Town Planner, Town of Clayton, North Carolina

>> My name is Emily Bedingfield. I am a town planner for the town of Clayton, North Carolina. My day-to-day activities vary a lot. [laughter] I work in a small town, so I wear a lot of hats. I would say my average day is a lot of time talking with the public, answering questions on the phone. I do a lot of work with developers. So I do a lot of work with new businesses and new developments coming into town and working with them to find out ways that they can best fit into the community and to avoid negative impacts, neighbors, and answer questions and. So a good example is just recently we had a Sheetz. I don't know if there are Sheetz here in Florida, but it's a gas station/restaurant. And they were - they are looking at rezoning a piece of property in town in order to put their business there. This particular piece of property is currently residential. But it's on a major corridor. It's a future major intersection. And so we had to work really closely with them to work with the neighbors. Because any time a new business comes into town, there's certainly concern over impacts of traffic and noise and lights and, you know, there's a lot of kids in the neighborhood. So it's a lot of balancing of the interests of not just the incoming businesses but the existing residents in your community and then kind of those intangible considerations of environmental impacts and quality of life. I think most of it comes down to just trying to ensure that the quality of life for the overall community, and especially those immediate neighbors that may be impacted is not impeded and is always enhanced. [ Silence ]