PINEHURST — The Village of Pinehurst Council met Tuesday, Jan. 10 with the a couple of contracts needing approval and a presentation of the Village’s revised strategic operating goals on the agenda.
The council approved a contract with Oakley Collier Architects, PA for design services for renovations to the Given Memorial Library and Tuft Archives.
“Last month we met and went over the proposal that Oakley Collier gave us and this contract was in line with what the proposal was,” said Assistant Village Manager Doug Willardson. “It will be $140,000 for the schematic design services which includes the existing conditions documentation, the programming and the overall schematic design. After that, when we have a better idea of what we want the building to look like and have a good cost estimate for that, we will go back and amend the contract for the full amount.”
According to Willardson, the schematic design phase will take approximately 12 weeks to be completed, after which the final plans can be agreed upon and construction can begin.
The council also approved an amended task order with McGill Associates for on-call engineering assistance.
“We have a standing task order with McGill for their one-off engineering services that they provide in support of our efforts throughout the year,” said Village Manager Jeff Sanborn. “I had previously approved a contract for $50,000 for those services, but we are going to exceed that amount for services this year.”
According to Public Services and Engineering Director, Mike Apke, P.E., the various services that McGill helps with are engineering site plan reviews, especially with large-site reviews or when the Village is short staffed, construction inspections on commercial sites and engineering consultation, such as price estimates.
The agreed upon amendment was for an amount not to exceed $80,000 and will require no additional funding as the necessary funds are already within the current FY23 Public Services Budget.
“We were hopeful we’d have been in his delegated authority of $50,000 for FY23, however, we were without an engineering technician for a while,” Apke said. “We have a position for an engineering technician in my department and that position was vacant from April to October. One of the duties of that position is that they do the construction inspection on commercial projects. So we relied pretty heavily on McGill in Q1 and Q2 for inspection services.”
The council was then presented with the FY 2024 Balanced Scorecard.
“The balanced scorecard indicates our proposed goals, objectives, key performance indicators and our areas of focus/short term goals,” said Organizational Performance Director Matthew McKirahan. “The three areas of focus from the Strategic Planning retreats were to develop codes and ordinances to protect the character of Village neighborhoods, to support the business community and to provide a safe and effective multi-modal transportation system.”
Along with the key areas of focus, the council also settled on nine Initiative Action Plans which are defined, measurable activities needed to address certain opportunities that may involve a significant amount of financial or staff resources or have a significant community impact.
Those nine IAPs include to design, build, staff and equip Fire Station 98, the relocation of the Public Services Complex to allow for redevelopment of Village Place, updating the Pinehurst Development Ordinance, expanding Downtown parking facilities, developing and implementing a consolidated multi-modal transportation plan, retrofitting current athletic fields with synthetic turf and the expansion and renovation of Given Library/Tufts Archives.
Finally, the council elected Mayor John Strickland as a voting member for North Carolina League of Municipalities in regards to its 2023-24 Biennium Legislative Goals.
The League of Municipalities – who does a lot of lobbying of the general assembly on behalf of many cities and towns across North Carolina – asked various towns for their top legislative goals to be lobbied for and so the council put together their top ten to be submitted.
These included enhancing state systems and resources for local law enforcement officer recruitment, training, and retention; expanding broadband access through innovative partnerships, expanding state transportation funding streams for construction and maintenance for municipal and state-owned secondary roads; supporting integrated and multi-modal transportation solutions; revising state contracting laws; creating an adequate and permanent funding stream for local infrastructure; encouraging regionalization of water and sewer; and various changes to municipal services.
The Village of Pinehurst Council will next meet Jan. 24.
