Emergency Meeting

Good evening everyone and thank you for being here tonight. I am interim town manager Russ Overton and with me tonight is Mayor Harold Weinbrecht. Uh Mayor Pro Tem and at-large council member Lori Bush. Um at-large council member Carissa Cone Johnson. District A council member Brittany Richards. District D council member Michelle Craig. Uh B That's B council member Michelle Craig and D council member Sarika Bansal. And I'll mention that council member Bella Wang is out of the country and could not be here tonight.

[snorts]

I want to thank the media for uh being with us tonight on short notice. And as you know, the state auditor and his team released a report on Cary earlier today. We appreciate all the hard work that is going into it and felt it was important to have a news conference to answer your questions about our response, which we'll do in just a bit. Uh we also have copies of another report from outside law firm Womble Bond Dickinson, which Council commissioned to conduct a separate investigation back in January. Representatives from Womble Bond Dickinson will be at our July 23rd Town Council meeting to make a formal presentation of their report, and you can grab those copies if you don't already have them at the front desk as you leave. As a reminder, this conference is being live streamed and recorded, and since it's a news conference, we'll be taking questions directly from the media. Thank you to all the residents and staff who are here to observe and support the meeting as well, and I would encourage you all to contact Cary's 311 anytime with questions you have regarding this report and our response. I'd like to give a give a brief summary of the events that brought us to this point, so we're working from a common foundation. In 2016, Sean Stegall was hired as Cary's Town Manager. And over the next 10 years and to this day, Cary continued to receive national awards and recognition in finance, safety, and quality of life. Many international events have made their home in Cary, including the soccer tournament and the Chinese Lantern Fest.

And we've opened an award-winning park that contributed significantly to the thriving downtown economy. But towards the end of Sean's tenure, staff began noticing questionable decisions and behaviors from our former manager. For example, he eliminated most of all budget positions and deprioritized key finance department roles such as the internal auditor position. He often encouraged staff to ignore policies and procedures and did so himself, and he had discontinued exit interviews and the employee satisfaction survey, which had previously given staff a safe way to report issues. Because Sean's actions had occurred over time, it was difficult to see what was happening in the moment, but late last year a clearer picture came into focus as a small group of staff brought their concerns to the Cary Town Council. Immediately, on November 20th, 2025, Town Council voted unanimously to place Sean on administrative leave. Just a few days later, the North Carolina Office of State Auditor, OSA, arrived at Town Hall to announce the start of their investigation. Sean resigned on December 13th, and 2 days later, the Council appointed me as the interim town manager. Over the last 8 months, we've supported the OSA's investigation by providing hundreds of and even thousands of documents to fully cooperate with the interviews they've requested. We appreciate their work in helping us identify the gaps in oversight and process and culture, and I'm glad that the State Auditor mentioned that cooperation in his news conference earlier today. This investigation is largely rooted in the former town manager's actions, but as an organization, we recognize that our responsibility to understand what happened, learn how we can help prevent it from happening again, and make sure our operations and culture meet the expectations of our staff and our community. The recommendations from the OSA's report will help us do exactly that. Cary remains a strong organization with amazing staff, financially stable, safe,

and offering our residents and visitors an excep- exceptional place to live and visit. We are moving forward, rethinking how things are done, rebuilding from what was dismantled, and taking steps to strengthen transparency and oversight. As part of this effort, we've developed a public dashboard to track our progress and recommendations from the OSA and others, and I invite you all to visit and bookmark carync.gov/movingforward to follow along. And with that, we'll open it up for any media questions. Yes.

Hi. Um the former town manager in the report is noted as refusing to comply with the terms [snorts] of a deal for his severance. Notably, it seems like he may not have given over his phone. Is the town pursuing that either, you know, getting the property back or pursuing criminal charges against him?

I'm not aware we have I'm looking for our attorney. I'm not aware we have authority to pursue. All we can do is hold the severance. I don't know if you guys know any more than that. But it's up to the DA and the SBI to pursue criminal charges against him. We have no authority to do that. However, we do have authority to withhold his severance if he doesn't comply by all of the conditions, which he has not.

Yes.

Could you talk about some of the material differences between the OSA report and the Womble Bond Dickinson report and what new information or recommendations the Womble report introduced?

So, I can give you my opinion. I'll ask my colleagues to jump in after I'm done. I thought the state auditor did an excellent job on the what. Here's all the things that happened. Really bad, really bad, bad. Um the auditor did a fantastic job over the months really digging in deep and

finding stuff that honestly I had no idea was going on. Uh so, it's very important for us as a council to hear these things and see these things. Womble Bond Dickinson is into the what and I mean the why and the how. And that's very important, especially if you're trying to fix problems and situations. You need to understand the whole picture. And the whole picture is the what, why, and the how. And so, that's why both of them together will help us move forward.

I'd also like to share I believe something that both of those resources did, which was important, was to illustrate what I would call an implementation gap. So, we do and we've talked about this as a body fairly frequently. We have a lot of policy and a lot of those policies just weren't followed. Um and that is, you know, often with any governmental body, um you can have the policy, but we also need to have the mechanisms in place to make sure that those policies were followed. And, you know, anecdotally I always think of it sort of like you can have a really great um drawing and sketch of a building and you can have the best architectural plans, but if the building inspector isn't on the job and making sure that corners aren't cut and, you know, there's not uh you know, a misinterpretation of the plans, then you're not going to get an ideal final product. So, I feel as though the Womble report really to me was an expansion on the work the state auditor did, as the mayor said, um identifying here's the here's the problems. And I feel like our our commission report with with Womble really did a great job of identifying those those gaps that we need to close to make sure that the that our policies are pretty uniformly and always adhered to.

And and I would one more um item, since we all have read the report and you get an opportunity to do it in a bit, is it really talked about the operational issues and challenges that we have, not

just with a council manager form of government, but when you have a large organization with part-time leaders and a professional town manager who's leading the organization. And I'd also like to chime in on the mayor's why part of the Womble uh report. I thought it was very helpful to talk very specifically of the why. What are the vulnerabilities associated with a council manager form of government? What are the safeguards that you need? How can you increase transparency? The how and or the why and then the how really dovetail nicely together because the Womble report also gave us pieces of the puzzle to put together so that we can make sure that this doesn't happen again.

Let me add that the Womble report had 21 recommendations and the OSA report has 13. All those recommendations will be on the moving forward webpage.

And you guys mentioned in your comments in the state auditor's report as well that people didn't see notice this quicker because it was a lot of different things over time. And there are a lot of recommendations in that auditor's report, but how do you now go about what if somebody making up and just hypothetically what if somebody does something in one month and then six months later they do something again like how do you not see that if it's happening

[snorts]

at all?

So, I'll I'll start by saying a lot of the problems in my mind were controlling information. Uh he was a master at making sure he had information from staff and he had information from council and he determined who got what information. That was a big problem and that was corrected on day one when we swore in Russ Overton as the interim manager. We no longer have that one-on-one where one person controls that information. So, we

meet in three by fours which means the mayor and two council members and the interim manager, the attorney, the clerk, and other senior staff members are there as well. So, we're all sharing information at same time to prevent that kind of thing from happening again. I don't know if you guys have anything to add to that.

For me it would be two words, culture and transparency. And on day one the mayor put forward a process and a for us to stream everything we do.

Actually, day zero. That was before I got rid of you.

Um and so everything we do is transparent. And we also made a commitment to each other that any information that we have, we share with the broader group, which I think is also indicative of this body uh wanting to move forward together. Um so that's the transparency. The culture part is ensuring that there is those those guardrails are there so that staff feels comfortable to share with us should there be an issue. So putting forward an anti-retaliation um program, putting forward a whistleblower, a tip line, those types of things are important to make sure that our staff feel comfortable so they don't feel bullied, so they feel like they can share that information with us.

And that will be taken as a policy to council at next Thursday's meeting. Yes, sir.

I know one thing that came out in the report is that 62% of people of the staff had cards or credit cards, access to credit cards. So I know in Raleigh they said they have 60%, Charlotte 10%. Are you cutting that down since that report has come out?

Yeah, I'll start with that. But we've already taken steps to cut it. We'll continue to look at that and make further steps to cut it down and that's something we'll be looking at moving forward all while knowing that the town has to uh make purchases and we'll look at how to do that differently.

And I'll just add when I interviewed with the town auditor, I did it for 2 hours and 40 minutes. And it was did you know this? And there are 800 P-cards and I'm like, well, is that normal or not normal? Well, Charlotte has about that many. Well, how many do they have? So they looked up all that information after we asked questions back because we didn't know. And I can tell you our inner manager does not have a P-card. Our town clerk does not have a P-card. So, they're already uh by example reducing the number of P-cards because that was a problem. That was a cultural issue that is being addressed.

And none of us None of us have P-cards.

With one of the recommendations to uh make P-card transactions more transparent as well to the public.

And And I wanted to comment on that because I think uh a really important thing to know is the form of payment doesn't um illustrate whether or not a a transaction or a payment is acceptable or not. So, there's, you know, there's there's problematic parts of any kind of uh you know, form of payment we we like checks. As we all know, you can't just pop a check in the mail anymore and feel really confident that it's going to safely arrive at its destination. So, one of the things I've been doing is really trying to look at this and say, "Okay, well, if we don't you know, pursue payments via credit card, what is the best practice and what is the ideal uh payment?" I I had a discussion with a colleague about this just today. It's it's not um necessarily a bad thing that credit cards are being used to make a lot of the purchases that are necessary and it doesn't illustrate uh fraud on the behalf of the the staff broadly. What it is is a it was a a standard way of purchasing things that we need to examine like so many things we're doing right now and examine it and make sure that that's the best way to go about it. Um and if we're going to

continue with primarily P-card purchase purchases for a lot of things, how do we do that, do it well, and do it safely, and make sure the money is safeguarded?

And and the elaborate spending that the auditor talked about, there will be checks and balances to prevent that from happening and we're working on a plan for that.

Well, and one of those um plans was we added two positions in the finance. One is a auditor for the finance department in this year's budget that was approved um

[snorts]

last month.

One more thing that was noted was I'm not sure exactly how it was described, but something to um something about uh the former town manager making last-minute decisions about things which caused some of those key card purchases to have unnecessary fees and/or cancellations to um venues and things like that. So, as we're looking at policies, making sure we're being planful would be among the things that we will continue to do.

Hi, I know there's been a lot of talk towards the town manager, but under this uh the auditor describing this as really a culture of extravagant spending, not just by the town manager, how did that culture develop without the town council recognizing it sooner? And I know we've been hearing a lot of we didn't know, but everybody knows how much money is in their bank account and what that spending looks like with your own budget, and as stewards of the taxpayers' dollars, how did you miss it?

Well, I think it it there's there's a lot of complexity there. Uh the staff makes hundreds of thousands of decisions, we make thousands of decisions, we're a thousand decisions. So, they boil down summaries is what we see. Uh I'll I'll I'll tell a story, which I think is very important. While we might have seen bits and pieces over the last few months,

we I didn't know what was going on with them. And then early November of last year, staff member come up came up and told me these things are happening, which was shocking. And I'm like, "Disgruntled employee, maybe?" Then another one. That's not right. And then on November 13th, he lied in front of the council about fund balance. By November 20th, he was gone. The problem was it was all based on that one fund balance issue until we got four staff members to come in to close session. We usually don't talk about what happened in close session, but I got permission to. They came in close session, risked their careers, and told us, "Here's everything that's going on." We were in there hours and hours. I won't tell you who those people were. It wasn't random staff. It was the interim manager. It was the town clerk. It was the chief strategy officer. And it was the assistant town manager. Top-level people in the organization went, "Wait a minute. This these things These bad things are happening, and council doesn't know. They need to know this now." And they risked it all just so we can know. And we heard it. And I can tell you that close session, not a dry eye was in there. It was heartbreaking. But we immediately made the hard decision, and he was gone. He was locked out of his accounts. He was locked out of the building. And he never returned.

I would um I want to add something there.

Sure.

I feel like the accountability and the um oversight was definitely low because of the trust that the council had in the manager. And I feel when um I I mean, this is my first term. I was new back then. But I felt like the lot of people who have been with the

organization for a very long period of time, they felt very torn and shattered. And to an extent, they felt cheated. And in Mayor's words, um so I feel like you know at some point there was a realization that this is bad for the organization and we need to move forward. But as soon as that realization came and we had the facts, the council moved forward very very quickly. We did not waste time. Um we it was we stayed in close session for 6 7 hours that night and we took the decision. So I understand that you know these the issues that we're talking about they were not they did not develop develop like overnight. They were there for many many years and as in last Mayor you have mentioned this that um towards the end of the tenure I feel like people started observing these issues more prominently. And that's when the realization started popping in that hey we need to have checks and balances, what is happening there there were questions that were being asked and there were no answers. Um at least that's my version of understanding.

And the the fund balance question happened at a quarterly meeting and by that time we had two or three council members that were going what's going on with the fund balance? This doesn't add up

thinking why did somebody ask that same question three different ways? Like he already said no.

I I asked that question on that day.

So that was the I think that was the defining moment. At that moment I said this guy's got to go and so now I'm gathering information from that Thursday to the following Thursday to make sure he was gone. So.

And I'll add to get to your culture question a little bit is um you know culture and trust is eroded away in the organization when the manager does doesn't follow the same rules that everyone else has to.

And so we want to right that ship.

Yeah and I want to share that I don't believe that it's accurate to classify the culture of our staff as one of extravagant spending. I believe that what we had was pockets of poor decisions and poor money management that we need to address. But, I would I stand by the fact that our staff works diligently to deliver the best product, the best services possible, and to do that at the most reasonable cost they can without compromising safety or quality. So, I don't think broadly a wide culture of extravagance is is completely accurate as a way to describe the culture with the staff here at the town of Cary.

And if someone could correct me if I misquote the number, but I believe it had been 10 years since we did an employee survey.

Yes. Yes.

And and our former town manager about that length of time since he had been. So, obviously hindsight is 20/20, but looking back, why would staff trust to come to to to whoever when we had not been coming to them and saying, "How are things going?" And and I can only speak for myself, but in my one-on-one conversations of saying to the former town manager, "Are you sure the staff is okay if we cut that potential for mayor increase back?" And him saying things like, "Well, look, they're all so happy." And he said it. And at least I remember at least one public meeting, you know, like, "They're all so happy. Why do we need to ask them?" And so, you know, we we were not We're moving forward at this point, and we're making the opportunity and hopefully continuing to build trust with staff as well as as the public. But, I I think we've tried really hard to make the point over

and over again, and not since November. I I believe I've heard lots of this my 2 and 1/2 years on council, how much we how how we know we could not be all the wonderful accolades that we have in Cary if it weren't for our staff. And so, continue to build that culture of making sure that staff know and putting the things in place to make it where they can come to us. So, um we can do better moving forward.

Yeah, I I'll add as well real quick long answer to your question is, you know, council for many months now has been awaiting the results of many of these simultaneous investigations. And so, we now have many data points to help give us a fuller picture of what happened. And so, to answer your question, I think two of we have our annual audit that noted that one of the deficiencies was tone at the top. And so, you know, that really did originate from the town manager. And you combine that with what the state auditor found, which was a culture of workplace intimidation and retaliation. And so, I think those two data points combined to say that we really had, you know, a top-down problem and a culture problem explains how some of that that the those issues arose and and the origin of of a lot of those problems and how removing the town manager, while we have a lot of policies and procedures to review, but addressing the tone at the top will address many of those issues that happened because of the culture that existed when he was here.

Did anyone else get let go? Or be removed because of this? Or is there one person to blame?

Dan Alt was also

He resigned. He came with Shawn from Elgin. Um don't know any connection other than that. He resigned. He was gone.

Yes.

Okay, you guys said you pushed back a little bit on the culture of extravagant spending, but it was flagged for a what? $733 executive van used to transport attendees 12 miles to a holiday dinner. It the auditor outlined $1,600 for Ray-Ban sunglasses. A lot of these things appear to be extravagant spending. So, to push back against that when we're also talking raising taxpayer property rates and all of those things, it's really hard to understand how you find that not to be extravagant spending. Why is $733 to go 12 miles not considered extravagant spending?

I didn't defend every single expense. I I defended the broad and majority of those expenses. Those costs outlined in the auditor's report and also in the R. Womble report, they're absurd. Heart stop. I make no excuses for those those expenses. Those that spending pattern was unacceptable. Also, that is not reflective of the habits of the broader staff. So, what I really take issue with is only the culture of inappropriate spending. I think that is broadly not applicable. I work with a lot of the staff day in and day out and we also I think it's also important to note that we can sit here as a as a council and ask for policy changes or ask for changes in in you know, try to change the culture and such, but the ones that are actually implementing the changes, implementing the controls, and getting things under control will be the staff. So, they can't be both things at the same time. They can't be out of control spending all the time across the board and individuals that can help us right the ship. So, that's that's my point.

It's right there in the middle, um I think is an accurate way to portray the situation right now.

So, so I add to that as well. Um I had an email today saying "Those expenses explained by the auditor were horrifying." I agree. We weren't notified. We knew we got Ray-Ban sunglasses. I didn't think they were 100 or whatever it was that they cost, and I was told it's part of marketing uh because we rebranded and it had our new brand on there. Uh these expense to the holiday dinner, by the way, everybody paid their own way at the holiday dinner, uh but I didn't know that cost money. We're going to fix all that. That's not a problem, but I wanted to address the tax increase. All the damage that has been done with the extravagant expenses has minimal impact on the tax rate. Those expenditures, the extravagant expenses, what has a bigger impact was the information he withheld from us. We haven't hired a police officer in 10 years. That and he kept telling us we are fine. We are fine. We haven't built a new fire station. We are fine. We are fine. And now we find out instead of a 5-minutes response time, we have a 12-minute response time out west. That's a problem, and that's what we got to dig ourselves out of, and that's how he impacted the tax rate, not with the extravagant expenses, but I totally agree it was horrifying.

Yes. Uh in the report, uh the town clerk uh recalls a uh a quote and I'll read it that Mr. Segal said, "If Councilman Bush ever gets upset at me, I'll let everybody know about the tuition." Did he ever overtly or otherwise threaten any of you with consequences for things like that?

Not me. Um, I can tell you my story of the

tuition and then Lori can explain it. She's explained it a million times, but he called me and said, "You know, we Lori's doing professional development and told me what the tuition was and he said like $6,000 at the time. I go, "I don't think that's a good idea." And I said she would probably see that in a campaign if they found out she spent $6,000 on education. I disagree. I totally back her as professional development. That was our conversation. And then I thought about it and I go, "You know, the council needs to see this or know this. I don't know if they do." And I sent an email and that's part of public records. You can go find it where I questioned him and that's when it all started and then Lori can explain which she has, how her end of that played out.

Yeah, so in in 2023 I started looking for a way to increase my skills as a public servant. I started thinking about going to law school or public policy or doing public policy. So I met with UNC School of Government Dean and met with other academics and decided to go after a Master's of Public Policy and Administration. There's no North Carolina State School that does that here that allows you to do it if you don't already have an undergraduate degree. That was a 2023-2024. I was uh, interviewing for an enrollment program in Northwestern. Had already started looking, had meetings, and the town manager said, "Um, you know, the town will pay for that." So, really? Okay, I'll, uh, I'll check with HR. So, I contacted HR, um, and all of those are in the public record. Um, HR said, "Yeah, absolutely. Uh, we'll pay for this." And we had multiple emails back and forth about the process and how do you do this? I said, "Hey, I got to I think it's time for me to I think I should let the rest

of council know." He said, "Oh, don't worry, I'll do that. I see them all on every council week. He sees all of us." I said, "All right." So, I know he told half of the council members, but he didn't tell everyone. And unbeknownst to me, when I asked him, "Hey, does everyone know?" He said, "Oh, yeah, I got that covered. No problem." So, that was in 2024 when that happened. So, come 2020 end of or 2025 when the mayor sent the email, that's when I found out that he didn't know. And and soon after that, even though I'm still in school, I'm still, um, going after my master's, um, I didn't think that it was right for, um, for me to do that. And so, I took ownership and responsibility and paid it back immediately. But, I do not know I to answer your original question, did he do that with anyone else? I couldn't speak to that.

I can say he never once overtly threatened me in any way, just to answer your question directly.

And I've never been, obviously, in y'all's position, but I just I spoke to a lot of people in Cary today. There were no alarm bells from you guys when there was the staff event at Rey's Restaurant, the fine dining steakhouse. There was the Ray-Bans, which you said maybe was a marketing thing, but Ray-Bans, everybody knows, I feel like, are expensive sunglasses. The book, the Dancing Queen video. I mean, this all happened in front of everybody's faces. Like, does that seem to be an appropriate use of tax dollars? I know that everybody is probably going to say no, but how does that happen in front of everybody's face and nobody questions it when it's happening?

I mean, that's a good question because I I I like the analogy of boiling a a frog in in water slowly. That's kind of way it was. For 6 years, this guy was outstanding. We were named the number one government in the United States in his tenure.

Uh so, there was a lot of the we were getting Last year, we got 40 national awards. Everything is going great. All our indicators uh were outstanding. Uh bond rating agencies, highest rating. All these things were positive. So, when things are going on, you think that, "Wait a minute. It's You don't question. We know now we should have. Uh how much did that cost?" Uh so, yeah, we're going to definitely address uh well, we already have been addressing any cost. Uh but, we didn't know about the cost of the Dancing Queen video. I had no idea. Of course, I would have said, "Whoa, time out. That's way too much. That's crazy."

We didn't know it existed.

Yeah, didn't know it existed. Um we thought staff on their own time per created this dance for our entertainment and to open up our quarterly meeting to set the tone of the quarter I'm not quarterly, annual meeting to set the tone. That's That's what I thought. And it was their time and their effort. I had no idea we were spending thousands of dollars videotaping that. And why would we do that? I didn't know that, but, you know, I can say I don't know. People don't believe it. That's fine. Uh but, we'll make sure that we know everything moving forward and I think that's a key point as Carissa said, moving forward.

Can taxpayers get their money back? How how does that I mean, that was taxpayer dollars that were spent. How can they feel How they can't get their money back. What can they do?

Well, you know, you've heard the expression when you know better, you do better. And I can tell you personally, I know better now. And you know, looking back, I feel as though it's important for me to take responsibility for seeing it and not acting on it as I don't want to say aggressively, but as adamantly as I should have. The the Ray-Ban sunglasses are an excellent

example. The park opened here is something for council. Mhm, no, thank you. Right? That wasn't enough when I said no, thank you. What I should have said is, what the hell are we doing putting our brand on Ray-Ban sunglasses and giving them out at no cost. That is the the response that I failed to make at the time. Um, there is no explaining that away as you know, but I it's what I should have done. Um, going forward, you can you can rest assured that um, we will be reacting that way if that were to happen, but I think that kind of behavior is going to be exceptionally unlikely in the future. Um, so that's just just me speaking for myself and and accepting the responsibility in that situation where my reaction uh, wasn't to the level of I think what I was seeing as far as the way money was money was being spent in isolated cases.

I would like to add something like um, about that um, retreat. That was the first um, year that you know, or that that was right when we took the oath, Michelle and me. And um, it was two months into the office when we went there. We we were like, [clears throat] you know, we were blown away by the professionalism of the staff. Uh we were too new. We were trying to soak in. The following year, I started questioning a little bit. Why why is council going for dinner? Why are we not like, you know, cutting this cut like something on those lines. So, I think it kind of started coming naturally to answer your question. It was a slow process being only like very short period of time in the office. And like um what others are saying, I would echo the same message. We're looking forward, but we also have to remember that we do not lose sight of what happened in the past because that's critical. We have to take

accountability. We have to take mistakes were made, and we have to make sure that as we're moving forward, we keep those learnings within our um sight.

Yeah, I I can offer the perspective as one of the two newest council members to say the culture that's described in this report is one I don't recognize. So, it already no longer exist in my 7 months now in office. Uh I can see the effects of the changes that Russ and my colleagues have made immediately that none of what is described there is familiar to me in my term so far.

One thing that stood out to me that the auditor said in our exit conference, but as well as I think in his remarks today, was about be more being more transparent and maybe if you have uh sometimes things that you all will agree or taxpayers may differ on, is um do it in open session and be transparent about those decisions as you make those decisions. So, I think we're doing that and we'll continue to do more of it.

Yes.

Uh the council, as it was noted in the report, also has a fairly significant budget for uh cars, and that's something that's pretty unusual uh in in the entire area. Never heard of a uh council member getting a specific allocation for car maintenance or whatever else. Can you all speak to that?

You want me

I know we we we we share a passion for this subject.

Uh

Municipalities pay councils in different ways. I'll just say this, you can take my entire paycheck and it doesn't add up to minimum wage with the hours I put in. So, if you want to fault me for that, go ahead. Uh I get paid $29,000 a year, probably work 60 hours a week. Uh and and

we it's basically a stipend. Uh and so I don't even remember how we set that. I think we tried to take the politics out, and that's probably why we need to put it back somewhere where people can see it because it got where we went over 10 years without an increase in salary, and we go, "Well, that's not right, and we don't want to make it political. It shouldn't be a campaign item." But if people and we actually when we made the change, I know we made it after the next election. So, if you didn't like it, you can vote us out, and then it came into play. Uh so, that's how it was created. It wasn't designed for us to make money. God knows we don't make money. Uh and it doesn't it's not a cost of living, it's nothing near that. It's just a stipend. And like I said, it doesn't even add up to minimum wage. Carissa, I don't know if

Yeah, and when when Harold is saying I make $29,000 a year, that includes his car stipend.

Yes.

That's all in. Uh I shared on some social media outlets uh last year my W-2 for 2024 was $27,050. That was everything. That was before thousands of dollars in taxes, right? And that is driving around a 60 square foot mile town in my own car, on my own dime, on my own gas, with my own insurance, with my own cell phone, with my own electronics, on my own internet. We don't have offices here. Um so, I don't think that that stipend is unreasonable. Um there's minimal compensation offered to council. And that's, you know, that's one of the other things I was really surprised during this entire process how many people did not understand that we're part-timers. Um so, often when I share I have a full-time job during the day, people are are surprised. Um and that's one of the challenges also when it comes to oversight in general uh because we are a part-time body um and not here full-time. It would be very difficult

even if I did want to be here full-time cuz we could work full-time even at our current salary, but I wouldn't be able to keep a roof over my head. And particularly wouldn't be able to afford to live here in Cary on $27,050. I think it's a little bit more now. We get what? 3%

I have no idea. I really don't.

There's a a flat raise, an increase to our my base salary, which I think is pushing $14,000 now. Um and we get a flat raise all of us the same amount. I think I think it's 3% each year. So, that's that's why when when I saw that um inclusion of the car stipend, I mean, if if people think it's fair, it could be reduced by a couple hundred dollars um maybe cuz I think the majority of us drive Hyundais. Do I remember that correctly? Yeah, the majority So, you know, it would be a an accurate sort of probably accounting for the expense I actually have in my car, my wear and tear, and that kind of thing. Um, but I don't think the car stipend is unreasonable at all.

You mentioned something I thought was was good. I'm the only mayor in Wake County without an office. I'm probably the only mayor out of the top 50 municipalities in the in the state without an office. We didn't think that was important. We thought that was a waste taxpayer moneys and we gave it up yeah, many years ago. Um, so it's not like we're trying to throw money around, waste money, and build salaries. I mean, that's not what it's about at all.

I would like to add something for the car allowance. And in this, I feel like everybody has their own decision that they have to make um as a council body. And I had a conversation with Auditor Bullock about this and he made a statement um or he his comment was that I don't mind you having that uh money allocated for the car given to allowances for the council, but go vote in front of public. Let people know. Be transparent about this

information. And I think that's fair. I think if this council wants to keep that allowance um and people know about this and they're ready to pay for this, then so so be it. Um, I think in my individual capacity, I just want to share since you're probably referring to the report you will see, I declined some of the benefits. And that's only because my husband uh had his benefits and we were as a family using his benefits and I didn't feel necessary to take those. It's nothing against a particular policy, but it's more about I just didn't feel that I needed it and that's why I declined it.

[snorts]

I'm a Wake County Public School employee and I made well, my family and I made the choice for me to work half-time when I was running for office and it's fortunate that we were able to make that choice because the average resident cannot afford to run for office, no matter what office it is, because first of all, even with a PhD, as a public school educator, I could not afford to live in Cary by myself. I depend on my husband's salary. And of course I did going half time and cutting my salary in half. But for the hours that I put in, I make a whole lot more as a public school teacher than I do as a town council member. So it's a significant pay decrease to become a council member. But if if if we decided, and we should we should revisit all of these policies. Most of the all of these policies were made before most of us were in office. And so like so many things, we're revisiting everything, it seems like. And so that's among the things we should talk about. And if we decide that the car stipend is too much, then I'm going to respectfully ask that our stipend is increased because I have a kid going to college in 2 years. And another one behind that. And it would be difficult for my family, you know, to cut back the amount of money that we have coming in.

But I I do recognize that she is correct that the auditor did say it's about transparency.

So who is to blame for this? Like I feel like from the auditor's or your response in the auditor's report, basically Steegel was very much named and I feel like he got a lot of the blame. But now you guys are saying that you're taking accountability. I don't want to put words in your mouth, taking accountability, trying to learn from this and move forward. So would you blame staff a little bit? Would you guys blame yourselves for not stepping up? Who is really to blame for all of this going on?

I think people want to pin blame on somebody and I'm getting a lot of it. Uh but I can tell you that a lot of it has to do with a council-manager form of government, which is all the municipalities in North Carolina, most mid-size cities in the nation. And that vulnerability exists in all of our brothers and sisters in Wake County. It could happen to them tomorrow. So, I hope they will model themselves after the changes we make. Pilot Mountain saw this. Rocky Mount saw this. These vulnerabilities will continue to be exploited until people put in infrastructure to stop it. And so, we did not have the infrastructure in place and we suffered from the vulnerabilities of council-manager government. So, if you want to blame us, blame me, that's fine, but really it's the council-manager form of government and it's important to understand what a council-manager form of government was designed to do. It was designed to keep to create a wall from the elected officials and operations because when you break down that wall, now you have corruption with elected officials and the operations. However, what it doesn't take into account is your professional not being professional. And that's what

happened to Cary, Rocky Mount, Pilot Mountain and others. Uh so, we are determined as we move forward put the infrastructure in place so that this doesn't happen again.

And will the infrastructure cost taxpayers more money, the safeguards that you're talking about?

Well, the great thing about the Womble report it and having take a moment when you leave to look at it, it actually talks about what are the things you can do with at a low cost that are more aligned with putting in the safeguards all the way up to hiring consultants, right? That would actually cost more money. Implementing tiplines obviously would have some cost. So, depending on the recommendation, I think there were 21 from Womble, it depends on the type of recommendation and whether or not there would be a cost associated with it. Some of them are not. Some of them are policies, procedures, oversight. Obviously, one of the biggest recommendations in the Womble report is the resumption of the internal auditor position, which we already approved in this last budget. So, the the loss of that position, by the way, which was not known to any of us, but putting that position back in place, getting someone here who can start doing all of the reviews, the clear-eyed review of every single department, and giving us recommendations on what we should do, that's a really key position to help us move forward. And I hate to say it, but in every crisis, there is an op- there's an opportunity. And maybe what we are here is an opportunity for our regional partners and our regional municipalities, there's 550 municipalities, I think, in North Carolina, to use us as a case of what they can do to strengthen their own government. The transparency implementation, the policies and procedures, looking deeply

into your culture, taking the temperature of your staff, and not relying on a single point of communication through the town manager. That concierge type of service, where where we all thought it was working, was actually not working and really um creating a lot of problems. So, I think we're a cautionary tale in some respect, but for us, it's an opportunity to take take everything we've learned and move forward together.

I'd like to echo what the mayor and mayor pro tem just said that the Womble report in particular does an excellent job of looking at those systemic failures and the systemic fixes. And I think what the auditor's report points to is one person might have exposed those vulnerabilities, but the responsibility for fixing it will lie with all of us, with the seven of us and the rest of staff to make those systemic changes to reinforce those guardrails to make sure it doesn't happen again.

I would just add one more thing here. My apologies. I just add one more thing I've heard and I want to address this big elephant in the room. A lot of people I've seen like on social media in some places they say, "Why can't you just do it quickly? Now you know this." It's not that quick fix. There's policy recommendation, then there will be discussion, public hearing, and there's a whole process for the council before the policy gets adopted. Russ, am I right?

Yes, and I'll just point out all of that will be online so the public can follow it on our website. We have time for one more question. I think you may have had one.

Yeah, you guys were getting to this before, but you're talking about these really kind of fundamental structural issues with the council being part-time, with the council manager government creating these inherent like oversight challenges. Is there any talk about changing any of those fundamentals which like you said are not unique to Cary, or is it more like what are the fixes there when it's such a structural issue?

So, my understanding is our authority comes from the legislature and we do not have authority to change the council manager form of government without Yeah, going to them.

approval.

Right.

Um so.

I would just say that, you know, you mentioned that the council um is part-time and that's an issue. I don't think that was an issue. I don't know what others think, but I feel like the issue was more of that a person was very successful in his role and he was able to conceal a lot of information from the council for the very longest period of time. And there was trust that was built over the period of time because of the successes that town has seen. Um, I think the um I I know that some of the council members and mayor Mayor has mentioned that you know, he works 60 hours and we all even though this is a part-time role, a lot of us have put a lot of time into this positions and it's definitely more than part-time, I would think.

I want to share one of the benefits of not having a full-time council, somebody like me. There's nothing in this for me, I always joke, right? It's not that I don't care deeply and want to do this job and do it well, but there's not financial gain here, right? So, it really does um attract a certain type of individual that's looking to lead, uh but I feel as though any of those sort of fundamental changes, they would have to be I think probably a a statewide change, realistically. Uh but with us examining where our responsibilities lie, I do feel as though I don't I wouldn't necessarily use the word blame, but the responsibility for fixing this does fall on us on this on the body of which I belong and we're taking it extremely seriously. I mean, this is I can speak for I think my colleagues and I rarely do that, but I can tell you this has kept us up at night. I've so been really challenging and and one of the other bigger challenges for us now is is to

answer that question directly about how will these fundamental changes affect taxes? One of the things that were included in this past budget is a correcting of that lack of staff that allowed a lot of this stuff to not be seen, to not be noted, to not have a treasurer position, those things. So, that was included in the budget that we just passed. So, there are of course tax implica- implications to those decisions. Um they were previously, by and large, not the police officers, but a lot of the other positions were previously funded and then under- unfunded positions. Um so, there is that uh that tax implication that's that was just passed as part of our budget. And I hope if anybody has an interest in how that uh came about, there's a lot of recorded work sessions and a lot of recorded meetings where we discussed this um quite thoroughly. Or if anybody wants to dig into that.

Yeah, the last thing I would add is the virtue of moving not slowly, but deliberately, is we don't have to guess what the fixes are. We have 13 recommendations from the auditor that we will take seriously and plan to address. And we have 21 recommendations from uh the Womble Law Firm. And so, because we have so thoughtfully investigated what transpired to know how to move forward, we know what the fixes are now. And so, we we know what the the work ahead of us looks like.

And and they're public. They're public knowledge.

well. I think what I'm I was trying to say is it's not like I know what the issue is and not and next 1 hour I can go and make a decision and move the needle. I think there's a process that we have to follow, which is which definitely requires several steps and it's time-consuming. And that is where I said it's slow.

Especially with transparency, because we have to schedule these meetings and that's what makes it take longer.

And just to close this out, I think it's an important message for our residents

to hear. Cary is still Cary. Cary is still one of the most desirable places to be, live, work, play, run a business. We're a safe community. We're a thriving community. That has not changed. We're a good value for the dollar. We have the second lowest tax rate in Wake County and the highest quality of life. Uh so Cary is still Cary. We will start to move forward and uh this council is committed to doing that.

Yes. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your questions.