Four public hearings, including one for citizen comment on the Town Manager’s recommended fiscal year 2023-24 budget of nearly $10 million—the largest budget ever requested in Town history—distinguish a busy agenda for the Town Council’s regular monthly meeting tomorrow.
The Council will meet at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center.
See the agenda at: https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/soshoresnc-pubu/MEET-Agenda-9b1b80f60aff4d669527ee97b77e97f5.pdf.
See the meeting packet at : https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/soshoresnc-pubu/MEET-Packet-9b1b80f60aff4d669527ee97b77e97f5.pdf.
FY 2023-24 BUDGET: We are disappointed with both Town Manager Cliff Ogburn’s written presentation of the FY2023-24 budget, which is thinner on detail and less readable and standardized per department than budget presentations of recent years, and with the Town Council’s decision not to hold any budget workshops this year. Mayor Elizabeth Morey eschewed the need for a workshop at the April 4 Council meeting, saying, “We have had significant budget discussions since the first of the year, periodically”—just not in public.
While not required, the presentation of budget requests by the different department heads at a public workshop has always been a valuable service for citizens. It gives a view into the inner workings of the town government and important budgetary decision-making and adds a layer of accountability. We would have liked the Town Council to have accepted Mr. Ogburn’s offer on April 4 to present “Cliff’s notes” about his recommended FY 2023-24 budget, with highlights brought to the forefront, at an April or May workshop.
The Town Manager’s requested budget for FY 2023-24 is $9,731,450, about 11 percent higher than the $8,790,776 budget that the Town Council adopted last year at this time for FY 2022-23.
As so often happens during fiscal years, last year’s approved budget grew with amendments that the Council approved for additional unbudgeted expenses. The $8,790,776 FY 2022-23 budget ballooned to $10,937,428, an increase of more than $2 million, or about 24 percent.
According to Mr. Ogburn’s budget report, revenues exceeded expenses last year, so the Town did not have to dip into its Undesignated or Unreserved Fund Balance (UFB) to cover unanticipated expenses. As we understand his report, the Town Manager expects to use UFB funds in 2023-24 for construction of the new Trinitie/Juniper Trail culvert.
Town policy dictates that the UFB have a minimum balance of $3 million—an amount the UFB usually eclipses by millions—to ensure coverage of extraordinary expenses, such as those incurred in guarding against the effects of natural or other disasters, providing for unanticipated capital expenditures, or protecting the Town in an economic downturn.
According to Mr. Ogburn, projected Town revenues in FY 2023-24 remain strong, with sales, occupancy, and land-transfer tax revenue estimated at $3,876,770, and revenues from all ad valorem taxes, including those assessed for the beach nourishment project, estimated at $4,325,237.
Although Mr. Ogburn suggested last year that ad valorem taxes might need to be increased this year, he is not recommending a tax hike.
Personnel account for much of the Town’s cost of doing business.
All Town employees are receiving a 6.5 percent COLA raise in FY 2023-24, for an expense of $122,022, according to the budget report. The Town contributes 7.65 percent in FICA benefits per employee. Mandatory Town contributions to the State Retirement System are expected to increase from 12.13 percent to 12.88 percent for general employees, and from 13.04 percent to 14.10 percent for law enforcement officers. And medical insurance premiums for employees are expected to increase 5 percent over last fiscal year.
The requested budget for the Police Department in FY 2023-24 is $2,334,697, or about 24 percent of the total budget. Of this amount, $1,229,744 is earmarked for salaries.
The requested budget for the Administration Department is $1,337,842 (14 percent), of which $409,244 goes to salaries. An additional $114,113 is budgeted for merit funds and bonus pay.
The Town Council’s compensation, which is a separate item in the Administration budget, is $18,600: $4200 for the Mayor, and $3600 for each Council member. (We thought you might be interested.)
The requested budget for “Streets, Bridges, Beaches and Canals” is, at $2,690,329, by far the largest allocation (28 percent of the total), but considerably less, so far, than the $4,021,216 spent in the 2022-23 fiscal year for infrastructure repairs and capital improvements. This budget is administered by the Public Works Dept. and includes in FY 2023-24, $1,182,088 in payment of debt service (third year) for the 2022 beach nourishment project and $1 million for infrastructure.
This year, the Town staff is asking the Council to increase the minimum required UFB balance to $3.5 million, as a hedge against the possibility that the Town will have to assume “ownership of the assets and responsibility to provide fire services,” should its contract with the Southern Shores Volunteer Fire Dept. become void.
Mr. Ogburn has allocated $1,073,539 in FY 2023-24 for fire services, $734,519 of which goes toward contractual obligations with the SSVFD, which are not detailed, and another $314,020 of which is the annual payment for the debt the Town incurred to construct the new fire station.
See the proposed budget at https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/sites/default/files/fileattachments/finance/page/2291/town_managers_recommended_budget_fy_23-24_budget._2_year.pdf.
ZTAs: The other three public hearings concern the following zoning text amendments:
1) MINIMUM LOT WIDTH/ZTA 23-03, submitted by the Town to amend ordinances in the Southern Shores Town Code pertaining to the definition of lot width and the minimum lot width requirements in all residential districts and in the government and institutional district, in order to make the method by which lot width is calculated less ambiguous than it currently is in the Code.
We wrote about this ZTA on 4/20/23 after the Town Planning Board took a first crack at it and will not delve here into all of the new proposed Town Code language vis-a-vis the current Code language. If the Town Council approves the changes, we will discuss them in a later blog.
The Planning Board revisited ZTA 23-03 on May 15. Thanks to the quick thinking of newly appointed Planning Board second alternate Michael Zehner, who is a professional planner, the new definition/measurement of lot width will apply only to lots created by recombination or otherwise after the Council’s adoption of the ZTA. If the new language had applied to all existing lots in town, many properties—especially those irregularly shaped or non-rectangular—would have been rendered nonconforming.
The current definition of “lot width” in Town Code sec. 36-57 is “the width of a lot at the required building setback line measured at right angles to depth.” (This necessitates looking up the definition of “building setback line,” which is subject to more than one interpretation, and the definition of depth.)
ZTA 23-03 would change this definition to “the minimum horizontal distance between the side lot lines of a lot measured from the front lot line at right angles to the rear lot line.”
In the RS-1 residential district, where most people live, the minimum lot width for lots created after June 6, 2023, if that is the adoption date, would be “100 feet from the front lot line at right angles to the rear lot line,” rather than 100 feet “measured at the building setback line.” (Town Code sec. 36-202(d)(2).)
What do you think? Does this language compute for you?
How would you measure the 100-foot width that is required for a residential lot in the RS-1 district to be buildable?
Planning Board Director Wes Haskett informed the Board on May 15 that ZTA 23-03 is a “stopgap” measure to prevent problems with recombinations of lots, such as occurred when property owners sought last year to recombine an 80,000-square-foot tract land at 55 Skyline Road into four smaller buildable parcels. Mr. Haskett denied their recombination request on the grounds that two of the four proposed lots, which were situated behind two streetfront lots, did not meet the 100-foot minimum width requirement, even though they actually measured 100 feet in width. Mr. Haskett based his ruling on his interpretation of the building setback line as essentially the front building setback of 25 feet from the public right of way. (See The Beacon, 10/1/22 and 4/20/23, for more details.)
The Town Board of Adjustment upheld Mr. Haskett’s decision, 3-2, on appeal, and the property owners appealed its ruling to the Superior Court of Dare County. The Town Council intervened in the litigation and approved a Consent Order in favor of the Skyline Road property owners.
The new ZTA language, if adopted, could be fine-tuned later, Mr. Haskett said.
Mr. Zehner is director of planning and community development for Berkley Group of Kitty Hawk and a former planning director for the Town of Nags Head. He is a huge asset to the Town Planning Board. We would prefer that he, rather than the Town Attorney, draft the Town’s new lot-width ordinances.
2) SHORES SHORES LANDING/ZTA 23-04, submitted by Matthew Huband, a homeowner in the Southern Shores Landing, to amend the Town Code to establish minimum 50-foot setbacks between restaurants, drive-through businesses, other commercial buildings/facilities, and mixed-use developments AND planned unit developments (PUDs), which the Landing purportedly is, so that Landing homeowners will have protection from any commercial or mixed-use construction on the SAGA investor-owned adjacent property at 6195 N. Croatan Hwy.
This ZTA is the result of a mess. As best as we understand it, the Town approved the Southern Shores Landing as a PUD in 2005, when PUDs were a permitted use in the RS-10 (high-density) residential district. Subsequently, the Town changed the ordinance on PUDs, allowing them only as a permitted use within the C, General Commercial District. It also rezoned the Landing development from 100 percent RS-10 to two-thirds RS-10 and one-third General Commercial.
ZTA 23-04 is an attempt to give PUDs setback, stormwater, and buffer protections from adjacent commercial and mixed-use developments, which they do not have if they are zoned commercial.
Although the Town Planning Board unanimously recommended approval on May 15 of ZTA 23-04, Mr. Haskett has taken the position that these protections can be more specifically addressed through Special Use Permits when a Special Use, such as a restaurant, drive-through facility, or mixed-use group development, is proposed. He is recommending that the ZTA be denied. We agree with the Planning Board.
3) SHARED SPACE HOUSING/ZTA 22-08, submitted by attorney Casey Varnell on behalf of Pledger Palace, CDEC, to create a new permitted use in the Town’s C, General Commercial zoning district of “Shared-Space Occupancy Dwellings,” a form of affordable rental housing that the applicant proposes offering to students and other single persons in a boarding-house type of arrangement.
Pledger Palace once operated a child education center at 6325 N. Croatan Hwy., which is located in the Martin’s Point commercial district, over which the Town of Southern Shores currently has extraterritorial jurisdiction, although it has indicated an interest in allowing Dare County to take over jurisdiction.
Although, if approved, the ZTA would apply to all property in Southern Shores’ commercial district, Patricia Pledger, the president of Pledger Palace, focused in her application on how she would convert her child-care center into a shared-space occupancy dwelling that could house 95 students, in four-walled “shared spaces” that could accommodate up to 10 bunk units for a maximum of 20 occupants.
The Planning Board endorsed the concept of affordable housing, but recommended denial of ZTA 22-08, by a 4-1 vote. John Finelli, who represents Martin’s Point on the Board, adamantly argued that the ZTA lacks fundamental standards (pertaining to square footage needs per occupant, and sanitation requirements for group housing, for example) that must be established before such housing can be considered.
CONTRACTS: In addition to consideration of the FY 2023-24 budget and the three ZTAs, the Town Council will decide upon contract matters, including:
1) Awarding contracts for two street improvement projects, each of which the Town staff recommends should be awarded to Fred Smith Co. Construction, the lowest bidder and the company that has been in charge of all of the rehabilitation projects since the Town’s 10-year street-improvement plan started. Fred Smith Co.’s combined bids total $1,072,799.95, about $72,800 more than the $1 million budgeted this fiscal year for street improvements.
2) Considering the two bids received for performing repairs and building upgrades at the Town Hall, the Pitts Center, and the Southern Shores Police station and possibly awarding a contract to one of the bidders, either C&T Contracting ($98,450.00), which the Town staff recommends, or Cynergy Home Solutions LLC ($122,725.00).
3) Considering a request by the Town’s legal representative, Hornthal, Riley, Ellis and Maland (“HREM”), to amend its contract with the firm to increase the hourly rate it pays for legal services from $205 to $235 for attorneys and from $140 to $160 for paralegals, effective July 1. The Town’s current contract with HREM took effect July 1, 2019, with then-rates of $195/hour for attorneys and $140/hour for paralegals. HREM’s attorney rates increased, pursuant to the contract, to $200/hour on June 1, 2020, and to $205/hour on June 1, 2021.
The contract, which may be terminated at will by the Town, requires the Town to pay a non-refundable monthly retainer of $3,000, from which all fees for services must be debited first.
Mr. Ogburn has budgeted $60,000 for legal services in FY 2023-24 and believes this amount will cover the increased hourly rates.
4) Approving a proposal by Coastal Protection Engineering of N.C., the Town’s beach nourishment agent, to conduct annual beach profile monitoring in 2023. CPE conducted such monitoring of the Southern Shores shoreline in 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The cost of CPE’s services for 2023, which involve gathering profile data and analyzing it for sand-volume and shoreline changes, and preparing a report, is $33,471.25, according to CPE Senior Program Manager Ken Willson.
After all of this business is conducted, Police Chief David Kole will present “staff” findings—as the Town Council requested at its May 2 meeting—on the use of speed bumps on residential streets, according to the agenda. (See The Beacon, 6/3/23) Nowhere else on the agenda is a discussion of traffic problems indicated.
Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 6/5/23
The Southern Shores Beacon 