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HomeMy WebLinkAbout061124 esHARNETT COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS Minutes of Work Session June 11, 2024 The Harnett County Board of Commissioners met in work session on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, at 9:00 am, in the Commissioners Meeting Room, Harnett County Resource Center and Library, 455 McKinney Parkway, Lillington, North Carolina. Members present: W. Brooks Matthews, Vice Chairman Barbara McKoy, Commissioner Lewis W. Weatherspoon, Commissioner Matthew B. Nicol, Commissioner Staff present: Dwight Snow, County Attorney Kimberly Honeycutt, Finance Officer Brent Trout, County Manager Jaime Bell-Raig, Deputy Clerk Rebecca Aul, Staff Attorney Vice Chairman Matthews called the Harnett County Board of Commissioners meeting to order at 9:00 am. Commissioner Nicol led the Pledge of Allegiance and invocation. The following agenda was before the Board of Commissioners: 1. Call to order — Chairman William Morris 2. Pledge of Allegiance and Invocation — Commissioner Barbara McKoy 3. Discuss a request for Board approval of a change to Summerville Bunnlevel Fire Department Relief Fund Board membership; Larry Smith, Emergency Services Director 4. Discuss a request to approve an amendment to the current services agreement with Republic Services; Chad Beane, Solid Waste Director 5. Discuss Proposed Text Amendment: Case #PLAN2404-00001 Applicant: George & Claudia Elliott; 10.62 +/- acres; Pin #0663-13-8211.000; From RA-30 to RA-20M Zoning District; Black River Township; SR # 2230 (Tylerstone Drive); Mark Locklear, Development Services Director 6. Discuss proposed updates to the Personnel Ordinance; Janice Lane, HR Director 7. Discuss the revised Nonprofit Committee bylaws, policies, and funding; Brent Trout, County Manager 8. Discuss FY 2024-25 Recommended Budget; Lisa McFadden, Budget Director, Brent Trout, County Manager and Kimberly Honeycutt, Finance Officer 9. County Manager's Report — Brent Trout, County Manager • June 17, 2024 Regular Meeting Agenda Review • Upcoming meetings and invitations 10. Closed Session Harnett County Board of Commissioners Work Session Minutes June 11, 2024 Pagel of 6 Vd 11. Adjourn Mr. Smith stated there is a request to change the Summerville Bunnlevel Fire Department Relief Fund Board membership from Mr. Harry Korner to Mr. Rodney Gregory. The consensus of the Board was to add this item to the consent agenda. Mr. Bean stated the Solid Waste Department seeks approval of an amendment to Republic Services' current contract. Republic Services currently operates all seven of the County's convenience sites, including providing staff, maintenance of equipment and grounds and hauling waste and recycling for each site. All necessary reporting goes to Solid Waste. The amendment would extend the terms for an additional three years, which the parties have agreed. There is a one-time rate adjustment of 11.49% that equates to $73,587 to cover hauling costs and a Consumer Price Index cap of 4% was included in this amendment. The consensus of the Board was to add this item to the consent agenda. Ms. Arbor stated there was a small typo to the item and it was a rezoning request, not a text amendment. Ms. Arbor states the requestor is requesting to rezone a 10.62 +/- acre site from RA- 30 to RA-20M. The property is environmentally sensitive due to wetlands and the proximity to Neills Creek. Ms. Arbor went on to explain the permitted uses in the two zoning districts as well as the Land Use Classification Compatibility. Ms. Arbor stated the request is not completely compatible with the Land Use Classifications. The staffs evaluation was not able to support the request. The Planning Board found the request for the small-scale rezoning to be unreasonable due to the potential impact on the surrounding community and the immediate neighbors. There were several citizens that spoke in opposition to the request at the Planning Board meeting with concerns about potential impacts. Commissioner Weatherspoon questioned whether the property was land locked. Ms. Arbor stated there was a private easement allowing access to the property. Ms. Lane went through the updates to the Personnel Ordinance line by line, mentioning there were several updates to the Personnel Ordinance to bring the Ordinance current and add new legislative changes to the Ordinance. Throughout the ordinance the mention of Deputy County Manager to update for all the positions in administration. The introduction to the Personnel Ordinance integrated to match the new strategic plan mission, vision and goals. Commissioner McKoy asked what was added as it relates to the Board of Commissioners responsibilities with regard to the Board of Elections. Ms. Lane stated that it was updated to reflect the statute. Commissioner McKoy questioned if the cell phone use policy was removed from the ordinance, who would be responsible for making the decisions. Ms. Lane stated that each department head would have to create a policy, which would all be provided to the Board for approval of the policy. Commissioner McKoy questioned whether the State allowed employees time off for Juneteenth, which Ms. Lane confirmed was a floating holiday at the State level for employees. Ms. Lane went over the updates regarding discipline for unsatisfactory job performance. Commissioner McKoy mentioned a verbal warning will sometimes straighten an individual out and asked why the need to remove the verbal warning. Commissioner McKoy questioned why we are eliminating the verbal warning, stating that the verbal warning would help the employee recognize they need to do better. Ms. Lane stated that the verbal warnings were not being Harnett County Board of Commissioners Work Session Minutes June 11, 2024 Page 2 of 6 documented properly, which Commissioner McKoy responded that is a manager issue. Ms. Lane mentioned that there is still encouragement for coaching before a warning takes place and there are still Performance Improvement Plans in place. Commissioner McKoy stated she would like for the oral warning to remain because it may eliminate a termination. Commissioner Matthews questioned the oral warning and the form necessary when the second warning is issued and whether the oral warning is noted, and Ms. Lane confirmed that the form provides the date and check box of the oral warning while providing the date of the second warning. Ms. Lane confirmed the preference of the Board would be to keep the oral warning intact in the Personnel Ordinance. Commissioner Matthews stated keeping the oral warning would allow for verbal conversation about any deficiencies in the employee's performance. Commissioner McKoy questioned where the anti -nepotism policy was in the Personnel Ordinance. Ms. Lane stated it was not added to the policy and referred to page 31, Section 6, The Employment of Relatives. Commissioner McKoy stated she did not find it appropriate that department heads should not be hiring their family members. Ms. Lane stated that a department head should not be able to supervise a family member; the existing policy prohibits it. Mr. Trout suggested that the department head fill out a form to request the hiring of a family member of the County Manager. This form would state that a supervisory relationship would not exist. Mr. Trout stated he agreed that family members supervising family members can become problematic. Commissioner McKoy reiterated the need for a policy against nepotism. Mr. Trout stated they needed to go down three levels of relation. Vice Chairman Matthews stated he would like the item on as a separate item to address the two revisions. Mr. Trout stated the company Carolina Community Foundation has a 10% administrative fee to manage the nonprofit funds. If the decision is to go to in-house and have the County making decisions and receiving funds, the money received from individuals is not tax deductible. Mr. Trout's recommendation would be to manage the nonprofit funds in-house rather than pay another foundation to manage those funds. If the in-house management of nonprofit funds became too much to handle internally, the option to have them managed by another entity could be revisited. Commissioner McKoy stated that in-house management would be ideal, with the final decisions regarding nonprofit funding coming from the Board. Each organization should be set up as a 501(c)(3) and reporting requirements should be implemented. Vice Chairman Matthews would like to explore the idea of a public/private partnership and would like to see some options regarding that design as a brand-new organization. Mr. Trout stated he would bring an option to the board for consideration. Mr. Trout stated there a several items that need guidance from the Board. The decision on the West Area tax levy rate increase and whether the increase should be two cents or four cents increase. Commissioner Weatherspoon recommended two cents. Vice Chairman Matthews noted the rate in the districts adjacent were higher and he questioned whether this was a matter of equity or a matter of need. Mr. Trout stated it is a matter of equity, but that there was an expression of a need. The consensus of the Board was a two -cent increase and continue as an incremental increase rather than four cents at once. Harnett County Board of Commissioners Work Session Minutes June 11, 2024 Page 3 of 6 • The Boys and Girls Club allocation of $50,000, and whether the Board would approve or eliminate the request from the budget. Commissioner Weatherspoon noted there have been two $50,000 appropriations from the State, his recommendation was to eliminate it. Vice Chairman Matthews mentioned the two appropriations coming from the State. Mr. Trout confirmed the two appropriations from the State. Commissioner McKoy stated she would like to see a policy in place prior to releasing any nonprofit funding. Commissioner Weatherspoon concurred. The consensus of the Board was to eliminate the allocation. • The $75,000 allocation for Nonprofits. The consensus of the Board was to eliminate the allocation. • Guidance was needed from the Board regarding the cost -of -living increase. Commissioner Weatherspoon stated 3% was what the State was providing to its employees as a cost -of -living increase. The consensus of the Board regarding the cost -of - living increase was 3% across the board. • Guidance was needed from the Board regarding the refundable deposit requirement to use the new room at the Jetport. The consensus of the Board was to approve the refundable deposit for the use of the new room at the Jetport. • Guidance was needed from the Board regarding the additional animal shelter attendant position. This position would create a $54,000 increase in our current budget. Commissioner Weatherspoon mentioned a 12-month hiring freeze and creating a savings of almost $4.9 million dollars to make up for the almost $6 million shortfall in education. Mr. Trout stated during the preparation of the budget all positions are funded. Mr. Trout stated there are no true savings because the positions that remain unfilled is money that remains in the fund balance. Commissioner McKoy noted the staffing issues are dire at the animal shelter. The consensus of a majority of the Board was to approve the one animal shelter attendant position. • Guidance was needed from the Board regarding Solid Waste roadside cleaning crew. This funding comes from our enterprise fund and keeps our roadsides clean. The consensus of the Board was to approve the Solid Waste roadside cleaning crew. • Guidance was needed from the Board regarding the Low Wealth Funding for the Board of Education. Mr. Trout stated the last item relates to the determination of the covering of the low wealth funding that was not provided by the State this year based on the formula. Management spent time trying to figure out this formula. Provided in a memo, were the basic tenants of what that formula relates to, and it relates to three factors. We first look at our property values, those are unfortunately two years behind, they lag as one of the inputs into the formula. We had a large jump in property values with gain from our revaluation and so that revaluation increased our numbers. They then have a weighted sales assessment number that is added into their formula. Ours was 88.12, that is important because that reduces how much our effected tax levy ends up being. Thirdly, it takes our .591 per 100 assessed tax levy and add that 88.12 to it, it reduces and provides a modified tax levy rate of .5210 which ends up being below the State average tax levy rate of .5420. It ends up being a combination of higher valuations which caused a modification to our weighted sales assessment which caused our tax levy rate to drop below the State average. When you are below the State average, the State says you Harnett County Board of Commissioners Work Session Minutes June 11, 2024 Page 4 of 6 should be helping more with your schools based on this formula. Ms. McFadden dug even deeper, she talked with some staff at the Department of Public Instruction and was able to tell us exactly where we could have done things differently and what the impact would have been. Ms. Honeycutt stated it came down to a few factors, the property value and the market value played in. Through assistance from Department of Public Instruction, we were able to take that long calculation that she had printed out and provided to the Commissioners. There are a lot of items that go into that calculation but there are two items that basically we were able to go back and drop in the change so had the tax rate been shifted from .591 to .616, that would have given us the tax rate average that we would have been equal to the State average and that would have kept the full funding in place. The other side of that would have been the year of that levy, when we set that tax rate had we left the tax rate at .591, had we given the schools an additional $11,876,834 to meet the average State pupil allocation that would have saved us the $5.8 million in funding, so it came down to what we gave and the tax rate. Throughout the PowerPoint presentation provided, the County has been trying to go up on the per pupil count to provide more current expense, but we are also putting an additional $2.4 million over for capital maintenance items to assist schools. Those are items that the County does not get credit for and that does not tie into any projects expense funding calculations. In addition, we are also continuing to set aside our reserves of our fund balance so that we could go in and instruct schools because the County through the Statute is responsible for the instruction of capital buildings for the school system and that includes schools. With the market the way it has been, the cost of construction is going up. The projections we have for the cost have exceeded exponentially as well as our borrowing rate. So, as we had talked about, everything ties into it but the two main factors when we were discussing with Department of Public Instruction it came back to the tax rate and/or the levy. In the end, it just boiled down to those two items increasing the levy a little bit or increasing the current expense allocation over $11 million. Mr. Trout stated the calculations that had been pulled together were about $5.8 million short. We have right now in the budget in order to put a number in, we currently have $5,882,183 million placed in our budget, in contingency and the reason at that this point unless a decision is made regarding any cuts of the budget or any tax increase is decided on. It is put in there as use of fund balance, and we put that number in contingency because we know from discussions with our Legislators that it is still being pursued as to whether the State will assist us. If we have it in contingency and the state decides to provide some funding back to us, then we do not need to pull it all out of contingency and it would just go back to our fund balance. This way we ensure that the amount is there in the event the state does not provide additional funding. Ms. Honeycutt did a calculation, and we are around 23 % of fund balance if we were to us the full amount in contingency right now. We would still be above our policy of 20% mentioned by the Vice Chairman. Mr. Trout noted the enormity of this decision by the Board. If there is any additional information needed, we will be happy to work on that. Vice Chairman stated he would hate to give more work to do, and he realizes this is an unusual time. He realizes the initial budget draft was done before we were aware of this but as he worked through some of the projected budget. He couldn't help but come across some things that made him wonder if they were really Harnett County Board of Commissioners Work Session Minutes June 11, 2024 Page 5 of 6 needed for next year. One example, we have in the budget to provide funding to repaint the inside of a building and he questioned if that could wait another year. Vice Chairman questioned if there would be an opportunity to go through and look some of those things, that may be able to wait another year, to reduce the hit to the fund balance. Mr. Trout stated they could go through the budget but wanted to know what the target amount would be satisfactory. Mr. Trout stated if the target was $5.8 million, that would change our service level and that would be major changes. He proposed a $1 million and $2 million target. Commissioner McKoy mentioned the risk of reducing the fund balance and the additional problems it could cause in the event of an emergency. Commissioner McKoy stated we need to maintain County services to keep the County in operation. Commissioner Nicol made the recommendation to add this for further discussion on June 25, 2024. He questioned the possibility of an emergency meeting in the event of continued revisions to the budget. Commissioner Weatherspoon noted that June 25, 2024, could be a voting meeting and if there was a need for an emergency meeting it would be determined at that meeting. Mr. Trout stated that he preferred that because there are a couple of things that he was informed of as he walked into the meeting. The budget director will not be available on June 28 and the information must be in the system and there was a mention of the system being down for some time for upgrades as well. Mr. Trout confirmed that you can annotate an action item on the work session. Mr. Trout shared he will be leaving for a leadership training event beginning June 11, 2024 and through Friday, June 15. He noted he received a scholarship to be able to attend this training seminar. Commissioner Weatherspoon made a motion to go into Closed Session to instruct the County staff concerning the position to be taken by the County in negotiating a contract for the acquisition of real property. This motion is made pursuant to NC General Statute Section 143- 318.11 (a)(5). The motion was seconded by Commissioner Nicol and carried unanimously. Commissioner Nicol made a motion to adjourn the Board of Commissioners at 11:55 am. Commissioner McKoy seconded the motion. Motion carried unanimously. ,�c&-Jt&� William Morris, Chairman J ime B ll-Raig, Deputy Clerk Harnett County Board of Commissioners Work Session Minutes June 11, 2024 Page 6 of 6