|
In the eight years they have held
January planning retreats, the Wake
Forest commissioners have moved from
long discussions about their roles in
relationship to each other and to the
town staff to an easy camaraderie which
allows them to almost use shorthand in
discussing issues even when they do not
agree.
The time frame has changed,
too, and this year it met Commissioner
Stephen Barrington’s desire that it be
only one day. The board wrapped up
everything by about 4:30 p.m. Friday.
They began by looking at the
status of last year’s goals, which were:
A tree-trimming policy:
“Every time it’s brought, it’s we’re
working on it,” Commissioner Margaret
Stinnett said. “It’s taking too damn
long.”
Stinnett’s issue is the
difference between the pruning and
trimming recommended by foresters and
the trimming done by the town’s electric
department.
Commissioner Velma
Boyd-Lawson, the ex officio member of
the urban forestry board, said the board
or its staff liaison, Lisa Potts, have
to check with other agencies. “I’ll be
happy to pass it along to Lisa and the
board that it’s taking too damn long.”
“They have other things they
do, too,” Mayor Vivian Jones said. “I
don’t think a year is too long for a
policy that’s being as comprehensive as
this.”
The urban forestry board,
which only controls trees on town-owned
land and in street rights-of-way, does
have an approved plan to examine the
health of the trees, prune them on a
schedule and remove dead and diseased
trees when they are found.
An increased municipal
district: Planner Agnes Wanman
presented a plan in October to increase
the downtown tax district to include all
of the Renaissance Plan area, but no
action was taken.
“You didn’t do anything,”
Town Manager Mark Williams said.
“Stephen (Barrington) tried to get you
to do away with it.”
Mayor Vivian Jones asked
that it be on the agenda for the
February meeting, where they will take
action.
A revision to the
commercial electric rates: Finance
Director Aileen Staples said Tom LaBarge,
the town’s IT specialist, had been
trying to get the needed data about
commercial usage to ElectriCities, which
will review the rates. However, the
information he can get from the current
financial software system and its maker
has not met ElectriCities requirements.
He has just gone back and assembled the
information manually.
An expansion of the
town’s urban service district and
expansion into Franklin County:
Planning Director Chip Russell said he
will bring the change in the urban
service district to the comprehensive
planning committee in February. It is
essentially a swap of territory with
Rolesville.
He also said he should have
a line in Franklin County that will set
the limit for Wake Forest’s expansion
northward.
Construction debris
recycling: Commissioner Frank Drake,
who has renovated old houses, brought
this up last year as a way of reusing
usable materials and saving space in the
county’s landfill.
Jones said she had been
surprised recently to learn that David
Williams Jr. has a construction debris
recycling business called Triangle Waste
that has been in business about a year.
He wants to find a site to set up their
separation process. “I told them we
could help them get through the
permitting and application process as
quickly as possible.”
Historic structure
demolition: This would delay
destruction of an historic building to
allow a group or individual to buy it
for renovation. Jones said she and
Barrington planned to see state Sen.
Neal Hunt to ask him to introduce the
special legislation needed.
In the afternoon, the
commissioners moved to newer or
continuing concerns, which were:
The Northeast Plan:
Russell said the steering committee for
the plan would be determined after the
second meeting, which is Jan. 29, and
then the committee will begin organizing
a plan.
Boyd-Lawson said she wanted
to see local people employed in whatever
project is authorized.
Drake said he had heard
complaints about the lack of street
lights. Deputy Town Manager Roe
O’Donnell said he and town staff have
ridden through all quadrants of town at
night and installed street lights as a
result. However, “You may meet the
standards and still have dark areas.”
Public Works Director Mike
Barton said his department has installed
lights on request and then other
neighbors have asked to have them
removed because they do not want the
light in their homes.
“If there’s an area that’s
dark, we need to put it up there [a
street light] whether the neighbors want
it or not,” Town Manager Mark Williams
said, calling it a question of level of
service.
Cultural programs:
After asking Parks and Recreation
Director Susan Simpson how her work with
the Wake Forest Cultural Arts
Association is going – Quite well,
Simpson said – Jones said the board
needs to keep in mind that the needs and
program for the department are changing.
“If you read the old land use plan, it
talks about the town having
responsibilities for cultural
activities.” She has recently visited
Cary, where the cultural arts section of
the parks and recreation department has
11 employees and a budget of between $2
and $3 million.
Football fields:
Commissioner David Camacho said several
people have approached him about
practice fields for the two youth
football teams in town.
Simpson said the Wake Forest
Bulldogs have the first right to the
field at the middle school because they
spent some money on the field when it
was built.
“Field space is at a premium
for everyone,” Simpson said, not only
here but across the county. One problem
is that the school system charges a
hefty fee for field use, meaning Capital
Area Soccer League has stopped using
many school fields for its games.
The football teams need
lighted fields to practice because they
do so in the evenings, and Simpson said
the Wake Forest guideline has been to
light only baseball and softball fields.
No real solution was found.
Growth: For several
reasons, the town stayed within its 2006
goal of permitting 800 or fewer dwelling
units using town water, 783 to be
precise.
Camacho said the
comprehensive planning committee would
like to track water usage by consumption
rather than building permits. For one
thing, 40 apartments use less water than
40 single-family homes. Also, developers
now are installing water conservation
measures in all dwellings.
The CPC is close to having a
policy not to recommend any development
that wants to use the town’s water
system for lawn irrigation, Camacho
said.
Last year’s peak water use
was less than in 2005, 3.65 million
gallons used on Aug. 14 as opposed to
3.79 mgd in 2005. O’Donnell said it was
largely because 2006 was a wet year
compared to the very dry 2005.
“We added eight hundred
dwelling units and our peak [use] went
down,” Camacho said, and asked the other
commissioners if the CPC is on the right
track in barring irrigation systems.
“You take the gut out of it
when you take out irrigation,” O’Donnell
said, adding the town could allow
irrigation when it owned the water
system because it then sold more water.
“We’re using the water
allocation to help us get more quality
in our development, roads and
infrastructure,” Russell said. “We’re
going to get something that’s really
going to help us in the long run.”
Finance and taxes:
The town has several high-cost projects
underway or planned, and Finance
Director Aileen Staples said the goal is
to issue no more than $10 million in
bonds in any one year.
The amount of planning for
the 2005 bond referendum has had
benefits far exceeding what she had
expected, Staples said, including two
upgrades in the town’s bond rating that
resulted in low interest rates such as
the 3.74 percent interest for the money
for the electric substation.
“Raise taxes for town hall?”
she asked. “Very possible, but we have a
[property tax] revaluation year coming
up. This year the valuation is a lot
higher than we originally anticipated.”
The timeline is key and she may be able
to save money toward the town hall.
Williams said their goal
would be to keep the tax rate after
revaluation as low as possible. One cent
of tax on the property valuation now
brings in about $185,000, and he said
that might increase to $200,000 by the
end of the year. (The tax rate is 54
cents per $100 valuation.)
“We will try to keep the tax
rate where it is,” Williams said
Water allocations:
The commissioners decided to refer to
the CPC questions about how long a water
allocation remains in effect. “We need
to be more precise in what we’re giving
them,” Drake said. |
