Minutes - 19990413 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

2 The Department of Social Services and. Cooperative Extension is proposing renovating and turning the present house on the Homestead property into a Family Life Center where parent education, gardening, and food preparation would be the focus. There are funds for this in the CIP. Another new project would be a result of ongoing collaboration between the managers and law enforcement officials from Orange County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and the University. Commissioner Halkiotis has led this process. The CIP reflects funds from both the towns, as well as the county, as well as a one-time contribution received by the sheriff for housing state inmates. The sheriff has been aggressive this year in pursuing back year reimbursements due the county. They would like to earmark the revenue toward law enforcement related functions. Looking at future needs, they anticipate there would be other major requests by the school systems. John Link explained that the time frame for addressing the CIP is the presentation tonight, a public hearing scheduled for next Tuesday night, and then the work session scheduled for May 11th. The CIP will be adopted as Capital Project Ordinances as part of the total budget adopted June 21St Commissioner Carey asked what departments are included in the agricultural related departments. John Link said it would include Cooperative Extension, AFCS, Soil and Water, FHA, basically all the agencies on the right side of the building except for Environmental Health. Commissioner Brown asked about any other bonds for the schools. John Link said that revenues for schools are not being projected because there would need to be another bond issue. Commissioner Brown wants to understand the needs of the agricultural community for the agricultural building. She cannot see spending County money for something other than our core departments. She is not sure another building should be built when they have facilities now. She suggested that a task force review the needs and look at the space allocations. She would like to assess all of the space needs for the County departments. Commissioner Brown made reference to the Family Life Center. She would like to have a better understanding on how this would be used. John Link said that it would correspond to the Department of Social Services goals and agricultural goals. He said that there is more work to be done on this item. He said that he wanted to bring this forward to see if the Board of County Commissioners would agree conceptually with the idea. Commissioner Halkiotis agreed to look at the original concept of the rural education center. He made reference to a trip to Kinston where they visited their center, and said that they had many of their County departments that were associated with agricultural activities located in the same facility. He made reference to the planning and agricultural building, and said that there needs to be some serious improvements done to this building to improve the life for those people working in the facility. There are County parking lots that are not paved. He is advocating for the focus to be on using the 10.3 million dollars, which is projected to be in excess in the last six years of the plan, for County projects to upgrade facilities. There are also some serious court needs. Commissioner Jacobs asked about the statement in the CIP under Public Works that states that, "they continue to experience a significant reduction in waste collected as compared to the unstaffed sites (Page 61)." Rod Visser said that at the time there was a system of unstaffed sites, the volume was between 16-18,000 tons a year. When the sites became staffed, the amount of solid waste being taken to the landfills decreased. At this point, there are no unstaffed sites. This statement refers to the sites that were previously unstaffed. He said they will correct this statement to clarify that there are no unstaffed sites. Commissioner Jacobs would like to know if part of what is happening is because of sites being staffed or is it because people are disposing of their solid waste elsewhere. He thinks it would be useful to do a little more analysis of what has caused the reduction in solid waste. Commissioner Jacobs asked why the SportsPlex is $300,000 for last year and $400,000 in the other periods (Page 63). Rod Visser said that last year they paid three quarters of the payment because they paid one quarter the first year. Commissioner Jacobs asked if there was any money specifically allocated for County core oroiects. other than the bonds.