St. Helena Council Meeting Minutes

March 16, 2023

St. Helena Town Hall

6:30 p.m.

Attending the meeting were Mayor Robert Barnhill, Mayor Pro-Tem William Hunter, Councilman Neil Benton, Councilwoman Nancy Jones, Councilwoman Judy Katalinic, Village Clerk Robbie Holly, and Building Inspector Louis Hesse. Absent were Nathaniel Coleman who had back surgery and Councilwoman Kaye Knowles who was absent because she had pneumonia.

In the audience were Andrew and Diana Paluck, Planning Board Secretary and member Carey Childress, and Planning Board member Gerald Velie.

Mr. Barnhill brought the meeting to order.

Pledge of allegiance was said to the U.S. Flag and a salute to the N.C. Flag was said by all.

The prayer was led by Mr. Barnhill.

On motion by Nancy, and seconded by William, the minutes of February 16, 2023 were approved unanimously.

The financial report was the next topic. Nancy questions the cost of QuickBooks. Robbie said that the town is being charged for each employee on payroll monthly even if the town doesn’t write them a check monthly. For example: Louis gets paid every two weeks, but the council and the planning board gets paid every three months. So, every month the village is getting charged for 14 employees at $5 per person per month whether they get paid or not, even though they get paid every three months. Robbie said the only way to avoid that is to make them an inactive employee for two months and put the back active the third month and take them off again the following two months etc. Nancy said that there has got to be a better and cheaper way and Robbie invited Nancy to try to find one.

Nancy asked if William has been put on the town’s bank accounts. Robert said no. Nancy pointed out that it has been months since the whole council voted to put William on the accounts in place of Ms. Bakan. William said no he had nott but he would be off Good Friday and could go if the banks are open. Robert asked if Nancy would like to be on signature card since she works in Wilmington, she could go by the bank easier and she said no.

On motion by Judy, and seconded by Nancy, the February 2023 Financial report was approved unanimously.

The next order of business was the audit done for year ending June 2022.

A handout by Robert was given to the council covering the budgets from 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2022-2023. The budget for 2021-2022 was missing from the handout.

Judy took out her own paperwork and told him what the amount was budgeted for advalorum tax, the actual amount that was received, and the tax rate for 2021-2022. She explained about the amounts from 2018 until the present budget. She pointed out that she tried it several different ways and the amount that was in the 2021-2022 budgeted that we would expecting to receive from the tax office was way too high. She explained that given what she had looked at and the records she had checked, there must have been a numerical typo and maybe it should be $40,017 instead of $49,017. She also pointed out that the advalorum tax should be adjusted in the 2022-2023 budget and that the fire tax should be $48,147 since the fire tax has gone up from nine cents to 11 cents in per $100 evaluation. Robert wanted to know when the fire tax went up. Judy said 2022. Robbie confirmed that the fire tax has gone up. Judy also pointed out that the last page of the audit had the tax rate at five cents when it is supposed to be ten cents starting in 2021. Nancy wanted to know why we got a letter from the Local Government Commission about the shortfall, but the auditors didn’t notify us. William said we should think about getting a new auditor. Why did our CPA/Auditor not explain the budget difference? They should have found this and let us know before the state auditors did.

Gerald had a problem with the minutes from January 2023 and wanted to know who wrote them. Robbie said she takes Judy’s notes and combines it with hers. Gerald asked who is responsible and that it shouldn’t take two people to do minutes. Robbie said it is part of her job description to do the minutes. Judy asked Gerald “What was your problem with the minutes”. He said how it was worded and that it needed to be clarified more that it was just the budgeted amount that was off $9000 and not actually $9000 worth of money lost. Judy said she did used the word “budgeted” which means it was in the budget that was approved in July.

Gerald also asked why the town clerk was not taking the minutes for the Planning Board meetings. Notes are being taken by Carey (planning board secretary) and he responded by saying that he usually has his head down taking notes so much that he doesn’t have time to comment on the discussion.

Gerald wanted to know about the paper that was signed at January 2023 council meeting that all except for Nancy signed. Gerald wanted to see it and get a copy. Robbie said she didn’t know exactly where the letter was but pulled the letter up from her emails (via her phone) and read it aloud. Gerald also suggested that we record the meetings (either by video or audio). Louis suggested a recorder to take minutes, the sound is going to be awful in the town hall building. Judy suggested that it might be good idea to add curtain to help with sound dampening.

Carey asked to speak. He pointed out that he means no ill will but he takes care of equipment and paperwork where he works at the D.O.T. and has files on a lot of equipment including repairs, etc. which is in file cabinets. He said he knows where each file is at all times. Carey stated that the clerk should know where the file containing the letter should be at all times. Nancy agreed that filing is part of a clerk’s responsibility and Ms. Bakan would know where a file is and can go directly to it.

Gerald Velie asked as a representative from planning board “shouldn’t the Land Use plan be done before UDO is reviewed and changed”. Louis said no.. it does not have to be done before. We are doing it for state update purposes. It was due December 2022 so we need to get it done. Gerald asked “Why are we not in compliance if we pay someone to do it.” We had it done last time by Kim and she did a great job with UDO. Louis stated that we are not in major trouble. Gerald asked why do we need an UDO if we have a Land Use Plan? (Land Use Plan issued 160D 3 years ago which is part of UDO). It is the law and we had to comply. Robert said something about working to get a recorder for meetings and Gerald asked if we could live stream the meetings.

Judy asked who the guest speaker at the municipal dinner was going to be. Robert said he didn’t have one. He said that everyone was busy. He thought of asking Olivia Dawson to speak about the blueberry festival. Someone asked if she knew anything about the blueberry festival. Someone else said that she ran it for five years. Gerald said he knows Judge Faison and he might get him to speak at the municipal dinner. Gerald said he will call him. He also told Ms. Robbie that he will be attending the municipal dinner. Robert said if he doesn’t get Olivia or person to talk about where the funds for blueberry festival, he can always get Pete Cowan to speak.

Robert brought the subject back to the audit. He asked for a motion to approve Auditors Financial Statement from June 2022. No council member made the motion.

Louis brought up the contractor Allen Wilson and that he will submit a new quote based on the new changes. He has been on vacation and hopes to have a new quote next week. Louis also pointed out that the tower on Harvest Lane is getting some work done and he has issued two permits for electrical work for T-Mobile/Verizon to update equipment since they are the tower owners. They are working difference times which are ideal for safety reasons.

He also gave an update on the Perez’s property which is having more and more problems with the contractor they hired because all the sub-contractors they decided to hire are unlicensed people to do the work but the state inspector came out and state investigator said that Louis was “good on all his paperwork”.

Ben Everett is busy filling in his pond with scraps but that doesn’t make it in compliance. Fire trucks cannot drive over it safely. Louis told him he needed to stop and do what the judge ordered. Louis asked to have a meeting with Mr. Evertt, his lawyer, and the town’s lawyer to clarify about the 90ft cul-de-sac on top of the pond.

On motion by Judy, and seconded by William, the meeting was adjourned unanimously.