001minutes. As we conduct the county's business, Lord, and may our may our business dealings be pleasing in your sight. May we work in such a way that honor you and and represent the people in the very best way, Lord. We thank you for all your many blessings. We thank you for this county and all the people in it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> [clears throat] >> All right. So, the next item on our agenda is informal comments from the community. And Madam Clerk, we we don't have anyone signed up today. Is that correct?
002That's correct. All right. Um If if seeing as how we have no speakers signed up, is there anyone in the audience that would like to um speak in informal comments? All right. Well, hearing none, we'll move on to our next item on on the agenda. So, the next item on our agenda is item -142, and that's our resolution honoring Bishop Osgo Gardine Jr. And at this time, um I'd like to read the resolution. If you guys will humor me for just a second. So, [clears throat] um this is a resolution by the Union County Board of Commissioners honoring Bishop Osgo E. Gardine Jr. And it states as as follows. Whereas, on December 3rd, 1995, Bishop Oscko E. Gardin Jr. became the pastor elect of the historic Elizabeth Missionary Baptist Church, and whereas, he has led
003the historic Elizabeth Missionary Baptist Church for 30 years, expanding and growing its ministry and community service, and whereas, Bishop Gardin has been for many years and continues to be very involved as a leader in his community, and he has been recognized for his service and leadership to his community through the years in various ways, including, but not limited to the following. Number one, appointed in 1998 to the Union Regional Medical Center Board, and was honored with the key to the city of Monroe. Number two, began serving as chaplain for the Monroe Police Department in 1999. Number three, founded the Union County Martin Luther King Jr. banquet in 2001, and helped in dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Number four, under his leadership, the Union Baptist Association was integrated in 2005. Number five, founded
004the New Covenant Community Development Center, establishing a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to community uplift, education, and advocacy. Number six, appointed chaplain for the North Carolina Highway Patrol. Number seven, consecrated to the office of bishop in 2013. Number eight, appointed uh prelate of Union I'm sorry, of United Covenant Churches International. And number nine, received the Presidential Volunteer Award in 2022, recognizing his commitment to service. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Union County Board of Commissioners expresses its appreciation to and recognizes Bishop Osby E. Garding Jr. for his visionary leadership rooted in faith, education, community engagement, and economic development as he celebrates his 30th pastoral anniversary and looks forward to his continued leadership and community involvement in the future. Adopted this 2nd day of March, 2026. So, with that, um just want to say thank you,
005sir. Thank you for all of your service to um our community, our county, um the city of Monroe, everywhere that you have gone, you have done nothing but deliver service and um and administer to the people. So, we would like to honor you. If you come up, could you get the vote for the board to vote on the resolution? >> [laughter] >> Thank you. I appreciate that. So, can I get a motion on the uh resolution? So, moved that we pass the resolution for Mr. Garding. All right. All those in favor of the resolution, say aye. Aye. Now, Bishop Garding, if you'll join us up front here. >> [laughter] >> Thank you, yes. >> [laughter] >> Oh, okay. >> [laughter] >> Okay, second crossing the aisle. Thank you. >> [applause] >> All right, it's now
006time for consideration of any changes to the agenda. Are there any motions regarding requested revisions or amendments to either the consent agenda or the business agenda? Uh, Chairman, I'd like to make a motion that we approve the consent agenda as published. Jason's okay with that. He's Okay, so we've got a motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. All right. >> [clears throat] >> We are now at the business portion of our agenda. The first item is item 26-103, grants management update. I will now recognize Jason May, not Jason K, Jason May, budget and grants management director for comments concerning this item. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate you making that clarification. I left my red jacket at home. It's where it where it ought to be. >> [laughter] >> I I will note
007that as an App grad, I I like to to make sure that every University of Michigan grad that I run into knows that I went to App as well. So, understand how that goes. Chair Helms, Vice Chair Helms. My name is Jason May. I'm the director of budget and grants management. I want to thank you for the time this evening. I'm going to use this time this evening to go over the latter half of my title and talk about grants management. Talk a little bit about where we've been, where we are now, and where we're planning on going in the future. So, on this first slide here, I want to talk about what we have done over the past 7 years. And Ms. Lyle's and her team every year put this together. This is based
008on expenditures, not on awards. So, this is where we have expensed these funds. And what you'll see is a little bit of a timeline of the COVID pandemic and some of the funding that came along with that. You see in '19 and '20 we're around 23 million. Jumped up to 36, stayed in the 30s. We've been very high for the past four or five years. And I want you to direct you to the 2025 and see that $61 million mark on there. Cuz one of the benefits of bringing budget and grants together is that a budget director like myself now looks at that number and I see tax dollars. And I see cost avoidance is a term that budget directors often talk about is how do we do something or other without having to pay
009for it directly by county citizens. And so one penny on our tax rate at this moment in time is about 6 million. And do the math relatively quickly, we've avoided 10 cents in taxes last year. And FY2025, that was 6 pennies in 2024, 7 and 1/2 pennies in 2023. And if you look over the past 7 years on average, we have avoided about 6 cents in tax and ad valorem taxes that we have had we would have to ask our citizens for. That's the past. I'm going to talk a little bit about where we are now. So one of the things that I've been asked to do is to to look and continue to look for grants. And so far in this fiscal year, we've applied to 19 grants. Those 19 grants total more than
010$30 million worth of funding that would be brought in. Again, we've received four of those. Often times when you're dealing with grants, those smaller grants get awarded faster than your larger grants do. Often times those larger grants have more strings attached to them, so it takes longer to expense those as well. But what we've seen so far is that if we are successful in that, we would avoid again about another five pennies in tax rate this year. And we still have four more months to go. The team is currently working right now with a number of different grants. So I want to talk a little bit about those grants because I want to make sure that the board is aware that we're not just going out and trying to apply to anything and everything that
011is out there to be able to bring back. We want to be strategic in our approach to this. And so as you look down this list, you will see a number of grant programs that are attached to projects that we are already in the pipeline to be able to do such as the North Carolina agricultural manufacturing processing. This is a part of the barn project. The economic development administration. This is a in a an economic development plan that we are working on, but I want to draw your attention to the last bullet point the golden leaf open grant. So again, this is another opportunity we're having the grants in the budget team together is going to pay a a little bit of dividends for you. My team has recognized that the agricultural services team has
012looked for a couple of different projects. Those projects have not made their way through the budget process, have not risen to the priority level that our management team has put forward to be able to balance the budget, but this project makes very good sense as a grant project. And so we're in process of having discussions with open with golden leaf right now about their open grant to be able to see can we bring that funding in as a matter of fact you just gave permission this evening for us to move forward with that. That's about $150,000 that we're trying to bring into the county to help with both the food hub and with a couple of other projects that the ag services team is working on. The last bullet point I would note that again
013we're looking at five additional grants that we want to apply for larger grants, not just small grants, but big grants that we're trying to be able to pull together teams of staff together to be able to get projects pushed the county forward. With that being said, the grant world's changed a lot. Three years ago you were in the middle of pandemic funding. And you've had you've gone in in three years you've gone from where you could basically write a grant in crayon and get funding for it to where now you have whole grant programs that are being eliminated. And a fair example of that is the brick program. When I first came to Union County building resilience in communities is the brick grant is handled by the FEMA Federal Emergency Management Association agency, excuse me.
014This is a a grant program that comes in after you've done it had a disaster to be able to see what the impacts of that disaster are and to be able to provide grant funding to harden facilities for where buildings were flooded to be able to try to prevent them from flooding in the future. That grant program during the previous administration received about $60 million in additional funding each year for 3 years. Under the current administration it was slashed and cut. It completely dismantled. And so Union County had a grant that we were going through the brick program for. We were told that program is no longer a an eligible program. We were shifted over to a hazard mitigation grant program. Went through that for about 2 months, then we're told that brick was being
015brought back to existence, but it was brought back in a different way where our original grant project doesn't match up with what they're trying to do with brick. This happened in a year. The the the intersection of federal, state, and local government funding is changing and it's changing rapidly. One of the major topics we'll talk about when we go into the FY2027 budget discussion. What we are wanting to do is to make sure that we're coordinating and understanding the long-term benefits and cost of these grants. We want to make sure that we're growing to a place where we are strategic in our approach of how we apply to grants that make us strong now and as we go into the future. With that being said, that grant strategy is is really a four-pronged approach. We
016want to manage the whole journey. I can't tell you how many times in this line of work I have had sat down with a staff member who is overjoyed and excited. They they wrote a grant and they got $25,000 to be able to go do something or other. Fast forward 2 years and they're just about willing to give the $25,000 back to avoid having to deal with the closeout cost of it. And so what we want to be able to do is manage that full life cycle of the grant from the very first application all the way to closeout. We want to make sure that we're having clear reporting. We're going to start at the beginning of FY 27 to have quarterly reports attached to your agendas. These reports will walk you through what we
017have applied for, timelines around that, Gantt charts of when we apply for it, and when we actually think this will make its way. Because as I stated earlier, we may be awarded some dollars today that we won't be able to spend for another 18 months. And so we want to make sure as a former mayor of mine told me, "Everybody's really happy about the planning, but nobody really cares until a dump truck shows up." And so we want to make sure when the dump trucks are going to show up. We want to make sure that we work together. That last bullet point I was bereft in my my statement. I want to make sure that we're working not just with those departments, but with the funders. Because those folks that are funding and they're the
018grant managers at FEMA and other organizations that are trying to do it, they are holding on to a tiger's tail at this moment trying to keep up and understand where their programs are going. So their our best piece of information is be able to build relationships with them so that they let us know where grants are going and what what we need to do to be prepared for that. One of the relationships we have is with the recreation trails group in North Carolina. We're in the process right now of of looking at the grant application that we are aware of, the NOFA or the notice of funding opportunity comes out tomorrow. So that's where those relationships paid dividends as we go through that. And then last but not least, using better tools. We have eCivis
019now. Um management team has pushed that forward. This is a grant search tool where we can be able to create AI search agents that go and scan all of the Just Grants for federal, state, and local grants around a particular topic. And then we have Power BI. This is a program that we've brought in. It's not completely free. You have to pay a little bit for um the licenses attached to a Microsoft account. But for the most part, this allows us to be able to do financial reporting and to be able to provide that information back for both the board, for management, and for the departments as well. So with that, more than happy to try to answer any questions and provide any additional information that you may have this evening. Any questions for Mr.
020May? Okay. So, I've got a a couple of comments here and maybe maybe a couple of questions. Um So, uh first of all, thank you for the presentation. And and I think it's good that uh that we are actively looking for these grant opportunities because obviously um and I I I really appreciate how you broke that down, you know, as far as like the pennies are concerned. Because everybody pays taxes. And what we are essentially doing with these grant opportunities is we are recouping state and federal dollars to stay right here in Union County where we need them. And so I think it's great, you know, that we're actively pursuing some grants. Um and it certainly helps uh our folks out here in Union County. Um but and I think that and please correct me
021if I'm wrong, but I think that you would probably agree with this that not all grants are created equal though. And so I I think that we have to be very careful about and I think you mentioned the word uh strategic. We have to be very careful about the grants that we that we try to apply for because some of those grants may not be a good fit for Union County. And some of them may have some strings attached that maybe we just don't like. So, um So, with that, Jason, I mean, how many folks and and I'm sorry if I missed this in your presentation, but how many folks do we have currently, you know, actively looking at these grants? And I'm sure it's a pretty involved process. One person. In addition to myself.
022So, we we've brought on a grant specialist to to join our team. So, this is where we are we are bootstrapping this as much as we possibly can to be able to go after that. Again, the eCivis software provides the ability to to up AI agents so that they constantly crawl both the Just Grants, the state, and some of the local um grant grant sites to be able to look for that. It saves myself and my team from having to every day go on 10 years ago we would have an hour every morning to go on to Just Grants just to scan and and use keywords to be able to get through it. We don't have to do that anymore. Those search agents go through that both on the federal side and on the state
023side and on the local side and send us emails saying, "Hey, this is a grant that matches up with what your search term was." So, we're we're trying to make the most use of both software, AI, and and the talented folks that I have on my team. Small but mighty. Yes, sir. Small but mighty mighty team there. Okay. All right. Well, I don't really have any other comments other than to say thank you for for what you and your team is are are are obviously doing. Um I think that uh that once again this goes back to fiscal responsibility >> Yes, sir. um that our board's been committed to and our staff's been committed to. Um and so I appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you. Any other comments or questions? No? All right. Thank
024you, Mr. May. Thank you, sir. Okay, so that is the end of our uh business agenda. So, Looks like I was wrong. It's It's 6:45. I think that's uh you know, you did a pretty good job on that one. I mean, we're we're extremely efficient here tonight. So, I will I'll now recognize our county manager for his comments. >> Thank you. Most of the time I I don't have any comments, but I do actually I do want to I want to say something. Um Patrick, uh myself, and Megan participated in the uh what's called the POPAT. It's the Police Officer's Physical Aptitude Test. I think that's what that stands for. Um and they uh they they asked us if we'd be willing to come and watch and see how that works and possibly participated and
025participate and we did. Clayton um conveniently was not there. Uh he he had other other uh other duties he had to to handle. So, that's fine. Um I will give a big shout-out to Patrick. He actually completed and passed it, so we know what his future uh his future uh for employment is in law enforcement. Megan and I completed it. We did not necessarily pass it in the allotted time, but we did complete it. But, it was it was interesting. They were very gracious. They were very uh supportive of us. We really appreciate their staff and you know, giving us an opportunity to see how that works and and and be part of that. So, I just want to let you guys know that we we did participate that and and I am still moving
026after that. [laughter] But, um it was a good experience. Do we have video of it though? Is there video of this? Probably do have some video. >> [laughter] >> That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we'll start down here at the end. Commissioner Welcome. All right, thank you, Brian. Um I would just like to encourage everyone to keep our servicemen and women in their thoughts and prayers as they're engaged in some very dangerous missions at currently. And outside of that, I would just encourage everybody to be careful on the way home. And I like this early meeting. In time. It's going to be nice. I just want to say how exciting it was to um see Bishop Gardine here tonight and to be recognized for all of the great work um that
027he has done for um his community, our community. I wish more people in our community um had a servant's heart that um cared about the children and um making sure that they have all the resources available to them to excel in school and I think he's a great great example of um what our Union County constituent should have a heart for and um and I pray that more people um look at his example and do that in our community. So, um just very happy to see he and his wife who have given so much to recognize him here tonight for doing something very good for Union County. First chair Helms. Thank you, sir. Um I'm going to echo both Commissioner Merrill and uh Commissioner Balcom. Um Pastor Gardin um has served this community for so
028long and is so appreciative um of all the work that he's done for the county. Um going to echo um Commissioner Balcom in regards to everything that's going on in the world going on in the world right now. Um my son did send me a text today. One of his fraternity brothers is being um deployed uh to the Middle East today and my best friend, her son is also a Marine and we're waiting to hear his orders. So, when it hits close to home, you have a you have a tendency to pay a little bit more attention, say a lot of prayers for those families, those mamas and daddies out there that don't know if their child is going to come home or not. Um so, pray for our military servicemen and women. Um and
029um if you have not voted, please go out and vote so that we exercise our right to freedom that we have. Thank you. So, >> [clears throat] >> um I I'll just say this that uh that my thoughts and prayers go out to all of those military families. Uh we've got a military mom right here. Um and so yeah, I mean that's not easy and it's it's not easy on the ones that are sent overseas, but it's also not easy on on the families that uh that support them. Um so uh I would just say I agree with uh Commissioner Merrill's comments about Bishop Gardine. Um the man has truly lived a life of service um and dedication to our community and and um I mean I I I know that he is going to
030be remembered long beyond his years, you know, for the things that he has done for uh the citizens of this county. And so much appreciation uh for Bishop Gardine and all of the service to the community. Um like to thank our staff, as always, uh you guys do a great job. Um appreciate all the work that you guys put in these meetings. Uh Mr. May, thank you for your presentation as well and uh for all those that uh that joined us um this evening. We got a little bit of a light crowd, but but thank you all for being here and participating in this meeting. This is your county and so uh it's always good to see folks show up. All right, so uh that's all that's all my comments. Um I guess I'll make
031a motion to adjourn. All those in favor? Aye. All right. Thank you, folks.