001How are you? Are we ready? Uh, it's 5 o'clock and it is time to start our meeting. Uh, Mr. Wilson, would we do do our invitation for us, please? Father, thank you for a good day today. This is the day that you have made and we will rejoice and be glad in it. Thank you for keeping us safe and thank you for watching over us. Father, as we start this meeting this evening, we pray that you'll be with each of us, each person that's represented here while you watch over. Give us wisdom and give us understanding as we try to make decisions that aren't in the best interest of Walker County Schools, the teachers, and the kids. And Father, we give you praise for all that you do. For it's in Jesus name we pray.
002Amen. Amen. Uh, now we'll have a discussion of our 2026 budget. Mr. Rice, So, we'll go through our presentation. Just to mention that Mr. uh Richardson is on vacation, but he is uh called in tonight. So, we're glad he's with us. Uh and he is also going to call in for the board meeting. So, I'll move him over there in just a little bit once we get finished with the budget presentation. Um hopefully everybody will be able to see what we have up there. So, I'll just begin to go through uh the um presentation. I always like to start off and I know some of you guys were presentation. And so I appreciate y'all um being here again. Um it's just about our mission and that's ensuring all students graduate ready for college, ready for
003work, ready for life. And so every decision that we make is based on that. Um and we we we pride ourselves on the fact that the board has always kept that as the center point point or the focus of what they do. This is a new site we added this year, which I think was a great addition to us because we like to make sure our property owners and our folks that pay property taxes understand what they're doing that they support the mission of the school system. And so a better school system with more graduates and a workforce that's being developed is automatically helping out the local economy and that brings folks to Walker County. And so, uh, we like to make sure that they know that that investment is going to provide safe schools,
004quality programs, opportunities for students to grow and succeed. And so, we appreciate that commitment and we appreciate the fact that um they they want to understand and know a little more about where our money goes and where our money comes from. And so, that's what this presentation is about. This is the second of two required meetings. Uh the the law requires that before the board votes on a tenative budget that they have two uh hearings for the public to be able to offer suggestions or ask questions. It also gives the board another amount of time to um decide on or finalize what that budget's going to look like. Revenue sources for us come from a variety of uh areas. Local funding includes property taxes, other local resources which are real estate transfers, TOBT on vehicles,
005interest, and then of course our splice pennies that come in. We also get state funding from QBE and that's the quality basic education. We'll talk a little more about that in just a second. Categorical grants and then our equalization, which we'll try to give a better explanation for as well. And then federal funding, and there's a lot of titles there, uh, but the majority of ours are title one and probably 6B. Um, but those are all very restrictive and they're for very specific purposes. Uh, you can lose those funds and so we try to work within the confines of that. And then our SPLS funds, which is our education, special purpose local option sales tax. It kind of helps us fill in the funding gaps uh without having to raise property taxes. And it's been
006wellreceived since 1997. Uh, we're in our seventh iteration. Is that correct? This is coming up on East 7. Uh and so we we definitely are uh thankful that the uh voting public continues to support that. Uh that's a one cent sales tax approved by the voters in the general referendum. Uh it spreads up um you know that tax burden to choppers that come through. And so I mentioned in our presentation last Tuesday, we don't have an exact number, but I know that economic development feels like we're somewhere between 30 and 35% of all pennies that are being spent in Walker County are from non-residents, folks that are passing through. And uh the Chamber of Commerce did a really good job several years ago getting into what they call Walker Rocks where they promoted tourism. And
007so that promotion of tourism is actually bringing a lot of folks into our area. A lot of folks don't realize Rock City is in, you know, in our county and so MLmore, some of the different developments. So that definitely helps. And those dollars offset some of the things that we would typically use for or out of our general budget and our operational budget. And so anytime we can offset that with ESP plus funds, we like to do that. It can only be used for capital projects, construction or projects that are mentioned in the referendum. Okay? So if it's not in the referendum, you can't spend E+ pennies on it. You can't also use that money to offset cost of people, uh, salaries, benefits, things like that. Those have to be kept separately. And typically we
008call that buildings, bonds, books, buses, bits and bites. So those are things that are easily qualified under the referendum always mentioned, but also are a good use of those funds. Um, the question was asked about tax abatements, and the board of education does not do anything with tax abatements. That's typically um county government or the m municipalities, economic development, top of Georgia, those folks. When they're courting these companies to come in, our typical involvement is when they call us and they ask two questions. What's your graduation rate? And what how are you building and maintaining a job force, a workforce for companies around you? And so we we talk to them about what we're doing through dual enrollment and through uh AP and honors and through some of the things that we're doing with internships
009here and workbased learning. Um this is something where they don't have to pay property taxes, but it does bring in or bolster up those East pennies that are being spent because they're bringing folks to our area, whether that's new families or customers, whatever that ends up being. Um there was a question about are we involved in some of those planning and that was at the Tuesday night meeting and we are on a limited basis. Uh we're always willing to be involved in those conversations but typically that moves to um those folks who are in economic development and so we try to make sure that they know we're available for those conversations if needed. QBE funding, quality basic education. That's what happened in 1985 when the funding formula was developed. It hasn't been changed since. The
010funding formula is a good formula, but it needs to be adjusted for current costs and inflation. It never has. It typically provides state funding for 60% of your budget and local funding would make up the additional 40% that's left out. We'll get to a slide in just a few minutes where you'll see that we're maximizing our state funds where that we're not charging back or having to look for that 40% in local funding that's a lot less than that. And then QB is based on how we serve our students. It's based on two things. How many students we have and then how we serve them. And so uh the program of study that they're offered uh can bring in more funding dollars. And we typically uh see funding dollars increase through QB every year. We'll
011go into that a little bit just in a second as well. This gives you an idea of some comparisons. Uh the QBE earnings from last year at $73.4 million and our initial earnings for this year that we received were $75.5. So you can see that's an increase in almost a little more than $2 million. Uh that's based on slight enrollment growth and again how we served our students. And so those are two really good things that we're continuing to look at. And we've done lots of training on how to look at your scheduling. You guys hear us talk about Usha. Usha is something that lays over our student information. And it tells us, hey, you're missing something here that you could be looking at from a service perspective. And if you do, it may give
012you more capital or give you more dollars associated with that student. So we look at those very closely. LFS, a lot of folks don't understand or know what that is. That's local fair share. So in our calculations, the state looks at what a meal is worth in Walker County and then they they pull back the equivalent of five of those meal. Those go back to they don't go back, they stay with the state. Uh and then at that point that money is then redistributed to districts on what's called equalization or trying to equal the playing field. You can see last year our local fair share was $8.2 2 million. This year it's 9.5. So, we're sending back or or having deducted from our uh formula a lot more because of the assessed value of property
013around us that's gone up so much over the last three or four years. Equalization, we were expecting about $9.1 million last year. If you remember, the governor took money out of of the coffers and poured into equalization. Uh so, we were actually able to get 12.8 at $8 million, but you can see what it's going to this year. It's right at $9 million. So, that's a difference in $3.8 million right off the bat that we're losing an equalization. The other thing I always point out right here is we learned this last year, even though the legislation changed this year, it was if you go below your millage rate goes below 14 or the equivalent of 14 mil, you begin to lose equalization. Well, they now move that to 10 mil before you actually lose your
014equalization. However, every time you roll back, your equalization is going down. And so, you have to be very careful in striking the balance of what your millage rate is and what your equalization is going to be. And you can see we lost $3.8 million um this year coming in. Nursing went up a little bit, transportation went up a little bit. So, you can see our state aotment last year was 79.6 million. This year it's down to 77 million. So, we lost the 2.5 million right off the bat before we began to put together our budget for this school year. This is just a graph showing you what that looks like. I'll skip on through that so we can talk a little more about um just some comparisons for for numbers. And you guys know this,
015we've talked about this a lot, but if you compare this to FY22 when our QBE was $66.1 million and look at our local 5 mil share, it was $7.2 $.2 million in 2022. So you can see in 23 it went to it dropped a little bit to seven, a little more than seven. It went up a million dollars in FY24. It went up another 200,000 almost 300,000 in 25. And now you can see it went up a million3 this year going into this school year. So, um, you can see equalization has steadily gone down except for 24 and 25 when they push some money back in there. So, we're again, we're trying to find that balance between a solid millage rate that's bringing in local dollars, but also not losing equalization funds in an effort
016to maintain that 60 40% um that that's in the funding formula. Most people don't realize this. There's no funding for any of the folks that are mentioned up there. That's all coming from local dollars. Um, so I try to make sure that folks as they're seeing the presentation or they're reading through the information that they see that there's a lot of things that come that we do that we have to do to run a very large business in Walker County. Uh, but there's no QB funding for it. Uh, they provide a certain number of teachers, but not all teachers are funded by the state. So local dollars would pick up all that uh those those uh costs associated with those teachers that you bring in. We'll talk about that at the very end when we
017go kind of take the stroll down memory lane where we see why we have the need for some very specialized teachers now that we didn't have maybe 10 years ago. State funds less than 23% of transportation costs. We've used that example for several years. cost us over $6 million to run our buses every year to do the things that we have to do in a large geographic area and we don't get that kind of money from the state to cover transportation costs and so and then of course in inflation even though I think you know as far as certain things costs are coming down in certain areas but we battle the same inflation that that folks that are residents here county battle every day as well. These are the big expenditure increases that we're looking
018at this year. Uh state health insurance u I'll talk about two different folks here. I'll talk about folks that are certificated meaning they have gone to school and they have certain certificates of educational levels of attainment that allow them to do certain things on in the teaching side. Then I have a noncertificated which means they don't have a certificate. So, they're working in some of our operational or service portions of our employment. First, I'm going to talk about the certificate. You can see that 7% increase for our certificated employees. So, their number goes from $21,120 to provide them with insurance. It doesn't pay their premium, they pay their premium. It's going to $22,620 per year per employee that takes our our insurance. That's about a million and a half in um additional funds that we'll
019have to budget this year. And keep in mind, we already lost 2.5 million just before we even started. Now, we're already inheriting a 1.5 million increase just for the certificated folks. And since 2023, state health insurance for certificated employees is almost doubled. It went from $11,340 to $22,620. That's a 99 or almost 100% increase since 2023. just in the what we have to pay for their benefits. And so when folks look at our our total costs, our total expenditures in a budget and they try to compare it back to five or 10 years ago, they're looking at that number going, "Wow, what are you guys doing? You're mismanaging your funds." Well, you're not. You're only paying these exponential increases that are being passed down to us. And so this is on our non-certificated folks. So
020they're those employees that that we're seeing an increase in 30% this year. So they're going from 17,420 up to the 22620 that the certificated folks are are getting charged now. So for us that's $3.2 million additionally just for that group of folks. So that's a huge increase for us going into this year. This is um if you remember the young lady that previously owned a staffing agency and she wasn't passing out business cards. She just made the point that she was in that line of work. She said, "I understand why a lot of folks in education now are beginning to subcontract that work out for their non-certificated folks." So, we use the example of bus drivers. So, we can do that for the bus drivers. We could go to First Student or we could go
021to another company and say, "We'd like you to take over all of our routes in Walkton County for us." The first thing they do is they buy all of our school buses at a at a lower price. And then the contract for that year is pretty fair. The second year when you have no buses, then the contract exponentially goes up and then you're stuck because you don't have a way to provide transportation. So, that's one that we looked at, but we've never found a way to make that work. custodians, school food service, pair of professionals. We've tried subcontracting those out. It's harder and harder to do. So, a couple of things have to change. One, the the most beneficial in my opinion would be the the legislature figures out how to lower the cost of
022insurance for state employees. That's the first thing. The second thing would be staffing agencies are going to have to find a lot of people to do this work because they're just not out there. And so, we're at a real um you know, I don't know if justosition is the right term there, but it's a it's a unique crossroads that we're going to have to figure out, but a $3.2 million increase is pretty substantial. And that graph is just showing you those increases. And this is really what I I like for folks to see is in FY22, again going back and showing you that comparison, uh we were paying $10.2 million for state health and we were getting from the state 7.3 million for to offset some of the cost. So, you can see there was
023still about a $3 million local um uh involvement with funding to to make sure we're taking care of our our employees. FY23 went to 13.8 and we dropped a little bit to 7.2. Uh expenditure in FY24 went to 16.5. We're still about $3 million apart. 25 the estimate was 21.1. We were receiving 13. So now we're a little more than seven and a half almost $8 million apart. And this year it's 22.9. So 23 million in expenditure what we're going to spend and we're getting back 14.6. Okay. So we're talking about 7 plus million dollars that we're having to come up with locally to just offer benefits to our employees. So that's a huge increase. teacher retirement. It's a nice marketing tool for us, but it's gone up considerably over the years. Our rates going
024from 20.78 to 21.91. That's effective July 1st of this year. That's going to cost us about $725,500 to offer that to our teachers. Um, and this is kind of a way to look at our general fund budget. Um, that's 6040. So state QB and equalization uh revenue is 63% for us. So it's it's a little above that 60% that they this formula is set up. So we're maximizing those funds. That 2% is some other state revenue. So about 65% of your uh total budgets coming from other sources. And then our local revenue that can be at 40%. We're still holding steady at 35. We've been as low as 33 at times. Um, this year it's it's it's crepted up just a little bit, but we're still sitting at 35%. So, I still love the fact
025that we're maximizing that that um that formula and not passing that loan to the local to the local property owner. So, local revenue at 42.2 million, state sources at 77 million. Those other sources were 2.2 for a total revenue projected at $121.6 million as we go into next year. This one I made my Pac-Man joke and so Miss Angela took care of my yellow color in there and made me look like Pac-Man. So I appreciate that. Um the goal there was just to show folks that 65% of our budget of what we're spending goes back into instruction. And so that's where we we feel like that that's important that our core business is educating children, educating students. So the the line share of our dollars are going right back into the schools to make sure
026that our our students are being taken care of. Then when you look at the total uh expenditure budget for the year, uh the yellow portion represents 88% of our total budget. That's 115.2 million is all wrapped up in the people that operate uh what's going on in our facilities every day across the district. And then that 12% that small slice is our operating expenses and that's $15.8 billion. And I always try to point out that electricity, fuel, some of those things that are set pricing. We don't control those. Those are variables that are out there, but we have to budget to make sure that we can get through and pay the bills. And so some of those bills are just like folks at home. You know, my electric bill shows up, I have to pay
027it. If not, it gets really dark quickly. So we have to make sure that we have funds available to take care of that. But when you look at it from that perspective, you can see the largest portion of our budget is is made up of salaries and benefits. So the total budget for 2526 represents $121.6 million in revenue. We're looking at a beginning fund balance of about 44 million. That's a total revenue and fund balance of $165.9 million. We're estimating our expenditure budget at 131.1 million. It would leave us an ending fund balance at the end of next year projected at 34.7 million for a total budget of 165,925,463. And then I for folks that are in the audience typically that really don't understand how we calculate salary. Uh I try to make sure that
028they know on the teacher side it's a little different on the certificated versus the non-certificated. On the certificated teachers come into us with a variety of educational levels of attainment and a number of years of experience. So a T4 is called a bachelor's degree that someone has just achieved a bachelor's degree. A T5 is a master's degree. A T6 is an educational specialist degree, which a sixthyear degree. And then a T7 is a doctorate degree. And then we have a local salary scale that we add to that our local supplement that helps add to that salary. And so we just took a couple of those to show you what that might look like. Uh this is a teacher that would be on that 012 years of credible service. They're an entry level f person. At
029a T4, they're making $45,92 at a T6 and then at a T7. And you can see that and it's divided over 12 months. A lot of people don't understand this. We have to pay their benefits throughout the summer. And so we divide their uh pay equally over 12 months so that they can make a benefit payment during the summer months as well. Here's a starting teacher that works 190 days. Those are 180 school days and 10 planning days. That's a typical uh calculation for their salary scale. And this is a T4 with a bachelors. They're at 4592 annually. The state scales at 43,592. So the 45 there includes our local supplement. And they would be making 375767 per month for 12 months. And then you see what a doctor makes. And we're showing you that
030because that's if they only work 190 days. We have teachers that work more than those days. And so there's a different uh calculation for them. If you're on extended day, so this is a T6, that was that educational specialist. They have 10 years experience and they're working 200 days. For whatever reason, their job description allows them to work more than those 190 days. So you take their salary, which is 67 divided by 190 days, that gives you a daily rate. Then you take that daily rate and you multiply it times the number of days they actually worked. That's why their salary is actually a little more inflated than on that normal teacher scale. same um specialist degree working 241 days. You get the same daily rate, you just multiply by 241 days. They're working more
031days. Um so they're getting paid more. So you have to figure out what their daily rate is and then you pay them based on that. And then I just like to stroll down memory lane because I think it's good for us to all remember because we all have good and bad memories when we stroll down that lane. a brand new teacher in 2012 2013 which was my first year started out at 3297457. We had them on 182day schedule at that point and they cost the system $181 a day. Health insurance was $11,048 for certificated and $5,354 for non-certificated. TRS contributions for the system was at 11.41%. You remember it's almost 22%. This year we had,257 students. Our 14.4% were in our special needs programming. And so we were serving a lot of students where we
032needed those specialized teachers. And then the school system had 1343 employees and 8,692 students. Then you move on to 2526. a brand new teacher is at 4592, which we're thankful for that because the governor saw the benefit and he's given us multiple raises over the years, which is great. But 190 days, that's costing the system $237.33 per day. That's a 31% increase just in the daily rate of pay. Okay. Again, 88% of your pie was people. Health insurance at 22620 for certificated and non-certificate. So that's 105% increase for not certificated. 322% for non-certificated. There's not a small business anywhere that can handle a 322% increase in their health insurance and still stay in business. TRS has gone to 21.91 or 22%. That's a 92% increase since 2012. Based on FY25, we had 1666 of our
033students or almost 20% are now in our sped program. That's a 33% increase. So, our school system has more employees. 1418 have less students at 8379. But you can see that we've got 33% more of our students that need those specialized programming, specialized training, a specialized teacher. And so that all comes at a cost. And so that's why it's so valuable and important to capitalize on that old QB funding formula as much as possible. And then the investment in our children, we have to be judged on something. And so in 2012 2013, our graduation rate was 69.4. The state was at 71.8. In 2024, we were at 92.32 and the state was at 85.4. So we're tracking ahead of the of the state in all those categories. We could have put on their AP exams.
034We could put on their ACT scores and the percentage were above the state. we could have used those critical indicators to show that that investment in our children is paying good dividends for us. I mean, this just shows you what that looks like from this past year. And we're hoping that we are going to see a very similar number as we go into uh the final part of the summer to get us uh our cohort cleaned up and to find out what our graduation rates going to look like. And then we talked a little bit about this, especially if you've driven through Chattanooga. You know, there's a lot of ways that you're going around things. If you go through Atlanta, you might get rerouted multiple times because of traffic. We've been rerouted a lot. I
035think about the biggest reroute in my opinion was in 199 COVID, what year was that? Um 2019, 2020. Wow. I'm trying to block it out now, right? That was a huge detour for us. But that's been a five-year process to get back to what we would call normal. And I don't know if we'll ever get back to normal, but that was a huge exit. But we found our way back to our mission. And so that's what we continue to do every time we have something placed in front of us. We figure out how to get around it, go through it, or tunnel under it. Whatever we have to do to make progress for our students, that's what we're going to do. And a big portion of that is the school system budget. So try to
036answer as many questions especially from the board because tonight is the night you guys will be faced with approving a tenative budget as we go into the month of July. And then of course in August we'll get the um tax digest and we'll begin talking about millage rates. And so that's a that's a big thing for you guys as well. So I'll open the floor up again for for especially our board members Kevin as well uh as he's online and if you have any questions about anything specific I'll be happy to try to answer that. Angela and Rachel are both here. They can help answer those questions. And then if you guys have no questions, I'll open it up to the audience to see if anybody on the audience has a question. Dr. Wilson. Yes,
037sir. Uh excuse me. If the local doesn't make up that difference as far as expenditures are concerned, where do we get where where that money come? Well, Dr. Wilson, that's a great question. So if you look at our budget, the only place you could get that would be to uh look at a rift and u reduce the number of employees that you have because that's where the majority of your funding is is is tied up is in your people. And so you would have to start looking at programs and um potential of trimming away people uh to offset those those losses. When you first come on board in 2012, was that was that what was happening because you said they had a was a mass layoff? Yes, sir. So, at that point, if you remember,
038we were coming out of the recession and so we were under what was called austerity reductions. So at that point they were taking not only your local five mil share that you were sending back and we were still getting equalization but they looked at the total number that you were supposed to get based on the way you had served your kids and they were taking anywhere from 4 6 8 10 million away from you immediately. Walker County over a period of time lost $55 million during austerity reductions. But we had to figure out a way to make it work. The only way to make it work when I walked in the door was allow 52 people. And that's what we did. And so it was it and I say that's what we did. We also
039had um reduction in days but we teachers were on a 190day contract. They may have only gotten paid for 182 days or 180 days or 178 days because we had furlow days as well. So you had to find a way to make make up that difference versus going up on your millage rate. Keep in mind at that time when we were doing all those cuts the millage rate was 17404 and the meal was not near worth $2.3 million which is what it is now. So the reassessments have created the value to go up which that means the meal is worth more money now even though it's down to 14.982. It's worth more money than it was at 17404. So you're in a good place there. But if you had to make up more money the
040only way for us to be able to do that would be to cut people. It's a great question though. Anything else from you guys? Anything from the floor question? The same question he asked. Yeah. And it's it's for us it's the only thing you have to think about because that's the largest portion of your budget or raise your meal. Or raise your meal. Yes, sir. That's exactly right. So, and and you there is a balance there because you know you can't take the services away from some of those students. You have to provide that by law. But you also have to look at it from the perspective of how how hard are you hitting the local tax payer. So So yeah, you're right. I I attend a lot of different meetings and I just don't
041see people just I'm the only one here. That's sad. There's 70,000 people in this county. Nobody to listen to this. That's sad. And I hope you tell me because I'm I'm open and I know the board's open to this as well. Is it good information? Is it? It's awesome. That's what I'm saying. If I just I haven't, like I said, I go to all of them and I even go to one don't even know it exists. The development authority meeting and there's usually three people sitting there, but that is where it's happening. Just like the abatement, not they're giving stuff away. And I get it, but I don't get it. Because it you either got to give or take, and they're taking a lot. Uh, but I'm just a little confused on uh why we
042can't somehow get this to the masses. I I guess you know the commissioners meeting when I first started going to those things was five, six, seven, eight, 10 people. Now there's usually 35 or 40 and they they're Facebook. Everything's live. So are right now. Are y'all streaming this? We don't stream. We we tape them. We're playing back two days later. Y I just think I like I said somehow we've got to get it to other people because I'm not the only one concerned, but I'm in my situation right now I can kind of go to some of these meetings and I just think there's a lot of folks missing it but something like this that they can I mean it's just going to open some eyes and there again I think that's what we need
043somehow we've got to get the citizens in this county to open their eyes because it's I've learned a lot coming to y'all's meetings. It works. That's awesome. There was things that I never and I've been a lot taxpayer for 40ome years. So, I never knew a lot of things and I'm learning still. We've got to get this to the classes and either I don't know how y'all do that, but we do everything by law that we have to do to get out the information. We have it all posted. Um I mean I've been there for years. cuz y'all didn't even let come in the door. I mean, it's changed tremendously for budget for anything. Oh, no. Those meetings were always kind of closed. No, no, they're always the public. They are. Now, what people don't
044understand is the commissioners meeting is a meeting of the public. Correct. The board meeting is not The board meeting is a meeting of the board. They invite the public. So, it's a little different, but our our meetings are always open to the public. Yes, sir. Well, in fact, one of the stipulations is a door has to always be open. Yeah. We can't close the doors. Well, yeah, that's what I see. I'm asking a question. That's a great question. I just uh we've got to get it out there. Yeah. Somehow. Sure. And I don't know what that is. Yeah. Yes, I I can't think of one right off the top of my head, but I know that there are times when educational initiatives have not only been proposed, but they have been required for the school
045system to accept those and do those, but they don't provide the funds in order to uh they're going to implement it anyway, but they don't provide the funds for us to do that. I I I don't see why that they can't understand the school system strapped as it is and then to require whether it be special education or what. So you're going to do this but we're not going to give you the money to do it. Yes. We've been talking about unfunded mandates for a long time in education where it sounds great at the gold dome or maybe not at the gold dome maybe more at the twin towers but before co that's where all the education folks were. It was a great idea there and then they wanted everybody to do it exactly the
046way they thought, but they provided no funds for you. So, you had to you had to work out all the details and do the work to to implement it. So, we've been looking at those unfunded mandates for a long time in education. So, so some let's back to the development authority. do if there's something really big coming on coming in this county, do y'all ever know about that at all? So, you know, that's that's a a tough conversation because we always try to make ourselves available because we feel like that anything we're doing potentially has an impact on the county or the municipality and vice versa. So, we ask a lot of questions and we try to get to the table. the the young lady that was at Tuesday night's meeting mentioned Pathy Valley Road
047in the residential development there. Did were we at the table and did we express any concerns about traffic? Yes, 100%. We were at the table that was totally opposite what we were told as citizens. That's where I live. Our commissioner at that time is still there. He said no. He talked with everybody at the school system and everything was lovely. We we told our commissioners to come to back to school for the first five days and watch the traffic go up way both ways. It it's a it's an issue just because the road itself, the infrastructure road, it was small and narrow in anyway. There's nowhere to walk on those roads already. And so we did express concerns about that. We were part of that. I called it the wrong group. I shouldn't ever say
048that, but the initials were WRG, the Wilson Road Neighborhood Group. And you know, it just spelled out wrong. But but we met in that group and we were passing along those concerns at that time because that was probably wanted street lights down there. And so right now those new developments that's there now, I mean, they're they come right out to the edge of pavement. First thing the county should have made them do widen cell and lanes. They widen the developer pays for that, right? So that would help. But I just There's no sidewalks. There's nothing. And uh so I asked my question. I guess that's the question. If right now they're going to come down here, say just north of here somewhere and come in with a big development plan, y'all are not notified unless
049it's going to impact the schools. Typically typically the first call I get from the developer or the company and they ask about our graduation. Nobody county level typically. Typically that's right. That's what I Interesting. And again, I'm I'm trying we're trying to be a team player because part of what we do has an impact on the employ. I think that's the whole problem. The communication is very lacking. I think it's got somehow I don't know. Yeah, there's definitely a problem. All right. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that question from anybody else. Okay, Kevin, do you mind if I cut I'm gonna cut you off for this meeting unless you have a question and then I'll I'll No, I'm good. And I'll I'll join back in the next one. Yes, sir. Perfect. Thank you, Kevin. Yes, sir.
050Thank you. Okay, if there are no questions, then we need motion to adjurnn, which is a second. But all those in favor, we're adjourned until 6 o'clock.