Did you know your surplus vehicles, equipment, and assets could generate new revenue for your community? GovDeals helps local government agencies sell surplus assets through a trusted online marketplace, reaching millions of buyers while maintaining transparency, compliance, and control throughout the process. GovDeals. A tech tip from VC three. Free public Wi Fi may be convenient, but it's also risky. Hackers can intercept your data or trick you into connecting to fake networks that look legitimate. This can expose your emails, sensitive and confidential data, and even login credentials to hackers. If you find yourself at an airport, coffee shop, hotel, or other place with public Wi Fi, keep the following in mind. Avoid using public Wi Fi for work whenever possible. If you must connect, use a VPN to encrypt your data or use a personal hotspot for a more secure connection. Be cautious of pop ups asking for login information. Never access sensitive systems such as financial or HR platforms on unsecured networks. A little extra caution while traveling or working remotely can go a long way toward protecting your municipality's data. This tech tip from VC3. From the North Carolina League of Municipalities, this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns. Thanks for joining us on another episode of Municipal Equation from the North Carolina League of Municipality Studios in Downtown Raleigh. I'm Ben Brown. So at the League, our tagline and guiding phrase is working as one, advancing all. And one of our core functions here since our founding in nineteen o eight is advocacy and working with our state legislature so our cities, towns, and villages can be their best. That process of advocacy is at its best when we convene to work on it together as one to advance our communities and advance our state. This is us working with our municipal leaders in exchanging ideas, converging on what we all agree are the most important things, and communicating in a clear way about it all with our State Legislators. This is our ongoing process with our membership, and this time of year has been vital for that in preparing for the twenty twenty seven legislative long session. And we've had some milestones to celebrate with that already. Just recently in September, municipal officials from across North Carolina got together at the Benton Convention Center in Winston Salem at our legislative summit to hear presentations and updates about legislative matters, get on the same page about our legislative priorities, and work together on outcomes. Members together share topics to look at like down zoning, property tax authority, housing affordability, regulatory authority, funding, and and so on. These are the big categories. Here's League of Municipalities President Jody McLeod, the mayor of Clayton, at the start of that legislative summit.

And here's Rose Vaughn Williams, the executive director of the League of Municipalities.

The work that you're doing matters. The work matters in your community. The work you're doing, the sacrifice you're making every day in your work, but especially the work here today, is a down payment for your communities on their future in every way. And this is the cornerstone of what you're doing today is laying the cornerstone of the legislative agenda of North Carolina cities and towns for the next two years. And this matters. Setting that legislative agenda for big cities and small cities and cities in clean, Setting a legislative agenda that addresses all the complex issues that you all have to deal with every day is no easy task and it's very important that we have these voices here today and in these next months as we do this process and make it happen. Our strength is in our unity and that's part of what we're doing today is creating an agenda that's a unified agenda that's for us all and that's what matters so much. We are here to serve you. We want you to be invested in this process, which is, again, what you're doing by being here today, and also in the results. There'll be other opportunities for you to participate. We want you to be a part of the process every step of the way. Just say what legislative solutions matter most to your communities.

On this episode, we're gonna hear more about that. At the time of this recording, we're still very much working with our members, the municipalities of North Carolina, to solidify where we're at and what specifically we're working toward in 2027 to, you know, refine our core focus areas that we've identified in member surveys and at the legislative summit. Again, it's a process we've done together for a very long time at the League of Municipalities. And at the heart of it right now is what's called our Legislative Policy Committee or LPC for short. That's a 65 member committee of municipal officials from different communities all around the state being co chaired by councilman David Hunt of Ahaskey and mayor Haley Beatty of Dallas, North Carolina. I interviewed both of them recently about the LPC and how it works.

This was one of the most productive committees I have ever been on. The conversations were vibrant. They were real. They were, you know, people talked about their problems, but also offered solutions to those problems. I'm really looking forward to to seeing what comes from this. You know, even though this has been ongoing for a long time, the league does a great job of talking to our legislators and me not knowing what's happened in the past, truly

across party lines, across the state, and listen to each other, we're then able to help shape the priorities that are going to reflect what the municipalities need as a whole. Not just Dallas, not just I ask you, not just, Zebulon. It's going to be everyone as a whole. And that's why I believe that the LPC is so important because with the participation, it matters. The league as a whole and the LPC's voice as a whole is the strongest when we're actively working together and helping.

So for anybody who doesn't know, and I say this because, you know, we have new staffers coming to different municipalities around the state, maybe getting oriented with with municipal government and state legislative government, how it works. The North Carolina General Assembly, just to explain, is the overarching name for the State House and Senate. They generally meet every year for session, but it's a biennium. So the way it goes is in odd numbered years, they do what's called the long session, and in even numbered years, the short session. The long session is what we have coming up in 2027, and the long session is really where the main session... It's the main session of work, you could say, for our lawmakers. This is where new bills get filed, they develop a state spending plan, all the main stuff they do, and it often lasts the greater part of the year depending on what their priorities are and how much work they have to do. The short session comes in the following even numbered year as a sort of a cleanup session, I guess you could say, where they make any amendments they need to make to state spending. They consider bills that are still eligible from the previous year's long session. This is all generally speaking and how things work at the general assembly. So the long session kicks off in mid January of twenty twenty seven. As it unfolds, our government affairs staff is on-site. Pay attention to our legislative bulletin that goes out weekly during the session. It has all the relevant recaps and general info to keep you informed. And when session is essentially all wrapped up for the year, that's when we put out our end of session bulletin, which recaps everything. And you might have just seen that hit your inbox just recently for the 2026 short session. We had a link to it in our weekly league letter. Again, this is all about working together. Let's hear more from our legislative policy committee chairs, councilman Hunt of Behosky and mayor Beatty of Dallas.

that relationship is important because the end goal is truly the same. And, you know, letting the legislators know what Dallas needs, right, and then what Gaston County needs from talking to other mayors and council members in the area, talking to other districts in the area, having that relationship and letting them know that we are really on a team, even though we wanna take care of our municipalities, you know, on their own. It's still what helps essentially what helps Dallas helps the county and helps the state Growing that relationship with your legislators being so important, when they see that you want to be a teammate and not someone that's just a a me person, it shows them that there's trust within your within your realm. And so when they see that you have that relationship, not just with your legislators, but other, elected officials in the area, it it shows them that you're willing to work together. That networking and making the communication constant versus just when you need something. What would your message be? Just encouraging

you will go so far and so beyond what you thought was even possible because you put trust into the people that you're working with. And I think the league does a great job of putting that putting that together and making it come to real life. And I truly believe and stand firm that that partnership and teamwork is the greatest success story to anything

So we'll keep you posted as we do on the ways that we'll continue to work together and exchange information and updates and so on with regard to the general assembly. You can always reach out to us. Just click on the people directory on our website, nclm.org, and look for an invite to one of our most important events. That's the Town and State dinner, which is going to be in February in Raleigh. This is a popular event we do where municipal officials and their state legislators join together for dinner and conversation and build good working relationships and ideas together because, again, working is one. So we'll have more info about that as we get closer to it. Again, reach out to us on the peopledirectory@nclm.org. That's where you can find me. My name is Ben Brown. Any episode topics, ideas, feedback about things you've heard on this episode or past episodes, people directory nclm.org. We will talk to you on the next one. Thanks, everybody.