than d e e e e e e e I've got 6 o' we'll go ahead and call our joint meeting um for Tuesday February the 25th to order and I'll turn it over to um and I will go ahead and call to order the chatam county um Board of Commissioners joint meeting um and I'm speaking into the mic because I just want to be sure that the people that are online can hear me is can they hear even when I'm just are we good all right thank you e e ready all [Music] oh [Music] this is your chat and Park development update for winter 2025 We Begin this update with a look back at all the businesses that open their doors here in 2024 numerous buildings and spaces have welcomed new tenants residents and customers with some hosting simple ribbon cutting ceremonies and others organizing Grand celebrations the Hampton in and Suites opened their 120 Key hotel in November and this beautiful property welcome guests over the holidays and is ready for your visit to chadam park Mosaic hosted a total of 47 events last year welcoming over 17,000 guests to concerts markets and health and wellness activities and their 2025 schedule will offer even more to see and do over at Northwood Landing the medley Apartments finished construction and these one two and three-bedroom apartments are filling up with tenants Northwood Landing also saw the 2024 openings of Zach's Duncan First Health Family Medicine QB's Car Wash and the opening of The Wade Barber Park the Lowe's Foods building welcome new tenants om te nail shiny Jeremiah's frozen treats in addition to Great Clips Novi is currently under development in the village town center the dot is working on realigning subtles Road as part of the larger project of extending chadam Parkway new homes are now under construction and sight work has commenced on a four-field soccer park that will be just east of the YMCA talks are in progress with local soccer clubs for this future town of Pittsboro Park the chattam Park YMCA is preparing for a grand opening in March March this state-of-the-art YMCA features two outdoor pools with the lap pool being heated for year round use the east side of the building has an airnasium for covered outdoor activities and this y will feature a full array of workout facilities and activity rooms as well as child care and family oriented spaces as chattam Park and Pittsboro continue to evolve the construction of new sections of chattam Park Way is enhancing our transportation options once completed chattam Parkway will connect to 15501 both north and south of town construction is scheduled to be complete sometime in 2027 also ongoing in noi is site work for modern multi-story town homes that will begin sales this year directly behind this site is Encore by David weekly Holmes Encore is a 55 plus active adult community that boasts a spacious Clubhouse spanning 5,000 sare ft a tranquil meditation Garden a putting green and a variety of recreational courts including tennis pickle ball and cornhole Novi will also be home to a future chadam County school on almost 28 Acres just south of Novi the vineyard's neighborhood is nearing completion This Charming area features a variety of Home styles from cozy Cottages to spacious single family homes and town homes Garmin homes is completing the final section of The Vineyards all of the homes built in chattam park adhere to the guidelines set forth by our ecos Select Plus program which helps homeowners save money on energy costs while reducing their Environmental impact jadam Park boasts an extensive network of sidewalks and multimodal Greenways that connect residents to various amenities these include night farm community park the paddle swim and pickle ball club and numerous pocket Parks scattered throughout the community our goal is to ensure that every resident in chadam park has access to an amenity within a 5minute walk rounding Out The Vineyards are phy Academy a k through eight private school offering a classical education and amazing explorers Academy a stem based preschool located just north of paddles construction is soon to commence at the intersection of chadam Parkway and East Street this project will bring to life 368 apartments that will include all levels of affordable and Workforce housing as outlined in the chattam Park affordable housing elements additionally the development will feature some compliment commercial spaces UNCC Health recently acquired a substantial 43 acre plot across from the East entrance to The Vineyards in The Innovation District plans are in the works for a new Medical Campus near the award-winning water Recovery Center the Commerce Center off Eubanks Road is preparing to welcome its first tenant in the 60,000 ft light industrial Flex space chadam Park will soon be home to unify Athletics a triangle based gymnastics studio thanks for watching this quick update on shadam park for for more information visit our website at chatam [Music] park.com thank you they always say a picture's worth a thousand words so that's more than I could say just give you some facts here before I get into my uh PowerPoint we are now 8,500 Acres started 21 years ago we got our approval a little less than 10 years ago uh our Northern section is about 3500 Acres our Southern section which we are in the town now for a u small area plan approval and the core for our uh Wetlands approval uh is about 5,500 Acres total developable land units will be about 27,000 so we could have about 27,000 you probably 5 to 6,000 of those would be Apartments approximately 1,600 of those 27,000 units will be affordable housing so we have to provide 7 and a half% of all our housing has to be affordable we're going to accomplish that through single family tow houses and mostly Apartments cuz that's the about the only thing you can afford to build a affordable housing with now is is apartments on that and so we're looking forward to get started on our Southern section in about probably in about six months we're already putting in some sewer pump stations uh down there now our Northern section is just about uh sold out as we've got Disney happy to have Disney as part of our family and they're doing 1500 Acres they're going to do 4,380 units up there with a big $150 million Clubhouse and a lot of amenities up there for that so I'll start on the um slideshow I need to do that oh okay this is uh our original zoning map where we had 7100 acres and we were zon for 22,000 units at that time and 22 million square feet of nonresidential since that time we filled in a lot of uh of the white open areas that you can see we fill it in like I say now we have 8,500 Acres this is our North Village approximately 3500 Acres this where we started originally CU we had water and sewer available and the Big Green part up the top right is the Disneyland that's 1500 acres and then you can see the parkway uh chattam Parkway that goes up through the middle which is under construction now up to Grant Drive the northern section will be lit on March the 15th So within about 18 months from now you'd be able to drive from old 64 all the way to 15501 uh this is our Southern section our planning map you can't really see much from it but we've got houses already designed in each one of these sections we're working with the town now on Parkland uh utilities uh roadways densities uh commercial areas quite a few other things so this is a our South Village this is our overall master plan so you can compare the North Village to the South Village to the left on the south Village we have delale web homes py building two delale web communities 55 and older restricted and they'll have 2,000 units with two $20 million plus clubhouses and they're going to get started here in April uh we've been waiting on the contract to be signed for Sanford to build a sewer Force main from Pittsboro to Sanford which has been uh bids have been accepted and they're passing it through the state so they can do a contract here to start probably in May or June with that line which is about a two-year process once we get that then that will serve uh Pittsboro for the next 30 years for for sewer uh for that so most of the stuff on the right in the bottom is just under planning stages right now the dark green areas are are buffers on the streams or Parkland overall in chattam park we'll give approximately uh 700 acres for Parkland some of them we develop some of them we give to the town as rawal property I'm G turn it over to Kirk talk about the commercial areas um good evening nice to see you thank you for having me um we I'll try I will not try and repeat what was in the video but uh let's see there's a pointer there so I was going to try and point out so Northwood Landing he told you some of the new things that we have we do have Chase Bank is uh almost through with their approvals and we'll start construction right there we're in conversation for some of the other uh out Parcels as well including this large section but no action I'm also pleased to tell you as of this week we're a little over 30% leased at uh the medley there's 312 Apartments there so roughly 100 Apartments out of that are leased that's that a couple things wanted to point out here uh was that a which is a second grand opening they had today for the Hampton in but they told me last night they were 86% occupied which is good so they they're finally starting to get a lot of the people there they had a big group at the a center so very nice to uh get that Synergy and help uh this is the guild we are at about 86% occupied and uh some of you I know have been to meetings and stuff at 79 degree West in that building and we're about 60% leas there in our Suites but most interesting thing starting this January we had we've had about two or three companies that were in a two or three desk Suite have come to us to upgrade they're growing their business and so most in demand is the smaller smaller businesses it's a great thing for them they come we don't only have so many you know two and three bed two and three bedroom two and three uh desk Suites and so we're opening those up by our internal uh existing uh tenants growing which is exactly what we want we hopefully that'll grow enough and then we some other office space too eventually um there was a grand opening uh some of you came to that Revan cutting for the dentist office in orthodontist there another great amenity we're in conversation with two other medical users uh the two newest uh tenants we've got right here here is a bar three exercise facility husband and wife from chadam that are getting ready to build and open that they hope to be open I think in May and also our very own Greg Lewis is about to open an Italian restaurant there more to come on that but I he plans to be open before Labor Day hopefully sooner than that so that'll be another uh food opportunity there I'd also like to uh point out uh this we're going to start construction on this this building I hope before the end of March and there'll be a town hall burger and beer anchoring it talking to some other tenants out there we're beginning to get a lot of uh other medical users as well as some of the other service retail uh I'm uh hoping we can get we would like to get some other um what I call activity based um dance studios and School of Rock has talked to us some others that we can make things work that's a great thing to have sort of in between all these schools being built to have the after school activities there as well so um very excited for that and then um what we all know are the growth drivers and that's the job creation and so uh FedEx is actually we built the building and S empty for a while but they're actually using it I got a package the other day and I was like all right had that delivered through the for the building we built this is a copy of that's a 338,000 foot facility um V we'll see what happens there but will speed is very close to getting uh there I think they have some operations already starting but we'll be scaling up also Toyota and then the Coca-Cola the Apex right there in the um I guess it's an apex address but chadam County uh tenant uh and that that industrial park over there so very exciting we've had several uh industrial uh companies including a very large life science company that wanted 700,000 fo M building campus come through uh we submitted the information for that at tip West they were looking at a had finalized Ohio and North Carolina and they had three sites in North Carolina one in olly Springs the tip West site and Moncure and that so hopefully uh we industrial activity really slowed down in 2024 we've seen it begun to pick up uh now that the election's over with and uh we seem to be you know getting a lot you know our fair share of looks there was another another company coming in similar size you know about 500,000 foot building so very encouraging spring uh hopefully for job creation uh this is just a repeat a lot of the jobs both in directly in chadam uh just to our South in Sanford North in Holly Springs into Randolph County with Toyota but um very um very interesting sort of job creation pattern here and and that's really the key we need continue to have that in order to fill up departments and drive all the rest of still feel very optimistic I know yall get reg M I like we're happy to answer questions back to overall map right really see it okay since we're here with the school board we are are giving School sites and the first one is going to be right up here right off of Grant Drive right there it's going to be our School site that elementary school has been approved for and uh should start construction in 26 or something like that so we are uh we're happy to have that one and in the South we have a big School site in this area centrally located could be a Elementary or middle school or both whatever in this area so that's two there would address those concerns and just a few more facts we have about 800 homes occupied in shadam park plus apartments so we have over 2,000 people living there now and we are we have over 1,600 jobs we created over 1600 jobs in our development so I will open it up for any questions from Kirk or myself that's a lot of information in a 15 20 minutes yeah thank you for that do you want to hand housing okay so you're saying that 7% of all the housing that you do has to be affordable housing so were we talking about affordable housing or we talking about Workforce housing because there's different between the two we have three categories we got 60% in below we have 80% in below and we have 80 to 120 that's work force, so we'll be doing all three categories we have a certain amount in each category that we've committed to do okay and what's your Baseline rent for well a baseline rent for 60% or 80 or 120 is based on the median income for the county which I think's 117,000 or something it's based on U Hood number and then you take 30% of that minus U utilities and taxes and stuff I can't answer exactly what what it will be it changes every year okay any other questions other questions from the board well you probably AR going to answer it sure we will um it might be politically Char might be politically charged um something will move in at the VIN fast um site something I'm sure something I'm I'm and you know in the last month I the feeling of an electric car company going there is probably less secure a car company might go in there but it may not be an electric car company so cuz the it the sight's all cleared and ready and all that so somebody but uh V V fast has had a hard a hard go at it so speak I'll just say it's the best site in the country and I hope Vin fast decides to move forward tomorrow uh if they don't they've got a timeline where they have to you know they either have to move forward or you know that site comes back and um you know the state and and County have all learned a lot and fix some of the problems they've had with other sort of Mega site deals like the one in Nash Rocky Mount area there but um you know I hope vinfast comes and if they can that's great and they'll bring a lot of jobs and if they don't it's the best site in the United States of America uh and better than it was three years ago when they made the deal so you know the state and has done nothing but make it better question did not I was going to say thank you for the update I know we do get bits and pieces of um the information about what's happening in chattam park but it's good to hear it from you guys and um that there is significant Green Space being preserved is that Parkland in addition to Green Space in the developments so yes ma'am it's in addition two different things okay great okay we'll have over 2,000 acres of open space about 700 Acres of Parkland okay right great thank you okay you brochure or our history we put on everybody's table got some extra ones if anybody wants any so thank you appreciate it thank you again um we are next is to receive a presentation from ored and I think Mr BCE is goingon to be doing that introduction as well so this evening we have Thomas Dudley and Brian Godfrey from OED which is part of it at NC State University to give you an update on what everything that you saw means for the school system Mr deadle I hear congratulations are in order to am I correct there got you thank you Mr BL board chairs other members of the boards pleasure to be joining you all this evening again I'm Thomas Dudley by my colleague Mr Brian Godfrey we're school planners part of OED and we're excited this evening to be sharing with you the results of the study that be conducted on behalf of Chapman County Schools we'll begin with an introduction to our organization from then I'll be handing it over to my colleague Mr godre discussing the L process and results from there I'll be talking through the membership forecast and the resulting School level forecast which we call the out of capacity tables our parent organization is called The Institute for transportation research and education for short itri and itri is a University Research extension part of NC State University in housc State centenal campus in R it has been conducting research related Transportation North Carolina for over 40 years our smaller group OED or ored is an unbias third party evaluation research group that helps depoliticize School planning in the state we do that through the tools that you see listed in bold here and if you'd like to learn more about us we have a link to our site there as you can tell we've had the privilege of working with quite a few districts over the history of the program now as far as our relationship as far as the organizations working together or our ad started working with ch County Schools back in 2003 and as far as uh producing enrollment membership forecasts we've been doing that periodically since that time as far as uh working with attendance zones and creating new attendance zones for new schools we've assisted with that with Virginia cross par Chan grve and most recently wece speaking to the most recent work that we've done in the from last year we projected that you all would have 8,826 students as part of this current school year when the actuals came in the PMR was looking more like 8,775 uh looking back that gives some perspective basically uh we expected some growth we saw some growth but not the magnitude of growth yet as what we were anticipating still puts us about it about uh half of 1% off from the actual District total which is about where we want to be now with that I will hand it over to my colleague Mr Godfrey to talk through the land use Mr godre well as a foundational element of our work we seek to conduct what we call a land use study which is uh the full picture of growth and development around chadam County uh so here we have the interview roster of those uh public officials and and uh local experts um that we took the time to speak with us and we learned a lot from them so I want to take an opportunity here to recognize and thank those so the full picture of development in chadam County uh is is still uh considerable uh although we have seen a bit of a Slowdown in the past year uh and that is uh maybe perhaps in spite of tightening sewer constraints uh we got some data from Central Permitting and uh there were over 400 homes built uh in 2024 that's down from over 500 in 2023 so a bit of a slow down perhaps with Rising interest rates and Rising costs but still a robust pace of growth and nonetheless new subdivisions new developments continue to be proposed uh for rezonings and subdivisions uh that's many single family subdivisions in eastern chattam County but also uh quite a few rezonings in Pittsboro as well now a lot of these and and the majority of those in Pittsboro are sort of in a holding pattern uh pending some of these uh Wastewater infrastructure improvements we heard a little bit about that and we'll speak more to it in a moment uh but we can expect growth to really open up uh upon the completion of those projects in 2027 you heard an excellent update on the commercial and Industrial situation for the for the county uh I'll add as well that um in the past few weeks another major project announced metox International uh maker of efficient power transmission cables uh pledged to create over 300 jobs and invest over $190 million on a new large facility here in chattam County I mean this is a exceptional picture of economic uh development and uh credit to this board uh to the staff and all those that worked on all of these projects uh you all will continue to see the economic benefits of this for years to come and as was also noted the the Toyota plant down the road in Randolph County is going to be opening and shipping out their first batteries in the next few weeks um certainly some folks who work there could could live in along the 421 Corridor so so one of the biggest determinants of growth uh is water and sou and uh the regionalization of that Tri rer water is is a very big deal first it was Pittsburgh now it's County as well and now Syler City uh that is in the short term you know mostly a bureaucratic uh situation but long-term signals we can support growth and development around the county in the years to come and and the tri River situation also underpins these two major Wastewater projects to note first the uh Force main from Pittsburgh to Sanford that's going to really open up uh development in Pittsboro and then there's also uh construction underway on a expansion of the Wastewater facility in Syler City and that is also expected to be completed in 2027 so we can anticipate residential growth to really take off uh 2027 and 2028 so as part of our work in speaking with uh public officials and using public data we compile what we call a development inventory so this is residential development that is pending that is uh either proposed approved or partially built but not fully built out so this is all of the homes still yet to come this is what we call our residential development inventory and we use this data in GIS analysis to project uh future student populations so it's it's a substantial amount still yet to come and uh apart from chadam Park who we just heard from we are monitoring 51 pending residential developments across all jurisdictions with over 10,000 dwelling units yet to be built that's on top of chattam Park so that is a picture of very significant residential development um and again we can expect this to really take off uh when these infrastructure projects are so with this data in hand uh we use this for our analysis and I will pass it back to my colleague Mr Dudley thank you Mr Godfrey so in addition to the development inventory which you just saw there's several other factors that lead into the membership forecast that you're about to see and the critical one the most meaningful most reliable long-term indicator or leading indicator of where your enrollment is going to go is resident L births a large percentage of these births are going to become your kindergarten students five years down the line and demographers keep a close eye on these a percent change a 2% change can be impactful can be significant in the long term what we saw with the data from 2022 was a 10% jump that was a big deal that jumped off the page to us and from then once that data was received the logical question next was what was that a FL what we learned from the most recent data available and this is from the state center of health statistics was that that 2022 data was not what you saw is U consistently High resident live birth significant grow and that's consistent with young families moving into the district and having kids as well so yet another indicator that I'd like to highlight is looking back at your membership history going back six years what we see here is the decline with Co in 20120 to 2021 and a modest recovery in the time since then recovery at that rate what we do is we look at this at the school level we look at this at the grade level we look at it all the way down uh to sense of how the cohorts are moving up through the system moving on to channan park how we model channan Park is essential because basically no matter how you slice it no matter how you look at the assumptions that you make Park is going to be generating thousands of students by the end of even just 10 years so there are two essential components that we needed to be able to model that first the timing of when lots are going to come online lots and units and that we receive directly from chanon Park and Preston development broken down by other criteria as well through their full development timeline the next component is looking at answering the question of how many students to expect from each of those lots that we used an in-depth case study of Brier Chapel as a as a proxy of sours to be able to understand how many students to expect uh based on Brier Chapel's full timeline that brings us to how we're able to estimate how many students come from CH Park and add those into the membership forecast which is next I'll take a breath here and say that we have six versions of this table I tend to focus on the ones that have channan Park be included which is I believe four of them have that but I wanted to just park on this first one just for a second that'll reason for that'll be clear in just a moment here what we like about these tables the out capacity tables is their quick visual way of being able to see where your facility are and where they will be in the future working our way from left to right we have the name of the school the capacity of the school the current membership of the school and then 10 columns out to the right the forecasted membership of how many students you can expect in each one of these schools can forward over over that time frame the coloring is simply based on utilization and all I mean by that is the number of students in that cell divided by the capacity of the school you see a green cell that means that that school is not overcrowded you see a red cell that means that the number of students in that cell in that particular year for that school exceeds the capacity of the school by more than 5% so utilization there would be over 105% the reason I've parked on this first one is you see some red on this one that indicates that yes chanon Park is here it's developing it's um going to lead to a significant number of students in the district it's full story and I think some of the other work that my colleague specifically has done tracking those other 50 developments indicates that there is a lot going on here it isn't just the story of chatton Park so uh we also have grouped I'll skip to the second one here you can see how much more additional red there is once you build in chanon park the last two of these charts include a different way of looking at grouping the schools so the last two in the that you have show um looking at grouping like the by the elementary or excuse me by the high school attendants so but for right now I'll park on this um I know this is a lot of information to present it once most districts that we worked with really enjoyed the the ability of these charts to answer these sort of what if questions so in addition to these slides I will for these tables I'll just pause for questions and then after that we have one including SL so I do I have a clarifying question is this out of capacity for um built classrooms or Does it include mobile and mobile ready that's an excellent question and what we do to try to address that and I I appreciate the question there's a distinction that we make in the title of these between brick and mortar capacity versus serviceable capacity and that exactly gets to your point so brick and mor is just the school building itself and uh the term that we come to use at Cross districts is serviceable for that capacity Plus the additional for modular units trailers uh other similar structures absolutely thank you and then I have a question going back to a prior slide I saw that you um part of your the cohort that you've consulted with included Campo but I didn't see um tarpo or dccm which most of chadam so only a tiny super tiny portion of chadam is in Campo so I just wondered whether you all had opportunities to collaborate with them we did yes we we had a conversation with um and you'll have to pardon me because I believe the name recently changed yes we did have an opportunity to speak with them um some notable Transportation projects include modernization of 64 um the shift of the intersection of 751 and us64 into a interchange making that a freeway uh repaving of 15501 through Pittsboro um nothing other super major I would say relevant to uh our our current analysis but we did have that conversation with so I sorry sorry for the Omission there Central Pines there aren't additional questions on these slides I'll proceed to our concluding ones and again a lot of those are there for reference so as part of the the challenge of looking at over the the course of the next 10 years there's a natural uncertainty comes with so what are the impacts going to be of all these developments that are in the pipeline of various various forms and so what we wanted to do with this SL was to be able to convey some of that uncertainty in a way that was a little bit more quantifiable and so the forecast the Baseline forecast of what you've seen at the school level and all that corresponds to the blue line on these charts additionally beyond the developments and the the new students that are going to come from the um there are also slightly more speculative developments that are in the pipeline that we've learned about through the conversations with the different plan departments when you take into consideration those you could be looking at the purple line instead which at the end of 10 years is roughly a thousand students more than what we're looking at as part of the Baseline forecast and all of that is because of the potential in the the yes the potential water and sew it opens up two years from now I want to be clear as this is being presented that the purple line is not U hypothetical it's a that's based on developments that we have locations and names for and plac we've done everything that we could to try to quantify not only what we believe is most likely with the blue line but then also to also hedge and acknowledge that there are uncertainties and unknowns about what could happen uh in the long term given if uh once these developments that are in line start getting capacity with that um there's only one more point that I would like to make and that is to help contextualize this just a little bit more I wanted to mention how unprecedented this level of growth is I look back at uh the records that we have my colleague and I and our predecessors as part of OED have been doing forecasts like this since 1990 and of those roughly and I counted of those roughly 250 enrollment forecasts what you just saw is the most aggressive forecast we've ever produced and I'm talking about the blue line just wanted to put that in perspective and again highlight how unprecedented the situation is are there any questions or discussion on this topic I don't but I thank you very much I think this is it's so important particularly you know that the school district hears this information fairly regularly um but at the county we're making a lot of decisions that are sort of hinged on um the availability of housing uh what you know what is our student population growth looking like um and what what is transportation planning looking like and we don't often get this kind of um sort of granular student School connected data which is I find very helpful for me as I think this through these things through um I share the transport the triangle West Transportation Planning organization and today we heard that chattam county is expecting 130% growth of vehicle miles traveled um over the next 30 Years which is and it blew every other District's numbers out of the park Durham wake um Chapel Hill so it it is you know we'll be drinking from the fire hose for a long time and having the right information is critical making good decisions so thank you I don't know whether questions we've heard all this that that are a retreat particularly so I'm glad you got to hear it too so uh We've we've got some decisions to make all of us do I'm sure so thank you thank you all very much thank you for your time um and our final informational item is a presentation on the digital inclusion plan um efforts on the education environment and our very own Brenton Hart will be presenting this good evening everybody thank you for um letting me be here and discuss some of the work that um we've been doing in chadam County on digital inclusion um I'll go over a few different items um but for the interest of time there's a lot more that I cover I've covered with uh our board um on this um and we've included that within the packet but so this is an abbreviated version of that presentation but if you all have any questions or um anything um that you all want um more information about from the presentation feel free to reach out to me um and we'll um I'll get that to you so to start off um just want to give a bit of an overview of the Broadband environment in chadam County um we all know that it's uh very important to education um it virtual learning has become a thing in the past um 10 years so um that's that's a big important thing for students to be able to do their homework those sorts of things so um uh wanted to give some brief Legal Information on that so counties um in North Carolina are unable to use taxpayer dollars to um fund Broadband expansion except for uh providing um grants to isps for the per purposes of serving unserved areas so that's an important designation that um we as the county have to utilize to understand when money goes to these programs through the state and federal government that um we are only allowed to provide grants to isps for this we can't build it ourselves um in chadam County uh the unserved locations um as you can see on this it's a little bit hard to read are in the darker areas so you can see um swaths in North chadam as well as in the more rural areas that don't have as much coverage um and the some of the pro program that we've been involved with the state um on are in are the dots in here so the green dots are the great grant program which I'll go over very quickly in a minute and then the yellow dots are the AT&T great grant program so those but those are homes that will be served over the next two to three years um the first grant program that we've been working under um is a federal program it's called the world digital opportunity fund it covers um about 3,448 locations in chadam county and these are in census blocks so we don't have exact uh address data and which addresses will be covered by Spectrum who is the um owner of this grant um from the from the uh federal government intia um but we do know which census blocks will be covered and importantly no federal funding was able to be used to build prop band networks in these in these locations um um because this grant was awarded the second grant that we've been working through um as I mentioned previously has been the great grant program from the state of North Carolina um the uh there are two um as I mentioned one from AT&T and one from um bright speed and uh the total project cost of all of these together along with the match amounts um from the state and local um governments are is about $8.1 million project um being built out in total between both of them um and then the final and newest project that um has been announced so far is through the cab the completing access to broadband program um uh from the state of North Carolina and it will serve 2555 locations and um an important note here was that the Chad County Board of commission had allocated about $2 million to that grant program but due to some uh some State Law changes that uh the state is now covering that match so um that was the Broadband section just to give you all a brief overview there um but if you all have any questions uh you can ask me at the end but next is the um digital inclusion plan so um chadam County recently adopted a digital inclusion plan in December um and what I thought it was important to give a little bit of context to what this means so digital inclusion plans assess the tools and resources available within um counties or the areas of which they cover um assess the areas and populations most in need um resources and strategies to connect everyone in the region um and then uh the ability of residents to use these devices and Technical Support um the f um we and uh our the chadam county plan is divided into three sections availability is the first one so that U we view that as the Broadband infrastructure um and the three goals that were created under this and there are goals and strategies in our 50-page um plan that lay out how these this will be accomplished but are to create better Broadband mappings across chadam County coordinate increased connectivity for UNC areas and promote improved connectivity and stability of broadband connections um in this section the next section is access so it refers to the ability of someone to gain access to available Broadband so once that Broadband a wire or satellite connection is set up and ready to be used um the ab ability of someone to access that Broadband is next so that includes um um affordability that includes um device access um and that includes um connectivity in public spaces along with a hotspot connectivity for uh folks that are not um able to get that broadband connection from a wired source and then our final section in our digital inclusion plan is um adoption which means adopting the Broadband that you are have available to you and access to to use in your everyday life so um the the goals that we looked at here were to increase digital literacy learning across the county um create a digital inclusion steering committee with our partners through this effort of which the schools was one um goal 10 was to establish Workforce Development programs in Broadband related fields and then also to work with our partners to create events celebrating digital inclusion whether that be a hackathon or something like that um uh to uh assist uh Youth and adults in be having more adoption for Broadband um and that was our digital inclusion plan a very brief overview of what's in it but um as I said it was it's a very comprehensive document um that lays out all of the goals and strategies that um will will be used over the next SE several years to move those efforts forward the next um topic um on digital inclusion that I wanted to bring up was the digital Champions grant that was awarded to Central Pines Regional Council um one of chadam County uh uh chadam county is a member of which um in the triangle area um with in partnership with cramden Institute so um the North Carolina Department of Information Technology awarded um $30 million in funding using American Rescue plan act dollars uh through ncdit for digital Equity programs across the state um some of the eligible uses were affordable uh reliable highspeed internet provision of devices digital literacy and skills training and then technical support as well um and they gave uh a range of 400,000 Per County served up to that $1.5 million total but um importantly the grant that was received by cprc on behalf of both chadam and Durham County counties was 800,000 so we got the max amount um through that organization to provide um classes in chadam County so that will include um not sure if it says on the next slide but um that will include 500 um residents being able to have a free laptop once they complete a um free digital inclusion class um at multiple locations across chatt County so um right now there are some scheduled for March in um the libraries uh libraries have reached out and put a news release and social media posts about this effort so you can go ahead and check that out um and if there's any folks that you all know of currently that might um benefit from this type of program definitely send them the libraries way they've got phone numers set up and everything um ready to um enroll folks in those classes some of the populations that the grant serves and the classes uh serve are low income low literacy Justice impacted rural populations seniors um individuals with the language barrier and racial or ethnic groups so it's a broad there's a broad uh a broad group of individuals that could take access to these classes um and then also importantly we'll get data from cprc on the uh pre and post tests of all of those folks involved um who take the classes and receive those uh computers and then finally um on digital inclusion we have the newly released Broadband access and digital inclusion Hub um that was released a couple of weeks ago um on our GIS site um that goes over a lot of the things I talked about uh today but you can also individually explore the maps that the state provides and have been um put onto this site so that you can see uh and residents can see if locations across the county are being served by any of these individual grants that have been awarded um or any future grants that um we will be going for and working with the state and federal government with in the future for Broadband expansion um and then Additionally the digital inclusion plan is um hosted on this site along with a lot of frequently asked questions about Broadband um as it relates to County government so um with that U the the links aren't there um on this but um in your packets you'll have the links for the um for these resources and that's it for me and if you all have any questions happy to take them question uh just well not a question just a shout out I know in my end of the county Southwestern Corner Randol Communications had been wonderful and they're continuing to Branch out I guess my question is maybe direct it to Commissioners too how difficult is it for different companies to Branch out are there service areas that they can't move into because of territor territorial issues or not that that was one I don't know so um there are no territorial um constraints that I know of outside of those um isps that are using Federal funding in other Federal funded areas so um all most of it is proprietary um and some of those session laws uh keep it that way so um most of that is expansion either um through these Grant programs or proprietary expansion by the internet service providers themselves I I think I know I've had had people in the area or away from my area and they're dealing with some of those proprietary ones and they want Rand off communication because they're they're easier to deal with is is much quicker when they deal with them so that I was just just passing that along anyway for them just a just a shout out for them and and I think for a company like Randall Communications it's a um a business question whether it is profitable and enough to you know go that extra mile or two whatever it is um thank you Brenton I want to give a shout out to chattam county for this because it's not enough to just say something exists um it really is essential that we create Pathways to access and utilization and I think that's exactly what we're doing and really well done thank you thank thank you thank you very much I think we've come to one end of the part of our meeting our our end a couple things I want to do um to make sure our visitors thank you'all for being here I see CH Education Foundation uh uh Britany I appreciate you being here they're awfully good partner of ours and of course we want to thank our presenters for for being here and of course don't want to leave without thanking our commissioners for the partnership it's you know as I've heard Miss Howard say when they go to other places and listen to The Angst that's between the Commissioners and the Board of Education I've not encountered that and I hope I never do so uh we just appreciate that very much and I think Mr Ham's got something else oh we do thank you yes so oh I see him back there yes we appreciate that one of our teachers as a matter of fact so thank you'all very much for being here and and giving us this information uh I'll entertain Mr amam stopping me again youo you provided thank you very much so and I'll entertain a motion from the Board of Education to adjourn do we have a second second thank you all in favor with an i I thank you and the tat County Board of Commissioners will recess for a few moments