MikeMooreMedia
Melody Shuler, Mayodan Town Manager 09.17.24
Mike Moore Media. Today I'm talking to Melanie Schuler, new made-in town manager. And she's on the line right now. We have a couple of things to talk about. Hey, Melanie, how you doing? Hi, I'm good. How are you doing, Mike? I'm good. Well, you are new, but you've been in the job a little while. We haven't had an opportunity to talk before, so maybe you could kind of give us a little background on you. Who is Melanie Schuler? Of course. Yeah, so I'm originally from the Virginia area, southwestern Virginia, and I come down to North Carolina about 20 years or so ago, and started my journey in local government with the town of Wingate as in customer service, and then gradually moved my way up, eventually becoming town clerk for the town of Waxaw, and with a couple promotions moved into the assistant to the town manager role, where I had a lot of fun doing a lot of special projects, pretty much anything that the manager would throw in my way, but the great thing that I learned there was you know, how to be an effective manager, and truly appreciate the mentorship that my manager provided me, and just want to bring that to Mayden, and just help support staff, and bring good change or improvements to Mayden, and so I got a master's in public administration from Appalachian State University back in 2019, and that was a challenging and rewarding experience, and that group has definitely supported me throughout this process, and will continue to support me into the future, and I greatly appreciate that. I do have a husband and two children, my kids are 11 and two and a half, so definitely keep me on my toes with the cobbler. Sure, I can imagine, yeah, all right, well, well thank you for that background, we appreciate that kind of giving us an idea of where you came from, and what you've been doing, and 15 plus years local government experience, as I understand it, and we haven't, I haven't mentioned this before, but I don't believe, but we have a little connection there in your past, because I graduated from Wing it, so yeah, so that was way, way back before your time, but I have some wonderful memories, several of us from high school, with North Rowan and Spencer, and several of us went to Wing it together, and of course made new friends there that still have some of those friends today, and so yeah, some good memories of Wing it in that community, and that that has really, really grown, and now it was a Wing it college, then just two years, but now it's a Wing it University, but to see the progress in that area where you were at one time, that's amazing, isn't it, the growth there, but that's everywhere, isn't it, I guess, no, yeah, and things are growing and moving forward here in western Rockingham County, and lots of good things happening in and around Medan, and Madison, Medan, Stonewall area, but I know you wanted to talk about these ordinances that were adopted at this much town council meeting that involves residences and businesses and repairing projects and things like that, so go over that with us if you would please, Melanie, what was that all about? Of course, yeah, so I don't want to bore you with all the details, but I want to give you a basic overview of what residents need to be aware of, so an important update that recently was adopted, as you mentioned, were the ordinances to regulate dilapidated residential and commercial buildings, so these ordinances would provide the detail necessary to identify when structures require significant repair or are beyond the point of repair, and so the town will be working with the state code enforcement who will help support the process required to enforce these ordinances. They have already begun preparing list of buildings in town that require attention, and so the important thing to know is to start the process of reviewing a building's condition, it will require four or five complaints from anyone in the community to be submitted to the town, if a preliminary investigation reveals that a building doesn't meet the minimum standards, then the owner will receive a complaint, and I noticed that an administrative hearing has been scheduled for 10 to 30 days after receiving the complaint, and so the difference between residential and commercial is residential, you would be looking at basically if a building is not exceeding or equal to 50 percent of the house value in terms of the repairs, then they would need to repair or demolish within 90 days, and if it exceeds 50 percent of the house value, then they would have to demolish and remove within 90 days. With a commercial structure, it was indicated at the meeting that they actually give them 180 days, mainly because the expenses are a lot more than a typical house, so some of the concerns that were brought out by the council were related to, you know, well, what if you have a senior person who can't afford the repairs, and so what the gentleman from state code enforcement indicated that they are more than willing to work with our residents to ensure that they get the support necessary, they will actually work with them to apply for block grants for funding for those repairs, and another example that he used was, you know, when there are repairs that are required, you know, they can just contact them, they'll come out, show them what repairs are required, and that makes the process a lot easier for the home owner or the business owner, so that they can ensure that they're meeting the requirements, and so the big part about this is if you look at this holistically, you know, is it fair for neighboring property owners to put up with the condition of the property? No, and is it also fair for the person to be living in that condition? No, so ultimately the purpose of these ordinances is to improve the quality of life for all residents in the town of Madan. Yeah, I was looking through those pages and pages of all of that, but you've brought it down into a very understandable points there, so yeah, so this just kind of makes it, puts everything together so people understand what the ordinance is, what's involved in the properties and the quality of life, as you're talking about, and making sure that that, you know, is taking care of it. I was impressed too, and you just mentioned those block grants, so it looks like with the people that are putting it together and working in collaboration with the town, making it very easy to work with and just to kind of go through this whole process, doesn't it? Yes, absolutely. They seem to have it down to a T and have done this successfully for a number of years. Yeah, okay. I liked it the way he gave examples of other towns they've worked with, and that whole process too, so okay, so that's now in place for the town of Madan. Okay, one of the things that came out at the meeting, and it was a big highlight of that September Madan Town Council meeting, swearing in of new police chief Tim Knight, that's always exciting. Yes, very excited, excited to see him grow into that leadership role. Yeah, people wanting to know a little bit more about the street paving. I've seen some Facebook posts about that, so give us an update on that, Melody. Yes, yes, of course. So we have been working on repaving streets in Madan, so we've completed repaving Jefferson Street from 1st to 2nd Avenue, and also the parking lot that's town owned next to the Marathon off of 2nd Avenue, and then Madison Street from 11th to 13th Avenue has been repaved, and most recently what has been approved, the Town Council last month in August approved for Jackson Street to have the sewer lines, flip lines, which would essentially add 50 years onto the life of line, and then basically doing those main repairs or changes underneath to ensure that once we repave Jackson Street, it won't be disturbed for hopefully many years to come, and so at this last meeting the council adopted or approved for Jackson Street to be repaved, and so they are actually getting ready to mill up or grind up that street tomorrow, and they will be working on starting to repave on Thursday and Friday, but there's a chance that they may not get all of it done by the end of this week, so there may be a little bit of rough road over the weekend, but they will be back in town beginning of next week and get that finished up. Okay, infrastructure, it's ongoing, it never seems to stop, but it seems like some of the things you're talking about here gives us some long-range satisfaction there too on some things, so that's great, isn't it? Yes, absolutely, it helps on many counts, and like you said, it's ongoing and it is definitely a concern of the towns. Yeah, okay, well, thank you for that update, before we get away, we certainly need to mention hey it in, the festival that people look forward to every year, and the hay bales and all of that, that's coming up Saturday, October 12th, thanks to the made-in merchants group for making that happen, anything else we need to mention before we finish up Melanie? Just one project that we are gearing up for, it's actually been in the process for a long time, the Washington Mills site we've been working on removing some contaminants from that site and hoping that that will be cleared up by, I would say August of next year, all going well of course, but then what we're hoping to start moving towards is a design for a park at that site, and so very excited to see where we go with that, and just the opportunity that it will bring to the community. Oh yeah, as you know, it's been a many years long, long, long process with that historic property there, lots of memories and lots of people said when that mill came down, but some some good things on the way as that gets developed, and oh that's exciting, so it's good to have you there at this point to kind of see where that all comes together, so so about a year away from from some of that work you're just talking about through on the Washington Mills site, okay that's great, well thank you for that, okay. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, Melanie, good to get a little better acquainted here, thank you for your time in this podcast, and we'll invite people to go to the website, the town of MedNNC, if they need more information, and main number there is 336-427-0241. We'll talk again next month. All right, thanks, Mike. Thank you too, bye-bye, bye-bye. Okay, good to visit with MedN town manager Melanie Shuler, and that's our first, that's our initial podcast since she's taken over as town manager in MedN. I've got to tell you about one of our sponsors, and that is Dan River Insurance Services, as an independent agent, they work with many, many companies, they can compare rates from so many different places, so to make sure that you get the best rate possible auto home business life, Casey and Tara have many, many years of experience insurance business, so you can count on them to do the very best for you at Dan River Insurance Services on North 2nd Avenue in MedN, so check with them, and you can go to their Facebook page and get more information there. Also right across the street is our accountant, and that's Nadine Cobb Accounting and Tax, so I wanted to mention her as well, and that and I were just in recently talking to Nadine, and she's very knowledgeable, years of experience there, and works with businesses and individuals and organizations, and gives a lot back to the community too, and the many different organizations that she supports, so thank you Nadine for your good work there at Nadine Cobb Accounting and Tax on 2nd Avenue in downtown MedN, and for your good work with so many different community projects and the people involved there, and thank you for listening to our monthly podcast with the town of MedN. [BLANK_AUDIO]