces of the graduates were priceless. I personally knew several graduates that are students in my Sunday school class. Congratulations to the Cary High school graduates!

Sunday I attended two more graduations. Apex was at 4 PM and Panther Creek was at 7 PM. Both were outstanding and I was glad to see even more Sunday school students walk across the stage. The Panther Creek graduation was the first in the school’s history. An important point made by their principal is that the seniors became great leaders to underclassmen without having leaders themselves. They all came from ninth grade centers so have been older than classmates since the seventh grade. Congratulations to Apex and Panther Creek graduates!

There were several complaints in this week’s email. These included geese, our water conservation ordinance, our sign ordinance, door to door solicitors, and our noise ordinance. Hopefully, we will be able to address all the questions very soon (if we haven’t already).

Well that is about it for this week. I will plan to post again on Sunday, June 21^st.  Please feel free to leave a comment on my post.