Mayor: Thank you Steve. Before we hear from our next speaker, I will acknowledge that I omitted the agenda so can we stop and go back and pick up the agenda additions or changes or approve the agenda before we go on to the next speaker?

Horace Warner: That should be fine.

Mayor: Will ya’ll be willing to do that Council Members?

?: uh huh

Mayor: Okay, what uh any changes in the agenda approve it or…

Dot Duggins: I move to approve.

?: I second.

Mayor: All in favor.

I, I , I,

Mayor: All right we’ll get that out of the way. That was not the council’s mistake that was mine. We’ll go on with the next speaker, Harold Warner.

2. Harold Warner

2958 Lakawanna Drive

Walkertown, N.C. 27051

Thank you very much Mayor Davis and the members of the Town Council. I certainly appreciate this opportunity for a few minutes to speak with you or to you about some matters I think you’d be most interested in. Now hopefully all of you have noticed the number of citizens who are very interested in making Walkertown a model community by participating in the business of this town and doing what they can and offering their services to the council and to the citizens. I think you’d notice this by certainly the attendance at your meeting tonight and in previous meetings. I think this certainly should tell you something about that we’re all behind you and we want to work with you and for you to make our town one that is envied by a lot of people. Now these citizens have had many legitimate questions to myself and many others who I see seated here this evening. And I think it’s only good business to bring these questions before you the Council members, the town staff and also other citizens who might not have had the opportunity to express their feelings. And tonight I want to share with you some of these questions and interests of many of your fellow citizens. First, many citizens are coming to me, I think to you and others about the possibility of returning the service of recycling to the citizens of Walkertown. I think we all have an obligation to the environment and to the future generations to conserve our land and our resources. You are to be commended for your consideration of this. Now these same citizens want to know a little bit about how you’re going about asking for information. We want to know if you are contacting all of the known providers in this area by written letter stating various forms of recycling to see what we can and cannot afford. We hope that has been done and if it has not we want you to respond to us please. Now moving on also, it’s been a lot of comment to myself and with many of you about this matter of using our land, our precious possession and even if we do go to Mars I don’t think we think we consider that making any more good use of Walkertown. We want that to certainly be used in the best possible manner and on that thing there is a mention of a comprehensive Land Use Committee relative to our planning board. We already have a Planning Board established. I picked up from the town office the document or ordinance I think it’s called there spelling out things, studied it a little bit but I don’t want to certainly misinform you that I’m an expert. The citizens are asking such questions as this: How many members are proposed to be on the Land Use Committee and are these members being considered for various areas of our community and the surrounding area. We think that is very important. Secondly, when is the deadline for applications to be turned in to our town office for studying consideration and appointment. Thirdly, have you the town council members reviewed those applications, completed applications who have already been turned in to you. If not we hope you will be doing it very shortly and evaluating each of these interesting people. And then we also want to point out to you the question of how will these Land Use Committee members be appointed. Uh, we want to hopefully be that this will be done by the elected officials of all the citizens of Walkertown which is you the Town Council Members. Hopefully maybe we would have you share some of the information to our questions with us if not this evening certainly in the immediate future. Thank you very much for the addression.

Mayor: Thank you Mr. Warner. Most likely many of the questions you asked Mr. Warner, will be addressed as we go along later in the night. Okay, pause, seeing no other names listed we’ll declare the public session closed. We’ll move forward for uh old business on our agendas. Item #1 under old business is the minutes from the January 13^th meeting. I trusted you have read these minutes and have ---------any motion on the minutes?

Warner: Hearing no corrections or ________ to them I move to approve them as given.

Larrimore: I’d like to make a comment about the minutes. Uh, I noticed a lot of people have uh its not her fault that if you don’t go up to the microphone it don’t get –it’d be a question asked and if it comes from out there and it’s not from the microphone then she can’t hear it. I mean its not on the tape so our minutes don’t get….the question and the answer don’t get answered on the and the of course we’re here..the council’s here and we’re we know what the question was..am I right? That’s the only question I had the only comment I had.

Mayor: Ok motion on the floor for Councilman Warner to approve the minutes? Councilwoman Duggins has second this motion. All in favor?

People: I

Mayor: The minutes are approved as written and with the comment that in order to be heard and knowing to be recorded you need to come to the microphone. That’s what you’re talking about, right?

Larrimore: Right

Mayor: Under new business tonight, uh our first item of new business is recognition of uh our retiring Fire Chief Dennis Whicker. This past week many of you may or may not have recognized it but you would have thought it was something unusual if you had watched the papers the original Fire Marshal in the state and in the county past away this week and just yesterday Cliff was just showing me the obituary also from who was it one time the lead trainer of all the firemen here in this area and he was the first director of EMS that was uh D.W. Atkins. The first gentleman I was speaking about was Reece Bauguss.

Then D.W. Atkins, but these are old giants in the fire service that have past away. Unfortunately they’re lived long enough that they didn’t get the recognition that they probably deserved uh but tonight we want to just pause just for a moment in the middle of our busy schedules that we all normally do and we want to stop and say thank you to Chief Dennis Whicker who retired at the end of December after fifteen years of service with the Walkertown Fire Department as chief and I think that’s what how many years all total in the fire service Dennis? Thirty-seven years in the fire service, I don’t know about ya’ll but that’s a lot of years of service. (clapping from audience) Dennis we’d like for you to come forward. We have a small plaque of recognition just to recognize your service in appreciation of your service for the town of Walkertown for fifteen years as chief, we want to just say thank you for that and also something that’s very familiar to you. We have a picture of something that you should recognize very easily. We want you to have this to hang so you can look at it day by day. We do appreciate…….(clapping from audience).

Do you people realize the number hours that have gone into his 15 years of service, Dennis would like to say a word…say a word to us. If you have word..I done put you on the spot. That wasn’t planned I know that. (Dennis laughing)

D.Whicker:

I just like to the Mayor and Town Council and the staff uh over the fifteen years a lot of personnel has changed but we’ve got along real well with the Town Council and not being part of the town sometimes is difficult to uh understand it’s a whole different world in the fire department than government and uh everything has gone along real well and I really appreciate everything that ya’ll have done and uh the man coming up now is well educated and well trained and I’m sure that a you’ll support him like you supported me and we need to continue to move forward into the future. Thank you very much.

Mayor: Thank you Dennis. (audience clapping) Along those same lines we have another item concerning this and I will like to recognize Councilwoman Dot Duggins for a special presentation that she’s making tonight.

D. Duggins:

Mr. Hutchins are you here. Could you come forward please? While he’s coming forward I’d like to say that the Duggins family appreciates the fire department tremendously over the period of time that Leonard was ill and uh which was several years, and he had a lot of trepidation of what was going to happen to him in his last days and I want to tell you that many of you, I know that he discussed his needs, that his possible needs that he discussed with you all about what he might need and you all gave him a lot of comfort in the fact that you could handle whatever happened and there was several times that we did have to call on you and especially the rescue squad. We appreciate so much. You came out and helped me with him a lot times and that last trip to the hospital we appreciate. Thank you, that’s a small token of our appreciation.

Hutchins: We certainly appreciate that. (applause)

Mayor: I suppose we should have went one step further when we finished recognizing retired Chief Whicker. We do have the new Chief that a Dennis eluded to. Wesley Hutchins is our new chief and was just the recipriant of the uh award that was given to the fire department and Wesley now has a presentation to make to us. Several months ago this council voted to pay a sum of money, I believe it was $5000, is that correct?

Duggins: That’s correct.

Mayor: Toward a thermal imaging camera. Many of you probably, that don’t mean a lot to you but to the fire department that’s state of the art technology and that’s a piece of equipment that runs anywhere from fourteen to fifteen thousand dollars. By filling the boots and by begging and making presentations to clubs and all facets of organizations the fire department has come up with enough money and has purchased the camera, and tonight Chief Hutchins is going to show us a little bit about the camera so Wesley if you would bring the camera and make your presentation. We’re all eyes for you.

Hutchins: I’ll be brief, don’t have much to say. Before we get started uh a few words Dennis eluded to uh..there is a new man coming in behind me. And uh, fortunately,

unfortunately I’ll leave that to be seen down the road and if it was me uh I’d like to say thank you for your leadership. I served under Dennis’ some form or fashion of an officer for his team in the fire department. I’ve learned a lot from the gentlemen and hopefully I can fill the shoes that he filled for so long and uh we still be that force in the community that we can provide a much needed service to the citizens of the community. Dennis and many of the folks in the room thank you. I appreciate what you’ve done for us and uh if you see that I get out of line a little bit just prod me along a little bit and I think we’ll make progress with that. Thank you very much.

?: The mayor eluded to the fact that several months ago the Council approved uh some money for the purchase of a thermal imaging camera and I’m going to be real brief on what a thermal imaging camera was and I have with. Thermal imaging camera is the some of the latest technology that’s available to the fire service. It’s really a spin off of some of the military technology. Not quite as high tech as they have in the military but to us it’s pretty high tech and we recently added this piece of equipment to our ____ here at Walkertown fire department under the some of the leadership again of Chief Whicker. Uh we were forward thinking and we’re one of the few departments in the county that has this piece of equipment, and what the equipment does, it allows us to a go into your home or go into a the scene of an emergency and the camera detects a heat signature anything any object has some type of heat signature to it whether it’s the heat radiation from the body or the heat from an electrical outlet or from a light bulb or things like that. The camera allows us to go in a smoke filled or a dark atmosphere or even an area where there’s light and it detects the heat. So again when we come to your home, if you’ve got an electrical problem, if you‘ve got a furnace malfunction, if you’ve got a ballast in a light fixture, something like that, that is burned out, we can use our camera to go in and take a look without having to come in and do damage to your home. We don’t have to tear out the wall. We don’t have to move your furnace, we don’t have to take down the light fixture. This allows us to kind of go behind the scenes and see. The big advantage is with us is if we come into a smoke filled room or a dark area and we’re looking for that victim that has to rescued and believe or not we’ve had that opportunity here in Walkertown to do that a few times. It’s not, it’s not a real easy task. This camera allows us to go in and to take that person’s body heat. It really saves our firefighters a lot of time and a lot of energy and makes our jobs a little bit easier. We feel like it’s a plus to the citizens of the community of Walkertown. When we come to your house we don’t have to create more problems or the problem that is already existing when we got there. So the camera is going to allow us to do it. Uh, I’d invite you to stop by the fire station any day during the week 8am to 5pm or any Monday night from 7 to about 10pm. We’ll show you how the camera works. As Mayor Davis eluded to it doesn’t come without a price. The camera that we have is about twelve thousand dollars. Prices have come down. They started out originally around 23, 24 thousand. So the technology is gaining and so are the prices. They’re coming down a little bit. We’re proud to say that no tax dollars were spent on the camera. Everything that we put to the camera either our firefighters and folks stood up here at the intersection and as the Mayor eluded to, we filled the boots. We held some buckets out um thanks to the folks from the Mayor and the Council that you gave us a donation of five thousand dollars. There’s several other civic organizations in the community that contributed to our efforts so again we’ve added to our arsenal and if we come to your house we look forward to using this piece of equipment and these tools. I’ll be glad to answer any questions that any of you folks in the audience or the Mayor or the Council may have. (someone is asking something but I can’t hear what they are saying) It’s pretty simple, it’s one button pushes it on you look at the screen kind of like watching your tv. You click it on you watch it and you see what’s on the screen. When you get done you cut it off and we put it back in our case and we’ve trained with it the fortunately the county fire department had a couple of these things before we ever got it and a we were able to use some of the things they had. We do a lot of research. There’s about five or six companies on the market that put these things out and we evaluated five different uh we had a committee to put together and this is the recommendation our committee, wasn’t the cheapest but it wasn’t the most expensive so we kind of came in the middle of the road. (someone asking a question) Yes sir? Right it’s an infrared technology and it’s not quite as high tech as the military. They use some of that night vision. This is more of an infrared. They actually call it a micro bolometer, if that means anything. It kind of confuses me sometimes too but we know when it gets dark and smoky we can cut the camera on and we can see like we can see the images of the folks here in the room. (someone asking a question) Yes, it’s a tool that if you were to sit in a chair and get up and walk out of the room and we came into the room and said was anybody in the room, we could scan the chairs and it leaves a heat signature so, yes if a child’s wandered off or if you’ve been involved in a car accident and you can’t find them if we can use the camera you can see that there was actually somebody there, kind of alert us to kind of take a look or if a child has wandered away and it’s at night, we could go out and scan the area around the home or something like that to detect there heat, yeah it could. (someone asking a question) Yeah something like that. Uh, I think it’s about twenty feet maybe twenty-five feet. We could look at one of the fixtures here and get a clear reading on say the bulb in the ceiling. When we looked at it, we were in a convention center in Charlotte and ceiling in there was about thirty feet, and it could uh it could read the heat signature on lights in the ceiling. So, it’s got a fair amount of range. It couldn’t reach several miles but it has several feet of range. Also, the camera that we bought has a temperature indicator in it. Everything gets above about 250 degrees, it starts reading temperature. Again, if you’re interested a demonstration, stop by the fire station anytime during the day 8 to 5 or any Monday night, I’m sure somebody up there will be glad to give you a demonstration. Thank you for your time.

Mayor: Welcome as Chief Wesley.

Hutchins: Thank you very much.

Duggins: One other comment I would like to make, that I failed to while I was up there.

Everytime there’s a call that comes into the fire station for the fire department or rescue, these people go out not knowing whether that’s going to be a life threatening call. Any call they go on, may be a life threatening call and this community’s very, very fortunate to have so many dedicated people like Dennis Whicker, how many years he has dedicated to this to service that is not paid for in money in dollars. Thank you so much.

Mayor: Any other comments from the council? Pause …. All right, moving along on item 3. It’s for discussion. Our comprehensive Land Use Planning Committee process and we have a special guest with us tonight, Mr. Fred Luce with the Forsyth County Planning Board is that correct? He’s going to speak to us I understand. (yes sir) All right.

Luce: My name again is Fred Luce. I’m with the City County Planning Board Staff personnel City County Planning Board and uh also the lead person on your Walkertown area plan and I certainly appreciate the opportunity to discuss with you the area planning process. I think you could be commended for having the foresight to see the need to prepare a plan that will help you as you have taken over your own planning function and having a plan like kind of identifies where growth should occur, where neighborhoods that you want to preserve and historical resources you want to preserve and open space and that considers economic development, I think that will be a valuable tool as you get to review particular requests for rezonings and subdivisions. The City/County Planning Board uh actually is preparing a series of these area plans uhm I think we’ve already following the adoption of the legacy overall comprehensive plan which Walkertown and all the other communities in the county adopted several years ago. We’ve already prepared three plans that have been adopted. We have now three more in process, including this plan for Walkertown. Uh, so we have the staff certainly has some experience in preparing these kinds of plans. I did want to talk a little bit about the process for preparing the plan and I understand you got this uh uh chart in your packet last time in the meeting that was cancelled by the weather and I was just going to speak from it. We actually began working on the Walkertown area plan. Staff of the City/County Planning Board back in September are gathering some information on demographics and other kind of census information preparing some of the existing landings map. Maps that show (someone in the audience is saying "can you talk a little louder?") Ok I’m sorry, I’ll get a little closer to the microphone. We, uh in September we began preparing some of the data for this plan uh and uh did some analysis of the existing conditions. I think we have the first meeting of the steering committee in late October and did some initial things. One of the first things we did, we came to one of the early meetings with a proposed boundaries for the Land Use plan and you can see the map here that was the result of some discussions. The black boundary, the black line there is the proposed boundaries of study area. The sort of brownish color is the city limits of Walkertown. So that would be the area that would be part of this study. It’s about 40 percent of it is within the town of Walkertown. The other 60 percent is actually in the county, within the counties planning jurisdiction. So we have some discussions with the planning uh committee and some other people that were taking in part and didn’t actually modify the boundaries to take in some area to the northwest there where there had been significant development and it was spelled that that are be included as part of this plan. We uh, I think we had a meeting when I talked about the legacy plan as the overall framework for preparing these detailed area plans, what that meant and what we haven’t really kicked off the planning process yet and that will really start when we do our community visioning, what we call our community vision. That’s when we get together in a large public meeting and ask people what kind of community do you want in the future. What do you, ideally what would you see Walkertown becoming in the next ten, fifteen, twenty years? We did such a visioning for the Legacy plan and found that it was a very effective tool for getting people to express their opinions and so their goals and values for their community and our originally schedule had that taking place in January and obviously that has moved some now but that meeting might probably might take place in this library room or maybe we may sight a bigger location depending on the turnout we expect. The following input from the public and there’s a number of places along this process where the public has influence. Following that input we’ll develop what we call a vision statement, a kind of statement that expresses the values of the community and their aspirations. We’ll from that identify some issues and strategies for addressing the particular issues we see so there are obstacles to achieving our goals. We plan for this area plan a second a major public meeting that would involve the public and give me some input on what the actual land use plan should be where we see commercial growth occurring, where do we need some parks and other kinds of things. Do we want to preserve some open space? What are the historical sources that we want to protect? What do we see? What are the boundaries of the downtown and what do we see happening in the downtown area? We will, following that public input we will prepare a future land use map and develop some policies and recommendations about that and a the next step, major step would be a public review of that graph plan use plan and this original schedule had that taken place sometime in June that would be set back some obviously but a the a step after that would be the refinement of that land use plan by the steering committee and then finally we begin what we call the we begin the adoption process of that plan and that again involves public input, public hearings, recommendations by the Walkertown Planning Board and the City/County Planning Board and then additional public hearings and reviewed by this Council and by the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners before that plan would be finally adopted. So the whole process would take about a year typically. A fairly long process, a lot of work put in by the a steering committee which typically would be meeting about twice a month. That’s about all I have to do or say, I’d be glad to answer any questions right now.

Mayor: I’m sure there are plenty of questions. Council members do you have any questions for Mr. Luce?

Warner: One question I have there you have a where your public hearing is going to adopt a last frame there in September, where it says Walkertown Town Council we will adopt it and what would be the participation of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, I guess they have a final say on everything, is that right?

Luce: No, you’ve taken over the planning function (Warner: That’s what I understand) so the proposed plan within the municipal limits of Walkertown, the brown in that map there is you’re a (Warner: So we’d have to ____with them on the outside of the municipal limits, right?) and the Forsyth County continues to plan in jurisdiction of the white area there on the map there within the black boundaries so they would also need to be involved in the adopting and approving of the plan.

Warner: It’s a dual thing, good.

Duggins:Fred, I’d like for you to address a little further about a for the people in the audience that’s here the about um the fact the some of them we have some questions about how long it’s going to take. Address please why it’s important that we take plenty of time to look at different land uses because once you do it, you tell them about it.

Fred: As I mentioned earlier, typical plans take about a year to prepare and one of the reasons for that is that we do so much public input in preparing these plans. As planners we could certainly go back to the office and probably in a much shorter time draw up a plan for Walkertown. Unfortunately it might no be, probably won’t be the plan that you all want for your community. So that’s why we need the public input, planning staff is sort of the technicians the resource people that guide the steering committee but it’s really the steering committee that says what the plan should be and has the votes if it comes to the point where things need to be voted on. I think just the general education everyone about some of the planning issues and planning concerns takes some time so it’s something that can’t be rushed and it will take some time to come up with a good plan. I think it’s really important to reach consensus on this plan because if you don’t then when it comes time to actually use the plan to guide your decisions on rezonings and subdivisions there is not going to be any consensus about what the plan is or should be then that’s going to make it more difficult to follow the plan after it’s adopted.

Dot: Thank you.

Doc: While it’s not a public session I would like to ask does anybody from the audience have a question for Mr. Luce since he is here with us and normally he’s not and we don’t have the privilege to ask him questions. He’s the professional. Does anybody have a question? Mr. Warner did you get your questions answered, did he answer any of them, or all of them, or none of them?

Harold: Specifically, I’m still a little vague about the fact of the involvement of the town use of approval of those who are going to serve as representatives of the citizens that are going to be involved in the addition of the plan before it comes to the public hearing. Is that rest with the Town Council or not? I don’t think you spoke to that at all.

Fred: I’m not sure I understand your question.

Harold: The Land Use Committee the applicants involved, who will be the one to evaluate each applicant and make the decision who will serve?

Fred: I think typically that’s the Town council’s prerogative to decide who should serve on this committee and I would, I have some guidelines that I can get to you in terms of the kind of committee we’d like to see. I think it’s good to limit the size to maybe from 9 or 10 to fifteen people. There’s just some logistical, mechanical reasons why that’s good. I mean just obviously just trying to find a table in a room that’s big enough to hold a much larger group is difficult and if you have to have some issues of discussion and you have to around a table of 25 or 30 people and get everybody’s opinion then obviously that slows everything down so we found by experience when a group of say from 10 to 15 people is a good size and certainly I mean I don’t think you have to pack everybody on the Land Use Committee. There’s going to be plenty other opportunities for public input into this plan so I’d the other thing I’d encourage you to do is to have a lot of good representation on the steering committee both geographic representatives from all around the study area, the planning area, representation of the different interest groups, be they the developers, the neighborhoods or environmentalists or historic preservation people, a good mixture of representation there and I think adversity in terms of gender, race and those kinds of things, so all of those ought to be taken into account as you select the members of this Land Use Committee, I think.

Mayor: Other questions for Mr. Luce? Now’s the time to ask. Did that help you Mr. Warner?

You said you had some guidelines will you share those with or e-mail them to Toby or whoever so we can…..(Luce: sure I can do that)….that would be good. Any other comments for Mr. Luce while he’s here with us? It’s not like he’s passing away I didn’t mean that, he is here in flesh tonight and we can ask him face to face. We will have this opportunity again. Council members are ya’ll, everyone here, satisfied with the questions or answers or the direction we looks like you have a good feel for the direction obviously you’ve done it three recently and three more in the work quite a few more than we’ve done.

Toby: Council is there a time when you want to stop accepting applications and appoint those at the next meeting or sometime in March?

Dot: Why don’t we leave it open for until the first meeting in March and then contemplate it at that time so that plenty of other people if they are interested in getting their application in can do that?

Horace: Given that we say the deadline is would be the first meeting of March and then the decision can be made in the voting?

Dot: Right.

Welch: Everybody understand that?

Dot: That will give us several more weeks. That should take care of it.

Mayor: All the Council members in agreement with the accepting the applications? We’ll be leaving the applications open until the first meeting in March and then we will make the decision at the second meeting in March. Is that what we’re all understanding?

Dot: Right.

Mayor: Ok. All right. Mr. Luce we appreciate you coming tonight. Thank you very much. I’m sure we will be calling on you and seeing you quite a bit more. Thank you. So with that we’ll be waiting until the first meeting in March to make any decisions on these applications. We’ll move along to our next item of business. For discussion and/or action, discussion tonight, recycling options. We have another special guest with us tonight, Mr. Richard Johnson. There you are. Were you wanting to speak to us now? All right. Mrs. Welch is our recycling officer. Do you have any comments before we ask Mr. Linville to present what he has?

Welch: Well, I’ve been given quite a bit more information now which to read. So it’s makes a difference.

Toby: The point of them submitting these prices were to give us real world quotes for what the different types of recycling would offer. The first one there is weekly curbside collection which is what we had before. Then a price for bi-weekly collection and then he quoted two different prices for a convenient center. One being one commingled container which is you know you can recycle anything just like you would do curbside and then a _____ separated site that’s more valuable to the recycling companies because it comes in them, all glass, all plastic, all paper. But I just wanted them to give us some real world numbers so that we could look at which direction we wanted to go in before we start bidding from the different companies so we’ll have, so we can sort of select which numbers we want to see so they’re not all over the place but at some point we need to decide whether we’re looking for weekly collection at the curb or bi-weekly curbside or a drop-off center and then we can start our bidding from there.

Horace: How many other bid requests have been sent out?

Toby: None

Welch: none(talking on top of Toby..can’t understand)

Toby: This is to get us thinking about what we want.

Horace: Ok, cause I believe that’s one of the questions that was raised earlier.

Doc: I think, if I understood Mr., understood today this page here with Toby so that I would understand it and this is the first that he’d heard from and you were looking at this as this. This is not a proposal, it’s just what one of the things that’s available. Is that correct Toby?

Toby: That’s right.

Doc: Ok

Toby: These are options that are available to us and then we’ll bid it properly once we decide what we want.

Doc: And this a one week, excuse me, a weekly a bi-weekly or a drop-off center with separated or unseparated options. So you’ve got four options here and I’d ask Mr. Johnson today, I spoke with him briefly if a monthly, just a once a month would be possible and he said "Sure if you find three other towns that want to share the monthly."

(laughter) So he’s all for it, so all we got to do is find three other towns who’d like to share on the monthly basis and that would be a possibility, but it is more difficult than we imagine. It’s not as cut and dry to just take a bid because the more you read the more you find out the recycling is a complicated business. It’s not just everybody’s begging for these materials that we do not want to put in the landfills. Most recycle companies such as Waste Industries here end up paying somebody to take them. Is that pretty much the case? Ok, for one thing, glass we brought up today, we discussed that there’s not a market for glass in this area. I think you have to haul it to Raleigh you said, to just find a market to dispose of it or to recycle it so it’s not a matter that we don’t want to recycle, we just have to find the right method to do it and the right options whether its weekly, bi-weekly or possibly monthly whether it’s a central recycling bin. Other questions or comments, Mrs. Welch did we touch on everything you wanted to cover tonight concerning this since you are the…

Welch: Well, I wasn’t aware of this and it was pointed out to me that we have a fenced area right around the town office back of it if we wanted to go with that. It’s also where the sheriffs keep their office back there. It’d be an ideal location and already fenced if we do that way.

Horace: Do we own that property there?

Welch: Yes

Horace: We don’t own it all the way over to Depot Street do we?

Welch: No, we own, yeah we do.

Horace: It’s just on one side.

Welch: That fenced in area belongs to the town. (someone asking a ?)

Doc: This is just an exploratory statement. We don’t have anything yet that you can take hold of. Please don’t bring it today. (laughter) We’re just looking right now, our game plan is to move toward a recycling plan for the community _______that many has spoken to us, that many people, many citizens

(Lynn’s portion)

Ms. Duggins: "Recycling costs. There’s no doubt about it – it costs! And so we need to do what people are going to participate in most for the least amount of money…for the least cost."

Mr. Warner: "When we ask for bids from all the others, could we ask them also to give us a list of those they are now serving because obviously, the companies that are serving others can handle this material better than just one handling one place. If I recall, when we discontinued recycling, it was costing us about $38,000 a year. I agree, we’ve had some annexations since then, and such, and at that time it was talked about how much more we would be in charge than someone else – which I don’t think that was ever borne out. But can we go back and also get some figures on what we were paying, based on that, just as a matter of comparison as we go out? That, obviously, won’t enter into your request for bids from other sources. Oh! One other thing and I don’t want to put anyone on the spot but I would like some, as we address this what you might say, sources or co-mingled, or one location, I’d like some member of the civic club to give us a statement on what happened. They at one time had this service and didn’t work out very satisfactory – at any rate, then we would know what caution we would have to take as far as getting in to that business. Maybe no one would want to give us that information but I think the Health Department unfortunately entered into that picture on what they were telling me. We want to avoid that, of course. I know in our last meeting I said something about having to have a fenced area and I think one of the co-councilmembers here said something about it would be easier to clean it up if they set it down at the gate rather than take it in to the thing but we don’t want to get into that business."

Ms. Duggins: "Well, it would need to be ours. There are a lot of …. I am sure that Mr. Johnson can tell us, and anyone else that we happen to be discussing this with, could tell us what is the best – if we went the route of having a recycle area where people bring it in to the bin that they – it would probably have to be manned and open certain hours. And I think, once, we may have to cite some people for bringing things and dumping them there before the people would get the idea that they’re not allowed to do this. What I made the comment before was it was a lot better to have it dumped at the gate, if we had to have a choice between it being dumped in the yards and on the streets – that it would be better to at least be brought to the gate."

Mr. Larrimore: "What I’m worried about, and I was an engineer and I had to quote jobs all over the place – is this the type thing that we need to sort of keep under our hat and for your sake?"

Mr. Johnson: "I would prefer – yes – preliminary, the numbers I put down there was what I would charge. I would prefer that they stay with you guys. ___________ Confidential."

Mr. Larrimore: "……..I can see why!"

Mr. Garland: "Well, unfortunately – they’re not! They are public record so…."

Ms. Duggins: "…….The cat’s already out of the bag!!"

Mr. Garland: "That doesn’t mean that you use them back and forth with other companies but it is open…."

Mr. Larrimore: "…..I was just making comment because it is here and if we have other people coming along – I wouldn’t volunteer….."

Mr. Garland: "…..Again, how ya’ll deal with it is one thing but if someone were to ask for it, they would be able to get it."

Mayor: "Any other comments concerning recycling or our options of recycling? Ms. Welch, anything else you have to add on that?"

Ms. Welch: "Not yet. I’m learning as I go."

Mayor: "Okay. All right. Mr. Johnson, we appreciate your coming to answer any questions and also, Mike, I appreciate you coming also. Thank you very much!"

Mayor: "Our next item for discussion is the Town Festival Committee. We had discussed this the last meeting – of forming a town festival committee to try to – what was our date? Was it in August?"

Mr. Linville: "We had talked about to correspond with the – summer – or to correspond with the incorporation date."

Mayor: "Kind of along those times. We didn’t have anything set in cement but that’s the date that we were actually referring to in August. So, councilmembers, what did you want to discuss about that? Did you give it any thought and I believe the way we left it, if we go back to look at our minutes, we were going to try to come up with some possible people in the community who were willing to serve on this committee. I have several that have volunteered ----"

Ms. Welch: "---That’s great!"

Mayor: "That was what you called it, wasn’t it, Beverly?"

Ms. Duggins: "I think we said two from each council and mayor – to recommend two names. I haven’t had a chance to; I hope we can leave it open til at least the next meeting."

Mayor: "I would say we could leave it open as however and if we can get more – the more people to volunteer, the better."

Ms. Duggins: "I’d say don’t turn down anybody who volunteers!"

Ms. Welch: "Right."

Mr. Warner: "Well, I had a call from one that I would certainly put on the committee and she’s here tonight. I think she also called the Town Hall. I don’t want to lose that name, that’s for sure! Because she sure makes good cakes! (Ruth Church). And then on the other hand, I would again ask another individual if they would accept my naming them – and that’s John Dillon. So I’d like to kick out those two names tonight. My point is to get those names out before the rest of them grab them!"

Mayor: "For the record, the record can’t read Ruth on the name you were talking about. You may want to submit the name."

Ms. Duggins: "Well, I was already clear as to who it was!!!"

Mr. Warner: "Ruth Church. To have someone step – to help me so much – got out in public – she called. So I told her to please call the Town Hall now. And that’s the spirit we need if we’re going through with this project. And I think someone recommended that we call it the "Walkertown Community Day" and I think that was wonderful. So if we can keep that spirit going, it’ll add a lot in many ways. So if you will accept my two names, please?"

Mr. Garland: "When you’re looking to start it up, if you’re looking for folks to … Tobaccoville has done this for five or six years, I guess. So they have some folks out there who’ve gotten different organizations and seen what works and what doesn’t. So it might be worth a call to them."

Mr. Warner: "Anything will help. Also, let me put in another plug for that name, the ‘Walkertown Community Day’ . I want to put that plug in."

Mayor: "Well, I’m holding mine until I see if any of the rest of you – I’ve got four names down, which have agreed to serve. But I’m not trying to hog the committee. Ms. Welch, did you have any names to submit tonight?"

Ms. Welch: "Nope. I’m kind of like Dot."

Mayor: "Okay. What about you, Mr. Larrimore?"

Mr. Larrimore: "No. I didn’t – I came up with some names but I haven’t got around to talking to them yet."

Mayor: "Well, it’s no hurry. We’re not going to do it this week – it’s not like we’re stopping taking the people. We want to get volunteers. I will submit these four names if the council will allow me to. It’s Betty West, Dana Webster, Mary Hutchins, and Beverly Davis – all of which volunteered!"

Ms. Welch: "That’s the best part!"

Ms. Duggins: "That’s good because we need people who will be dedicated and have high energy and have a lot of interest in what happens."

Mayor: "I believe there was really one more person that volunteered….didn’t you volunteer? Tom Lane. He also volunteered."

Ms. Duggins: "Go over those names again. I believe I missed one."

Mayor: "Betty West, Dana Webster, Mary Hutchins, and Beverly Davis."

Mr. Warner: "I would think the bigger the committee, the better we’d all be. There’d be that much less for any one to do and certainly bring the community still closer together."

Mayor: "So, we’ll ask the council to continue to work on getting a list, a group of names to work on this committee and hopefully we can get them started moving in the next month or so. Okay? Does that suit everyone?"

Ms. Duggins: "Um Hmm."

Ms. Welch: "Suits me fine."

Mayor: "Okay. Our next item is Item #6 – For Discussion. We can take action and get this done tonight! This is talking about the new high school for Walkertown. Should we set up a committee? Should we lobby? Should we do anything? Should we just sit quietly by and do nothing?"

Ms. Duggins: "No! We do not sit quietly by."

Mr. Larrimore: "No!"

Mayor: "We’ve seen a lot of interest in the last few weeks concerning the schools, in the paper, concerning the bond referendum that was issued three years ago, I believe it was. And at that time, most of you are aware that land was purchased on Sullivantown Road with the intent of building a high school. Now, whether that’ll ever come to pass or not, we don’t know but now is the time to discuss it as a community. There’s – recently, I believe it was this past week, one of the schedules showed that not only were they contemplating building a high school here but they were also, it was mentioned in one of these articles here, replacing the middle school. And I’ve not found anyone that knew anything about that yet! I’ve talked to some county people – I’ve talked to some ---- I’m sure they know about it – I don’t mean they didn’t know about it – but it kind of took everyone by surprise is what I’m saying. What’s your feelings on the school, on the high school?"

Mr. Larrimore: "Sooner the better."

Ms. Duggins: "Well, I’d like to address that. It’s imperative that we get a committee started – and soon….as soon as possible! Because, now, we may have – they may not go through with this because of the lack of funds, but we know it’s coming so we may as well start getting organized and we need to make our voice very loud. I think that the reason that they purchased the land on the last bond issue was because a lot of you people who are sitting right here today made your wishes known and talked very loudly and to the right people. I think that’s very important we do that this time. And we, the only community in this area in Forsyth County, that doesn’t have a high school, is Walkertown. And we need to have our high school here. With the elementary school being one of the largest in the county?? We have to have somewhere for these kids to go. So we have to have somewhere for these kids to go. So I think it’s important that we move on this and move on it now and not wait until the money comes in or they decide they can do it. We need to be ready when they do!"

Mayor: "That statement – our elementary school is not one of the largest – it is the largest! One thousand and five students in our elementary school here, Walkertown. And we’re going to have in just another few months, two elementary schools in the city limits. Middlefork will be opening up by the new fall term, I understand."

Ms. Duggins: "And this is before we have the development that’s coming in. We have three housing developments that are in the process right now. So we know we’re going to be more over-crowded."

Ms. Welch: "I’d like to add that East Forsyth has eighteen hundred students now and has a waiting list!"

Mayor: "Other comments concerning the school from the council? What’s your pleasure on this? Is there any direction, any……? Do you think we should set up a committee?"

Mr. Warner: "I think we should because this is going to have to be a long-term process either way you go; just talking about the bond referendum. And, of course, Councilwoman Duggins said this, ‘the earlier we get in the picture, the better off we’re going to be’. And it’s going to be probably a long drawn-out process but I don’t think there’s any other way to go but to set up some kind of committee. And, also, to address the next question, to lobby the School Board at the proper time, now maybe not at the outset but let them know that we are concerned about this and while the land is available. Because I think also, this article here said the Forsyth County District will have between 2400 to 4700 new students. Well, like you said before, where are you going to put them? And we want to put them here, at least have the convenience for our people here. So I think we should move forward on both."

Mr. Larrimore: "I think we ought to stack this committee with retired school teachers. And we got a nice one sitting right back there. She’s already on another committee."

FROM THE AUDIENCE: Arlyn Wilson: "I was real proud of our Walkertown community the last time they had a bond referendum because we really got together and we formed and we went to every one of the meetings. We were well-represented. That’s the only reason we got the land bought then."

Ms. Duggins: "That’s right! They knew! We had let them know that we would vote against that bond issue if they did not give us some indication that they were going to buy the land and prepare for this high school."

Mr. Warner: "Could we use that same on this issue….as far as to build it here…..?"

Mr. Larrimore: "Sure we could…"

Ms. Duggins: "Right. Now, here’s the next thing we need to do. There’s one other step the Walkertown community needs to do. We need to have someone in this community to run for the School Board. We have no one on the School Board that looks out for the interest of Walkertown. We need a person on that School Board. Think about it."

Mayor: "Since we’re talking as a group, Cliff, you have something to say about the school?"

FROM THE AUDIENCE: Cliff _______: "I think before they go to voting about the schools, they need to do something about the traffic. 311, 66, and 158 are terrible in the morning and in the evening. Another school will mean more traffic."

Ms. Duggins: "That’s D.O.T. We agree with you – every one of us agree with you wholeheartedly. All over the country, all over Forsyth County, all over North Carolina – it’s this way. And many times, they don’t put a lot of thought in how they’re going to get in and get out because it’s one hour in the morning and, well, less than an hour actually. But they’re there just a short time clogging the traffic. The afternoon – same way – when school lets out. But you’re right. But that’s D.O.T. We have to lobby them to take care of that."

Mayor: "Just as a follow-up to that, we do have, and all you councilmembers have a copy of this in your packet, on the proposed, right now and we don’t have a date on that when this will take place – but Old Hollow Road will be enlarged. Part of it will be 3-lanes, part will be 5-lanes and the balance of it 3-lanes. And we don’t have a date – a timeframe – on that but that’s coming within the next ….. on the list of 25 projects, that’s number two but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be done this month. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be done this year. But it’s number two in priority on the list. It is in the works, Clifton, following up on what you were saying."

FROM THE AUDIENCE: Cliff _______: "I understand a fellow that works with the state said they already had the right-of-way on 158 all the way to the county. Somebody ____ it out."

Mr. Larrimore: "Well, they’ve had it for 39 years!"

Mayor: "No… the money. Money is the problem. They do the planning and they’ve got all these plans and they buy the right-of-way but then it takes a lot of money for them to come through with these individual projects like that. It does take time."

Ms. Duggins: "And what happened on Reidsville Road – because we used to reside on Reidsville Road – and they bought only enough property to do three lanes. They no longer do 3-lane roads, they do 4-lanes for U.S. Highways. That’s why. They’ve got to come back and buy a little more property in order to put the 4-lane."

Mayor: "So back to our committee. How do we want to form a committee? How do we want to address this as a town? Council?"

Ms. Duggins: "Well, we have two people here tonight who would be excellent co-chairs….."

Mayor: "….Hmmmm. Now, who would that be?…."

Ms. Duggins: "Dana Van Hoy --- oh, excuse me, Dana! Dana Webster and Mary Hutchins. They worked real hard last time and I’m sure a lot of other people did too. But we need to probably think about that first to have some co-chairs, or chair. And they make get up a committee."

Mayor: "How would you feel about that, Ms. Hutchins? (Not to put you on the spot!)"

FROM THE AUDIENCE: Mary Hutchins: "I will do anything to help get a high school here."

Ms. Duggins: "Good!"

FROM THE AUDIENCE: Mary Hutchins: "As long as it doesn’t somehow manage to make me lose my job! Arlyn will be there with us.

Ms. Welch: "Are you sure she’ll do it?"

Mayor: "I’ve got one other volunteer, Tammy Reed, also agreed. She agreed to serve in the event we had a committee. Arlyn, you would be willing to serve?"

FROM THE AUDIENCE: ??: "What is the outlet going to be, Old Hollow Road?"

Ms. Duggins: "That will be D.O.T.’s decision. They will, I guarantee you, they will come up with a decision on that while they’re doing the process of that."

FROM THE AUDIENCE: ??: "Well, if it’s Avalee Street, I hope it’s not."

Ms. Duggins: "I don’t see how it could be Avalee Street. I don’t think you have anything to worry about there."

FROM THE AUDIENCE: ??: "That was one concern that I had heard – they were going to open Avalee Street all the way through and there’s enough traffic on there now."

Ms. Duggins: "That’s too close to the intersection. I don’t think they would buy that."

Mayor: "I think it would probably, if you’re not familiar with it, having grown up on these hills and hollows back here – that’s one big campus, now that they’ve bought the lot in front of the Baptist Church. Now that they’ve bought that land, it pretty well can be connected one way or the other from the middle school and the elementary and the high school could all be connected on one big campus. So you’d have Sullivantown Road; you’d have New Street and, of course, Main Street, and Ruxton Drive. You’ve got a lot of means of egress and ingress for the property. Yes, Steve?"

FROM THE AUDIENCE: Steve O’Ferrell: "What about the sewer? Is there any plans for the sewer for the high school?"

Mr. Larrimore: #9; "We had that one pumping station moved way back there – and enlarged for this specific thing."

Mayor: "Two schools already would be on the sewer and then the other one, it comes down New Street and would be available right at it. It’s already on the property – No, it’s not planned – I mean, I don’t want to speak out of turn. It’s not really planned….."

Mr. Larrimore: "………It was planned enough to enlarge the …………"

Mayor: "It wouldn’t be a surprise, it wouldn’t be a major obstacle."

Mr. Linville: "Our system would accommodate that new school."

Mayor: "That’s just like the new school on Williston Road. They’ll build that infrastructure to get out to the outfall. It’ll be connected by means of the outfall going on the street side. Well, Council, how do ya’ll want to proceed with that committee?"

Ms. Duggins: "Well, let’s delay this until next meeting and then we’ll have several more names, also."

Mayor: "Okay and if you would, we need people of interest. Obviously, it’s good to get people to volunteer but we want people that’s really going to be committed because we do need to go forward with this. I think Arlyn made it very clearly that we need to make our voice known to the county. We know we’re fighting a pretty tough battle because if you read in the paper, they’re over the 10% limit that they like to have when they issue more bonds and so with them already 10 ½% of their debt, it’s unlikely that they will be too receptive to more without there’s some other carrot for them to achieve, I imagine. Any other discussion on the school and committee? With the councilmembers in agreement, we’ll hold off on forming an official committee but we’ll be gathering names. Is that okay with everybody?"

COUNCILMEMBERS AGREED.

Mayor: "Any comments on the financial statements?"

Mr. Larrimore: "Nothing, but we ended up in good shape. As we alluded to while ago with the new developments going up and the shopping center – if everybody’s putting money in the new restaurant out there. I think I’ve seen everybody out there two or three times. That’s all going to help our bottom line and has anybody got any questions with it?"

Mr. Warner: "I’ve got three little questions I’d like to ask. We paid CCUC on Check #2048, $33,821 – does anyone know what that might have been? Why would we be paying CCUC??? That was on December 16^th."

Mr. Linville: "That’s part of that balance for the ATS sewer extension….."

Mr. Warner: "…..That’s what, now?"

Mr. Linville: "That’s part of the balance for the ATS sewer extension. You know, we got a grant for $160,000 and the project cost a little over $300,000. So that’s where that money….."

Mr. Warner: "That was estimated to end up with $115,000 debt on that. So this reduces that, is that correct?"

Mr. Linville: "Yes."

Mr. Warner: "In addition to that, though, then, we also had Check #2024 which we paid them $152,134 and 144-dollars of that – but then they also had on that $8,134 – professional services. What would that be?"

Mayor: "Wooten Company."

Mr. Larrimore: "Yes. That was the Wooten Company."

Mr. Linville: "They’ll get up to $16,000….."

Mr. Warner: "…..Just a percent of the total, or is that for their services in engineering?"

Mr. Linville: "It’s a percentage of the total and it comes out to $16,000."

Mr. Warner: "They get a percentage but do they also get engineering services expenses, money? Or is this just a percent of it for that engineering?"

Mayor: "I think the total, we looked at that, we spent a lot of time digging that out the other day. We’ve paid them two different times of four-thousand something dollars and it’s based on four installments and the most recent one on the ATS project was that they billed us for the first and the second engineering management fees or administration."

Mr. Warner: "But then we will have to pay them some more, is that right?"

Mayor: "Two more installments."

Lynn: "Their contract price is $16,000 and we will end up paying them $16,000."

Mayor: "To date we’ve paid them a little over $8,400."

Mr. Warner: "But, now, whoa! We’ve paid this, I think, to City-County Utilities, didn’t we? This $152,000."

Mr. Linville: "Right. That was for construction."

Lynn: "That’s in your booklet. I put a copy of that in your packet."

Mr. Warner: "So the professional services on that was not Wooten, is that right?"

Mr. Linville: "It’s just the fund that we used."

Mr. Warner: "What professional services would we be paying CCUC for, their engineering or what?"

Mr. Linville: "No. No. That was for the construction. That money passes through them and pays……….."

Mr. Warner: "…….144,000 I understand – but then they also had the professional services for $8,100.,.."

Mayor: "…..8,100 is additional to the $144,000. The $144,000 was the price of the contract that we’ve got the grant on. In addition to that, we owed $16,000, or their contract was for additional $16,000 and we paid one installment of four…………"

Mr. Warner: "…………All right. Was that City County Utilities or Wooten?"

Mayor: "No, we paid it to Wooten."

Mr. Linville: "That was – it went through CCUC to Landform Construction."

Mayor: "But it’s from Wooten…Wooten did the work, right?"

Lynn: "Horace, we have to pay the City of Winston and they pay Landform Construction. We got a $160,000 grant minus the $144,000 which leaves the administrative costs of $16,000 – that we are now paying Wooten Company. With the $144,000; the bill itself was $152,000 so I just took about $8,000 and put it into the Professional Services line item."

Mr. Warner: "Do we know what that $8,000 is for?"

Lynn: "It’s just part of the actual construction costs of Landform. It’s that much above the $144,000 that we got from the grant."

Mayor: "It’s the managing project engineer – they give us an hourly rate and we’re billed. We get an itemized bill on both of them – both for the supervisor and the engineer, I believe it was. Wasn’t that the way it was, Toby?"

Mr. Linville: "Oh, yeah. The construction bills have every bit of mobilization, gravel, digging…"

Mayor: "It is there."

Mr. Warner: "The last one there. Do we have any other liability on unemployment claims? I know we paid a portion in this year."

Lynn: "I think we have responsibility for one more person but it comes yearly and we haven’t been billed as yet."

Mr. Warner: "This will be on an annual basis? This same amount?"

Lynn: "No. We pay the complete costs on who was insured and what was paid out – we’re self-insured - and I think Gail is the last one that we will be paying on. It hasn’t come through yet."

Mr. Warner: "In this fiscal year, we’ve paid $10,625 and we still will have more? Now that means if they go to work, we don’t have any further liability, is that right. Now on the other hand, if they got liability, that may not be an incentive to go to work. I guess it says to me that we will be cautious next as we go forward as far as employment and unemployment.

Mayor: "Do you have any other…? Any other questions or concerns on the financial statements? As we did with the minutes, would you like to take care of the financial statements of December even though it’s a work session?"