 we are one minute from air one minute from air 30 seconds can you hear me out there and our new microphone system somebody give me a thumbs up thank you thank you as well as good afternoon I want to call this work session of the Durham City Council to order at 1 o'clock on set on the on July the 22nd certainly want to welcome everyone here today this is someone of a landmark day back together again in person very exciting still got a ways to go with this virus but it's just great to at least be back with my colleagues I'm so happy to see everybody councilmember Freeman is going to be a little bit late and but she'll be here in a little while and we'll give councilmember Reese excused after we call the roll madam clerk can you please call the roll mayor shul here mayor pro tem Johnson here councilmember Caballero here councilmember Freelon here and some member Freeman is laid and councilmember Middleton here councilmember Reese has an excused absence thank you thank you I think we need to vote to give him that excused absence if I'm not mistaken madam clerk can I have a motion to that effect just a mirror offer that motion thank you moved by councilmember Middleton seconded by councilmember Caballero that we give councilmember Reese an excused absence all in favor please say aye aye oh no motion passes unanimously thank you very much let me just ask in the new regime with councilmember Freeman not here yet I'm not sure if her vote counts do we know good afternoon mr. Mayor so this is actually a regular work session of the city council okay okay all right thanks I will be the usual protocol then all right we'll now move to announcements by members of the council announcements colleagues customer Middleton thank you mr. Mayor and good afternoon colleagues good afternoon to all who are watching this is a pretty exciting day I keep tapping Morse code to council Caballero who's sitting next to me through our screen but I want to thank you mr. Mayor for as we emerge we still got some time some work to do but as we emerge out of this pandemic at the local level thank you for your leadership during this time from the time that the stay-at-home order was declared and state of emergency was declared up until now this has been a long hard journey for our city as just on a personal note as as a resident of the city and the citizen I want to say how how powerful it is I think symbolically for me to see our government at work in this chamber together in spite of all that's happened I think that's a that's a good sign that Durham is back we're moving and we're on the rise but we also are mindful of the numbers relative to the variant the Delta variant of COVID that numbers are spiking all over our country all of us up here are vaccinated but we're still taking precautions and I just want to lean in on the importance to all of our residents and citizens that are watching today that if you haven't done so to please get vaccinated it is the best it is the best way to protect against the Delta variant and COVID in general while we are here in this chamber we know that we still have to be vigilant and none of us want to go backwards none of us want to go back to the days of lockdown and one of the best ways we can do that is to all get vaccinated and to maintain our vigilance so I just want to say how good it is to see each of you with my own eyes here in person in the chamber I want to thank the staff as well matter manager and your staff who have done just an incredible job in preparing the chamber and preparing the building who kept the city running while we were staring at each other on screens but a lot of work went into being in this chamber in this room today and do not let the the the sparsity of the population in here fool you a lot of work and effort went into preparing this day from equipment to all kind of things so I want to thank every department that had a hand in preparing this room and matter manager I know you will convey the thanks of the council and the thanks for the city to our incredible staff who made this day possible that we all longed for pivoting that Mr. Mayor while we want break we know that even as we were scoring victories with new companies moving here and even as we are scoring victories over COVID we still and we passed an incredible budget congratulations to madam manager that was your first budget as city manager so congratulations to you and congratulations to my colleagues for passing what I thought what I think is an incredible budget but even with that we know we still have challenges before us as a city from still emerging out of COVID still dealing with gunfire issues of violence in our city and those who are not fully participating in the economic prosperity of our city congratulations to Durham for making the list number two place to live in the country I I coral with not being number one but what we'll take number two for now I know we've been in the news quite a bit Mr. Mayor about something that we said our racial equity report that was issued over a year ago seems like some folk in Raleigh just read it and I know that Durham's name has been bandied about quite a bit but I would just respectfully submit that one of the reasons why Durham is the number two place to live in the country is because we do focus on equity because we do wrestle with history for everybody that's going to be bragging that the number two place to live in the country is in their state I would just impress upon them to remember why we made that list it's not just about economic prowess not just a magnificent of our educational institutions but because we were honest with our history we're honest with our mistakes we're honest with our stumbles as a nation as a city and we seek redress and I think that is added to the the calculus of our success as the best place to live in the United States of America speaking of of things that make us great I want to send a shout out Mr. Mayor during the summer I had an opportunity on your behalf to give a proclamation read a proclamation in honor of two time Olympian James Carter James Carter is the head coach of Bull City Express Omar Beasley is the president of that organization they had fifty not fifty seven kids registered and participated in the regional and state competition for the United States of America track and field association thirty nine kids mainly Durham residents have qualified to participate in the junior Olympics being held in Jacksonville Florida let me say that again thirty nine kids mainly Durham residents are eligible to participate in the junior junior Olympics the United States of America track and field association junior Olympics in Jacksonville Florida they've raised about eighty five hundred dollars of a needed twenty thousand dollars to get there I plan on making my donation to them this afternoon but I want to raise that up as an example of the type of things that we should be leaning in on when we talk about root causes and talk about giving our kids things to do and when we look at the news each night and see gun violence and victimization these are the kind of stories that I think we need to be lifting up in examples we need to be raising we got a bunch of Durham kids who are going to be participating in the junior Olympics in Jacksonville Florida and I want to send my congratulations out to Coach Carter to President Beasley and to the Bull City Express track club here in Durham and to all those families that I know are excited and I know that we'll do all we can as a community and as a city to make sure those kids get there with that said the budget has passed but we've got a lot of work to do and and we're back let's stay back by getting vaccinated and staying vigilant against this pandemic that has done enough damage I think to our country and to our community already good to be with you God bless you God bless Durham thank you Mr. Mayor thank you very much council member colleagues other announcements good afternoon council member great to see you good evening well good afternoon I want to apologize I I want to apologize I was running a little late and I just wanted to acknowledge and say good afternoon to everyone and welcome back we're glad to have you council member great to see you thank you good to see you too all right colleagues any further announcements all right we'll now move to priority items by the city manager manager manager good afternoon it's great to see you in person thank you good afternoon mr. mayor madame pro tem members of the Durham City Council I do have a few priority items for you this afternoon agenda item number 22 contract with maiden Durham the administration is requesting that the rules be suspended which would allow the contract to meet the city's deadline for payments utilizing 2021 funds agenda item number 27 consolidated annexation partial parcel K plan attachments number one and number 20 were updated agenda item number 29 dr. Rochelle newton citizens matters attachment number two has been added an agenda item number 30 contract for booking agent is a supplemental item that has been added for today and finally agenda item number 31 Durham guaranteed income pilot there will be this is also a supplemental in progress includes a presentation in this agenda and we expect that presentation to last for about 10 minutes that is all I have today mr. mayor thank you very much matter manager colleagues you've heard the manager's priority items can I have a motion for their approval so moved second moved by council member freeman seconded by mayor pro tem johnson all in favor please say aye I oppose no motion passes unanimously all right we'll now move to our city attorney madam attorney great to see you any priority items here as well mr. mayor it's good to see madam mayor pro tem members of city council it's wonderful to be in your presence like in your physical presence decided about it we do not have any priority items today thank you very much madam attorney madam clerk any priority items today good afternoon everybody the city clerk's office has no priority items thank you madam clerk great to see you too all right now we'll move to our administrative consent items the city clerk's office item one citizens advisory committee appointment item two Durham bicycle and advisory commission appointment, item three Durham cultural advisory board appointments, item four Durham historic preservation commission appointment, item five Durham homeless services advisory committee appointments, item six Durham open space and trials commission appointment, item seven human relations commission appointment, item eight mares Hispanic Latino committee appointment, item nine participatory budgets steering committee appointment, kana ten recreation advisory commissioner appointments, under apartment items item 11 under audit services cemetery operations performance audit June 2021 mayor I'd like to pull that please all righty under item 12 bylaws for the Racial Equity Commission item 13 under community development approval of a multi-family housing facility known as trails and twin lakes apartments and financing with multi-family housing revenue bonds item 14 contract with a housing authority the city of Durham for the provision of tenant based rental assistance services for two years item 15 interlocal agreement with Durham County for the provision of housing assistance and related supportive services for two years 2021-2023 under Department of Transportation agreement with North Carolina excuse me State University for the development enhancement and maintenance of the Triangle Regional Model I'm going to pull item 16 for question about that item 17 construction contract with Crowder Construction Company for the North Durham Water Reclamation Facility process improvements phase 2 construction just want to say on this item this is the first time that I've seen our diversity questionnaire in action matter manager it's great to see it on these items the list of the resources at the end of the diversity questionnaire is great and I think I will pull this item because I have a question about what we do to follow up on some of the questions on that questionnaire so I'll pull item 17 just to discuss that item 18 professional engineering services contract with Hazen and Sawyer PC for the Western intake partnership water intake and transmission infrastructure engineering project item 19 professional services contract with Raftalus financial consultants Inc for the Western intake partnership governance an emergency communications department item 20 city County radio system service agreement renewal with Motorola Solutions Inc and item 21 under general services department change order for the Durham Parks and Recreation Administration building air handling unit replacement contract with HM current corporation under Office of Economic and Workforce Development item 22 contract with made in Durham this is an item that we'll come back to in a minute that the I have a question on this so I think we'll go through the others and we'll we'll come back to this the manager would like us to vote today on this under public works department item 3 catch base and insert pilot study SP 2021-01 professional services contract going to pull that item item 24 contract SW 81 public works street maintenance repairs 2021 item 25 contract SW 81 C request for qualifications for inspections for public works street maintenance repairs under presentations budget management services department item 26 participatory budgeting cycle to results and we have a presentation on this item under public hearings in the county planning department item 27 consolidated annexation parcel K under item 28 consolidated annexation 405 T. W. Alexander under citizens matters to be heard at one o'clock item 29 Dr. Rochelle Newton and we also have another citizen who has signed up James Chavis under supplemental items parks and recreation department item 30 contract for booking agent and under the city manager's office item 31 Durham guaranteed income pilot we also have a presentation on this item Madam manager I think what we should do before dealing with the pulled items in the presentations is to take up item 22 so we can go ahead and get that disposed of is that meet your pleasure so colleagues let's look at item 22 this is the made in Durham contract that the manager would like us to go ahead and move on today I'm going to why don't we discuss it a little bit first my my questions were who else funds made in Durham I see that we're being asked to provide $100,000 I know there have been previous funders in the past and just wondered who else is funding it and what are what we know about other people continuing to support them not sure how we're doing this now we get good good afternoon Mr. Mayor council members the my name is A.J. Graham Scott and with the office of economic and reports development and to the best of my knowledge to answer your question I know that the county of Durham is also supporting the fund made in Durham they I know that they're in the process of trying to leverage funds to apply for various grants but the extent of which has been awarded I do not know thank you Ms. Graham Scott and the technology works that's great I'm I'm I'm interested in whether or not there are private funders who are continuing to fund made in Durham and I'm happy to go ahead and support this but I'd like to hear that a manager back from the administration at some point about even just an email would be great yeah all right colleagues any more discussion on item 22 council member Middleton and thank you Mr. Mayor free line thank you Mr. Mayor just a question I can't in on supporting this as well I think made in Durham does great work here in our city I'm curious how far back does our financial relationship with made in Durham go with what year would this represent if we are funding them when we approve this contract and if you don't know it right now you can get back to me on that council member Middleton I'm apologetic I do not know how long this is it certainly predates my tenure with the city and I don't know how far back it goes but we'll be happy to get information and have it forwarded to you in the email thanks much yes council member free line thank you Mr. Mayor I think in the brother Middleton in the memo it says the city provided funding for made in Durham each year since its inception in 2015 so it looks like about six years thank you my question is about I'm curious how made in Durham got this relationship with the city and particularly in context of other organizations council member Middleton earlier mentioned the wonderful work that the track organization is doing and I'm interested in finding more ways to leverage city funds to support efforts like that and this I mean this is just really good important work for our youth and I think this is where we need to be leveraging our you know public safety dollars and and in this kind of moment of you know increased violence in Durham these are the types of solutions that I'm really enthusiastic about supporting so I'm just kind of curious a little more about why made in Durham was selected and and you know through what mechanism and what if any other avenues for supporting work like this are available in this way as opposed to our traditional kind of budget proposal MO thank you thank thank you for that question I do think that it would be most efficient since this is you know a work session item for us to come back with some historical information about how the relationship started as well as some of the other questions I'm noting them here and we will provide that information as an as an attachment to the agenda just to make sure that we are correct it does you know represents a historical relationship you know I could say some anecdotal things just from looking you know from the outside but I like for those for that information to be really accurate so I would prefer for us to bring back something and writing um attaching to the item if the item goes forward thank you madam manager and yeah just to be clear I'm definitely interested in supporting this and don't want my inquiry to slow process if there's an imminent need for for funding just really kind of curious and excited about um you know other things we can support in this way and also just structurally how the city works this is an unusual thing I'm curious why it wasn't in the regular budget and it's coming up now it's just kind of a institutional knowledge piece that I'd like to get a wrap my head around better thank you thank you council member um I I think that uh it is in the budget but and it was in the um OEWD budget I'm pretty sure uh but now we're coming forward with the contract for it I think is what's going on yes is that correct madam manager that is correct and and the reason for the suspension of the rules is just because it was budgeted in the fiscal year that we are closing closing out now but madam manager is going to give us some more information about that any other questions or concerns uh council member freeman thank you um mr mayor and thank you madam manager manager for bringing this forward I do want to note that I have raised some concerns in the past about the not necessarily the service but whom is served by made in Durham and so I just want to make sure that it's included in this contract which I do not see and cannot support today how you will align getting that type of information coming back and so I would look forward to seeing what that would look like before I were to approve a contract like this so thank you thank you council member I'm not sure about council member freeman's uh tack over there um but uh there may be uh ms wallace you I know you you you can hear that she's having problems with her tax so okay they're working on it thank you very much it's a brave new world uh and we appreciate everybody's patience thank you other comments on item 22 all right we've been asked by the administration to suspend the rules and vote on this item today um because that the money has been allocated for this fiscal year um madam uh is there any more any other comments all right then I'll accept a motion uh to suspend the rules move to suspend second uh moved by council member Middleton seconded by mayor pro tem johnson that we suspend the rules and vote all in favor please say aye pose no all right the motion passes unanimously and now we'll vote on the item uh is there a motion to approve this item move to approve second uh moved by council member Middleton seconded by council member caballero uh all in favor please say aye aye pose no uh the motion passes five to one all right um we're all getting used to the the voting again too kind of a whole another yeah like quicker um okay uh and now uh the items that are pulled that I have and we'll move to the the citizens matters in just a moment madam manager 11 16 17 and 23 and then we have the uh the two presentations all right uh we'll now move to citizens matters to be heard at one o'clock and dr rochelle newton I hope is with us virtually let's see if that is happening I am dr newton welcome we're glad to have you and uh good to see you and you have three minutes thank you so much um I wrote a proposal that basically describes creating it support in community specifically in Durham but more importantly throughout the United States and the whole premise here is to create IT support for people who do not normally have technology resources as in IT support within the organization or the resources so I asked that we consider an IT support a community-wide IT support program in Durham that would be staffed by citizens of Durham specifically students and marginalized staff and marginalized communities in Durham although that's not the ideal but that's what my premise is is that we give people jobs and hopes that have not had that and people have access to resources that they have not had and I think COVID proved to us that there are a lot of people who struggle with technology parents and students struggled with it during the academic year others struggle with it just trying to be an essential worker or getting their information and so I think a community-wide IT support program would be something that would be ideal in our community and it would be something that was support and give hope to those who who not normally have that hope and specifically in IT it is a high-demand field turnover is often high and finding ideal IT support people are often difficult so by bringing in people from our community and training them giving them an opportunity does a lot both economically and socially thank you Dr. Newton thank you so much your very detailed proposal is attached to this agenda item and I just want to express my appreciation to you very very much and we'll all take a good look at it I know our staff will take a look at it as well and provide a response but we're very grateful to you thank you so much thank you Mr. Chavis welcome Mr. Chavis it's good to see you you are our first uh in-person speaker at the Durham City Council in in 16 months they're about so we're glad to have you good to see you and you also have three minutes thank you mill and nice seeing all you all except one person I am calling on name but you know what I'm talking about but my concern today is you're all talking about defunding the police but I want every one year look they got children to think about that because that was four shooting in one area in one week and not one of you all came out there to find out or see about and on the last one three of us I said three including could have been killed by a driver because we were trying to get you all to understand the program that was going on in our community over there but not one of you all came out and still have not came out but you're talking about defunding the police in a different manner I want you to understand that the young lady well new money to Durham by having a job not asking the city to pay her any affairs like in Durham with others and you know who I'm talking about she had a job but her job is liking some now because her life could have been taken by the shooter the shooter came down Andrew Avenue and she was trying to get out if the shooter had kept straight across it could have killed her and the young white guy right behind her but he turned and came up the street while I was trying to get in my car that's how much concern I want y'all to see y'all see about us and think about us she is still in pain and misery about this she's still having flashback about this now why y'all can give away one million dollars with the county see how you can give away millions of dollars to people that goes through things like this for certain treatment okay because it's not easy this is not my first time about losing my life like this it's not my second time so I know how what she's going through and I am reaching out to her every chance I get I hope you all will reach out to her this morning thank you mr. Chavis thank you very much for being with us today all right colleagues you've heard citizens matters and now we're going to move to the items that have been pulled we'll start with item 11 cemetery operation performance audit and this item was pulled by councilmember middleton thank you mr. Marin thank you to staff who'll be addressing my questions I was really struck when I read this audit because it seemed like such a stark contrast to what I'm accustomed to hearing when it comes to the financial matters of the city as a whole so I was really I'll read the first line in highlights it says at present controls over cash receipts at the cemetery division are weak and the weak controls create an environment that present an opportunity for fraud to occur lack of segregation of duties standard operating procedures management oversight and staffing all contribute to this weak control environment in addition record keeping practices need to be streamlined data resides in different sources systems and there are no set guidelines that specify what information should be collected and recorded in the different record documents last systems cemetery division staff use handmarked maps to determine which gray sites are still available and it goes on and on in that same spirit so it you know when i'm used to hearing when we hear about audits of again of the city's overall financial management this kind of struck me in my other life my other job I spend quite a bit of time at cemetery so I was particularly drawn to this audit I guess the first question is this is this characterization uh represent a degradation since the last audit or is this status quo since the last audit and then you're available staff I think we'll I think staff will pop up on the screen here at a moment yes sir good afternoon mayor shul uh madam mayor pro tem council members germane brunton director of audit services I also see director uh who is the director of general services and the cemetery division is a component of that department but but I would like to say councilman middleton that this the controls at the city overall are really strong we've had great audits over the years but we have hundreds of processes at the city and sometimes we do have processes that that we need to work on and the point of the audit is to bring light to shed light on these areas where we need to make improvements that's exactly what this did and this the staff and I'll let Gina talk to this but the staff are taking the recommendations seriously and I do want to say to Gina's credit she was the one we we have a process to look at what areas we're going to audit over the course of the fiscal year and Gina brought this process to our brought this to us to ask if we would look at this any more in-depth way so I just want to give credit to her for bringing this to our attention but I'll let Gina speak to this thank you thank you miss brunton Gina probes general services director and that is true we um we were interested in having a neutral third party take a look at our processes we had a lot of things that and initiatives that we were focused on at cemeteries not only on appearance and maintenance but also on our business unit side we have hired new staff and we've been focusing on our business unit side so having um audit department take a look where we could continue to make improvements was the goal of audit as well as um our our process with moving forward with an IT governance a recommendation to have a software you'll see that many of the recommendations have to do with our record keeping and the importance of having a robust software program to support our our cemetery operations is another initiative we had ongoing and that we're implementing so I'm hopeful that all of the recommendations that we've seen as well as as the insights we're going to continue to make these tweaks and improvements and it's a roadmap for us in the next year thank you so much for that and then let let me be really clear I understand that um we are so vaunted around the country precisely because of what dr Brewington said um and I think Gina you echoed as well that are we're not afraid to ask the questions and don't attempt to cover up and and the transparency that characterizes this department um I think is world class I'm going to be very clear in that that we we don't cover problems that when we know there's an issue we we in a full-throated way admit them and fix them which is why we enjoy the reputation that we do I am I'm just a little bit curious again as to how how far back if we know what what's the baseline of of when we looked at operations in the cemetery division relative to the audit that's before us now I'm just wondering how far is this the first time we've looked at of the cemetery operations or when's the last time when's the last audit did that occur and and what do these characterizations look like relative to that the last time uh in order to cemetery services was conducted yes sir so uh councilman middleton I've been at the city since 2007 and this is the first time we've looked at um cemetery operations and if you can recall I know 2007 is a long time ago do you have any idea of what what things were like then well I actually I think this is the first time that um the audit staff under my leadership and the prior leadership have looked at the cemetery operations fair enough to be certain but I think it's the first time we've actually looked at cemetery operations uh when we talk about looking at the maintenance and the the cash handling procedures etc right um absolutely well well thank you so much I think that that's going to in my line of inquiry I want to I want to thank you uh for the uh the transparency in it and for the unflinching uh look at it that's how we get better and if there's anything that that the council can do or from the elected level I know you guys got in the control there's anything we need to do in terms of uh funding or whatever uh I'm sure you'll you'll let us know but I want to thank you it's no need it's difficult to overstate how important a service this is uh for so many people in our city at some of the most challenging times um in their lives so we wanted to make sure the operation is as our all-derm operations fit from top to bottom so um that's the end of my inquiry thank you so much and best wishes as you um tackle uh the challenges there and to make this department uh better um thank you mr mayor thank you staff thank you council member I'm sorry Clark and I are doing a little business over here no worries let me just say uh add to your comments that when the those of us on the audit service committee had some of the same concerns when we saw that because you're right uh usually when we see the audit of our processes uh you know there are always some improvements but this had more improvements necessary than usual and so we had the same concerns got the same answers and had the same level of comfort that you expressed I mean I I'm very comfortable that the uh you know I'm appreciative that the department asked for the audit because they recognized that the concerns and it's just great to have you know we have this internal audit function uh that not every city has that is absolutely great and uh so yeah so appreciate your comments and just want to let you know that we also had those same very same concerns thank you mr mayor yes uh thank you council member Middleton for that line of inquiry it's really interesting to me to hear that this was the first audit and I'm kind of curious um this is kind of a rhetorical question but um uh what is the process by which our auditing department goes about determining places that need focus is it kind of like a where there's smoke there's fire thing and then you go in or is there like a preemptive thing I'm also thinking about it in the context of the uh the grants that we've gotten to audit um well it's a different type of audit the work we've done in the water department to look at uh racial disparities and uh fees and things like that it seems like you know when you do the work to dig beneath the surface there's always areas for improvement but I'm curious about uh kind of the methodology of how and when we choose where to put that microscope um yeah because uh yeah hearing that hearing that this is the first one since 2007 you know or maybe ever makes me wonder if there are other uh places where we we could be peering to to find ways to strengthen our you know work thank you thank you that's uh let's let's ask um there is a way there is a system and uh so let's hear from um Dr Brewington um Dr Brewington you still with us could you answer uh council member Freelon's question about how we choose the audits that we do yes sir and council member Freelon thanks for that question um just a little bit about the process we um engage in what we call our risk assessment once we get a list of audit quote areas and we seek um topics or areas from the exec team from all the directors from the members on the independent audit committee we go to conferences we look at what issues are some sort of um hot spots around the country so there are several ways we also had a citywide enterprise risk management assessment performed I guess now back in 2020 and the leadership at the time as a part of that um that process that citywide risk assessment process uh came up with six categories uh of where they think the the highest risk are and so what we in the audit department do and and there are actually um five of us in the department and three folks really focus on in the audit um division or the audit program and others focus on other things but um our capacity in the department is about 10 audits max per year um now we would love to do more if we have more staff but our capacity at the moment is about 10 audits per year and so we we take all of the suggestions we take our research um and we put that in a spreadsheet and we rank those particular items um and we should have about 49 or 50 some odd items per year on that list and um and then we um again put them through this risk model so again we can only do 10 audits per year the audits that are provided the topics that are provided by the directors we tend to give more priority because they're the experts they know where the issues are and we we appreciate that and we try to make sure that we can accommodate that um so that's that's a bit about the process I hope that answered your question absolutely thank you thank you very much council member and thank you dr Brewington thank you all right colleagues any other questions on item 11 all right uh before we move to the next pulled item there were there were two other speakers that had signed up to other items and I'm sorry that I did not realize that I apologize and appreciate the clerk drawing it to my attention um I know one on item 13 uh I know the speaker was just here if there were questions but on item 14 um which is the contract with Durham Housing Authority for provision of tenant based rental assistance service uh Ms. Gwen Silver uh would like to speak on that um and Ms. Silver is not here and so do we are we able to bring her on the screen all right good evening Ms. Silver I apologize to you um sorry that I was my mix up and I appreciate the clerk letting me know that you're here and we're glad to have you you have three minutes thank you so much I'm Gwen Silver 302 Sapphire driving the city of Durham um good afternoon to the city council county county city manager uh city administrators and of course the Durham community I'm speaking today on the city of Durham Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program and that's on the agenda for funding for over half a million dollars I support this program as well as other programs administered by Durham Housing Authority because these programs aid and assist Durham's most vulnerable population this month I attended my first DHA town hall meeting hosted by state representatives at Hawkins and these meetings have been going on for a while to give Durham residents DHA residents and the community a platform to voice their concerns last week I sent you an email um about the heartfelt cry of one of the residents at this meeting who's sleeping in a chair because her unit is infested with bed bugs Tuesday I emailed you the news report about a DHA mother living in the most unimaginable filth conditions that mostly resemble a third world country on February 3rd I responded to the email chain about rats and roaches at Hoover Road complex and I emailed you photos I took in 2010 about a Liberty Street unit full of roaches dead and alive roach powder chemicals and everything else and DHA told this mother relocating from out of town basically from Virginia oh it's ready ready for you to move in but it was not September 8th 2020 I voiced my concern about DHA evicting families in the middle of a pandemic because the rent protections were expiring all of this is symptomatic of a bigger problem that DHA has accountability and I want to know to whom are they accountable it doesn't seem that they're accountable to the city for these families who are battling roaches insects just poor living conditions and I don't know if they're accountable to HUD but today I'm asking you for two three two three commitments actually can you relocate the woman who's living with the bedbugs and sleeping in in a chair why can't she move into a unit that's already been approved for renting one of the newer units number two can you find security money for this mother that's sleeping in mold mushrooms and everything else so she can get moving to a livable a unit she says that they've taken so much of the security deposit for things that they say she broke that she doesn't have that money anymore and three accountability for Durham House of Authority because we should not have slumber landlords even if it's DHA I support the rent-based services I support the programs I support public housing I support all of this but I do not support slumber landlords be they DHA or anybody else I ask you to act and I think the citizens of Durham would like for you to act as well. Ms. Silver thank you for being with us today I had previously forwarded your email I know that DHA is aware of the concern that you raised and I'm sure they'll be dealing with or I'm sure they have already dealt with that apartment and appreciate you're letting us know all right we'll now move to item 16 agreement with North Carolina State University of the Development Enhancement and Maintenance the Triangle Regional Model I pulled this item my question is I wasn't quite clear about the financial impact in the memo I know that the MPO is paying 80 percent from federal dollars the localities pay another 20 percent so we are paying a share of about forty seven thousand dollars allocated to us by population within the MPO is that right yes bill judge assistant transportation director the so you're correct 80 percent will be paid with federal funds the remaining 20 percent would be paid through the MPO's annual work plan of which the city pays based on population all right thank you mr judge appreciate that all right we'll now move to item unless there are any other questions on item 16 we'll move to item 17 I also pulled this one this is the construction contract with counter counter construction now my questions really regard the diversity questionnaire in action I'm interested in so on this questionnaire in this case the crowd or construction had a lot of good and useful answers that one of the things they said was that they don't recruit at HBCU's I'm really glad we asked that question do we do any follow-up on on these questions I know it's very new but do we do any follow-up do we fit or do we plan to do any follow-up I mean just having the question on there of course is a suggestion to crowd or construction that or anybody else that we think that they should be recruiting at HBCU's but I'm curious as to is there anything beyond this questionnaire that we do I'm not sure that there should be but I'm interested in of course you know it's for our it's for our use at the council as well but I just thought any thoughts on this on the part of staff good afternoon mayor mayor pro tem members of council Don Greeley director of department of water management as far as your question that department of water management doesn't necessarily follow up on the questionnaire we discuss with our both you know companies like Crowder and our consultants that work for us that the questions they are you know strongly encouraged their business practices to take advantage of those resources and opportunities that that are out there with historically black colleges as well as another of the other services and you know certainly the the youth programs that we have as far as whether OEWD or equity inclusion does some follow up I would defer to them thank you is there anyone I would think that yeah so my thought is that this is not something that I think we would want each individual apartment to do that's not there your area of expertise but I guess I would ask that a manager to just give some thought through our racial equity inclusion department to whether or not we want to do any follow up on these kinds of things certainly um you know obviously this is a new process that we're implementing and one of the reasons that we implemented it is so that the council could have in advance information about the companies that were before you to receive you know the the nod for contract it you know was never really intended to be you know the last word but just to give you an advance notice some of these questions you have asked contractors once they get in place so that was one of the reasons but certainly any information that we collect in any of our systems from contractors we are anticipating using that information as we go forward to improve outcomes in some of our highest priorities and certainly our spending with women minority owned businesses our recruitment from some of our local universities where we know that there are minority candidates for jobs and particularly if those schools specialize in areas that the the contractor hire the contractor hires their employees from so i can i cannot say today that we have moved to that step but certainly hear your feedback here and we are more than willing to continue to develop this process to improve the outcomes in this area thank you madam manager and this questionnaire is a great improvement and it's a real big step forward so thank you and appreciate your response councilmember caballero yeah i just had a quick follow-up question that this was a great tool it's easy easier to get the information in a way um would we potentially want to because i i understand that as a a business maybe they don't honestly know where to get some of these this information so would something like a tool where it's like here is a list of all the student organizations at all schools not just hbc us when i think about building sciences to think about nc state and i'm sure there are the black student building association groups over there women architecture groups over there and so that way there's a resource that we're handing to folks that we can say hey we understand this is challenging here's a here's our suggestion for you to start building these relationships thank you yes i mean the there is this great list of resources but that could certainly be added and i think that's something we could act i think that the manager's listening and i know she will take this back to our department so thank you all right colleagues thank you any other anything else on item 17 all right uh we'll move to item 23 the catch basin insert pilot study professional services contract i wanted to know what does a catch basin insert look like what does it do um i couldn't figure that out from the memo is it uh what is a catch basin insert good afternoon mayor shul madam mayor pro tem johnson and council members my name is meghan walsh and i'm a civil engineer with the department of public works and thank you for your question on what are catch basin inserts and the answer isn't it's they're different types a lot of times they are mesh sometimes they could be made of a steel wiring but in the um a bigger picture of catch basin inserts they are something that are placed within the catch basin to catch growth solid and they are to be removed and emptied and put back in place thank you i appreciate that is there is this mean are these is this kind of a decentralized thing or is there one that sits on every you know each of the main you know i think about this this catch basin that you're talking about we have a couple of main streams that are coming into that catch basin is that where the the the inserts would be or are they decentralized are they in people's yards you know are we talking about that kind of decentralized treatment what would it or are they larger and put in mainly in you know tributaries so these catch basins that were or catch basin inserts that we're looking at in this pilot study are for catch basins that are in the street stormwater catch basin so they're smaller and they're decentralized and we're looking at um where um they'll be placed within the drainage area and how that affects the maintenance needs so they're smaller and they're in the street um stormwater catch basin got you so for a basin like this would we need more like three or would we need more like three hundred and three for the pilot study area that we're looking at at this point we don't know this we're looking at how many how effective they are and if they will work with the locations that they're in and the types of stormwater catch basins and we're also looking at how effective they are in terms of the amount of growth solids that they remove so yeah at this point we don't know but we're hoping to find out more great well i really appreciate you all doing this pilot i think it's wonderful i remember when you all started on the algal scrubbers and i was scratching my head and wondering and those have turned out to be really useful um and uh i'm really appreciative thank you any other questions colleagues on item 23 all right um we now have two um two presentations that i believe are remaining items items 26 items 31 and we'll begin with item 26 and this is partitions participatory budgeting cycle two results all right mayor members of council good afternoon my name is andrew holland and i currently serve as the assistant a budget director in budget management services department i would also like to introduce my colleagues first jamie tendell who is currently serving as the interim budget engagement coordinator and also our pv intern um elizabeth barriger who is a rosin sophomore at duke university so we're very excited to have this opportunity to provide you with the pv cycle two results and update so this is our agenda and the items in which we will cover throughout our presentation first we will discuss the genesis of pv cycle two and then we're going to walk you through the pv process also we wanted to carve out some time to talk to you about some challenges that we face during the implementation of pv during covid and of course if you have any questions join after the presentation please let us know and we will be glad to answer the questions okay so last september you see the council approve one million dollars for our darn connected non-profits and community organizations who directly are serving those residents impacted by the covid-19 pandemic in addressing issues contributing to racial economic and social inequities in Durham due to this new focus and scope pv staff was tasked in establishing and standing up a grant funding program specifically for a darn connected non-profits and community organizations to respond to so for a community organization and non-profit to be eligible for funding they had to provide services specifically for the underserved communities and they were eligible to receive up to $50,000 in grant funding so this is an illustration of the pv darn cycle two so this past winter we conducted a follow-up survey to see if the engagement results from the comprehensive plan were still the needs of the residents during covid their survey could be completed using an online engagement platform social pinpoint that was a platform in which we are currently using and also we wanted to have a hardware as approached as well where we wanted to meet people where they are where we still had that face-to-face interaction where we had paper ballots for residents to complete so in mid-feb-were to the entire month of march residents and also our organization non-profit organizations had the opportunity to respond to respond to the survey results so this was open for about a month month and a half so for the entire month of april our internal staff and also our budget delegates reviewed and scores proposals based upon equity impact and feasibility so for the almost the entire month of may and the early part of june residents 13 years older had opportunity to vote on those projects and currently we're in the implementation phase where we are currently working with our city attorney's office and designing a pb contract orientation and our goal is to start drafting contracts to the winners begin in next month so next i'm going to talk about the the community survey that we distributed out this past winter residents were asked to rank these 10 focus areas it's worth noting that if a resident did not see a focus air that spoke to them they could write in the focus area so one of the things that we saw especially with the right ends was a common pattern where we saw that many of our residents wrote in the need for affordable housing answered our survey so we had about 1,300 residents who responded to our survey we're very proud to see and to show you all that the majority of our respondents were people of color i think this is a testament to our outreach and engagement strategy that we implemented through covet one of the things that we wanted to do as i alluded to before was to meet people where they were so that included going to the dirt bus station that also included partnering with minority barbershops hair salons and also partnering with our enis engagement team so special things to the enis engagement team for allowing their networks to complete the survey also we are very proud to say that the majority of our respondents to this survey was females at 65 percent also if you're looking at the age we had a great representation of the youth who responded to the survey in which this age group included the youth 13 years to 17 years old and we also had a great representation from the other cohorts listed if you look at the zip code the majority of our respondents resided in zip code 27703 and also 27707 so these are the priority results and this is the average ranking as you can see the youth opportunities was was tied as the highest ranking priorities amongst our respondents and if you can see throughout this graph it's pretty well distributed across the board so we're very proud to know that a lot of these concerns are still relevant at that particular time so what we wanted to do was we wanted to have the opportunity to capture as many of those focus areas and categorize those focus areas into three categories so the first category that we developed was children youth and family wellness next community building economic opportunities and last but not least health and human services we also wanted to have the opportunity to define these categories so if you look at the children youth and family wellness it is really focused on the youth and the elderly in regards to community building economic in economic opportunities the focus is really geared towards employment opportunities for access intervention prevention and health and human services the emphasis was COVID-19 emergency assistance and also mental health services so next I would like to transition into the proposal development phase and really talk about some of the key players within this PB process community members also known as budget delegates met within their committee to work towards a goal of scoring grant proposals and ensuring that they align with the needs outlining focus areas so for this cycle we had a total of 43 budget delegates to participate in the proposal development phase one of the things that we did was to provide 29 knee-based stipends to these budget delegates we did this last cycle so we wanted to ensure that there was some consistency there and also our budget delegates committed to one to five hours per week and vetting and scoring projects we also had our budget facilitators which is a leadership role in which their responsibilities were to ensure that the budget delegates were meeting milestones and deadlines with vetting projects and the time commitment per week for the budget facilitators were 10 to 20 hours so this is the racial makeup of our budget delegates as you can see the majority of our budget delegates were people of color and the majority were African-American at 51% so we are very proud of this statistic and again we want to give thanks to NIS engagement team for helping us with the recruitment of these budget delegates so now i'm going to talk about the grant application in the scoring we did have a online application which was housed in our social pinpoint platform to ensure that non-profit organizations and community organizations had the opportunity to learn about the process we held multiple grant application organizations throughout the month of February so there were various components within application first we had the eligibility requirement form in which that basically talked about the framework of the grant funding program and we also had the budget in which we asked each of the organizations to provide a detail operating budget we also asked for the organizations to provide grantor references just to get more insight of their ability to manage funds this was not a requirement because we wanted to ensure that this process was equitable so we did ask for some of the smaller organizations to provide us with any financial records such as any fundraising documents and they could also identify project fiscal sponsor to serve in the capacity of managing their funds so in regards to our rubric it basically mirrored the rubric that we used last cycle in which the budget delegates vetted and scored projects based upon equity and impact and we had our city staff vet and review projects based upon feasibility and special thanks to our city staff representatives from parks and rat nis office on youth the city attorney's office community development and ts so they were very hard with working alongside with the budget delegates to make their projects feasible so i wanted to share these quotes you know feel as though these quotes are very insightful and it really gives you an ideal of the experience of the budget delegates so the first quote says i would welcome the opportunity to impact decisions that represent the interests of all of our citizens more specifically the low income and underserved communities and darn cheap population these are critical areas in which i feel collectively we could do a better job of inclusion where our financial resources are concerned the next quote i believe decision makers should be representative of the communities they serve i want to actually be part of a process to make a noticeable change changes in the community in the last quote most african-americans still do not engage in community involvement and this program offers a great opportunity to help change that narrative getting the word out to the underserved communities is the first step then having someone looks like them helps foster trust in the program overall again i wanted to share this with you because these quotes are very powerful in nature and it really speaks to the importance of having a program which allows residents to be part of decision making so next i will pass the presentation presentation over to Jamie Tendall good afternoon everyone um i am here um to let you know about the um cycle two process that we did um and this year pv used the social pin point which in the first cycle we use map c and because map c was no longer available um we worked with the planning department to find a different community engagement platform that would assist us in this process as well as provide some ease um so that we can continue to use a hybrid approach during covid um they had some great features that we thought would be beneficial to our cycle two process such as the budgeting tool the serving tool and the mapping tool and so by using this platform um we wanted something that would be user friendly and easy to navigate so what you're looking at right now is the preview for the english ballot that we had we also created a spanish version of this same ballot myself and elizabeth worked very hard on trying to make sure that it was a good way for residents to be able to cast their votes during this process um residents had the opportunity to vote in all three categories or they could choose whichever one meant more to them or was just most important to them during the time so they had those options and then we also um gave them opportunity to enter for raffle prize of course we all know that covid made everything look different and feel different so we also wanted to make sure that we incorporated different ways that people can participate in the process so to go along with our hybrid approach of the social pinpoint site we created a qr code that people could um do a touchless version of voting where they could use their own phones where they can scan the codes and it would take them directly to the voting ballot or they could manually enter the website in and then they will be taken to the ballot so we had close to about 300 scans we placed these qr codes in some of our black owned restaurants so that the patrons could have the opportunity to scan while they waited for their food or even while they were ordering and also by the register we also had these printed up on flyers so that we can pass them out at various events so the individuals had the opportunity within the community we also work with various partners we work with them our office of public affairs which is now communications department we work with the carolina jews for justice who are very excited to work with us they actually kind of reached out to us to see how they can be involved so we provided them some information that they can share with their networks we work with spectacular magazines so they can share it with their networks as well and they post it on their social media and we also provided some generic information for the non-profits who were on the ballot so that they can share it with their constituents as well as the individuals that they served and their stakeholders and just to personalize it more so that the individuals that they served they knew that they were on the ballot so that they can make sure that they cast their vote in support for those non-profits so with our community outreach efforts as andrew mentioned before we kind of tailored it a lot different to accommodate covid in the previous cycle our goal was to get 10 000 votes but during this cycle one of our main goals was to make sure that we reach residents where they were as well as reaching residents who don't typically participate in processes around the city so we still wanted to provide that opportunity where we tabled at events and had paper ballots to assist residents in the process if they were unable to do it online we went to the Durham bus station at least twice a week throughout the month of May to have those opportunities available and as we mentioned we printed off the QR code so that we made it possible for people to be able to vote via their phone in any way that they thought was possible we also work with Oak Street Health by also tabling outside of their business to get the residents involved as well we work with the DHA community where we mailed out over a thousand ballots to our residents so that they can have the opportunity if they were not able to come to these events or they were not able to come out or even if they didn't have access to internet we work with some churches as well as NIS they provided us a lot of opportunities of events in the communities and as well as working with the minority owned businesses providing them with that code so they can share it with their customers and also we work with kids voting Durham they thought it would be a great opportunity for us to have an iVoted sticker this year we felt like it would be a good touch we didn't have one the previous year but if you generally vote a lot of people look forward to getting their iVoted sticker so this year we created a virtual sticker with kids voting Durham and it was actually created by a senior at Jordan High School who was excited about being a part of this process and it was a great way to involve our students in a different capacity to be able to provide this for PV and so the next few slides are just pictures of us out in the community encouraging residents to vote of course we wanted to make sure that we had all our safety precautions covered residents were still weary we're still living in a pandemic so we wanted to make sure that we were safe as well as the residents were safe being able to provide them with hand sanitizer or even because most of those times it was hot outside so we wanted to provide them with water and just being able to encourage them to be a part of this process because a lot of residents who we were trying to reach which were our black and brown residents used most of the services that the organizations that we had on the ballot offered so we wanted to make sure that they had those opportunities as well as all of the residents as well and so these are just other pictures of us out in the community encouraging residents to vote but just still having that touch so that individuals didn't feel like they couldn't participate in the process and so now I'm going to turn it over to Elizabeth who will talk about our grant application process as well as some of our demographics that we collected good afternoon um so for an overview of our grant application process as Andrew had mentioned earlier we had 63 grant applications from various nonprofits and community organizations serving Durham and from their PB staff divided them into our three priority areas 26 applications and children youth and family wellness that had $400,000 of our budget allocated to it um 26 applications in community building and economic opportunity that also had $400,000 allocated to it and then 11 applications to health and human services with $200,000 of our total one million dollar PV budget for cycle two allocated from there we moved on to proposal development about half of the applications from proposal development made it to the final ballot 13 12 and 6 in each of the categories respectively and then from there 22 total organizations were declared grant winners for a total project budgets of about $950,000 of our one million dollars in the process and now I will move on to discussing the results and the winning organizations um from our process um I will have graphics here but if you would like to see more detailed demographic information um from our process you are free to visit um pbdurham.org slash cycle two results for information um looking into our total number of votes per category um we wanted to make our ballots as easy and quick for residents to use as possible therefore um on our website residents had the option to either vote for one ballot category or all three if they thought each of the um three priority areas were important to them um the ballot with the most votes was children youth and family wellness with about 3600 votes followed by community building and economic opportunity and health and human services overall this means we had 8500 votes across three categories however I think it's important to note that these 8500 votes are not individual voters just the total number of votes in three categories overall since voters were able to vote and go in um more than one ballot category on our website um the reason we are unable to provide a precise number of individual and unique residents who voted in our process um was due to issues with our social pinpoint platform originally when we went in and made the three separate ballots um the those at the platform told us that we would be able to distinguish individual IP addresses to identify the number of unique residents that voted in our process but that ended up not being the case so we are able to provide our numbers for the number of unique voters in each of the ballot categories um now moving on to our health and human services category here are the six organizations listed um that were on our ballots and the four highlighted in green were our winners for the health and human services category and now for our other two ballots children youth and family wellness there were 13 organizations on our ballot nine of which were awarded grants based on the total number of votes and for community building and economic opportunities we had 12 total organizations on our ballot nine of which were awarded grants here is the list of winning projects in the health and human services category and total budget um I would like to use this opportunity to introduce Dr Harvey Hinton the executive director of the organization care one of our winning um one of our grant awardees to discuss a little bit more about his organization's um involvement with PB how are we doing with getting Dr Hinton on screen yes hello can you hear me I'm I'm I'm here we can Dr Hinton great great great great great thank you for this opportunity to speak about the process um I'm really happy that you guys went out and solicited a community because care uh we work with a lot of vulnerable people in Durham we don't have a large social media presence and so I was really excited to see the efforts that went out um to to help us uh you know advance our calls we're trying to make sure that everyone in Durham has access to good food uh health and wellness is important and we know that it begins with food so um this process was really good to get us out into the community and to see what people wanted I'm really happy to know that we have a service that people are interested in thank you very much Dr Hinton we really appreciate your being here thank you thank you yeah thank you so much to Dr Hinton now on these next two slides we have displayed our um winning projects in the children youth and family wellness category and I will use this opportunity to introduce Tamika Brown the executive director of HEARTS helping each adolescent mother reach their spark um to speak about her organization's involvement in the PV process hello everyone can you hear me okay yes we can Ms Brown hello hey I'm Mayor Scholl miss you down at Re City thank you all for the opportunity hello City Council I am Tamika Brown I'm founder and executive director of your favorite nonprofit organization called HEARTS and it stands for helping each adolescent reach their spark and what we do is we go into the high schools and to the communities and teach team moms who have become pregnant between the ages of 13 and 22 with the resources and services that they need to be self-sufficient and independent and this process was amazing I had a very good time in the midst of this promoting the PV Durham um participatory budget process to not only our participant participants but also the community of Durham um the staff made it most definitely easy and accessible to our participants our clients our families that we serve I know Mr Andrew met me with tons of flyers to pass out we actually had a bless fest where we actually gave away gently used clothing items to our participants in the community and he showed up with those flyers um and everyone that came in that day we had over 40 to 50 families that attended that event down at Re City with us and we had everyone vote as they were coming through the door we also had the ballots inside the bags just advocating and promoting the PV voting so it was amazing um oh man we had a good time we had a good time getting out into the community um and just engaging yes we are in the midst of the pandemic and we hadn't had the opportunity for that live touching and in agree um live and in person in the flesh so that was a way to get us out for community outreach and engagement so we enjoyed it um how we plan on use or some services that um hearts provide to the community to team moms who have become pregnant um we must definitely provide education and training our number one goal is to help the team moms who have become pregnant with the skills and the services the life skills that they need in order to be self-sufficient and independent for their families that they are raising up and also to eliminate the barriers that's associated with being a team mom um in 2018 it was reported that 227 moms dropped out of Durham public schools um in order to raise their children so it is our most definitely our mission to make sure that that population is served and not overlooked and underserved and undereducated um so that is a mission that we have of that we have in-house how do we plan to um use the funds that we have been awarded we most definitely want to strengthen our organization i'm very transparent and i tell everyone i am tired of being the only one that's doing this work and i need a team in order to make it happen so i'm passionate i'm a teacher at heart so i love to educate and i want to bring on um group facilitators and case managers along with me to help me advocate for the team moms and the team dads in Durham North Carolina in addition to emergency support services we know that the pandemic um has caused our participants to suffer um in what have caused their employment and their finances to suffer um as well as their transportation child care and of course housing assistance so emergency support services is most definitely on our list of to-do items and the love bugs children's closet where we can continue to provide the diapers and wipes and clothes and shoes that the team moms need and just overall help the team moms grow and become a better individual so that they can raise their children and their families to be an awesome citizen for Durham North Carolina so thank you again Durham County and City Council and of course the pb staff for allowing us and granting us the opportunity to make this happen for our community thank you miss brown we appreciate you've been with us today congratulations thank you and then um for our last category community building and economic opportunities in the next two slides we have displayed um the winning projects where funds will be dispersed and um i'd like to use this opportunity to introduce mystery to hill of step up Durham hello can everyone hear me yes we can miss hill welcome thank you so much Mirchel um thank you everyone for this opportunity to share a little bit more about uh step up Durham and the process the pb process um so step up Durham we offer free employment readiness training personalized job coaching employer referrals and supportive services to job seekers the actual mission of our organization is adults and children transforming their lives through employment and life skills training before covid we did a transition reentry program where we worked in butner in orange county and did um job readiness services before a person returned to their community and right now what we're doing and we'll do that after the pandemic ends as well we have a hybrid employment training and a step two program that focuses on personal development financial education and career pathways in 2019 we launched an apprenticeship program called build and this year we formalized our connection with Durham tech to help people get short term certifications through their back to work initiative and earlier this year we also launched something called step three where we can deepen our relationship with some of our participants that have been working with us for two years or more so um those are the kinds of things that we'll be working using the funding on is our employment training placement and retention services this process we saw it is really inclusive and a really positive process we try to meet people where we where they're at not just participants but volunteers employers and not everyone um that we engage has the capacity to hire or volunteer or even invest and step up but what a lot of people were able to do was vote so we saw this as a great way to keep people engaged with our work so thank you all so much for the opportunity to you participate in a process like this and i would really encourage for these types of processes to continue thank you very much miss how we appreciate you and congratulations thank you yeah and now i'll move on to speak about the voter demographics um for those residents who voted throughout our PV process um i'd like to note these voter demographics are based on a survey that we had at the end of our ballot that approximately 1600 residents filled out so looking at racial and ethnic diversity the PV team is extremely proud to say that our demographics were very reflective of the city of Durham's population 54 percent of our voters were people of color and the largest representative groups were white residents at 42 percent african-american or black identifying residents at 37 percent and latino or hispanic identifying residents at four percent um and then we moving on to our age demographic question our largest represented groups were youth ages 13 to 17 and adults ages 35 to 44 um when we look at the graphic displayed the orange in the bars in the 13 to 17 bar and the 18 to 24 bar are our dps students 17 of those who answered our survey were dps students and 12 of those that submitted ballots were dps students they were slightly more likely to fill out our demographic survey i'd also like to note that the PV team's priority throughout the entire process was equitable engagement and reaching those that usually don't have a voice in government and this included our limited english proficient spanish-speaking populations which accounted for about two percent of our votes um the team thought it was important to look at our demographics of dps students and those without any dps affiliation when we look at dps students exclusively 69 percent of voters identified as people of color but even when we look at those without any dps affiliation where it is easier to have minority residents come in and vote um through the school system the majority of our adult residents um who voted were still people of color at 51 percent and now i'll pass it um to jimmy who will discuss um cycle two challenges all right so i'm going to wrap up the last few slides that we have in our presentation um and as you all know um there were so many challenges um due to kovat um so being a part of this cycle two there were a lot of challenges as far as events that we could be a part of or places that we could visit um because there were still a lot of restrictions um so we did what we could do um we asked about events that may have been occurring um during the month of may um it seemed like a lot of events started to happen around the time where we started voting um so we tried to use that to our advantage um and um definitely contact the nis to kind of assist us in any events that they had that we can just kind of tag along with to encourage votes um residents to vote during this cycle uh we didn't want to not reach out to these different communities but we still wanted to make sure that people were safe and making sure that the staff was safe as well um kovat 19 concerns amongst volunteers and residents that was a big concern amongst everyone um also during this time i think people were getting the vaccine as well um but we wanted to make sure that people were still safe we still wanted to provide opportunities where residents could vote in person but we still wanted to make sure that we remembered that we are still in a pandemic and individuals may still be cautious um so which led us to go to various events um and have the flyers available so that individuals had those options as best as possible um new technology um as i mentioned we were using social pinpoint which was new for all of us um myself and elizabeth we built out the sites so that residents um can have those opportunities to vote online um and it was a lot of information um and trying to learn this new software and just try to make sure that it was at ease for residents in a good way for them to participate um it came with these challenges um but we were up to the task and we were able to build out this site to make sure that um the residents had something that they can view um and support the non-profits a part of this process so now we are in our implementation phase uh we are working on doing a pv cycle two contract orientation for the non-profits who won during this cycle and we are working with the city attorney's office to draft draft up those agreements so that those funds can um begin being distributed during this fiscal year and we plan to implement all the projects by the end of fiscal year 23 and then um we will have a time where we will have an evaluation during for this cycle as we did for the first cycle so we are happy to answer any questions that you all may have thank you for giving us this time today thank you very much we really appreciate hearing from the staff um and uh i'll now ask my colleagues if they have any questions or comments uh for our staff on the pb budgeting anybody mayor pro tam thank you mr mayor um and thank you for this great presentation um this year was definitely a challenge for all kinds of programs and i think um work like pb where you're really out in the community um working hard to contact people and especially people who aren't necessarily involved in government otherwise this was a real a real challenging environment and i just want to thank the staff for all the work that they did and put into this and i think we had a really successful year in spite of coven um i really appreciated hearing from some of the non-profits and especially learning some of the work that they did to engage their supporters to support them in pb getting more people engaged in the process and voting and participatory budgeting because they are familiar with the nonprofit organization um that was that was engaged and that was really good to hear also really um great engagement with during public schools um glad we were able to expand that engagement um engagement this year and i know we we scaled this down and made it um focused on nonprofit organizations because of coven but i actually really liked the way that um doing it this way that having nonprofits engaging directly in the process this round um felt more connected to the community uh we had in you know in our first round where we were where people were only voting on um we initially had said it so people could only vote on city projects and we later expanded that because we had so many people say that they were um that they were interested in projects that would be um sponsored by non-profit organizations or or other um other groups in the community we still kept it to just capital improvement but our community really wanted more flexibility with regard to it to what they could do with the money um and so i think this year we were able you know through because of the covid crisis we were thinking about this in a different way but i think it really worked well uh to have that kind of community engagement in different organizations um working with their with their populations to get people um engaged in pb and it just feels um more connected to to regular germ residents than i think um some of the projects that we did in the first year which were a little harder um for people to connect with if they didn't necessarily live in the neighborhood or were familiar with the project um so i think we've done two really uh two really very both really good and really different cycles and i'm excited to see um cycle three uh ideas after we do um the eval of cycle one because i think we have some really good experience now doing this a couple of different ways and depending on how things look um when we get started with the next cycle hopefully the pandemic will be very far in our rear view and we'll be able to um have folks back out into the community in the way that we were um in our first cycle but really just wanted to appreciate um all the work that staff put in to make this a success under really challenging conditions and all of the um appreciate all the nonprofits who applied um and really you know shared their work with the community and i'm really excited that we were able to support so many uh so many fabulous programs with with public funds and hope that we'll continue to find new and innovative ways to do that thank you mr mayor thank you very much madam mayor pro tem other colleagues uh councilmember middleton thank you mr mayor and i'm going to thank the staff for for a really wonderful presentation you know one of the i think most important uh but not just me a lot of folks think one of the most important measurements of choosing leadership and um management is you don't choose them for just what's happening at the moment you choose them for what might happen what might occur and uh we were thrown a serious curveball as a city uh over a year ago and i i just want to i cannot say enough um in terms of commentate commendation and celebration to the the pivot that was managed uh by this staff uh the agility the adaptability the creativity the brilliance that was shown in the face of covid in um securing and furthering this great experiment in democracy going on here in our city uh with participatory budgeting so i just want to congratulate and commend uh the staff on on this great pivot um i echo other mayor pro tem sentiments in terms of the different flavor looking at not-for-profits as opposed to just kind of cip projects and and seeing what they can do i think it aligns with what a lot of us have been saying in our public square in terms of empowering and funding and financing organizations and groups that will will get to some of the things that are behind some of the things that we are challenged by uh as a city so just a word of celebration and commendation to the staff um great work uh and just a question um i want to to because you know we i get into a lot of discussions of folk uh with folk about uh some of the terminology we use particularly when it's disaggregated disaggregated in in certain context um in the first round we we talked about black white latino and and i noticed and i think it's a good thing that we're talking about people of color uh in this particular um presentation so i just just for the record it when we say it for the functioning definition we're using for people of color when we talk about participatory participatory budgeting staff i'm assuming that's black a api folk latino folk that do not represent as white and and others just just talk a little bit about what people of color if we would if we were to disaggregate that and i get questioned about it all the time if we were to disaggregate the term people of color um within the context of this pb presentation who are we talking about specifically yes that's a great question and i councilmember millington uh we're mainly talking about uh folks who identify as african-american latinx and also multi-racial as well i believe within our demographics i think we have native americans as included within that group but those are mainly our demographics right now when the folk did we the when we captured demographic information to folk who who represented who are self-identified as latinx did we ask them latinx non-white identifying or did we just latinx or we just including them with people of color uh we did i i believe we asked that particular question um and i can follow up to uh provide you with a more accurate answer okay cool um great work great work just really just just kudos to the staff and um to all who worked on to the to the um ambassadors to the folk to the organizations who do not who did not get funding this is in no way an editorial on um deservedness or efficacy um it's just you know how the votes went oftentimes it's about you know how how much your name is out there or how well people know about you but but it needs to be said that all of these organizations are vital um to the work we do in durham and to our social fabric here in the city uh congratulations to the recipients and and thanks to those that are continuing to work even if you didn't get a grant that are continuing to impact uh the fabric of our city in a positive way and again highest commendations and and thanks and congratulations to the staff uh for a job well done thank you mr mayor thank you council member of the colleagues any comments council member caballero i just wanted to uh thank staff for the presentation and all the staff who did an excellent job we have four voters in my house now uh since the last round because now we have another uh 13 year old which just means i'm getting older um and i just the the data around dps students is just really fantastic i can say just watching my own kids looking up different nonprofits they didn't know asking questions um democracy doesn't work if people don't do their homework and i think that the um we're we're doing it right in durham by getting kids involved at a really critical time to how do you be an active person in a democracy and this is one of the reasons i've been such a champion of this initiative by the city uh we need active participation and it's just i'm just so happy with this uh data with especially when i think about how the the demographic who's been impacted in many ways the most are our kids they've been in on on zoom school and shut down and locked down and the fact that that we could get this uh level of turnout is really really incredible so thank you to also to dps for a fantastic job for outreach thank you very much council member council member freeman thank you mr mayor and thank you colleagues i really appreciate um as well just echoing my colleagues on on the presentation and the the efforts of our staff the budget delegates the budget facilitators and the 63 organizations that have all applied i i really want to thank all the voters that voted to support the local organizations and change makers and i really hope um that this becomes a more model that we use moving forward acknowledging that the capital improvement projects are important alongside of the folks who are making that change in our communities i'm also interested in hearing how our staff will look at tracking the actual work that's been done acknowledging how many of these tax dollars are being used and just noting the measurements and the evaluations and of course the recommendations that come out of this will be very useful and so i just want to thank you all thank you very much council member all right colleagues uh thank you we do have one speaker on this item and that is donald hughes madame clerk uh could we make mr hughes available to be heard good afternoon mr mayor that's a huge welcome you have three minutes all right thank you so much again good afternoon mr mayor and members of the council i want to first start off by giving kudos to jamie elizabeth and andrew on a great presentation and a thorough presentation i'm actually pleased to see a fellow eagle working with the city of derm andrew and i were actually classmates in the mpa program at nccu um so it's always good to see a familiar phase but to borrow from councilman melton this is an experiment in democratic budgeting and while it's exciting we know that democracy isn't always perfect and to that end i actually have a few questions that i would love to have answered at some point in time similar to mayor shill's question regarding made in derm funding do we have data in terms of who else funds the participatory budgeting grantees particularly how many have already received or currently are receiving funding from the city in particular councilman freeline also raised an important question regarding made in derm in which i'm interested in knowing if this applies towards the pb process he asked about whether or not made in derm went through the regular budgeting process and that makes me think about this process is this a way for organizations to sub so to birth the regular budgeting process or operate outside of the regular budgeting process um and we want to be sure that that's not happening that if they are in fact qualified or able to receive funding through a regular process that should be the route in which they're going um but i would like to know kind of what the intent of the pb model is it to find innovative ways to move the needle on issues that we care about as a community or um is it really to supplement the budgets of long-standing institutions in our communities that may already have robust budgets i look through the name of the grantees and all of them are great to my knowledge and do great work in the community but i do know some of them are institutions that have existed for decades and have received a wealth of funding both public and private so i think we should look at the data and really dig into it in terms of the grantees related to um their financial standing and what the contribution of this funding looks like as opposed to other funding that they may have received from the county and then finally i just kind of want to end with something that's been on my mind related to the pb process yes we want folks to participate and we want them to have the ability to vote and when i listen to the presentation i know you all did an amazing job of really reaching out to communities to get those that have been historically excluded or marginalized to participate but the other thing in the room is that we know some organizations are expert organizers and they're able to really galvanize support around their particular program organizations not necessarily meaning that the value to the city is any greater than any other organization and we should think about that when we're looking at these organizations is it a matter of ability to expertly organize or is it really a matter of the impact that a particular proposal may have on our community so it's something to think about as we move this process forward in future cycles um and what i would ask from staff is that we are able to capture the data regarding unique voters but then we also think deeper than just racial and ethnic makeup and simple demographic makeup but then we also look at social economic diversity because just because someone is african-american or a member of the latinist community does not mean that they are wealth aren't well funded or um have access that some of our very poor members of our community don't have access to so maybe partnering with the county of Durham and social services and health and human services might be an opportunity to reach some of our most vulnerable to include them in the process of developing proposals but also voting on the proposals but again kudos to staff and to my fellow eagle and i wish you all well as you work throughout the implementation process thank you mr mayor thank you mr hughes right colleagues i want to add my congratulations to staff for a job well done i do think it's really important to to get that number of unique voters and i'm disappointed we weren't able to get that this year and i'm looking forward in future years to make you sure that we have the technology that we're able to identify that but thank you very much i'm excited to see what's going to come of this and a lot of great organizations participated and it's really really good to see so thank you all right um we'll now move to our final item item 31 and this item uh is the mares for guaranteed income let me see if i can pull that up on my agenda um and i believe we will be hearing from miss amber wade as wade we can see your um we see mr yeah we pulled the wrong spring up there we go okay all right good afternoon mayor shul uh mayor pro tem and city council members um i am amber wade assistant to mayor shul and i am excited to be with be here with you today to share about the work we have completed over the past seven months to build durams guaranteed income pilot economic insecurity isn't a new challenge even before the pandemic wealth and income inequality we're at historic highs covid 19 has further exposed the economic fragility of most american households and now more than ever it is imperative that we build economic resilience in our cities as we have seen with recent rounds of federal stimulus payments and the expansion of the child tax credit and the reimagining of its payments cash can be a critical tool for improving racial and gender equity guaranteed income is a way to recognize every individual's inherent dignity and combat several factors that are stifling economic mobility i would like to start my presentation today with an expression of deep gratitude and appreciation for the individuals who are part of our working group this group met weekly from early february through the end of may to help shape the framework of durams guaranteed income pilot the reason we have the framework which i will present to you today is a direct result of the time commitment and expertise of these individuals if you will indulge me i would like to name each of them and thank them again for their support of this pilot mayor shul councilmember freelon councilmember middleton anise vance hanalea hoberman ryan smith courtney mccullum chuck manning christa kukaro gudrin parmer roshanna parker drudal laura holland donna carrington erica maddox and jamie jones several weeks ago durham was featured in an emerging local government leaders podcast which was part two of a series on guaranteed income it was great to be able to share our work with the national audience um and since the airing we have been contacted by the city of birmingham alabama to learn more about how we engage with this work so the next two slides will give a bit of background on mayors for a guaranteed income and how this work came to durham mgi is a network of mayors across the country committed to advancing local pilots in the national conversation around guaranteed income it was established in june 2020 by then mayor michael tubbs of stockton california and was built upon the first of its kind guaranteed income pilot in stockton called seed in september of last year mayors shul joined mgi and in december of 2020 we received an early christmas gift and were asked to be a part of mgi's 2021 pilot cohort and was all and we were also selected to receive a five hundred thousand dollar grant to start a local pilot these grant funds were provided to mgi by the ceo of twitter jack dorsi to implement pilots across the country in february of this year councilmember middleton presented a resolution to city council in support of a guaranteed income and it was unanimously adopted by council and also in february the group of individuals that i acknowledged earlier began to meet weekly to advise and guide the design and in implementation of the pilot most mgi cities are working with a community organization to implement their program and likewise the city of germ will not be directly administering this pilot on april 14th uh 2021 the city issued an rfp to identify a pilot administrator the rfp was advertised on the city's website and an rfp workshop was held for interested community organizations to learn more proposals were due within 30 days however no proposals were received local nonprofits provided valuable feedback instead about the lack of funding committed for administrative costs city manager wander page subsequently committed up to a hundred and ten thousand dollars for administrative costs and a second rfp was issued on june 15th 2021 a waiver for a shortened submission period was granted by equity inclusion and one proposal was received from step up durham on june 25th 2021 since 2015 step up durham has provided employment training and placement services to more than a thousand individuals created with an equity and asset based lens step up durham primarily works with low to moderate income people to build promising futures and decrease the cycle of poverty of their clients 93 live below the poverty line approximately 56 have criminal backgrounds 34 are in substance abuse or recovery and over 50 experience housing instability additionally over 70 are people of color with 63 identifying as black and african american step up services primarily benefit individuals living in durham county and their staff representation aligns with the community served approximately 66 of staff or people of color and 44 identify as justice involved step ups employment counselors and staff not only support job readiness training ongoing job research and job retention support but also walk with individuals as they pursue continuing education opportunities and work alongside them to secure transitional and permanent housing step up also provides services to durham's justice involved residents through their many community partnerships for the past three years serita hill executive director has served on the criminal justice resource center advisory committee and step up durham is actively engaged in durham's local reentry council these community partnerships provide referrals and resources for step ups participants in taking time at the outset to engage with community leaders and local thought partners we surfaced many thoughtful compelling criteria for selecting recipients for our pilot program suggestions range from families and low income households with newborn children to persons experiencing homelessness or those in jeopardy of eviction and residents living in lower to medium income census tracks each of these groups offered compelling options for how we might structure a small pilot but ultimately the city decided to focus its pilot on individuals recently released and returning home from prison some of the reasoning behind this approach is that this population aligns with policy goals of the city council builds on recent collaborative efforts and initiatives developed by the city provided clear onboarding pass and offers a moment in time that is after justice involvement or during reentry where time limited additional monthly income would make sense in supporting better reentry outcomes justice involves involvement comes with many collateral consequences individuals often struggle to find employment applying sometimes for hundreds of jobs before finding a low wage job or just giving up individuals may aspire to start their own business or to invest in training for a better job but lack the funds to pursue these dreams and these financial hardships may also be borne by close family members and may place added strain on these important relationships guaranteed income can help ensure a successful transition home by providing a much needed additional source of income during this time furthermore this choice also builds off recent reform efforts by the city to increase economic opportunity for justice involved residents by expanding access to license restoration and expansion league legal services and by increasing our efforts to welcome home individuals returning from incarceration I will now share kind of a high level overview of how our pilot will work so 115 selected participants will receive $500 a month per person for 12 months at no cost mayors for guaranteed income will provide a disbursement app called steady which will allow participants to transfer payments directly to deposit accounts or establish a banking account and debit card evaluation of the pilot will be completed by the center for guaranteed income research at the University of Pennsylvania and through our ongoing relationship with code for America's criminal justice court they have offered our pilot free technical assistance using a process called customer journey mapping to help design a recruitment process to reduce barriers to participation Durham's pilot is part of a collective evaluation of pilot cities by the center for guaranteed income research at the University of Pennsylvania School for Social Policy and Practice CGIR's role is to consolidate the key learnings from the pilots taking place in MGI member cities address knowledge gaps in the contemporary understanding of guaranteed incomes impact for Americans and to allow the organization to layer data with anecdotal evidence in federal advocacy to support the evaluation needs CGIR will hire and provide a stipend for an individual from the Durham community to serve as an onsite evaluation fellow participants will be invited to take part in optional surveys and in-depth interviews during the course of the pilot to help the city evaluate our impact the city will also collect anonymized data on participant spending which will be limited to broad categories of spending using merchant codes merchant club merchant codes do not include specific items purchase but rather the type of goods provided by the merchant examples include grocery stores bookstores eating places or restaurants or other types of merchants anonymized data collected from the pilot will be shared with local partners and with national partners at CGIR to evaluate alongside other programs including Gainesville Florida's program which is also focusing on individuals who are returning from incarceration MGI also prioritizes data as well as stories and as such each MGI pilot will have a storytelling cohort that's a group of end of group of recipients that will volunteer to speak publicly about their experience with guaranteed income and economic security as the pilot is happening in short we want to be able to tell the anecdotal stories of how guaranteed income is helping individuals show up and be more present for their families and communities so for our next steps August 2nd City Council will vote on our contract on a contract with step up to administer Durham's guaranteed income pilot from August to October our implementation stage will begin and that includes recruitment enrollment and onboarding of the selected participants for August to December step up Durham and city officials will work collectively to raise the additional private dollars needed for the participant payments and we are hoping that our program will launch on October 1st 2021 and that means that all participants will be identified and an official public announcement about the launch will be made payment participant participants will begin by December 31st all of the payments will begin at the same time so there's no rolling enrollment and they will continue through December 2022 which at that time participant payments will end and the program will conclude and we expect to have evaluations and findings from our program the spring of 2023 which can be presented back to council so again we are very excited to begin this work and I am happy to take any questions or comments from council members at this time great job Ms. Wade super presentation and you've done an amazing job getting us this far I think I'll ask council members Freeline and Middleton if they want to start off with comments since they've been so intimately involved with this council member Freeline thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you Amber for the wonderful presentation for Ryan and the rest of the staff members who've been working on this this is just one of the most exciting things that that we've done um and thank you uh council member Middleton and Mr. Mayor for putting me thank you for putting me in this working group it's been a pleasure working with the all on moving this forward um I think you know it's important to contextualize that that this work is really to get a national guaranteed income program going and it is really important for cities to be the innovative incubators for creative and outside of the box ideas like this and it's completely appropriate and awesome that Durham is at the center of it and we're doing it well um we'd mentioned there's a partner well several other cities um in Virginia South Carolina Florida who are also doing pilots and it's just such an honor to be a part of this cohort and to do this important work um so yeah really just wanted to express gratitude for the wonderful presentation and enthusiasm about the uh deliberate speed that we're moving forward to get this done so thank you thank you council member council member Middleton thank you brother Freelon and thank you Mr. Mayor um it's it's really difficult I think to overstate um just how important uh a threshold we're crossing in our participation uh in this pilot uh how often do you get to put somebody else's money where your mouth is how often does that happen uh and this is an opportunity where we actually get to use for now someone else's money um for something that goes directly to the heart of what so many in our public square say uh are our values as a city um how often have we heard that it's necessary when you when you list the ills that plague um our city and other cities around our country how often do you hear it said that it's important that folk have access to opportunity and resources opportunity and resources here's an opportunity for us to directly infuse resources uh into the lives of folk who are um in most cases the first people we look at when something goes wrong uh those who we fear are most at risk for recidivism or falling back into traps uh if something goes missing if something goes pop in the night in our city the first folk we think about often are the ones uh who this pilot is focusing on this iteration of this pilot is focusing on uh so here we are at an incredibly important threshold i cannot say enough about ryan and amber uh how they quarter backed and and shepherded this this whole process uh for us uh and the working group um it could not have happened without them um you know we as electives often time we get a lot of cram blame and credit for for things we don't deserve uh in in any account uh so it we really need to highlight the work of the staff i do want to say to folk that have um written to me and and probably my colleagues as well from all over the country with with um commentary about the whole notion of universal basic income and and guaranteed income um why this is important um we are not subsidizing pathology uh this isn't about uh just just given uh lazy folk and i won't use some of the terms that have been in some of my emails and letters um lazy folk uh free handouts um this is about us as a city and hopefully ultimately a nation saying that by virtue of your humanity there is a line beneath which we will not allow you to fall uh we aren't giving out mansions we're not giving out exotic cars we're not giving out vacation homes this is about a line beneath which you should not fall and that's just good social policy uh people with children that are fed and safe people that have um warm places to sleep and rooms over their heads make better neighbors uh the calculus that they do uh in life differs from those that are desperate and this is in a full-throated way Durham saying that we are committed uh to saying that by virtue of your humanity and the accident of happening you know your luck your accident of happening to be in this country at this time in this city at this time uh we'll put you in a position uh beneath in a beneath the line which will not you will not fall i do want to say um that part of the timetable the tick tock of this initiative and you'll see uh in the um list of things to do uh that at some point we're going to as city uh officials and staff working with step up Durham and i'll say a minute i worried about step up during the minute um raise some more funds because one of the things we committed to was using the entire five hundred thousand dollars for disbursements um we could have used it for disbursements and administrative costs but we thought it'd be best to use all of the money as much as possible all of it for disbursements um i do want to say to my colleagues however and by way of appeal and just by way of kind of forecasting um we're going to do our level best to find good philanthropic partners and corporate citizens uh to ante up and participate in this initiative but i think respectfully we should be prepared as a city if there is a shortfall uh to be prepared to to put our money where our mouths are uh as we've done on so many other things as this i believe goes directly to uh uh root causes directly to the type of things we talked about that insulate people from engaging in some of the activities that that we think um you know aren't aren't good for people aren't good for our community aren't good for families um i think i believe that there are many many generous folk um and generous organizations and entities in our city and in our state and our region that would be more than willing to to do what um jack dorsey shout out to the to uh ceo twitter um who's been following this discussion um i i i know there are entities that are more than willing uh to do this but at the end of the day as as brother pier said um this is our responsibility as a government it's our responsibility as a nation it should be our coffers uh ultimately uh that fund this so i just want to put on notice you know when i when i talked about this idea last year before covid struck i was going to ask for two million dollars um mayor's matter and we happen to have a mayor who who had the foresight and good fortune to sign up with this outfit and as things turned out um we're not spending any of our money out the gate um but my ass will not be two million obviously now but but i think we ought to be prepared as a council as a government if the time comes uh to to fund any shortfall uh that this above anything else we've done i think we should be willing to do so with that said we're not going to slack up we're not going to ease up on on fundraising efforts i know the mayor is committed um council member freelance committed i'm committed and i would invite my colleagues as well here on the council to to work your network and work your contacts um and talk to folk who may be willing to subsidize this uh this pilot beyond perhaps even the end date that we have um but this is a good day this is an exciting day for our city um any number of groups the case that could have been made for any number of groups to be the focus of this pilot would have been an irrefutable case uh and we went through a a large number of iterations of folk but in the end we came down on folk who were just as involved for the reasons that amber uh listed i think it's a good start but if it's going to truly be universal it means that ultimately every one of those groups who who we talked about will be part of the fold will be part of the the of the universe which we serve uh with guaranteed income um it's a fitting and appropriate that derm is is part of this of this national conversation that we're in the vanguard of it uh i'm excited i want to thank um you mr marron colleagues for for allowing uh me and and pierce uh to work on this on our behalf on our city's behalf i'm excited to see what impact this will have um and just in finally known as i dismount um this money is is is no strings attached we are not uh you know looking to see whether vice or virtue comes out of use of this money what we are looking to see is if if this net if this safety net if this guaranteed income will make a difference uh in folks lives and in the lives of our community um what can be more Durham than our participation in this pilot what goes to our values more so than this type of initiative coupled with our overall shared economic prosperity plan coupled with participatory budgeting coupled with that's more than a couple grouped with uh our our new department of public safety um a lot of great things are going on in our city and i'm just so proud that that we are are crossing the threshold and i'm proud of the work that staff has done i'm eternally grateful uh to them um to you mr mayor to you appears for the work that's been done on this and it's only just the beginning um let's get to work let's get started i'm ready for the the checks to start rolling or the payments to start rolling and to see what difference this will make in people's lives but the real work begins when we add our voice to the cohort of cities around this country to press our national government the federal government to make this part of our national fabric um the preamble of the constitution says we the people in order to form a more perfect union establish justice ensure domestic tranquility and then there's a great line that says provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare everybody which is why we think this should be universal and this should be guaranteed for all of our sake for the sake of our nation and for the sake of our city amber thank you so much ryan thank you so much mr mayor thank you so much pierce thank you so much and thank you colleagues for throwing our weight behind this great initiative it's a great day for Durham thank you sir thank you councilmember councilmember i hate giving you encouragement to speak longer but you mentioned that you were going to say something about step up thank you they need to be they do be recognized here and and i think i'm going to just encourage you to do that thank you mr mayor and i won't abuse the encouragement step up uh durham is is well we heard their name mentioned uh during the participatory budgeting uh presentation they are a proven uh group with a track record they are committed they are vested to the fabric of the city serita hill is a great leader i cannot be more pleased that we have a partner that knows durham that's not just a professional kind of a crew that disperses things with no vestedness in the local entity that they're working for step up durham is durham and i am just pleased that they they responded to our our rfp i want to assure them because i know there may have been some trepidation about language about fundraising that we will do everything you will you're not going to be by yourself you will have us as as partners in the efforts and we're going to get this done we're going to get the money we need one way or another we're going to get that money we're going to get the money we need one way or another to make this a successful pilot and to post the numbers we need hopefully to push this over the finish line nationally but step up durham is a wonderful partner i don't think we could have done better and i'm excited about them and i want to thank them for taking up this call and commit to them our full being our full emotional support the support of our networks the support of our reputation and the support of our legwork and getting the work done so thank you so much thank you mr mayor shout out the step of nerf thank you very much councilmember great shout out councilmember freeman thank you mr mayor i appreciate the opportunity to share sure thank you mr mayor i appreciate the opportunity to share and just give thanks to councilmember freelon and middle 10 around taking the lead and moving us forward i'm also too i'm very proud of amber and her work in this in this moment i can't tell you i'm over overflowing but um and also ryan i i do want to make sure that i i know that there are to councilmember middle 10's point a lot of contingencies that have to be taken into account acknowledging that step up is coming forward as an organization to to support us i do note that this is a pilot and i want to make sure that the public is very well aware that there's going to be this going to be a greater need than what we can cover in that pilot and so i just i just want to make sure that um that we are accounting for some contingencies around the additional folks who might come out of this who might not fit into that pilot and so i just want to make sure we're we're having that conversation as well and um other than that i really appreciate all that the that has come forward and um looking forward to gathering the information and seeing the success of all the participants in it thank you thank you very much councilmember mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor i just wanted to join the chorus of appreciations and support for this initiative i'm really excited to see this get moving um and wanted to thank you and council members middleton and freeman and a special shout out to amber um for that fabulous presentation and all the work that she's put into this effort it's great to see Durham having the opportunity to add to the significant and growing body of evidence that ubi is an effective and productive anti-poverty measure um and i look forward to seeing the results from the pilot and along with all the other cities that are participating and continuing to make the case locally and at the federal level for this kind of program to be implemented nationally we are seeing a lot of really big moves at the federal level right now on infrastructure on supporting youth and families and so i think this is a really exciting moment to add to the to add to the body of research on ubi and i'm excited for Durham to have the opportunity and for our residents to benefit from it so thanks y'all and looking forward to making it happen thank you madam mayor pro tem any further comments two thumbs up from councilmember carriero maybe she had even three thumbs if she had a third one all right thank you colleagues and and to miss wade we really appreciate you stepping up with step up here you all have done a great job i will add to councilmember middleton's remarks that step up when we first put out the rfp they were very interested but people were understandably reluctant so thank you to our manager for adding some administrative funds from the city that was very important and as my colleagues have said we really we we are not going to leave step up out there on a limb we're going to do all that we can't we are meeting i believe next week for our first fundraising meeting to really raise the additional funds i know we will and but i had the opportunity to talk to serita during this process a couple of times just to hear all her ideas and she is going to be a tremendous leader for this we are extremely fortunate and and the fact that this really kind of falls right into step ups niche is also great these are these are people that the the folks that we will be serving through this program are people that they are already serving and they know this group of people they work with this group of people it's a people who have tremendous need when they're coming home from prison and so to have a group that has this experience and i'm just super pleased so thank you miss wade miss wade any final comments no nothing else thank you all for work thank you very much i think you got half a day off tomorrow that's a good thing all right colleagues um i believe we have gone through all of our items uh and we'll turn now to our clerk uh madam clerk are you ready with the um with the appointments yes good afternoon mr mayor mayor protan and council members i have your nominations for the various boards committees and commissions the first one is the citizens advisory committee nominee and that is liya efford the Durham bicycle and pedestrian advisory commission representing at large is ideal or tease for the Durham cultural advisory board we have michael a betz jr eldrin d's rodrigo dorfman tom janes rotha pernsley and laura j richie for the Durham historic preservation commission representing the category of architect andrew c ghoulsby Durham homeless services advisory committee representing the corporate and private sector position is shantizia kinard under the same haystack committee and for the category of faith community the majority of council requested that this vacancy be re-advertised for Durham open space and trails the nominee is harrison gilbert human relations commission representing the category of african-american female or non-binary person is tammy hood the mayor's hispanic latino committee nominee is mario guiscombe participatory budgeting steering committee representing the category of youth is jonah pernell and lastly the recreation advisory commission the three nominees are cedric berk david j fellorath and cuckoo nayo and that's the end of my report thank you very much madam clerk appreciate it and thank you to miss roland and and others in your office who've been helpful thank you we appreciate a lot a lot of work behind that thank you i believe we're ready to settle the agenda madam manager good uh afternoon again mr mayor madam mayor pro tem uh after nine long months i believe it is my pleasure and my privilege to set my very first agenda as your city manager uh i hope i get it right uh i i have items one through four items six through 21 items 23 through 25 and item 30 and 31 for consent and gba public hearings item 27 and 28 all right i just wanted to check that item five that was that's the one that's advertised i believe that one of those appointments is still on consent is that correct and one will be re-advertised yes okay colleagues you have heard the manager's agenda uh is there a motion that we settle so moved moved by councilmember freeline second second by mayor pro tem johnson all in favor please say aye aye oppose no the eyes have it the motion is carried um colleagues uh just i'd like to ask uh if just for five minutes afterwards uh there was some issues that there's still some issues involved in managing the meeting uh that i i think it would be good madam clerk and madam attorney madam manager mayor pro tem uh if and and miss wallace if we could all just stay for five minutes and just talk right here while some of the couple things are fresh in my mind it would be helpful if you all don't mind yeah colleagues any other things that we need to talk about great thank you so much everybody uh i'm going to declare this meeting adjourned i think i'll hit the gavel for fun at 3 29 p.m. i haven't had a chance to hit that gavel in a while peers how'd you like it up here