Village Point became more “pedestrian friendly” when the Clemmons Village Council voted in its meeting on Monday night to approve 13 pedestrian lights to go along with new roadway construction.
“These are not street lights, per se,” said Gary Looper, village manager. “They are pedestrian lights to lights to light the way for pedestrians so that they feel safer and a provide little more of a pedestrian element to the Village Point area.”
According to Looper, representatives of the new apartment complex asked if Clemmons would be interested in taking on the projected annual costs of $3,700 to operate the decorative lights if the petitioner covered the initial construction cost of $5,000.
Going back several years, Looper said that the previous council agreed to put street lights along Towncenter Drive from Lewisville-Clemmons Road to Harper Road, where Morgan Elementary School is located. There will be 109 street lights, which will be paid for by the petitioner, on that road when it is completed. Looper said that the cost to maintain those lights will be $27,000 to $28,000 annually.
Overall, he added, Clemmons pays $80,000 per year to keep the street lights going.
Also in Village Point, Looper said that five companies put in bids for the greenway project after the first round of bids came in too high.
This time, two of the bids were lower than the previous low bid amount by about 4 percent. Looper said that he couldn’t provide specific details at this point, but he did say that the Village was ready to take back a request for an increase of a grant award to the Transportation Advisory Committee on May 27.
Looper asked the council to consider increasing the local 20 percent match — a total of $57,000 — if Clemmons was to ask the TAC to up its portion.
“That would take our local match from $170,000 to $227,000,” Looper said.
The council unanimously approved the request.
In other business, the council also continued discussion from a budget workshop held in the previous meeting on April 28, which included amending the personnel policy and discussing whether the council wanted to consider changing the reimbursement policy.
That resulted in a lengthy discussion on the merits of funding all the travel costs involving meetings of the N.C. League of Municipalities and the National League of Cities.
The council agreed that $4,500 budgeted in 2014-15 for the N.C. League was acceptable, but $16,000 for the National League of Cities was questioned. Last year’s budgeted amount was about half of that total. This year’s November meeting is in Austin, Texas.
Councilman Darrell Roark thought $16,000 was excessive and that Clemmons could perhaps consider attending just one national meeting to cut costs.
Councilman Bill Lawry suggested that the Village should drop its NLC membership and again stated his concern about Clemmons being involved “and that we were going on record as supporting amnesty for illegals.”
Councilwoman Mary Cameron again disagreed, calling it “an incorrect statement.”
It was eventually decided to continue the discussion about the reimbursement policy in the next meeting.
In other items, the council:
• Agreed on a template for a new appointment policy to fill vacancies on the council, including notice of 30 days, voting by ballot and determining the winner by majority instead of the highest number of votes.
• Approved a contract with Colter Electric Co. of Winston-Salem for the traffic signal on Lewisville-Clemmons Road at Allegacy Way.
• Received an update from planner Megan Ledbetter on the first week of the Farmer’s Market at Tanglewood. She said there were two vendors last Thursday and 12 vendors on Saturday. Ledbetter added that there was a lot of “foot traffic” and that seven vendors sold out on Saturday. The hours of the market are Thursday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
• Also heard from Ledbetter on the “All About the Bike” event on Saturday, May 2, at Frank Morgan Elementary. She said that 42 children attended the event and that there was a lot of positive feedback. “Overall, the day was very successful,” Ledbetter said.
• Heard from Looper on the Clemmons Spring Cleanup event on Saturday, May 2. He praised the work of Emily Harrison, stormwater technician, in coordinating the event. About 70 people came out to pick up 82 bags of trash, which Looper computed to be 1.17 bags per person.
• Voted to unseal the closed session minutes from Feb. 10, 2014, March 24, 2014, April 14, 2014, and April 28, 2014.
• Was a presented a book by Jill Osborn, a columnist for The Courier, that she compiled on neighbors in the Clemmons community, “An Ordinary Town: Extraordinary Neighbors.”
• Announced the next meeting will be Tuesday, May 27, at 7 p.m. instead of the usual Monday time slot because of the Memorial Day holiday.