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Last Thursday the Town Council met for a strategic planning meeting. This is sort the kick off to our involvement in the budget process; it’s a time where we reflect on the last year’s progress as well as brainstorm strategic objectives for the next fiscal year.

Each director gave an update about the accomplishments and challenges faced in the prior year. I encourage you to watch the video (linked below). We then did the strategic planning session, followed by a financial conditions update. I’ll make a separate post about that, as it’s a pretty dense subject.

Our legislative agenda update got pushed due to time.

For now, I want to post the pictures we took both of the accomplishment summary boards as well as the results of the strategic planning session (where we proposed initiatives and added our “dots” to indicate support for them)

On Tuesday, the Apex Town Council officially adopted our 2024/25 budget, bringing budget season to a close.

This budget includes a 3.8 cent increase in the tax rate above the revenue-neutral rate, the lowest among all municipalities in Wake County. The final tax rate is 34 cents per $100 assessed value, the second-lowest in the county, and 10 cents below last year’s rate of 44 cents per $100. This adjustment offsets the higher property values from this year’s property revaluation.

Our budget prioritizes people. We are investing in our growing community by hiring 37 new positions and supporting our existing employees with competitive cost of living increases and a well-funded merit increase program. We’re also expanding our benefits to keep Apex a competitive place to work, avoiding the shortages faced by other towns. Details about the new positions and our four-year staffing plan are in the budget appendix.

We are also making significant capital investments in response to resident feedback. Our capital improvement plan prioritizes projects like streets and sidewalks, Jessie Drive, Peakway North widening, and more. Notable projects this year include a traffic light and turning lanes at BBQ and Olive Chapel, improvements at Center Street and Chatham Street railroad crossings, an Environmental Education Center in the Nature Park, a Street Hockey Rink at the Community Park, and completing Pleasant Park with a baseball/softball complex. Many of these are multi-year projects, with funding to start them this year.

I am proud that we have made these necessary investments in our workforce and capital projects while maintaining the smallest tax increase and second-lowest tax rate in the county.

Final adopted budget can be found here: https://apexnc.org/DocumentCenter/View/47375/FY24-25-Budget?bidId=
More info here: https://apexnc.org/153/Budget

This year we have proposed to set aside $200k for a “cost share” at this intersection. The first thing I need to address is that it’s not actually located in town limits. Under normal circumstances, we are actually prohibited, by law, from spending money on transportation projects outside of town limits. This isn’t some soft limitation, implied by some general principal about spending tax dollars. GS 136-66.3 lays out the specific limited circumstances where we can participate, and how that can happen. It’s pretty clear.

So what is going on here? Basically, two things. The first is Pleasant Park. The traffic study for Pleasant Park indicated the project would require a turning lane on Old US1 onto Friendship. In this regard, the town is a “developer”, we are subject to the requirements of any other development: traffic studies are required, and any mitigations from the traffic study must be done. All Town of Apex development rules apply to the Town for our projects. Separately, a private development adjacent to this intersection also determined that turning lanes were needed on Friendship. So, the town and a private development combined are going to provide turning lanes this year. That’s the cost share. That project is ready to go, and will begin hopefully this summer.

The second issue is a potential traffic light at this intersection. We did a traffic study last year, which showed that (finally) a traffic light is “warranted”. Recall that traffic lights can’t just be built when some governing body decides they want one; there is an objective process required to “prove” it’s needed. That’s the “warrant”. But we finally got the “warrant” for this intersection, which is the biggest hurdle. Great!

So who pays for it? Recall; under state law, the Town of Apex is explicitly prohibited (under normal circumstances) from paying for traffic lights or other traffic projects not inside town. So we went to DOT, and said, hey guys, the data shows we really really need a traffic light here, and we’re not allowed to do it, will you? And they said 1) No, at least not for a while, and 2) If a traffic light goes here, we will require one at Holland and Old US1 as well (the two intersections are too close) timed together.

But! Holland and Old US1 *is* located in town limits, and we *are* allowed under 136-66.3 to contribute to traffic improvements here! And even more helpfully, a private development at this intersection had a condition of approval that might make them responsible to contribute. Plus, there is some money from a Holly Springs development driving a lot of traffic to the area, and hopefully that money can be conveyed to NCDOT as well. So, point being: now that it is a slightly larger project involving multiple intersections, at least one of which is in town limits, we believe we have legal authorization to participate if needed.

So there you have it: at Holland/Friendship/Old US1, we have a complex project with two traffic lights and four different entities (a Holly Springs development, Town of Apex, a private development, and maybe NCDOT) who can contribute funds to get it to happen.

I want to be clear: money really isn’t the issue. The project still needs to go through a process at NCDOT to get approved and designed, which could take a year or more in of itself. Once that happens, I am confident the funds will be there (this isn’t really a lot of money in the grand scheme of things). But the project is not “ripe” right now to happen, so the decision was made to go forward with the turning lane projects right now and then do the light as soon as possible, rather than hold up the turning lanes – even if in an ideal world it all would have happened at once to minimize the disruption.

Additionally, a request has been made to include funds in this year’s budget for a future traffic light here. I am not opposed to this, as if nothing else it will demonstrate our commitment to this project: but I do want to be clear: a traffic light is not happening this year, turning lanes are – no matter what the budget says. This isn’t because money isn’t available, it’s because much work has to be done to pull available funds together, and actually design the thing, and push it through NCDOT’s process. This work has to be done, and unfortunately, it has to be done by NCDOT – because it’s their road and will be their project. There technically isn’t yet a project to appropriate funds to, and if we do appropriate the funds, the most likely outcome is those funds will simply need to be re-appropriated next fiscal year when (hopefully) the project will be ready to get the green light (…see what I did there)

Our long range transportation plan calls for a realignment here (of Holland and Friendship). That will require a significant amount of private property, and is NOT happening as part of any of the projects discussed here.

So that’s the story between the cost share, the turning lanes, and the (future) light at Friendship and Old US1.

I want to spend some time to make a few posts about some of the capital projects that are funded this year. I’ll start with Jessie Drive.

We’re putting an additional $1.5m towards the project this year for design, and we’re scheduled for $4.3m next year. It was funded by the 2021 Transportation Bond.

So what is it? The official description:

This project upgrades an existing section of Jessie Drive from west of Ten Ten Road to the Horton Park development boundary using half of a 4-lane divided roadway with 10′ side path on both sides and increasing to the ultimate 4-lane width in advance of Ten Ten Road. The Horton Park development will extend Jessie Drive west to the future Production Drive and a collector street south to Colby Chase Drive. The Apex Commerce Center project will extend Production Drive south to Jessie Drive, providing local connectivity north and south.

So, in short, once fully complete Jessie Drive will connect TenTen road and US 55, providing some vital direct connectivity between two major roadways that currently is really hard to navigate between. It should provide some traffic relief to both roads because and the intersections between them.

Phase II is scheduled for design in 26/27 with full construction in the “future”, and not yet funded.

The full project page can be found here: https://www.apexnc.org/1852/Jessie-Drive-Improvements-and-Extension

On 5/2 the Apex Town Council held a Budget workshop. I want to take a moment to go over what happened at the meeting, and where we landed on the budget.

The Apex budget draft, as presented, totals $216m. The tax rate is 0.32 per $100, which is 0.018 above the revenue neutral rate. There are nominal increases in Water and Sewer, but the big news is a 14% increase in Electric rates.

Starting with the property tax. We have been surveying other towns, and the proposed rate represents both the lowest increase (above revenue neutral) as well as the lowest over rate in Wake County. Staff presented a menu of options for what could be funded with a rate of 33, 34, and 35 cents. Council discussed the merits of the projects and the various rates. I got on the record first, in favor of a 33 cent tax rate to fund road way rejuvenation projects, which I was excited about because I believe it will save money in the long run by extending the lifetime of the surfaces treated. Other Council members spoke in favor of the 34 cent tax rate, which in addition staff recommends a basket of worthy projects including more money for roads, sidewalks, greenways, as well as a series of Vision Zero (pedestrian safety) projects. That carried the day. The new recommended tax rate is 0.34, which would place us just behind Cary as the lowest tax rate in the county.

Next I want to touch on the projects funded in this year’s budget. This list is prior to the Council increasing the tax rate to 34 cents. The full list is below, and I’ll be adding more details and posting about these projects individually in the coming weeks. For now I want to call out that funding completion of Pleasant Park (likely through special obligation bonds) is in this year’s budget.

Discussion point: funding our Affordable Housing staff through our Affordable Housing Fund. This was a recommendation out of Finance Committee (myself and MPT Gray). We felt it was appropriate and even desirable to have a dedicated tax rate backing staff working on Affordable Housing, and was an appropriate use of those funds. CM Zegerman disagreed, and felt the AH funds should be reserved exclusively for projects. The recommendation to fund staff from the fund was adopted 4-1 (Zegerman dissenting).

Staffing changes this year: We’re hiring 41 new positions this year. The summary is below, but a highlight is our continued commitment to our multiyear staffing plan, including 12 new positions in APD (although we learned that 2 SRO positions will be likely be delayed into the following FY to keep with the school construction schedule)

We had a discussion about SRO’s, specifically their funding source. In summary, we are only reimbursed for roughly half of the salary and none of the equipment associated with staffing an SRO position at the middle school and high school level, and there is no reimbursement for Elementary School SROs. As a result, Apex (along with Holly Springs) are the only two municipalities self funding Elementary School SROs. CM Gantt objected to this arrangement, and pointed out each SRO we have could instead be a patrol officer (that we are struggling to increase). He expressed a desire to end the elementary school SRO program and convert those positions to patrol officers. His position was not seconded by anyone else on the Council. I expressed that the best way forward would be to keep them status quo while we work with partners at the county and state level for a more equitable funding arrangement.

Below I included a slide which showed some projects aligning with our strategic goals. There isn’t much discussion, but I felt like it was a good summary to include.

We had a discussion about Apex’s policy of waving application and other fees associated with a solar installation. It has been our policy, as the most solar friendly community in the state, to waive all of these fees since 2018 I believe. This year, due to challenges in the Electric Fund, staff proposed to add them back. I felt like the revenue lost here wasn’t yet significant enough to abandon this policy which aligns so well with our strategic goals of being an Environmental Leader. Others expressed a desire, given the challenges this year and in upcoming years to the Electric utility, that we should tighten up programs like this. That position carried, and the fees were adopted by a 3-2 vote (Mahaffey, Zegerman dissenting)
Finally, the electric rate itself. This year proposes a 14% increase in rates. The way the math works out, last year we had a base rate increase and a per kW/hr DECREASE. This year the proposal raises the kW/hr rate to approximately what it was last year before the decrease.

Even with this increase, we have the lowest electric costs in the region – and that’s compared to Duke and other municipalities rates LAST year. See the chart below. We have a really good deal, but we know that it will get tough in coming years as we re-negotiation with Duke. We’re aware that Duke has passed on significant costs in the form of rate increases to their customers, and it’s pretty clear they’ll do the same to us when our contract expires.

The reason for the increase this year include;

1. “True up” costs, this is in the contract with Duke. If they lost money on us, they can bill us. A lot of this relates to how warm the winter was, the price of fuel, etc. We take on that risk with them.
2. Infrastructure maintenance costs. Materials are getting significantly more expensive (transformers, etc) and have longer lead times
3. Just general inflation, wages, etc

It’s our goal to keep rates as low as possible, and we are proud to still be the lowest rate (more so, once everyone else updates their FY25 rates too). But we see challenges here in the future.

There has been a bit of a discussion lately about Olive Chapel road, in particular about the restriping to add a bike lane a few weeks ago. Let me clear a few things up.

First; the restriping you see today is temporary to mark the lane shift, not the final marking. It reflects the final layout.

Second, some objections have been raised about how the bike lanes shift back to merge with the travel lanes at the intersection of 55 and the Peakway. There really is no way around it; the bike lanes don’t continue past this point. This is because when they were designed, only this stretch of Olive Chapel had enough space curb to curb to fit in a separated bike lane.

Physically separated bike lanes is the way to go. It’s safest for both bicyclists and drivers. Expect to see more of this in the future, as streets are redone and as new streets are constructed.

Finally; Olive Chapel is set for a full resurfacing. This will begin as soon as this week. It’ll be from 55 all the way down to Publix. After that is complete, we’ll get final markings on the bike lanes (including arrows and symbols, typically done last)

A recent survey sent out by the town and shared by me and others (https://www.publicinput.com/transitsurvey) has prompted the a set of questions and comments about the usage and necessity of our transit program. In order to constructively add to that conversation, I asked our staff to give me an update on utilization (the last update I had was from the middle of last year)

If you’ll look below, you’ll see that our average usage is up dramatically year over year, including up 67% Feb 24 vs Feb 23

The second chart is the same data, but broken down by “hour”. I like this chart because an hour corresponds to one complete loop, so you can see how many people are boarding on an average trip. Keep in mind though that bus usage, much like road usage, is “bursty”. Some trips will be empty, others will be full.

In light of this data, I have no explanation as to why several people have emphatically claimed to have never seen anyone riding the bus. Perhaps it’s a window tinting issue.

Building ridership is a process. We’re succeeding and trending in the right direction. I am very thankful for the work our Transit Committee and Apex staff has put into this so far, for the leadership of the Cary and Wake County in blazing a trail here and providing funding, and for my colleagues on the Apex Town Council (particularly CM Gantt) who have worked with me to push this forward.

We’re going to expand our service.

Our work session today was all about Yard Waste, what to do in the short term and what to do in the long term.

Our yard waste program is in an extremely challenging position, and something has to change. Our current policy, where anyone (including contractors) can put an unlimited amount of yard waste on the curb and have us pick it up, is not sustainable. Take a look at some of the pictures below to see what our crews have had to remove. This costs real money; in addition to the labor involved, we have to pay tipping fees at a yard waste dump to dispose of it. The tree below cost us almost $500 to remove! Something has to change.

The current system is DRAMATICALLY inequitable. A very small percentage of people/neighborhoods in town make up the majority of the costs associated with this program. Everyone else (with a townhome, for example) is basically subsidizing large lot homes with big yards, and older neighborhoods with lots of trees. At the same time, moving towards a tiered system is administratively infeasible (is the yard waste truck operator supposed to look up your address and see how much yard waste you paid to have haul away?)

Oh, even worse: Our current fee structure only collections 70% of the cost of our yard waste program, with the rest being subsidized by the general fund. That’s bad.

Long term, there are environmental challenges with our current on curb collection. We are the last major municipality (Zebulon is the other) to do on curb collection. I suspect Jordan Lake Rules will require us to move to containerization.

In the short term, expect that:

– A new limit of 2 cubic yards of yard waste will be picked up with our current service. This is approximately how much fits in the bed of a pickup truck. It’s a lot.

– Above 2 cubic yards, there will be a fee: $50 for each additional 2 cubic yards

– Education campaign around rules.

– No more comingling of types of yard waste (separate piles please)

– Slight reduction in size of limbs picked up (6 ft long down from 8 ft)

– 48 hour rule enforced

– Schedule might vary throughout the year (there is no point in running yard waste trucks weekly during the winter, for example)

– Prohibition on contractors (aka, landscapers) from utilizing the residential yard waste service. We pay tipping fees to dump this stuff off, and we can not subsidize private businesses in that fashion.

Long term, we did *not* (yet) give direction to move to containerization. But, I do think the writing is on the wall with this one. We’ll evaluate the impact these changes have on the program, and revisit the topic in a years time.

Also an issue: setting up a yard waste transfer station/convivence center. If we start charging extra for large piles of yard waste, we want to give people an option of somewhere to take it for free.

As always, let me know if you have any questions. Please consider sharing this post to your neighborhood (especially if you are heavy users of the yard waste service). And please sign up for my mailing list at https://visionofthepeak.com if you’d like more updates like this one.

Great news! The Wake County Commissioners just had a follow up work session to further discuss library projects for an upcoming bond. If you’ll recall, in January the first proposal for a library bond was presented by staff: and it did not include a new library for the Friendship area.

Well, I’m happy to say that today, thanks to our collective advocacy on this issue the Wake County Commission gave direction to add Friendship to the list of projects for the bond!

Thank you to our Commissioners who made this happen. It just makes sense – the Friendship area (along with Rolesville) is one of the few remaining “library deserts” in Wake County, outside of their target 10 minute drive range, and certainly the fastest growing.

(The Peace and Justice Memorial was also added to the list of bond projects)