Apex Town Council 2/11 Meeting Report

A busy week starts off with a regularly scheduled meeting

The Town Council had 3 meetings this week, the regularly scheduled Town Council meeting on 2/11, Day 1 of our retreat on 2/12, and Day 2 of our retreat on 2/13. Now that I’m through the nearly 15 hours of content, I’m going to make a few posts hitting the highlights of each meeting.

First up I wanted to update you on the 2/11 Town Council Meeting.

Consent Agenda

The lease agreement with the Apex Chamber pulled, as we are waiting to get more data. If you weren’t aware, the Apex Chamber leases around half the Depot for $1 a year. We have a great working relationship with the Chamber and we are thankful for their service to the town (as reflected in this arrangement, going back a number of years). The town is growing, and running low on space, so the Council wanted to get more information on our facility needs before making a decision on renewing this long term lease.

The Council officially approved and enacted an EV charging rate of 20 cents per kWh for town owned chargers.

The Council approved the purchase of 8300 Jenks Road for $3.5m for a new substation.

Peak STAR Award

The Apex Town Council partners with the APSF to honor an education civil servant once a quarter and learn more about the great work being done in our public schools. Congratulations to Apex High School’s Quiwanna Britton! Thank you for everything you do for Apex.

Wake Transit Plan Update

We received an update on the Wake Transit Plan, including information about their public engagement process (you may have seen the survey links). You can see their presentation here.

Green Level Towns PUD - Approved

If you’ll recall at the last meeting we were unhappy with this proposal due to the levels of affordable housing offered. The Town Council is looking for residential developments to come in providing at least 5%. I was happy to see the developer here heard our concerns and agreed to meet the 5% level. The project was approved 4-1 (Gantt).

Public Art Purchase

The Town Council approved the purchase of two pieces of public art, the Best- in Show “Keyhole Portal” for $13,200 (will be located near the Depot) and People’s Choice “Doves of Peace” for $6,600 (to be moved by APD).

Tunstall House To be Re-bid

Deferring what was looking to be the most difficult decision of the night, we learned the Tunstall House project (renovating the old home behind the Senior Center) will be “re-bid”. The explanation I heard was that legal had some procedural concerns; that we hadn’t received enough qualifying bids and thus we should rebid the project. I outlined my strong support for Apex finally fulfilling its commitment here, none the less, others had concerns about the cost. There is no point in reiterating the debate at this point: it is my sincere hope that the next set of bids come in even lower, and that everyone is then satisfied with approving the renovation. Beyond just our commitment to Historic Preservation and our legal obligation to this project, Apex Town Hall has some serious space constraints and having the Tunstall House available as an annex will be an invaluable in the coming years.

Retreat Breakdown Coming

This was all in the span of about an hour and a half; I still have around 14 hours of our retreat to type up and summarize. Although there was a lot of dry stuff there, there were quite a few of interesting policy decisions (including info on the next bond?) as well as a report on our financial status I want to report out.

For now, if you’re interested, take a look at the Day 1 and Day 2 agendas.

I’ll follow up soon!