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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes 04-18-2016 1 APPROVED 5/5/2016 MINUTES BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS Legislative Breakfast April 18, 2016 8:30 a.m. The Orange County Board of Commissioners met for a breakfast meeting with the Orange County Legislative Delegation on Monday, April 18, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. at the Solid Waste Administrative Offices in Chapel Hill, N.C. COUNTY COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Chair McKee and Commissioners Mia Burroughs, Mark Dorosin, Barry Jacobs, Bernadette Pelissier, Renee Price and Penny Rich COUNTY COMMISSIONERS ABSENT: COUNTY ATTORNEYS PRESENT: John Roberts COUNTY STAFF PRESENT: County Manager Bonnie Hammersley, Deputy County Manager Travis Myren, Clerk to the Board Donna Baker, Finance Director Gary Donaldson, Assistant to Manager for Legislative Affairs Greg Wilder (All other staff members will be identified appropriately below) LEGISLATIVE DELEGATION PRESENT: Senator Valerie Foushee, Representative Verla lnsko, Representative Graig Meyer Chair McKee called the meeting to order at 8:42 a.m. Chair McKee said the Board of Commissioners is pursuing avenues to repeal HB2. Chair McKee said the Board had prioritized their legislative items and referred to their agenda package with their priorities listed and discussion ensued on the various issues and the priority topics first. Chair McKee asked that the discussion on the Bona Fide Farms topic be moved to the first item under priority discussion since there were several members of the public in attendance for this item. PRIORITY DISCUSSION TOPICS Bona Fide Farms — Item #26 • Support legislation clarifying the farm use and agriculture exemption of 153A-340 that restricts local zoning authority applies only to property on which the production of crops or livestock is the primary use. Clarify that marketing and agri-tourism activities must be secondary uses of the property and do not qualify for the exemption in the absence of the production of crops or livestock. Local governments are seeing an increasing number of properties that, although they meet one or more criteria for exemption, such as having a federal farm Representative lnsko asked if there was any legislation on the books with Bona Fide farms and Chair McKee said no but they are looking for clarification on this issue. John Roberts said any clarification/changes would need to be done through legislation. Commissioner Pelissier had asked John Roberts to submit this proposed item to our internal Legislative Issues Work Group because many individuals are trying to circumvent the rules on this issue in this county. John Roberts said currently all the statute requires to avoid regulation is the property owner meet one of five criteria such as having a forestry plan that need not be approved by any governmental 2 agency. He added it is up to the Board if they want this submitted because there are so many loopholes and legislative changes are the only way to close them. Senator Foushee said if this is something they want the Delegation to introduce and support this should not be done in their short session because she is not sure if it meets the criteria for a short session. Commissioner Dorosin said this issue came about because people are trying to get a farm categorization in order to avoid zoning. Senator Foushee said this would have to be a statewide bill not a local bill. Representative Meyer said pressure that comes around this issue is from large farms like forestry and livestock farms and this is an issue that would engage a lot of different industries. This is a conversation that he would like to have time to talk to farmers and bring forth in a long session. Commissioner Jacobs said this would go along with Item #31 –Agriculture- Support Conservation of Working Lands and Farmland Preservation. He said these two items could address conflicts in urbanizing areas and those areas that are trying to exploit agri-toursim rules. Chair McKee said this is more of an issue in the urbanizing areas such as the proposed event venue in the southern part of Orange County. He said this proposed property is not a farm, which exempts them out of regulation. Chair McKee said the conversation could start now with Farm Bureau and we could bring it back to the long session next year. But if the Legislature does move forward with this, many of these farms are small farms and the agri tourism events are critical to their function. But as it stands now this process is being abused. Chair McKee said he is seeing an increase in the area of non-farm activities. Representative lnsko said who is supportive of this issue in the community and who is opposed to it as it now stands. Chair McKee said the concerns are from neighborhoods that have been mainly for agricultural use and now people are coming in and turning these into farms for commercial use. Representative lnsko said again - who is opposed to this proposed clarification. Chair McKee said the agricultural community are concerned that if the language is "tightened" then this may hurt their operations-because if you have a declining farm operation but your agri-tourism increases-and five years down the line you are suddenly not farming but the other one—would you be grandfathered in Representative lnsko said is this a zoning and tax issue. John Roberts said with the Board it is a zoning issue but there are some potential tax implications. Representative Meyer said this type of issue in the General Assembly is never a "cut and dry" issue and may be amended and changed many times meaning it could move slower through the process. Most legislators don't want to vote on something "under the radar". And if the Delegation takes the time to review and talk this out, then that would enable them as legislators to get this up the statewide chain by lobbying through the Farm Bureau. Representative lnsko said this should be a bill with a lot of statewide interest as related to farms. 3 Chair McKee asked the Legislative Delegation on behalf of the Board to talk to other legislators about this going forward but as mentioned before, he thinks there will be push back. Representative Meyer asked Chair McKee to get them information on context and statutory information for them to circulate to their peers. John Roberts said he would do this. Broadband - Item #22 • Support legislation, funding, and other efforts to expand broadband capability to the un-served and under-served areas of the State to enhance quality of life as well as expand opportunities for jobs creation, small business development, and growth in farm enterprises. Orange County opposes legislation limiting local governments' efforts to provide broadband and supports legislation and regulations that would preserve local option and authority where needed to deploy community broadband systems and ensure community access to critical broadband services and to establish a minimum level of service. Chair McKee asked Representative Meyer to speak to this item since he had been involved in meetings with County staff and residents. Representative Meyer said the credit belongs to Jim Northup and County staff because of the efforts they had brought forth and he said the providers in the area say no one in the state is trying to learn how to expand the use of Broadband except here in Orange County. He said the most hope is in the Centurylink areas of service, where it would be to enhance the quality of service where there is already existing Centurylink lines and service. Representative Meyer said it would be more cost effective to do broadband through wireless instead of hard wires. He said the County has also talked with Piedmont Electric about collaborating with them. Commissioner Rich said she is on the NACo technology committee and there is a nationwide push to make broadband a utility. Representative lnsko said this is so unconstitutional as related to education and students and this does come up in education discussion in the General Assembly. Representative lnsko said is there any collaboration with the schools. Commissioner Price said this is one of the top goals of the NCACC. Representative lnsko said what about the local and State Boards of Education (BOE). Commissioner Price said they are trying to push this through as a basic utility. Senator Foushee said it would be helpful if the State BOE and NCACC would collaborate on this issue. Representative Meyer said a nice budget appropriation from the state would put in a lot of rural broadband. 4 Commissioner Jacobs said the Board of Commissioners will be meeting with both school boards next week and they can bring this issue up then. Representative Meyer said there is one Democrat that he knows of that will add a budget appropriation in the General Assembly this year. Representative lnsko said there is interest in this because of the education component. Priority School Issues — Item #19 • Support legislation to address the following three issues related to schools: a) Provide local school systems with calendar flexibility; b) Provide full funding for State allotments including Average Daily Membership (ADM) growth; c) Provide full funding for Driver Education. Senator Foushee said they file this same bill every year but it gets "shot" down by the eastern coastal counties. Representative lnsko said there is a continuing discussion on the Driver Education issue but it is not a top priority. Commissioner Dorosin said is there anything positive that they can anticipate in this short session. Senator Foushee said the "short session will just be a short session". Raise Age for Juvenile Jurisdiction in Criminal Court- Item #6 • Support legislation to raise the age for juveniles being treated as adults in criminal court from 16 to 18 Commissioner Burroughs said she asked that this be on the priority list and is there hope that this will get through. Representative lnsko said the Republicans are on board with this issue since they want to downsize the jail population. They just don't know if it will be addressed in short session or be kicked back to the long session next year. Repeal of House Bill 2 and Expansion of Protected Classes • Seek statewide legislative action to repeal House Bill 2 and provide all North Carolina local governments with the authority to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in order to protect these classes from discrimination and discriminatory practices. Chair McKee said they will have a resolution on tomorrow's night meeting to repeal HB2 and the Clerk will forward this to the Legislators. Representative lnsko said she is not hearing that the Republicans think the HB2 bill is a mistake. Representative Meyer said they will be introducing a repeal bill next week and the best they can hope for is that they move on what the Governor did on gender identity but that still leaves in place the other bad parts of the bill. Chair McKee said would it be possible to pull certain sections out of the bill such as the redress issue. 5 Senator Foushee said maybe the redress issue but not the protected classes. Commissioner Dorosin appreciated the Legislators' opposition to this bill on the day this bill passed. Commissioner Dorosin said what else should they as a Board be anticipating from the General Assembly (GA) during this short session. Representative Meyer said he is not sure about the achievements in education issue. Representative lnsko said in general that the GA would like to avoid any controversial issues before the November election. Commissioner Rich said what about the funding of schools. Representative lnsko said the ADM is still down significantly and they need to keep lobbying for an increase. Commissioner Rich said she is going to petition the Board of County Commissioners at tomorrow's night meeting to put forth a resolution in reference to raising the ADM back to the amount that is was in 2008. Representative lnsko said companies want to come to N.C. and they want good public schools. Other Concerns/Comments: Commissioner Pelissier said she is upset about the LMEs and the level of services they provide. She said she had hoped that there would be a way for the counties to have some input. Representative lnsko said she has concerns about that too and she hoped to meet with Board members to talk about what is going on with Cardinal Innovations. She said she would hope complaints would come to the County level instead of Cardinal since the county puts in a significant amount of monies into Cardinal. Commissioner Pelissier asked about the cap of light rail and she said that one of the messages that Go Triangle is putting out is that this will connect three of the largest businesses in N.C. and the cap is a problem. Senator Foushee said this too will be used as a bargaining chip in the Legislature. She said there are some in the Senate that are listening too about feedback on this issue. Representative lnsko said Democrats like them are not in the room where decisions are being made at the State level. Commissioner Jacobs said do the Democrats in the Legislature have access to counties' legislative agendas. Representative lnsko said yes. Representative Meyer said he thinks they will get Item #32 done - Aquatic Weed Control Authority. Discussion ensued. Representative lnsko thanked Commissioner Pelissier for her service on the Board of Commissioners since this will be the last meeting with her as far as a Legislative Breakfast. 6 Commissioner Jacobs referred to the hand out at their places that the Clerk forwarded to everyone over the weekend—which referenced draft bills on: environmental studies for riparian buffer requirements for intermittent streams, studies whether nutrient management strategies are effective or will be effective for overall water quality management and to prohibit the Director of Water Resources from requiring on-site stormwater control measures under certain circumstances. Commissioner Burroughs said Bonnie Hammersley and Colleen Bridger are working to get more information on the LMEs. Representative lnsko said she too will try and get more information. Senator Foushee said with the proposed legislation for jail construction that they have been working with John Roberts on this and they want to insure this is legislation they can address in the short session as a local bill; if not then they will try and get it attached to another bill due to the short session criteria. The meeting adjourned at 9:45 a.m. Earl McKee, Chair Donna Baker, Clerk to the Board