BC 2006 08 21 REGULAR - Laserfiche WebLink

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August 21, 2006 (Regular Meeting). Page 42 John Clark, Chairman of the Cabarrus County Democratic Party, thanked the Board for supporting David Murdock in building the infrastructure for the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC). He said the NCRC project may put a burden on the County's resources, the Board needs to be more frugal with the taxpayer's money and the County is not in a position to afford to renovate a school that is 80 years old. He also said the Arena was too extravagant: Further, he commented on the numerous delays in building the jail which has caused the cost to escalate to $75 million. He said the Board has avo.i;ded tough decisions in the past by taking money out of fund balance. Finally~h~ encouraged the Board to be stricter on the projects it funds in the future. and said the old Bethel School project should not be funded. Wi th there being no one else to address the Board, Chairman Carruth closed that portion of the meeting at 6:49 p.m. (E) OLD BUSINESS (E-l) Construction Project Update - Sheriff's Office and Detention Center Kevin Gass, proj ect Executive with Turner Construction, Inc., reported erosion control measures are being completed and the goal is to have the foundations for the Annex completed by next Wednesday at the latest. He said the submittal process for key trades is underway with work on the foundation to begin next week. Soon afterwards, he said work will begin on the load bearing masonry retaining walls. Finally, he further reported a tunnel review meeting was held last week and the tunnel work is slated to begin on August 24. Chairman Carruth asked how long Corban Avenue will be clbsed. Mr. Gass reported the road will be closed for 6-8 weeks. (E-2) Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance Update Jonathan Marshall, Commerce Director, provided an update on the progress of the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO), school modeling proj ect and the current administration of the APFO. . Highlights: of the progress of the APFO included the following: Tischler Bise & Associates, the consultant hired to update the capital costs incurred by .the County for each new housing unit constructed wi thin the County, is on track to present its initial findings in late September or October; the student generation and modeling data will be incorporated into the study; staff is also working to determine the level of service for fire, law enforcement and emergency medical services and how best to measure the level of service to tie it into the capital improvement plan and to create a proper test that will meet the necessary legal requirements; and staff were asked to reference the capital costs and student generation rates outside the ordinance and to update those figures every January as opposed to having a fixed number directly in the ordinance. Highlights of the school modeling proj ect were as follows: the Uni versi ty of North Carolina at Charlotte provided student information data that was used by the County's GIS system to plot where students live for the last ten years; building permit data will be used to determine where the permi ts were issued and to see how the two pieces of data relate to each other; and there was a hold up on the original data due to difficulties in matching addresses, but that issue has been resolved. Information presented on the current administration of the APFO included the following: the concept of this ordinance is that there be a shared responsibility between the development community and the County for the funding and construction of new school space; consent agreements are presented to the Board for approval once school adequacy has been determined to be inadequate; there are two ways to mitigate inadequacy: 1) direct payment of an amount when a. final plat is recorded to address the actual construction, and 2) through the dedication o~ land or the creation of infrastructure that supports school construction; and finally, phasing is used to help with modeling and to better tie the phased development to the construction activities that are untaken through the School's IS-year plan. Throughout the update, Mr. Marshall responded to a variety of questions. There was also a general discussion on the following issues: school capacity, capacity percentages, approval of subdivisions by municipalities, reduction in densities, other mechanisms that could be used to address adequacy, new legislation that allows builders to construct school facilities and to lease those facilities back to the County, the cost of new schools and land purchases, whether or not the school capacity data is shared