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CLEMMONS — It’s been a busy year for Doug Moore, the planning and community development director for Clemmons.

In fact, even before the start of Monday night’s Village Council meeting, the board held a follow-up retreat highlighted by a presentation from Clarion Associates LLC, which was awarded a contract for $229,225 in the Aug. 13 meeting for a rewrite of the United Development Ordinance.

In addition, the council approved a Safe Streets for All Action plan service agreement for $160,000 with Kittelson and Associates Inc. and approved accepting a Village of Clemmons Accessibility and Transition Plan in Support of Safe Streets for All Action Plan grant for $160,000 with the village share being $40,000 each.

It’s all part of hectic time involving transportation and revising regulations in a growing community, which will include a public engagement event on Thursday, Sept. 19, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the entrance to the Clemmons Branch Library (6365 James St., Clemmons). 

“With the UDO (United Development Ordinance), I don’t know if the average person is really going to care, but it is important,” Moore said. “That’s our development regulations. Everything that comes to town or is redeveloped has to comply with the regulations that come out of it, so we want to have your voice and involvement in the creation of that.”

Moore said that the village is pulling together a stakeholders group, which are developers, but he said it’s important that all businesses or residents that have any questions can have them answered while providing input.

“This will be informal and casual and be a great opportunity to talk to folks,” Moore said.

Besides the presentation on Monday in the retreat before the council meeting, Clarion also did the same in a joint meeting of the Board of Adjustment and Planning Board Wednesday night.

“There are just a bunch of things that are getting ready to happen,” Moore said. “In addition to the input session at the library, we’ve got the Transportation Plan that is being kicked off. They have been doing an assessment of our old planning documents, so they’re putting together a public survey along with the Safe Streets for All Action Plan that we’re doing. And we should have one of these at one of the last Clemmons Farmers Markets and then probably again at the Monster Dash and Goblin Hop (Sunday, Oct. 20) where we’ll hand out QR codes like we did for the pedestrian survey.”

The village received federal funding in 2022 for the Safe Streets for All Action Plan grant and in 2023 for a Village of Clemmons Accessibility and Transition Plan in Support of Safe Streets for All Action Plan grant.

“They’ll go through the community and they will inventory all of our sidewalks, all of our public facilities and they’ll look for deficiencies with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act),” Moore said. “They’ll create this analysis and then they’ll do an inventory and a ranking criteria and rank projects for us to do for improvements.”

But Moore hopes even more funds might be available.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he said of the latest request. “The last round of that grant program came out a couple of weeks ago, so I applied for $300,000 that’s including our match, which would be $50,000 to do demonstration projects related to transportation safety that will come out with the action plan. We won’t hear back from that for a while. We’ve gotten all this funding to do transportation planning, but what good is it if you can’t do something to kind of test it out and implement it.

“So far, everything we’ve applied for, we’ve received through the Federal Highway Administration. There’s been so much money in that pot that they haven’t been able to give it all away, which means the pot is growing and growing. More people are starting to apply, but there’s still a lot that aren’t. I think we have a pretty good chance on it. What we would do with demonstration projects is basically taking safety concepts and installing them in some way to slow down traffic.”

In one of the business items in Monday night’s meeting, the council approved a sidewalk replacement due to a safety issue of approximately 600 linear feet along U.S. 158 from the Historic Broyhill Events Center to James Street for a cost $51,600 with RCJ Contracting LLC.

The council also appointed Amy Flyte, assistant manager, to be deputy clerk.