 30 seconds. Good afternoon. I want to call to order this work session of the Durham City Council at one o'clock p.m. on Thursday the 23rd of July and I certainly want to welcome everyone here today but my council colleagues our staff and all those who members of the public who are attending as well. We're glad to have you here today. Before we get into our business I want to mention that yesterday we had our 74th death in Durham as a result of COVID-19. We also know that in the last week we've lost two civil rights icons John Lewis the great John Lewis and the great C.T. Vivian. C.T. Vivian was a colleague of Martin Luther King. He was buried today in Atlanta and I had the honor of marching with him in the 70s and these are great losses and then of course for us an equally great loss is the loss of Tom McLean a 12-year-old boy who we lost to gun violence in this past week as well. So as we start our meeting today I'm going to ask for a moment of silence and memory of these friends these neighbors and these leaders. Thank you. Madam clerk will you please call the roll. Mayor Schuhl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Council Member Caballero. Here. Council Member Freeman. President. Council Member Middleton. Here. Council Member Reese. Here. Thank you. Thank you Madam clerk. We're about to go to announcements by the council. We put our agenda for this item the discussion of the recent gun violence. I've discussed with the manager what we'd like to do since is hold that and some of our other discussion items until we go through the consent agenda so we can let our staff get back to their business once we have cleared those items as we usually do in work sessions and so without objection I'm going to ask that we hold that discussion until we go through until we go through the consent agenda items and the manager we have several discussion items and the manager and colleagues you all will figure out the order in which we want to hold them as usual. But now let me ask are there other announcements by members of the council at this time Council Member Freeman. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to give an update from our previous council meeting to say that the Black Artist celebration is moving forward and you'll look to see I shared an email just to give a little bit more information and I just wanted to make sure the council was aware and making sure that everyone in the community was aware that there were five neighborhoods that were selected to move forward based on requests from people in the community and will continue to have a process open so that additional neighborhoods can request to have public art whether on the ground or the ground plane or on buildings set with a with a muralist and some community engagement that includes youth youth stipends so to speak for the work around doing the art. So I just want to make sure that folks are aware of that. Thank you. Council Member thank you and thank you for the initiative and thank you also for the email updating us. Appreciate it very much. I'm looking forward to that. Any other announcements? All right thank you. I'll now move to priority items. Are there any priority items by the City Manager? Yes thank you Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon everyone. Good to see everyone and welcome to the the new year of virtual meetings. I have several items this afternoon that I wanted to bring to the council's attention. First not on the agenda but I would have asked staff from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development to give the council a brief update on our small business loan and grant program. It wasn't something that we could provide a written report in advance because it's changing every day and I wanted it to be most current so just like the other presentations at some point if you can let us know when that is we'll be ready to go with that. And then there are three items that the Department of Community Development is requesting that the council suspend the rules and vote on today. They're all associated with some very important work associated with COVID response and homelessness. Agenda item number 22 is the contract with Durham County for the provision of Community Development Block Grant COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Agenda item number 23, Housing for New Hope Inc. Emergency Solutions Grant COVID-ESG for Rapid Rehousing Services. And then agenda item number 24, Project Access of Durham County Emergency Solutions Grant COVID-19 for Emergency Shelter Case Management Services. I suspect there will be questions on one or more of these items so certainly we're prepared to respond to those questions but I do want to request that the council consider a waving of the rules and acting on those today. These are all important services and needs in the community right now and we need to get them rolled out as quickly as possible. I do think I may have had some authority to grant emergency approval of these based on some earlier actions that the mayor had provided but I wasn't comfortable unilaterally doing that. I thought it was too close to council coming together that we would I'd rather be sure we're answering the questions you have before we we initiate the program so thank you very much those are my priority items. Thank you Mr. Manager and can I have a motion to approve the manager's priority items? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the manager's priority items. Madam Clark will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. I vote aye. Council Member East. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Manager. And now Madam Attorney do you have any priority items today? Good afternoon Mr. Mayor, members of city council. The city attorney's office has one priority item and that is a request that the city council go into closed session for attorney client consultation to consider and discuss newly filed litigation. The name of the case is Tony Scott Jr. and Tony Scott Sr. versus the city of Durham at Owl. The file number is 120CV558 and that's been filed in the middle district of North Carolina. Thank you Madam Attorney. You've heard the attorney's priority item. Can I have a motion to approve it? So moved by Mayor Pro Tem seconded by Council Member Caballero. Madam Clark will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member East. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Madam Attorney. Madam Clerk are there any priority items? Good afternoon Council. I have no items to report. Thank you very much Madam Clerk. Alrighty we'll now move to our administrative consent items. Item one the city clerk's office approval of council minutes. I don't want to pull this item I do want to make a comment on it for the clerk. I don't I don't see any reason to amend these minutes but I do want to observe that I have some discomfort with the way council questions and comments were handled in the May 21st and 27 minutes attributed them to council rather than to individual council members. I think it's better to have the comments and questions attributed to the council member who made the statement and asked the question. I don't think these particular minutes suffer in any way from that but it does concern me so just wanted to raise that Madam Clerk. Okay thank you for letting me know. Yeah thank you. Item two Carolina Theater Board of Trustees appointment. Item three Durham Convention Center Authority appointment. Let me let me just while we got through these I'm going to recommend that item two the Carolina Theater Board of Trustees appointment to be re-advertised colleagues. I wanted to hear your thoughts on that. I was going to add to that as well I'm sorry. Council Member Freeman. I was just going to ask for the same thing on two but not three. Yes two. Did you? Council Member Caballero. I'm fine with you there was several that I thought we would maybe want to re-advertise and I don't know if we want to do it all together or do we want to go one by one? Let's let's go one by one just so we don't confuse the clerk. I think let me ask then as we get to them if there's others that you all think you want to be re-advertised let's mention them okay. So item two is everyone okay with re-advertising? Okay I see enough thumbs. All right thank you. Item three Durham Convention Center Authority appointment. I'd like to re-advertise item three as well. Okay. Council Member Freeman was not in favor of re-advertising item three. I'm also had a person chosen for that but I'm happy to hear with the majority's thoughts on that. Do you want to other people want to express themselves on item three? Yeah I don't know if we advertised this item previously this is the first time I don't know. I don't know if the answer to that question. Madam clerk do you know or is is Laverne on the call? Laverne is on the call. So maybe she could let us know if we have previously advertised for the Durham Convention Center Authority. Yes we have. Hi everybody. Hi Laverne. Yes we have advertised before. We have. Yes. All right. Council Member Caballero. If others are agreed then I'm fine with not re-advertising. Mayor Prattam. Yeah was the one applicant that we received was she also the only applicant when we considered this previously we didn't get anyone else? I believe so I can I think it's the same person but I can check to be sure for you. Okay no that's fine if we've already re-advertised it then I think we should just move ahead with the person we have. All right. Thanks. Thank you very much then we'll move ahead with number three. Item four Durham Cultural Advisory Board. Item five Durham Homeless Services Advisory Committee Appointment. Item six Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. On HSAC Mr. Mayor? Yes. All right that's another one where we only had one applicant and I'd like to hear a little bit more about kind of the history of that. Have we advertised is this a re-advertising? Yeah. Laverne do you know on that one Homeless Services Advisory Committee Appointment? I think we only advertised for this one once. Yeah this is a term expired. Council Member Reese do you want to recommend that we re-advertise? Yes I would. Yeah yeah okay. I'm okay either way folks okay I got some thumbs up so we'll re-advertise item five. Item six Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners Appointment. Item seven Durham Open Space and Trails Appointment. I was recommending that we re-advertise that one. It's already been re-advertised. This has been re-advertised. Double yes correct. Okay then I withdraw that thank you for letting me know. And item eight Housing Appeals Board Appointment. All right and item nine Recreation Advisory Commission Appointment. So just so we are not confused Madam Clerk which ones did you get that we're re-advertising or Laverne? Mr. Mayor you've decided to re-advertise the Carolina Theater Board of Trustees and Durham Homeless Services Advisory Committee. Okay those two. Thank you very much and now we'll move to Departmental Items Audit Services Department. Item 10 Payment Card Industry PCI Compliance Performance Audit March 2020. Item 11 Timekeeping Management Follow-up Performance Audit May 2020. Under the City Council Office Approval of Juneteenth is an official holiday for employees of the City of Durham. I don't want to pull it I just want to say that I'm glad that it's there. Likewise I think we all are and thank you very much and thank you Mayor ProTown and thanks to everyone who has been advocating for this. Item 13 Racial Equity Task Force Final Report. This is a discussion item and we'll have a report from the Racial Equity Task Force. Item 14 Funding for the Recovery and Renewal Task Force. Colleagues um this is also a discussion item it's I hope it'll be a very brief one but I will just move it over to the um discussion column so that we make I make sure that we have any comments that you all may want to make. City County Planning Department City County Planning Department FYS 21 Work Program. I'm going to pull item 15. Item 16 Expedited Hearing Request for Zoning Map Change Z19000036 Farrington Road Multifamily. I'd like to pull that Mr. Mayor. Item 16. Item 17 2019 Board of Adjustment Annual Report. Item 18 2019 Durham City County Appearance Commission Annual Report. Item 19 2019 Durham Open Space and Trails Commission Annual Report. Item 20 2019 Historic Preservation Commission Annual Report. Item 21 2019 Planning Commission Annual Report. I'm going to pull item 21. Department of Community Development these next three items are the ones that the manager has asked that we suspend the rules and vote. We'll come back to them after we have done the rest of this agenda. Item 22 Contract with Durham County for the Provision of Community Development Block Grant CWG COVID-19 Emergency Rural Assistance. I'm sorry Mr. Mayor we are going to discuss it before we vote. I don't need to pull it. Okay perfect. Right yeah I'm sorry I'm pulling these 22 23 and 24 yeah. Thank you. Yeah thank you. 23 Housing for New Hope Inc. Emergency Solutions Grant COVID ESG CV for Rapid Rehousing Services. Item 24 Project Access of Durham County Emergency Solutions Grant COVID ESG CV for Emergency Shelter Case Management Services. Department of Transportation Item 25 Extension Emerger Agreement with the County of Durham Demand Response Services. I'm going to pull item 25. Item 26 Contract for Cloud-Based Venter Hosted Integrated Parking Management System. We pull that Mr. Mayor. Yes it will. Item 27 Contract with Otis Elevator Inc for Parking Garage Elevator Maintenance and Repair Services. We'll pull item 27 as well. Item 28 Contract with SPS Management Inc. DBA Scotties for Parking Garage Pressure Pressure Washing Services. Item 29 Ordinance to Change Parking Fees Amendment Edition of Evening Monthly Parking Permit fee. Mr. Mayor I just wanted to comment on 28 I didn't really want to pull it that I noted that there were two women of like 200 staff members I just wanted to just make sure that that was noted for staff if there was any follow-up. Thank you Councilmember Freeman. Item 30 Grant Project Ordinance Super City Grant Project Ordinance 15653 Grant Project Ordinance Super City Grant Project Ordinance 15651. Item 31 FY21 Agreement with North Carolina State University NCSU supporting the Triangle Regional Model TRM. Under Department of Water Management. Item 32 American Tobacco Water Line Replacement Phase 1 Award of Construction Contract to JF Wilkerson Contracting Company Inc. Item 33 Contract for Western Intake Partnership Program Manager. Item 34 Ordinance Amending the Durham City Code Regulating Billing and Payment of Water Sewer and Stormwater Fees on Combined Utility Bills. I don't want to pull this but I do want to say excellent and I really appreciate the staff viewing these practices through an equity lens. Item 35 Bid Report May 2020. Item 36 Bid Report June 2020. Fire Department 37. Item 37 Local Burning Ordinance. General Services Department Item 38 Cell Tower Lease and License Agreement with T-Mobile South LLC at 1318 East Pettigrew Street. Under the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Item 39 Contract with Eckerd Youth Alternatives Inc. to Provide Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Youth Services. Under the Police Department Item 40 Executive Office of the President Office of National Drug Control Policy 2020 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. HIDTA Grant Project Ordinance. Item 41 Executive Office of the President Office of National Drug Control Policy 2019 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull Item 40 and 41. 40 and 41. Thank you. Under the Public Works Department. Item 42 Water Quality Polluting Source Tracking in Sandy Creek Tributary A and Warren Creek Contract. Under Technology Solutions Department City Works Store Room DC Configuration with Radley Corporation. Item 44 Multi-Year Annual Support Agreement and License Agreement from Unis Software with Tyler Technologies Inc. for FY21 through FY25. Under Public Hearing is the City County Planning Department. Item 45 Annexation of Olive Ranch West. Item 46 Annexation of Twin Lakes. Item 47 Street Closing Cue Place. You've heard the agenda and Mr. Manager, I'm going to go over with you what I believe the items that we have pulled are and the items for discussion. Items for discussion include the priority item, the OEWD, the Racial Equity Task Force, and the funding for the and the funding for the Recovery and Renewal Task Force and the violent crime, the violent gun crime discussion. Those are the four discussion items. I have Mr. Manager. That's correct Mr. Mayor. And then I have pulled otherwise items 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 40 and 41. That's what I have as well. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Colleagues, I think what I would like to do, since I think we can probably go through most of these pull items quickly, is do them and so the staff can leave our meeting and then we'll take up the discussion items. And I was thinking the order we would do that, I believe OEWD has a brief report and so we could do that first and then move to racial equity, violent gun crime, and then the funding for the RRTF. Is that suitable for everyone? Yes, I just- Okay with that. Okay. I just had one additional item, 38. And all I really wanted to note is that this is building on the existing general service statute that allows for for-profit organizations to use our local antenna or local public right-of-way for purposes. And I just wanted to note that this is a 10-year contract that will pay no fees to the city of Durham and just making sure that people are aware that this is happening. Item 38. Yes. Well, we're getting- I think that's correct. Okay. We're getting large fees for that. Okay. Yeah. That's on a water tower. That's not on the right way. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's on the water tower and our fees over the 10 years will be $544,000. Okay. I missed that. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right. So we're going to move now to item 15 and thank you all for helping me through this. We will- this is an item that I had pulled. This is the city county planning department FY21 work program. And I seem as young as here. Thank you for being here, Sarah. This is a tremendously detailed work plan and I want to appreciate the JCCPC. And I'm not sure- Charlie, are you still the chair? I am now, Mr. Mayor. Council member Reese. Great. Yeah. And I know that several of the rest of you all are on there and I'm very appreciative of the work that you all do. I've never suffered through as a member of JCCPC. So I want to express my gratitude to those who have. I've been looking- it's just wanting to comment, Ms. Young. I've been looking for the right opportunity. I've thought about the comp plan rewrite and our planning priorities going forward, including thinking about staffing. And so I just want to mention it here. And I see this long list of priorities and this attachment listing all of the small area land use planning desires that we're not able to do. You know, the list of things that we can't do. And it really kind of confirms my concern that I would sort of offer thought about it. You know, we hear a lot about the NPO process and how some people say it's the only resident initiated process that we have. I'm not sure if that's true, but I do know that I understand why it gets the interest that it does, the NPO process on the part of neighborhoods. But I also know, and as the council confirmed in our recent vote on an NPO application, that NPO's tend to privilege one neighborhood over others and exclusions in one neighborhood's NPO only put additional pressures on other neighborhoods throughout the city. But I do think I understand why why residents are so interested in it because it's their it's their avenue in the planning process where they feel that it is. And so I want to just urge us as we think ahead through the work plan and the comp plan work about figuring out how we can do more small area planning. A couple of my colleagues comment on this frequently. And I think it's really important and I think we need to figure out how to help our residents do that outside of the NPO framework. And I hope that in the comp plan update during this work plan year that we can take that up and the planning department and JCCC can help us think about how that move that forward in future years. I think devoting some staff to small area planning, which is not I think it will really support our residents' desire to participate in planning for their neighborhood and can help us guide future zoning and infrastructure decisions. We've certainly done a lot of this in my time on the council. I think about especially around the station areas, around the DLRT station areas, tremendous small area planning. So I know we can and do, but I just wanted to hope I wanted to express the hope that the staff and under your leadership and our council colleagues on the JCCC PC could think about how we can accomplish more of the small area planning as we think through the comp plan. So that was my comment. And Ms. Young, do you have any thoughts that you would like to offer on that? Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Mayor and members of council. I wanted to share that it may not be completely transparent that as part of our comp plan effort there will be some amount of small area planning that happens to develop the new land use plan with the thought that more detailed plans may be needed afterwards as an outgrowth of that for areas that may be looking to experience more change or have special pressures. And so the idea has always been that we will do some amount of small area planning as part of the engaged term comp plan process. And that we will follow that with additional future projects once the comp plan is complete to continue to do small area planning in areas. Great. Thank you very much. As always your way ahead of me. Are there other comments on this item? All right. Yes, Mr. Mayor. I was just noting I was going to note it in a chat, but I just wanted to echo your sentiments and that what I know over the time that I've been on the planning commission and on the council is that the neighborhoods that are disproportionately impacted aren't as organized and don't have the will worth all to do MPOs. And so you see this fracture of how residents can push in on the planning process. And so I acknowledge where you're saying that it's kind of like the people who are organized get the actual access. But I'm concerned that no if no one has access, then all we have is developers making a plans for our city. And so I'm hopeful that with Miss Young's comments that there will be more engagement around the small neighborhood planning. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Freeman. Thank you for being an advocate for this as you have been. Council Member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As the chair of JCCPC, what I wanted to say is I'm really grateful to you for calling that out and grateful to Miss Young for indicating the future of this idea. I will say that if and when this issue comes to the JCCPC for a conversation, I will definitely extend special invitation to Council Member Freeman, who to my mind has been the greatest champion for this kind of small area planning on the Council and is the only one of us with experience on the planning commission. So Council Member Freeman, I hope you'll agree to come help us talk through these issues JCCPC when that time comes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Council Member Reese. All right. Thank you. This was a really great document. There was lots of things that I saw that I was really pleased to see, including the Durham Landscape Manual update. And then just one of the questions I had was in the Departmental Racial Equity Work Plan. Will you all be working with HR around the equitable hiring practices? And will that help inform practices in other departments across the city? To answer your question, yes, we do plan to talk to HR. Right now we're examining kind of our own biases in the process. And so it's at a very early stage, but we do plan to talk to HR. And hopefully it will serve to help other departments do something similar in their practices as well. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. And thank you, Ms. Young. Any more questions for Ms. Young? Sarah, thank you for stepping into the breach in the Department again. We need you and we appreciate you. All right, I will now move to item 16, which I believe was Council Member Reese. And this would be the item expedited hearing request for zoning map change. Z19, scene 0036. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I need to pull up a quick email here. Hi, Sarah, you're still with us. Thank you. Have you seen an email from Durham Resident Ellen Plus about this particular item? I have not seen an email about this particular item. I have seen an email in regards to development agreement for this project and the development agreement text amendment. But I haven't seen one about the expedited hearing. Okay. I'm trying to find the right question. She asks, is this expedited request tied to a, as she calls it, swift moving text amendment that seeks to enable development agreements in Durham? Technically, yes. This project is seeking to do a couple of things. One is to use our first statutory development agreement. And I'm going to defer to Madam Attorney on this, just to make sure that I get the terminology right. We have done development agreements for other things, but this would be the first time that we're using it the way that it's defined in the general statutes in terms of, in conjunction with the rezoning, for instance. So that text amendment is coming forward. It recently went to Planning Commission, and there was a fair amount of talk this week about that. There's being some changes made to that text amendment. So that would authorize it in our ordinance. It has been, we had a prohibition on development agreements in our ordinance for about a decade or so. And then in 2016, I believe that was removed. But we didn't have anything prescriptive in the ordinance as to how those would be done, even though they were permitted. So that's one thing. The reason for the expedited hearing and the push to get development agreements of this type authorized and specified in our ordinance is because this project is seeking to do something a little bit different and unique in terms of affordable housing, and they have a deadline that they're working against. And so we are trying to work with them towards that deadline to see if they can be successful in providing that affordable housing. So that's the impetus behind it. The idea in general for development agreements is that they can provide a tool for council to use to secure community benefits that may be outside beyond the bounds of regular the topics that are covered in regular zoning code. So Can you answer a kind of a factual question about the application itself? Are they seeking, is the applicant seeking 330 multifamily units or 160 units? That was another question that was plus of that. I don't, I would have to look at that. I don't have that super handy right now, but I am happy to get back to you all with that. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you, councilmember. Miss Young, I have a question about this also, which is this is going to the planning commission and then coming to us, correct? The case will, yes. Yeah. What if we approve this? Correct. And so what I wasn't clear is what's being skipped, you know, what's being expedited is the expedited mean that they're moving ahead of some other cases that would normally have gone to the planning commission before them. The expedited status basically takes away the planning commission's ability to continue the case for up to 90 days. I see. So it guarantees one stop at planning commission with a decision one way or another and then moving to council. Gotcha. That's what I didn't quite understand, but it would still go to the planning commission first is indicated in the memo. Okay. All right. Any other questions or comments on this? All right. If not, we'll move on to the next item, which is item 21. Thank you, Miss Young. Item 21 is the 2019 planning commission annual report. And hello, Miss Young. I pulled this item. Here's my question. Most of the planning commission items come to us. The vast majority go to us and not to the county commission. But when I count the number of county commission appointees, I see that there are planning commission appointees. I see that the county has 11 appointees and we have six or at least that's the number that are currently on the agenda. And I wondered if there's a rationale for that. Is that just a historic legacy and any thoughts you might have? I don't know what the origin of the breakdown of who got how many seats originally. I do know that this is something that was established in the planning interlocal agreement. There are a few boards that are in that that larger master interlocal planning commission board of adjustment being being to joint city county being another. So I can certainly look into that and see if I can dig up the history why that decision was made, but I don't know right off hand. My guess is that it was a time when the county was looking at a lot more of these. Actually, Mr. Mayor, I believe that there's a crossover on some of them, some of the seats. So it shouldn't necessarily, I think say again. I believe there's a crossover like your representative in the city, in the county. And so that. Well, it would be good to know. So, Miss Young, maybe you could you could help us with that. I'll tell you my concern is not just the number. It's that I feel like we're getting such important advice from the planning commission and it's advice that's non tense of that advice is going to us and one tenth of it's going to the county. And I would just like us to have an ability to, you know, have a lot of influence over that advice that we're getting because we're so relying on it. So those are my thoughts. And once you've been able to find out a little more information for us, maybe we could figure out how to have a discussion with the county about it or would love your would love any guidance that you have to offer. Sure. All right, thank you. All right. Now we'll move to item 22. This is one of the items that the manager has asked that we expedite. And I'm going to ask now for any report on this that we might have from the Community Development Department. Hello, Reginald. Greetings, Mr. Mayor. Peter, nice to see you all. We'll be glad to respond to any questions. The purpose of this item is to have a contract with Department of Social Services Durham County, as well as who will be working with the legal aid of North Carolina to be able to distribute a rental assistance program. The source of the funds will be the COVID money that we have received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the CDBG, COVID money in particular. The sum is just over $1 million. And the Department of Social Services has agreed to distribute this money as part of the framework that they have, initially have. And we've been working with them. Thank you for seeing the memos that I shared with some updates. And so that's the purpose of this item. And that's the reason we're asking for suspension of the rooms because they're unapproved because there's a need out there that we're trying to meet in the Durham community, especially with the eviction moratorium getting ready to be lifted. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. You all have heard the report from staff and I'm going to ask Council Member Caballero. I think that you have some questions on this item. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I appreciate the supplemental memo. Reginald, you and I have had some email exchanges back and forth about this item. I see that Peter Gilbert is here from Legal Aid. I just wanted some clarification and criteria. When this conversation happened, you know, I think now in May, initially there was, I know I shared concerns around any barriers because of the current program that the county has for rent assistance. And I think some of it's been mitigated, but I just want clarity on what the criteria are going to be. What are they going to be asking for folks when they come in the door? Some of that's been kind of clarified in your memo. Some of it is still open so people can say, you know, documentation status doesn't matter. But if they're asking for a social security number, then that's still a barrier. So just wanted to have clarification around that. And then also our contract is directly with the county. So Legal Aid's role is adjacent. But that relationship is going to go through the county via us. I mean, instead of through us, correct? That's correct. That part is correct. Okay. So the way I just want to understand, we're essentially handing all the money over to the county. The county is going to administer it with Legal Aid. That's correct. Okay. And then on my criteria question, if you all could let me know what that looks like. So let me ask you a little bit about your criteria question. Are you talking about what documentation that persons have to provide? Or are you asking what standards are they are to meet? I guess both. Okay. All right. Well, let me, we have Melva Henry, who's a project manager on the call on this meeting. And I'll turn this question over to her to provide some detail. And we also have individuals from the county on the call as well. And so I'll let her answer your question. Melva Henry. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, we can, Ms. Henry. Welcome. Great. Thank you so much. What I will say is both Peter and the Department of Social Services have worked diligently on completing guidelines for the program. And with that said, I would be more comfortable turning the questions over to the Department of Social Services so they could give you a direct example of the types of information they'll ask. So if Lee or Contessa from DSS would follow up with that. Ms. Little, would you like to comment? Good afternoon. I am Contessa Sawyer. I am the supervisor over the rental assistance program here at Durham County. And the guidelines that we have placed, we have in place for the CDBG money is for clients. I'm sorry. The process is clients will either be referred by legal aid outside agencies and they will call the 5608000 number here at Durham County and receive an appointment for rental assistance. At that time, our social workers that have been identified to work on this team will contact those particular clients at their appointment time. The assessment will be completed with the client at that time. We'll go over pretty much what their housing need is and if it is directly related to COVID. Of course, the eligibility requirements is that the resident must be a City of Durham resident. They must meet the 80% AMI guidelines. They also must be represented by legal aid or an attorney that has been connected to this project They must provide all documentation, which would include of course any income information as well as verification of their needs. I can say that the citizenship requirement has been weighed for this program. And so we will not provide, I mean we will not require citizenship information. I believe that that would be it. Of course, the tenants would have to provide verification that they are responsible for these bills for this grant or utility need. And I believe that should be it. And would you like to add anything, Peter? Mr. Mayor, Council members, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Excellent. I don't know if you have in front of you the scope of work, which I think is Attachment A for the contract. The basic eligibility requirements are as Ms. Sawyer has outlined that they must be a resident of the City. They're very within 80% AMI represented by legal aid, the Duke Civil Justice Clinic or another attorney. We've been training private attorneys to help handle the volume that we are starting to see and expect. There are, I believe, 11 different documents that are required that are listed on page 2 and going on to page 3 of the scope of work. So it is my understanding from your Community Development Compliance Department that and from these are documents that are being required by a combination of the city, the county and HUD. So it is a fair amount of paperwork that clients will have to put together in order to be eligible for these funds. And one of the things that we think they will benefit from having the attorney involved in is that we will be able to work with them to gather this paperwork. Thank you. I just want to share that I appreciate everyone's very diligent work. I know that this is a lot. I know that the federal regulations limit what we can do. I want to acknowledge that. I also want to acknowledge looking at the list here, it just seems like a very onerous process. I'm very, very concerned. A lot of the folks that we're trying to, I see that there are workarounds for a copy of a lease. But there are going to be a lot of folks who don't have leases. They're paid by cash. Their income verification is going to be very hard to get. There's going to be, I also have questions of ultimately who's holding all of this information, especially when we're dealing with people who have different documentation status. So I do want to just air all of my concerns. I know that we're operating with some things that we can't control. But what I'm seeing here isn't necessarily allaying those concerns. Thank you, Council Member. Mr. Johnson or Ms. Henry, any of the other folks want to comment on that? Well, I do receive the comments from the Council Member and as she indicated, we have been in some dialogue about that. I would just share that, you know, in terms of the essence of meeting the need that we have and combining the rules that we receive this Monday on, under, that we, the staff, as well as the Legal Aid and the DSS have worked diligently, as well with our HUD office, field office, to be able to put together a program that will service as best we can. I'll be honest with you, it's not going to address everything, but they have DSS in particular has made significant strides to improve the process and we receive those. Is it perfect? No. But I think that it will go a good ways to meeting the need. I'll just be candid and say one of the things that's important and that in my bailiwick is to make sure and ensure that we do get reimbursed from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for these expenditures. That is a commitment that we have that's very important as well in addition to the service of the needs that are in our community. Mr. Mayor and council members, I'd also like to add that a lot of the information that we're asking is going to be delivered from the program participants by their own self-certification. So for income, they can self-certify. Thank you, Ms. Henry. Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Are there any of these 11 items? Peter had said that they were a combination of things being required by the city and by the county and by HUD. Is there anything that we can eliminate on the city side? Let me also add that we've narrowed the list and this list is as condensed as we possibly can get at this point with all of HUD's requirements and regulations. Thank you. Certainly. Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I just wanted to track back on the side of the city with community development and make sure that NIS or Neighbor Improvement Services is included in this scope as well. I noted that they're not and just noting that a lot of the inspections, the you know, housing appeals, that kind of work that's happening, there has to be a way to filter some of the kind of, we know that the housing stock is not all where it needs to be and I just want to make sure that they're involved in the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments? I just, any other comments? I like to add from DSS, you know, with some of the verifications we will be using some of our internal networks and systems to gather as many documents to help the clients go through this process as seamlessly as possible. So we'll be using all of our systems to help with that process and is our intent to make it as quick as possible too. Mr. Little? Yeah. Thank you and thank you to Ms. Sawyer. All right. Any other comments? Just a thank you as well. I know that this is federal funds that you're trying to direct to serve a need that we have. I really appreciate the way that staff has pulled together to come up with this very quickly. So thank you very much. Thank you. And Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to also thank our staff and our partners at the county and at Legal Aid for this work. We know that as the eviction moratoriums that have been put in place by the state are lifted and the COVID pandemic continues that we're going to see a lot of people struggling to stay in their homes and that's a huge issue for our community. Having access to stable affordable housing keeps people safe, keeps people healthy, keeps people in school districts so that their kids can learn. It's just such a fundamental need and so I'm glad to see that we're able to do this. I hope that our state delegation and our federal delegation will consider continuing some of these critical programs that they've put into place over the last few months because as we all well know the pandemic is not over, it's not even slowing. In fact, in a lot of places it's continuing to increase in speed and we're limited with what we can do here but I appreciate everyone's work and that we're taking action and I hope that our federal and state representatives will hear our community's needs and will continue to act as well and provide us the resources that we need to really manage this crisis. Thank you very much for those comments Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Caballero. Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor. Additionally, I just want to say I know that this is hopefully just a first round. We've discussed rent assistance within our own bucket of city COVID relief funds that we set aside and I know that that will not have the same barriers that I know we're all wrestling with so I hope to just like we're doing another round not necessarily of city money around with small business loans and grants that this is a first pass at help because I know that there are many in our community that are going to need it and again I want to thank staff and Legal Aid and the county for all of their work. Thank you. I do want to note also from the memo that DSS and Legal Aid are donating a lot of their staff services to this so that the money can go to rental relief and the staff expressed their appreciation and I want to add mine as well. I also wanted to note that the new AMI for a family of four in Durham and the Durham Chapel Hill MSA is now $91,000. 30% of the AMI is now $27,000 so we're in a continuing situation and it's always daunting to see those new numbers. All right, I thank you very much. Mr. Johnson, Ms. Henry, Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Little, Ms. Sawyer and I'm now going to ask if there's a motion that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. So moved. Second. Moved by the council by Mayor Pro Tem, seconded by council member Freeman that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl, aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, aye. Councilmember Caballero, aye. Councilmember Freeman, aye. Councilmember Middleton, aye. Councilmember Reese, aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes six to zero. We'll now move on to item 23, housing for new housing emergency solutions grant. Mr. Mayor, we need to vote on the item. How clever. Okay. Thank you for that important reminder. I will now accept the motion that we approve this item. Second. Moved by councilmember Middleton. Is there a second? Second. Second by Mayor Pro Tem. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl, aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, aye. Councilmember Caballero, aye. Councilmember Freeman, aye. Councilmember Middleton, aye. Councilmember Reese, aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes six to zero. And this motion, this item is approved. We'll now move to item 23, housing for new housing emergency solutions grant. And then Mr. Johnson, welcome. Thank you, Mayor Reginald Johnson, Director Department of Community Development. For this item, I will ask our homelessness system manager, Colin Davis, to respond to your questions and as well as introduce the item. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. City Council Colin Davis, Community Development, homeless systems manager. This item is to provide housing for new hope funds to implement and expand rapid rehousing for people in Durham experiencing homelessness, to move them from homelessness into permanent housing as quickly as possible. This COVID pandemic. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Are there any questions for Mr. Davis or any comments from members of the council? Councilmember Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Great. Thank you for joining us. I guess you're at the EOC. Is that what they call it? I am, yes. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you. I know you've had some long months over there. I thank you for your service. The staff memo on this item and the next item indicated that, and it looks to me as though only two applications for funding were received under this. Is that right? That is correct. And both are being funded by item 23 and then by item 24? Correct. Okay. Is that, do we know why some of our homeless service providers would another type of homeless service provider not qualified for these funds like another homeless shelter, for example? That's a great question. Other service providers are eligible for these funds. This is the first round of emergency solutions grant funding that came to the community. And at the time, the Policy and Planning Committee of the Homeless Services Advisory Council recommended to prioritize funding to rapid rehousing. At the time we were in the process of closing the hotel that was housing urban ministries at the Marriott RTP. And the objective was to get as many people into permanent housing as we could knowing that we were going back to a socially distanced urban ministries and or other location, which would have much smaller space for folks experiencing homelessness to stay. So the thought was, let's get money. The committee decided that the importance was to get people into permanent housing. And currently, Housing for New Hope is the primary rapid rehousing provider in Durham. And as I said earlier, these are the first round of ESG entitlement funds that are coming to the city. There is a first round of state ESG COVID response funds that community development is the lead agency on and just submitted a grant on behalf of the continuum of care to North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services for additional emergency solutions grants fund. And in that pot of money, there is money coming from the state to it's being recommended that money be used from that pot to urban ministries to help with emergency shelter grants. Great. That's exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you for your help. I appreciate it. That's all I had, Mr. Mayor. You're welcome. Thank you, Councilmember. Any more questions or comments on this item? All right. If I think Councilmember Freeman. Thank you. I know you can always see my hand sometimes. I just wanted to just ask if there was an administrative fee that was assigned to this just making sure that Housing for New Hope wasn't just like it just wasn't a pass through. Are you asking if there's an administrative fee for the City of Durham or an administrative fee for Housing for New Hope? Housing for New Hope. There is a... All right. So let me back up a second. HUD has changed their rules on the ESG COVID funds and allowing a 10% administrative fee. Okay. So out of that amount of money, there is an administrative fee and HUD is very, very specific on what those fees can be used for. They'll have to follow the stay in compliance with that and community development will be working on the monitoring to ensure that they stay in compliance. Thank you. You're welcome. And Councilmember, I think there's an attachment on that. Attachment 5, I think has detail. Any other questions or comments? I'm going to now ask if there's a motion that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. Move to suspend. Second. It's been moved by Councilmember Middleton, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Cada Yaro. Aye. Councilmember Freeman. Aye. Councilmember Middleton. I vote aye. Councilmember Ease. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Davis. Now we'll have a motion on the actual item. So moved. Second. It's been moved by Mayor Pro Tem, seconded by Councilmember Middleton that we approve the item. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Caballero. Aye. Councilmember Freeman. Aye. Councilmember Middleton. I vote aye. Councilmember Ease. Aye. Thank you very much. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously. Well now move to item 24. The third item which the manager has asked we suspend the rules and vote on in light of the COVID emergency. This is the project access of Durham County emergency solutions grant. Mr. Johnson. Mr. Mayor, members of council in some respects this is a companion item. I will turn it over to Mr. Davis to respond to any questions. Thank you very much. Mr. Davis, do you want to summarize this in a sentence or two? Sure. These funds are going to project access to work with those in our community who are both experiencing homelessness and medically vulnerable. Project access has the unique capacity and skill set to work with medically vulnerable who are experiencing homelessness. Thank you. I had sent you a couple of questions ahead of time and you've already answered a couple of them there with that. This is just case management. Is that correct and not rental assistance? So it is primarily for case management and or transportation of guests, clients to medical appointments. The funding is flexible in the ESG guidelines in that these funds could be used to rent a hotel room if an emergency shelter is not available. So if UMD at their socially distanced capacity there's no room and the county contract, the rooms at the Carolina Duke Inn are full and there's somebody who really has to get out of the elements. These funds could be used to rent a hotel room. The funds are not able to be used for renting an apartment for instance. That would be in the rapid rehousing portion of ESG funds. Thank you. And how will persons be identified who would be the most likely to be supported with these funds? Sure. The people recommended and referred to this project essentially need to be referred from a medical provider. Most of the referrals come from the Duke hospital from Lincoln and partnerships with urban ministries with Lincoln Health and we're currently working on how to bring the newly formed street outreach team into being able to make referrals through the medical provider as well. It's kind of making sure we've got a good medical handoff and making sure our medically vulnerable citizens who are experiencing homelessness are well cared for while they're making their way to permanent housing. Is our street team able to operate at this time given COVID? They are operating. I can get you details on where they are on that if you'd like. I know Housing for New Hope has been frantically hiring staff as we were closing the hotel and offering to partner with urban ministries to help make sure guests are cared for and have the supports that are needed because we're kind of stretched thin trying to operate multiple sites right now where we were historically operating one. Well that gives me a lot of gratitude to you, to Mr. Johnson, to everybody in community development and to our friends in the county who when we stepped in to fund this street team I mean I think we didn't know we were going to have a pandemic to follow but it makes its necessity even greater so thank you. I really appreciate this. I think this is a great expenditure of our funds. I'm so worried about this group of people. Homeless and medically vulnerable in a pandemic and so I appreciate you and the department for recognizing this need and including this and I think these three expenditures together are great and I also want to thank you for moving ahead to expand our own I mean one of the ways in which you've expedited this and want to appreciate the department again is by going ahead and spending our own dedicated housing fund money in anticipation of the reimbursement by the federal government which is enabling us to do this more quickly and I think that's very creative and want to appreciate the department for that so thank you. Are there any other comments or questions on this item? All right if not I'll accept a motion that we suspend the rules and vote. I'll move. Second. Moved by Councilmember Freeman seconded by Mayor Pro Tem that we suspend the rules and vote. Madam Clerk please call the roll. Mayor Shull. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Councilmember Caballero. Aye. Councilmember Freeman. Aye. Councilmember Middleton. I vote aye. Councilmember Reese. Aye. Thank you. The ayes have it the rules are suspended I'll now accept the motion on the item. Move approval. Second. Moved approval by Mayor Pro Tem seconded by Councilmember Reese. Madam Clerk please call the roll. Mayor Shull. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Councilmember Caballero. Aye. Councilmember Freeman. Aye. Councilmember Middleton. Aye. Councilmember Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you Madam Clerk. The ayes have it the motion passes unanimously. Thank you Mr. Johnson and thank you to your staff. We'll now move to the Department of Transportation item 25 extension of merger agreement with the County of Durham demand response services and I pulled this item and Mr. Egan welcome. Good afternoon Mr. Mayor and members of council. Did I send you questions? You did so if you'd like I can kind of consolidated responses to the questions. That would be great. I can't remember if I'd sent them to you or not. Thank you very much. Sure. I would go ahead if you want to introduce the item and maybe if there are some of the questions that you'd like to answer that would be great. Sure. Thank you very much. So what we're doing here is we're working through the extension of an agreement that the city made with Durham County last year where we formerly had two separately operated paratransit demand response services and we found that it was much more efficient for us to be able to consolidate these and provide a simpler better experience for our paratransit riders. So we entered into this agreement in October of last year and as part of this agreement we had planned to solicit a new contract for service provision through GoTriangle. What we ended up doing with that contract it was solicited it actually was sent to the GoTriangle Board of Trustees yesterday for award and it's scheduled to begin on September 1st. So what we wanted to do with this extension of the agreement was to enable us to have some additional time to work through the transition to the new contract that's going into effect on September 1st and understand any changes in service provision and any changes in the cost profile associated with this transition to a new contract and a new contractor. So what we are proposing here is a six month extension through the end of December where we'll continue to provide services that have been in place since October and then during that time we plan to work with the county to develop a long-term extension that aligns with that service contract. So that service contract is a three-year base term ending in June of 2023 and then there are two additional option years. So we want the interlocal agreement between the city and the county to be matched up with the service contract and we think that three-year initial term is a good target but we want to understand all of the ramifications of the transition and make sure that those are fully captured and addressed in the long-term extension and so we'll be doing that in the coming months but we wanted to keep the services in place so that there's no disruption in service to our riders. In terms of the how the merger has gone so far it's been very smooth we had the same provider in place so we were able to easily transition county riders to our service and there was no disruptions and we did not hear complaints from riders about the transition. In terms of the ridership we were expecting in the budget about 1400 riders per month. For the first several months we were at about 1300 trips per month and then since the pandemic we've seen a decrease in ridership now to a little less than 50% of those levels but we are meeting the trip demand from customers. On cost the city's current cost is approximately $26 per trip which is the amount that's provided for an agreement. There are some additional administrative requirements in the agreement for reporting and staffing of a transportation advisory committee that would increase the city's cost so we're working through proposals and cost estimates to address those. The goal of the long-term extension agreement is to ensure that any administrative requirements can be met and that associated costs are appropriately allocated. With respect to the advisory body current agreement does include a provision that calls for the formation of a joint city council county transportation advisory committee as a successor to the county transportation advisory board. The formation of the new committee was delayed as the city's transportation department completed a leadership transition so I'll take responsibility for that as I came in this was one of the things that I wanted to attend to and has not advanced as quickly as I would like it to have so as part of that we plan to engage with our county stakeholders and the community as part of the development of a long-term extension agreement to better understand the goals and objectives that we hope to achieve with this group and then what the right structure is to meet this and what resources will be required for support. I heard the feedback that Chair Jacobs shared during yesterday's go triangle board meeting about the valuable work performed by the county's board in recent years and we certainly want to develop a structure that will enable us to continue that important and valuable work. So staff have requested an opportunity to appear before the board of county commissioners that are not coming work session to redress the extension and requirements of the agreement and get additional input from the board of county commissioners and county administration to help us work through these remaining items. So that's my report thank you. Happy to answer any questions. Well you answered all my questions thank you Sean that was great report you covered everything I had seen and I'm very grateful. Any other questions for Sean? All right Sean thank you so much. Sure and if I may I'd like to ask Thomas Leathers to address the next few transportation items that relate specifically to the park. And those are 26 and 7 yeah let me let me first review our agenda everybody because Mayor Pro Tem had let me know that there are several members of the so we have various members of the racial equity task force here to present to us and they have some time constraints and so they've asked if we could move them up. Let me just I'm going to just say I can't remember Reese pull item 26 I pulled item 27 40 and 41 were pulled by the my council member Caballero I believe is that right yeah so I'll just say for my item I will let me just deal with that one item and then we can talk about the other three and sort of see where we want to go. For my concern was the employment statistics for the company which is this would be item 27 Mr. Leathers the Otis elevator contract where I see that there's one African-American employee so I understand we're under severe time constraints today so if I could ask if you could ask that someone from that company or through you to be in touch with us prior to our council meeting to let us know what their hiring practices are their recruitment practices are whether or not they are in touch with our local universities our local HBCUs and and you're very familiar with the kinds of questions that we like the answers to so if you could ask that on item 27 I would be grateful. Thomas Leathers transportation department Mr. Mayor members of council we will follow up with Otis elevator we receive that request information shortly. Thank you all right for items 26 40 and 41 I'm going to ask councilmember Rees and councilmember Carriero are these items that you think can be quickly disposed of or do you feel like we need a major discussion? I can I can dispose of mine pretty quickly Mr. Mayor. Yeah go ahead councilmember. On item 26 I don't have any concerns about the contract itself but Mr. Mayor as with the reasons you might have number 27 the employment statistics workforce demographics of this employer were of concern to me 21 employees all white no black black or brown employees and the UBE requirements per the per the compliance memo were met because there were no subcontracting opportunities identified by the transportation department. The reason I wanted to pull that is just to say this if state law doesn't allow us to reject a contract with an employee with a with a vendor who has no black or brown employees then I'd like someone to tell me that and so that doesn't necessarily have to happen today but I think we as a council are going to have to at some point come to grips with one of two things either we're not doing enough to require more diversity for the in the vendors that are selected through our contracting process number one or number two we are it is unlawful for us to do more and I'd like to know which that is because this is not a good situation. This is not the only contract we've seen like this over the last year Mr. Mayor you identified one I think there's another one later on that I didn't pull that also did not look reflective of the kind of diversity that we want to see in our vendors I you know we can sit here and keep voting for these contracts year in and year out but until we have a real conversation about what the law requires what it forbids and if we are not allowed to do more let's talk to our legislative delegation about getting the authority to do more but voting for these things is demoralizing that's all I wanted to say Mr. Mayor thank you thank you council member and of course we've had this discussion many many times and this is not Mr. Letters we recognize this is not for you but I do think that it's a discussion that we need to advance with our city attorney and I appreciate your foregrounding that council member Reese council member Freeman I just wanted to wholeheartedly agree with council member Reese's comments and your requests and information I just wanted to note that I usually don't ask on vendors that with less than 50 employees because I am cognizant of how workplace comfort levels can can be off-putting when it's when it's much smaller and you're the only one of color that works there and so I just wanted to make sure I added that caveat and then just to say that if there is I wanted to second and making sure that we are pushing forward through our legislative agenda ways in which to make sure that we have a handle on what we can and can't ask for so thank you thank you council member all right we'll now move unless there are any more comments to item 40 and council member Caballero this is just a quick question for item 40 and 41 the local match number the 10,000 something is that for each item or so is it a total of 20,000 or is it 10,000 because the number is the same so I just was confused yes this is a key suppress them with the police department good afternoon and council members um yes the 10,000 is for each one the local match is for our overtime for our officers and their benefits so we do the local match every year for that okay thank you thank you council member and thank you miss Preston thank you all right um mr manager I believe that we have gone through all the pull items and we're now down to the discussion items that's what I have mr mayor oh mr manager I'm going to change a little bit about from what we said and move on to the racial equity task force and then we'll move on to the that's fine that's fine thank you thank you for those members of the racial equity task force thank you for hanging with us we have big agenda today and very appreciative of you all being here with us um I'm going to ask the mayor pro tem if she will make some introductory marks remarks and then uh introduce the task force uh I'm I've discussed uh previously with the task force leadership and I will give you all 30 minutes to um report I know there's several of you all are going to participate and then we'll have questions comments from the council mayor pro tem would you like to introduce our our presenters may she's gone for a minute I will introduce our presenters um I'm going to uh introduce our chair judge and dean Elaine O'Neill who I want to thank for doing a great job leading this group over the past year and a half uh and also I believe Karin Haldeman the vice chair will also be helping lead this presentation and the two of them have been wonderful leaders for this group I want to say to the members of the task force I want to express my gratitude to you all for the incredible effort you put into it I've mayor pro tem has kept us informed of the effort of the ongoing efforts and and the extraordinary work that you've done and I just want to express my gratitude uh mayor pro tem would you like to um say a word to you and then uh we'll we'll hear from judge bush van yes sorry for judge O'Neill thank you mr mayor um and thank you everyone I'm really thrilled um to be here at this moment hearing this presentation from this group over the last 21 months I have seen them work so incredibly hard to think about the ways in which the city um and other institutions in our community are failing to live up to our ideals and our promises um about racial equity and to to put concrete recommendations in place um for our institutions in order to in order to move in the right direction um they have especially over the last six months spent countless hours uh in meetings they you know met three times in just the last two weeks I've honestly been um inspired and just so deeply grateful for the work that they've done and for the incredible commitment that all the members of this task force have put into um making this possible and bringing bringing these recommendations to us um we've learned a lot over the last almost two years um they've done a lot of community engagement had plans to do more but unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic made um made some of those efforts unsafe but I think that this is this is the beginning of a really important conversation and so we'll be able to continue to engage with the community and with organizations and residents around the around these important issues a lot of the recommendations are going to require the city to um to to put resources behind making um making some of these recommendations real they require funding and a real commitment from us um towards building the kind of community that we all want to live in um your race doesn't determine so many um of the aspects of your of your life and your future that that are that are now determined so I um hope that we'll all I know that we'll all give the recommendations serious consideration and and that we move forward um as quickly as we can with providing some real resources and funding to put to put some of these recommendations in place but I don't want to talk too long because I know our um our guests I'll have places to be but I just want to thank them um so much on behalf of the council and the entire city for the work that they've done and commit to um commit to putting their ideas into practice through whatever means we uh we have available to us so thank you thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem Judge O'Neill welcome we're glad to have you and would look forward to hearing your your report thank you I'm not exactly sure whether you can see me but I am here we can hear you we cannot see you but we can hear you okay and I'm not exactly sure why you can't see me but we will try to see if there is a reason now can you see me no I think that it's because I think you're not as included as a panelist is that correct Madam Clerk okay well I will hang on a second let me ask the clerk Madam Clerk is that correct yes I'm promoting to her to panelists to see if it'll work okay she's trying to judge she's trying to make you a panelist so that you could be seen so there I am hello is she there yay okay and Madam Clerk if you could also make Karen hold them in a panelist I see she's on yes good all right judge thank you good to see you all right good to see you all thank you thank you all so much for this opportunity this afternoon uh it's raining over here so I call that a blessed rain we've had a wonderful 24 21 months and I just want to briefly introduce myself to those who don't know me I am Elaine O'Neill I am a Dermite born and raised in the city having lived nowhere else other than Durham I served as a judge here for 24 years recently retired in 2018 from the bench then I went over to North Carolina Century University School of Law by Alma Mater twice and served as interim dean I am now retired as of today I'm done for a little while at any rate I I've had the distinct pleasure of serving as name chair but actually co-chair of this historic task force the racial equity task force I thank our Mayor Pro Tim Johnson and Mayor Shul for asking 18 of Durham residents to take part in this historic and monumental work we have been together and we are now family from November the 20 of 2018 to July 23rd today 2020 and we apologize for the lateness of the report we have actually been on a marathon for the last two weeks up until last night when we finally approved the last uh iteration of this document and it is now complete and ready for your uh for your perusal we asked that you remember that it took us one time to write it but you're gonna have forever to read it so we pray that it will be a great read and a call to action I wanted to uh introduce our task force members but I'm going to skip that part other than my co-chair and ask when those uh committee members speak if they would introduce the remainder of the task force member there are 18 of us hopefully you will hear from some of us today most of us today but I do want to introduce you to this special lady who I met on the day that I asked her to co-chair this task force and that's Karen Karen not Karen Karen Haldeman and she is the glue she has been the glue for this task force and she has kept us moving forward to this day I want to preface my opening remarks by basically saying and we have agreed that this comes directly from the report but it does address the moment in time with COVID as you know we were interrupted in our work we had planned to meet with some more community organizations but that time was interrupted and our work had was largely developed before the COVID-19 pandemic but that has further exposed the depth of inequality in our city and nation while adding to the work urgency of anti-racist work we have attempted to incorporate this experience into our recommendations but we realize that our understanding remains incomplete as the pandemic and its consequences are developing in real time the pandemic does underscore how serious our problems are and the necessity to up our efforts in changing the realities of racial inequities we talked about a couple of nights ago the task force did about the tone that we wish to for the readers to infer as they began to delve into this I think it's approximately 64 pages of reading and we thought it very important that we inject something into our conversation about this that you don't really see in the public eye and that's the idea of community love community love kindness and grace you hear a whole lot in the days news every day news about all of the hate but where is the love so this is our love letter to Durham and it is a loving and urgent call to action and so we ask that you infer that tone for this reading and for your subsequent action and with that I am going to turn this over to my co-chair Karen Haldeman who will explain to you our work thank you so much Elaine you are our north star on this task force good afternoon my name is Karen Haldeman and I am the vice-chair of the racial equity task force and I serve on the health and environmental justice subcommittee and the public health public history subcommittee today I'd like to give you just a brief overview of how we did our work there's a longer summary in the report so we hope you take a look at that but this is sort of just a brief walkthrough when I first walked into our first meeting back in November 2018 I didn't know one soul in that group and now we're standing here well sitting 17 of us having spent nearly two years together struggling and celebrating and supporting one another through the work and trying to rise to the challenge assigned to us we're parents grandparents and caregivers we are teachers and we are activists and we are business owners we are your neighbors we began our work early on by creating those safe spaces where we could talk about race and racism white supremacy and racial equity that deep thoughtful and sensitive work that was rooted in empathy we established some agreed upon ideas of racial equity and while we still grapple with the perfect definition we put forth in this report that the conversations will always be ongoing that racial equity is a noun but it is also a verb as our actions toward it are built into it we collaboratively developed six subcommittees that include housing wealth and economy health and environmental justice education criminal legal and public history subcommittees met outside of our monthly meetings and spent time visiting community spaces inviting speakers and attending other meetings that informed their work it wasn't a stated part of our mission from the city but we agreed early on that we really wanted to include a component of community engagement so that we could hear feedback from the people of Durham on the recommendations that we had made before we had even finalized the report this is really important to the group in December of 2019 we turned our attention to those presentations in the community in the remaining time December seems like years ago now so we turned our attention to those meetings and we were able to schedule a total of nine of them in February and March before COVID-19 interrupted all of our lives and we were able to keep eight of those nine meetings in the midst of the pandemic tens of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets and powerful protests that have laid bare the consequences of racial injustice and are passionately and effectively calling for a new anti-racist direction and our society and in our culture our task force responded with an urgency that we move forward with writing our report and in May we began meeting every week we offered this report in solidarity with this movement and here in Durham we cannot ignore the additional epidemic of gun violence and its deep and long-standing impact specifically on our black communities it has stolen our loved ones our children including Tyvee and McLean a 12 year old boy a student at Lowes Grove Middle School a Durham son preventing and healing the deep trauma of this violence is not the work of one organization or one city council it is the work of racial equity and of our entire community so we stand now at a vital and pivotal moment in our history when we are compelled as a city and as neighbors to build a collective conscience together and create the just city that lies ahead when we must lift every voice and saying the present situation cannot stand we can and must do better the future of our nation our state and our city is at stake so now we're going to hear from our task force members who will present recommendations from each of our subcommittees I believe Cameron Smith is with us today to talk about our recommendations from the housing subcommittee Cameron are you here yes I'm here Cameron thank you Cameron can you hold on one second let me see if our clerk as people are speaking can make them panelists so we can see them Madam clerk is that possible yes mr. Mayor I've already made her a panelist great and so we should be able to see you Cameron if you turn your camera on and let me just while we're doing this thank the clerk she has done double duty today uh minding the chat and and the everything else so thank you and Cameron um yes yes great good welcome thank you mayor thank you city council members for having us today my name is Cameron Smith and I'm a member of the housing task force as well as subcommittee as well as the wealth and economy subcommittee um my I'm presenting the housing recommendation um our chairperson was James Tavron as long along with uh housing task force members um Hallie Mott singer Dan McKinney and David Dixon and Corey um I would like to begin with our initial introduction and our recommendations for the housing uh task force it should be obvious to all concern that the lack of decent and affordable housing is a national and local crisis of great proportion that has been building over time we can trace this trend beginning with the denial of 40 acres in a mule to the survivors of American slavery and carried on through the period of Jim Crow via segregation racism and government housing policies real estate and mortgage industries are magnified the red lines this is also compounded by the urban renewal which is the hay time neighborhood of Durham led to the intentional might I add displacement of 400 families and 500 businesses most recently the 2008 Great Recession and its consequent indiscriminate gentrification along with the continuing decline in support of public housing and COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the housing crisis particularly and black indigenous POC community our policy recommendations focus on minimizing harm as we begin the meaningful work of seriously tackling the problem we understand the limitations on city power and financial capacity so we also advocate that the city work in league with other anti-racist forces around the state and nation to actually do the work here are a few of our further recommendations we recommend that the city partner with Durham housing authority to ensure the public housing will be safe livable humane dignified and well maintained and sensitive to environmental impact we also recommend that the city of Durham and the Durham housing authority develop and implement new public housing and eviction policies that provide mortgage and public rent relief and create a universal right to counsel for those facing eviction by allocating more money to legal aid eviction diversion program we also recommend that the city of Durham develop a strategy that would allow Durham housing authority to refrain from filing evictions after the 14-day notice period and instead implement a non-punitive measure like offering financial counseling many evictions including most public housing evictions for non-payment of rent resolve themselves when the client is able to pay additional rental assistance case management and where appropriate financial counseling or mental health services often resolve the underlying problem without the need for a lawsuit in court in many cases all that is needed is additional time for a tenant to come up with the money we also recommend that bend the box which is the questions about criminal history for potential renters in Durham be used in in our public housing also the city and county should track the race and gender of those facing eviction it is imperative that the city and county of Durham ensure that the public and private renters within their jurisdiction are not discriminated discriminated against as citizens the city and county must develop a system to track the race and gender of those being evicted and should publish the data for transparency and accountability we also recommend that all housing strategies contain a larger wealth building strategy we envision a Durham where communities that are most often disconnected from the city's dorm prosperity are supported in the initiative to build self-sustaining wealth historically and currently one of the primary ways to build wealth in this country is through home ownership the affordable housing bond allocates some money for home ownership for 400 first-time homeowners this money will cover the cost of the down payment for first-time homeowners we recommend that the city expand on the foundation of the housing bond and create a long-term strategic plan to increase the access of home ownership for community members who have historically only had access to rentals we also include in our recommendations love measures on increased accountability and transparency the main concern that we receive from community members of color with a general distrust of city initiatives we recommend that the city be proactive about building trust within these communities it serves and for the city to trust that the community knows what's best for itself we appreciate the efforts of neighborhood improvement services to move more intentional in this direction we recommend also that when the city rebuilds communities they do so as the community seats fit and that the community revitalization priorities include communities that have been negatively impacted by institutional policies and practices we also recommend measures on data collection and publication we recommend that the city track and public sized developers who are buying up homes we recommend tracking and publicizing this for the purpose of public awareness we also recommend that the city track records of the Durham housing authority who are relocated for renovations or redevelopment the questions came up where are they house how many return to their communities after renovations as where is where do those who do not return end up in closing we can only reiterate that there is a housing crisis in Durham a crisis that cannot be dealt with by a quick fix or one bond issue we call for innovative and serious action by the city state and federal government and concert with communities that are most impacted now i'd like to turn it over to Emily coward to present the recommendations for the wealth and economy subcommittee thank you Cameron thank you mayor shul mayor perotem johnson city council members for the opportunity to speak with you today and for the opportunity to serve on this task force my name is Emily coward i'm a Durham resident of 17 years um an attorney a Durham public school's parent and i i deeply love this city i want to speak for a moment about my identity as a white person with race and class privilege involved in this task force um as white people we live in a permanent state of unpaid debt to our black sisters and brothers to indigenous people and to all others exploited by the economy that we built on stolen land on the backs of enslaved people our communities and our souls would be far healthier if we were to reckon with our history but for centuries we have refused to do so this failure perpetuates racialized outcomes in our communities where opportunities and life outcomes are still predictable by race um and so fellow white people i encourage you to find a way to get involved in supporting reparative racial justice work not as a trend or as a hashtag but as the slow and humbling and necessary work of a lifetime with the goal of creating a liberated nation where we all can thrive our city our city has signaled its support for this sort of reckoning by creating this task force and i wanted to thank you for that and this task force has been focused on how to put our anti-racist values into action sustainable meaningful transformative action i'm a part of the wealth and economy committee along with Cameron Smith who you just heard from Cecilia Polanco Corey Hogan's Jessica Luganbuele and Tia Hall it was clear to our committee from the get-go that our focus needed to be on the appalling and growing racial wealth gap in our city we know that racialized poverty and Durham is not a product of culture it's a product of systemic historic and ongoing racism Jim Crow redlining the destruction of black neighborhoods for highway construction and other reasons disparate investment racialized policing education criminal justice and healthcare expletive wages for essential workers we know these causes and we need solutions so we would love to see our city and county take several steps to turn away from this legacy and build a new future they're highlighted in our report but i will note just a few today so first we'd like to see our elected officials use their platforms to pass resolutions calling for reparations at the national level and to organize along with other cities in our nation a concerted effort to make the imperative of national reparations a reality second we recommend that our city and county invest in a local reckoning alongside the national project of reparations we believe that reparative action needs to take many many forms as an unfunded task force with a limited time frame we didn't have the power or capacity to engage with the community to the extent necessary to lead the sort of reckoning that we believe our city needs but we do believe this should be ongoing and funded work third we want to encourage our elected leaders to launch a racial equity fund bold enough to meet the challenge of Durham's racial wealth gap it must be community led and accountable to Durham's communities of color we have leading scholars on reparations and the racial wealth gap right here in Durham who the city and county should be consulting with and launching such a fund we recognize that regressive state laws limit some of the options for such a fund but Durham is not powerless we call upon all resource rich institutions in our city duke university philanthropic groups businesses wealthy individuals research research triangle park and others to contribute to this sort of effort these kinds of funds are happening around the country and they should be happening here this should be happening here Dr. Henry McCoy's research shows that some of the most progressive cities have the largest racial wealth gaps this is true in Durham white paternalism and charity are built into many typical historic progressive responses to racial inequity it's time to turn away from these approaches and to invest in opportunities for wealth building and self-sufficiency and communities of color we're not in need of charity but are entitled to opportunity and accountability by making these investments we as a city and a county can begin to dismantle structural racism and the racial wealth gap that is continuing to grow in our city we know that what we've proposed will not be enough to solve the deeply entrenched racial wealth gap in Durham but as a city we believe that we should start this work recognizing it will not be ours to finish it has been an honor to be a member of this task force under the very wise and very loving leadership of the honorable Elaine O'Neill and the also quite honorable Karen Halderman thank you Durham thank you all of you for that opportunity and next up I want to introduce Anna Nunez who chairs our criminal criminal legal system committee. Hi everyone my name is Anna Nunez and I along with Tia Hall Howard and Machiner and Katie M. Gangola make up the criminal legal system subcommittee for our task force the uprisings of 2020 calls for a fundamental reassessment and transformation of our criminal legal system and other issues of racial inequity while the conversation regarding our criminal legal system has been brewing in Durham for years we believe a more substantive action is needed now we're offering a minimal set of recommendations whose institution would mark a beginning but beyond recommendations we need our community to come together for an in-depth discussion of how to stop the ongoing criminalization of black and brown people as we ensure safety for all as a subcommittee we have spent the last 21 months listening to community members and leaders including elected officials acknowledging that the criminal legal system covers a great breadth of issues we focused on matters where we saw high levels of racial disparity due to time constraints there are multiple areas of our criminal legal system that have not been addressed in these recommendations however we hope a permanent racial equity task force can continue to explore the areas that need attention and move this work forward I would like to share with y'all one of our recommendations due to our time constraints today which is that the city and county along with community partners work to implement policies that result in the decriminalization of substance use abuse mental illness poverty and poverty in Durham we believe this can be achieved by the elimination of barriers to housing in order to allow justice involved persons with criminal convictions to apply for and retain housing including but not limited to public housing the elimination of traffic stops based solely on equipment infractions by the Durham Police Department and the Durham Sheriff's Office access to court diversion programs that do not require a financial financial commitment from those seeking to use those programs investing in more mental health and substance abuse treatment providers in our court system in our city and in our county investing in mental health services improving living conditions and access to medical care at the Durham County Jail and the decriminalization of cannabis possession for personal use these recommendations are a spring board to a much larger conversation about the role of the criminal legal system in Durham we hope the work of this task force leads to a reassessment of budget priorities for making community safe we have invested too much in criminalization model for public safety instead of investing in housing jobs health care education for black and brown communities and fighting structural inequality we think our Durham community for sharing their knowledge their feedback stories and ideas with us and next I would like to introduce Jamal Moss who will present for the health and environmental justice subcommittee Jamal hi everyone my name is Jamal Moss and I'm the chair of the environmental justice and health subcommittee and I've called Durham home for five years until I moved to Tennessee to attend medical school at Meharry Medical College but I along with Karen and Giovanna Lewis have essentially looked at the health and built environment of Durham so over the last 21 months their environmental justice and health subcommittee met with community members and organizations to listen to their experiences and demands attended various meetings with key stakeholders to understand their contributions to the community and analyze the data to paint a picture of the health and well and well-being of Durhamites by the end of our efforts one thing was very clear systemic racism is a public health crisis in Durham internalized in a personal cultural institutional and structural racism are the fundamental root cause of disease and poverty in our community we need a trauma-informed perspective to understand the impact of centuries of racism and intergenerational violence inflicted by white supremacy on black indigenous and people of color until this system of oppression is deconstructed and dismantled we will continue to see poor health outcomes and chronic disease in communities of color there are no set of words or phrases that can be that can justly articulate the inhumane experiences we've heard from community members about their interaction with the health care systems in Durham black and brown families are less likely to have health insurance and more likely to face stigma and discrimination when they do seek care we listen to countless stories of people being ignored neglected and abandoned by doctors and other health care providers when they saw care and unfortunately this stands true during the age of COVID-19 where black and brown people are disproportionately represented in infection and mortality rates recently Durham residents of color have expressed the need for patient advocates when they seek care when they present with symptoms of COVID-19 they are turned away by health care providers and asked to return when their symptoms are severe which then may be too late for this reason we call for every health care and public health professional in Durham to become active participants in the struggle to end racism we ask that you advocate for health and racial equity by upholding yourself and the institutions you work for accountable to the people you all serve anchor institutions such as the Duke University Health System and the Lincoln Community Center are significant stakeholders who play a vital role in caring for Durham community they need to be called out and called in to unpack the distrust and resentment held by black and brown residents as a result of culturally incompetent care and discriminatory practices we know that it is racism not race that causes health disparities for too long our health care system has used race-based medicine to inform clinical decision making leaving black indigenous and people of color misdiagnosed and under treated which ultimately leads to poor health outcomes in this time we call on every community stakeholder to dedicate resources and funds to the life on commitment to self-evaluate and self-critique their practices procedures and policies to institutionalize cultural humility and anti-racist health care however we know that health and well-being are more than genetics and the summation of our health behaviors but it's also the environment our health our our health outcomes are the result of both nurture and nature our built environment is the result of city and county government supported plans and zoning practices based on the zip code we can tell if Durham families will struggle with obtaining healthy food attending well-funded schools accessing parks and green spaces being exposed to gun violence and environmental toxins and receiving quality health care our lived experience and build environment have biological or epigenetic consequences that affect health outcomes and life expectancy healing and reconciliation from centuries of racial trauma and violence requires more than declaring racism as a public health crisis and quite frankly that is the bare minimum that we can be done that we can do we need to transform or we need transformative justice to break generations of harm and feelings of hopelessness in our community no more empty promises no more race neutral or blind or colorblind solutions we want to build we want to build a more resilient and accountable Durham a city that proudly proclaims black lives matter we as a task force recognize the revolutionary act of breathing for black people is a form of resistance so when we say black lives matter we articulate the fullness of black lives declaring a right to be healthy productive autonomous and ultimately liberated in this crucial and climactic time we suggest the city of Durham and Durham County along with community members and stakeholders use a set of recommendations as a foundation of the lifelong commitment to races to anti-racist work that our city urgently needs one we recommend the city of Durham adopt definitions of health anti-racism and environment that focus on well-being are built in natural community spaces and environmental justice two we recommend the city of Durham understand community trauma in a historical context due to the effects of poverty the lack of employment and health care and increasing gun violence three we recommend the city of Durham collect qualitative community Rudy and quantitative data to understand and address health and environmental issues impacted by racial inequity to help improve the overall physical and mental and mental wellness of our residents in Durham four we recommend the city of Durham improve healthy food availability and access and last we recommend that the city of Durham create a city county health alliance and integrate health outcomes into city county plan decisions I will now pass it to Katie for highlight recommendations for education thank you so much Jamal um so I am Katie Ngongola I am the education subcommittee chair um and I served on the subcommittee with David Dixon, Vanessa Hines, Harry Mocktinger, Dan McKinney and Cecilia Polanco and education is obviously a very hot button topic right now what are we going to do for school this year seems to be the question on everyone's minds uh whether they are a parent a child or an educator um there's so much stress and trauma built into this moment we are in this very critical moment that has made America's many structural and institutionalized inequities very visible education is no exception although we would like to think that education is the great equalizer there are far too many barriers including racism that prevent that from being a current reality for most of our almost two years working on these recommendations there was no coronavirus we were able to meet in person with some of our community's great educational experts from DPS employees and leaders to students and parents and we thank you to those Durham community members who worked alongside us the concerns the challenges the strengths that they shared about our schools have not disappeared because of COVID if anything COVID has brought into sharp focus the very recommendations we were crafting when it struck we know that many things have changed however and we wrestled with how this context in our recommendations melded ultimately the situation we are in now it's not going to be the situation we are in forever so some of our recommendations based on physical classroom settings may be part of a long term or post COVID vision for example but the heart of our recommendations is this we are not here to fix the child we are here to fix the system and in terms of COVID that really means mental health support supporting the whole child having nurses in schools language access this means effectively creating a culture of trauma informed culturally responsive teachers and staff but also being clear the educators are people their safety and well-being matters too and they're going through trauma right now also so it's really important to make sure that teachers are getting what they what they need health wise if not they also may unwittingly inflict trauma on students we want to foster healing that reduces bias and helps us dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline our recommendations delved into four arenas supporting the whole child by providing more comprehensive holistic services to prevent gaps in the social safety net for our community interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline and ending the criminalization of our children identifying and addressing racism and white culture within our schools and childcare centers while making sure they are more culturally sustaining and addressing the need for supporting dorm youth including education to career training these recommendations are robust and we hope you and those listening take the call to action seriously many of these resonate particularly during this current context we want to emphasize the need to fund counselors social workers nurses to meet nationally recommended ratios before providing funding for school resource officers in particular we encourage DPS to prioritize hiring black and latinx counselors and social workers including spanish-speaking ones additionally having equity focus anti-racist district leaders is so critical right now when we risking opportunity gaps get even larger we know the recommendations we make here require a cultural shift and as we as a community strive to deal with covid it's time to reimagine and reinvent what our schools and our education community looks like it's time for everyone to thrive feel safe and feel valued ultimately we know the city is not in charge of funding our schools we know these recommendations need to be heard by county commissioners the school board county manager and beyond in fact state leadership and the general assembly needs to understand this and fund our public schools we see political leadership trying to get rid of public schools particularly legislators who create this polarization between educators and students but we want a different direction we aren't here to punish students or teachers we want to change the framework of understanding about what's going on in our schools and as many others have mentioned today to develop any true framework of understanding we must start from or within the community decisions need to be driven by students and directly impacted folks one of the biggest conversations this year in Durham education and nationwide is around school resource officers and the question what makes people safe the community needs a voice in this conversation including discussing safety issues around SROs we have seen this year that students are willing to lead us if we are willing to follow and listen in closing these stories the stories of students and their families are important to us and the work to make our schools truly safe and equitable for all these recommendations are just a beginning so thank you for listening today and for the opportunity to serve on this task force and I will pass it to Vanessa Hines to share about public history thanks Katie um good afternoon everyone and thank you council for having us join your work session today um like Katie said my name is Vanessa Hines and I am the chair of the public history subcommittee uh this this subcommittee consisted of myself Tia Hall and our vice chair Karen Halden the public history subcommittee has sought to help the city of Durham tell a more full version of our city's history and our public spaces we believe this to be a service to both the newcomer and a longtime resident to know the history about the place you live both the hard truths and the unique characteristics worth celebrating we believe it is important to know the stories of those who came for you and to ponder how you might get into the wider story of public history and public art help us know who is welcoming the city and whose story the city thinks is worth telling for the sake of future generations we must find a way to uplift the stories that have often gone unheard we desire to live in a city where everyone can find themselves celebrated through the story of someone who came before them one way we think that this can be done is by gathering more stories the city can fund the creation of a story gathering commission composed of groups in Durham who are already dedicated to the gathering and the sharing of our collective histories I think especially of the history department at North Carolina Central University the public history the public history department is doing some incredible work gathering the oral histories of Black Durham from historically Black neighborhoods like Braggtown the city can fund that the university's efforts to expand their work we believe that would be a great gift to the city of Durham there are many other groups to be included in this gathering of stories especially from our Latinx communities our Asian communities and our native and indigenous communities in order for us to be a truly racially equitable city we need to uplift the stories of those who have been intentionally left out of the narrative we can also we can also be a city that tells a more full version of our history by acknowledging when you've gotten it wrong in the past we know that the creation of highway 147 decimated so much of Black Durham's prosperity we know that promises were made but promises were not kept and many families were left out to dry where is the apology for that where is the investment for those neighborhoods and business districts that were destroyed we think that an apology although not enough to fix the decades of divestment can be a step towards healing and the beginning of a renewed commitment to the lives of Black Durham but only if it is coupled with a commitment to invest in Black communities finally we think Durham can tell a more full version of its history by funding a full-fledged museum of Durham history with enough resources to offer a plethora of outdoor exhibits to help bring the stories of Durham out of the buildings and into the streets we need more monuments to people in our city who have inspired us to seek justice especially for our most vulnerable we need more memorials to call us to lament our city's shortcomings we need more murals to help us remember where we have been and inspire us to imagine where we can go and of course we need more community engagements surrounding all these these projects should prioritize the hiring of BIPOC artists for the design and and implementation and include information about the artists and the history of the project we are grateful for the work currently being done by the city to create the Black Wall Street Gardens as well as the Black Artist Celebration Initiative that Council Member Freeman made reference to at the beginning of this meeting we are also grateful for the work that was done by the city city county commission on Confederate monuments for their list of who is missing from our public square and to the sesquicentennial commission for their list of Durham honorees time is of the essence to find places to honor these people and to share more Durham story and to continue bringing the stories of Durham out of the buildings and into the streets the artist and activist Fabiana Rodriguez says the role of the artist has never been more important artists are the beacons who help us see the light in times of devastation artists expose hard truths inspire new ideas and and make the future we want feel possible tangible and inevitable artists activate the imagination they soothe comfort and move us to action let's imagine together what Durham could look like if we exposed the hard truths through the intertwining of public history and public art may we be a city that doesn't shy away from the hard truths but reflects on them often so that we may heal and in turn create a more whole and equitable city for generations to come and now I'd like to turn it over to our vice chair Karen Haldeman for our acknowledgements thank you Vanessa that was a lot of information that would just drop down everybody the report is longer so we just pray that everybody takes time to to read it in depth this is just a small preview so um just want to take just a brief moment to acknowledge acknowledge that um we also didn't do this work alone and we thought it would be real it's really important for us to acknowledge all of the people who've helped along the way the racial equity task force would like to thank mayor pro tem jillian johnson for proposing the creation of this group in the first place and to mayor steve shul and the whole Durham city council for creating space for us to begin the work we're grateful to mamey web bled so for her patience and expertise as our facilitator as she guided us through two retreats and helped us to focus our ideas in order to fulfill our mission we would like to thank jeremy rauw for volunteering his time to build our website in literally the blink of an eye we could not have completed our community engagement calendar without the excellent assistance of neighborhood improvement services especially and including constant stancil linwood best laura betiger pamela pegan tanu gupta alexis john carmen orteez sharyl mcdonald faith gardener and james davis and we'd like to thank christin dismuks a Durham resident who just raised her hand at a pack meeting and volunteered hours of her expertise in writing this report and finally we thank the people from across Durham the community members who attended our meetings and provided input local resources who shared their years of experience we have so much wealth of knowledge and experience in this city with special thanks to dr henry mccoy who spent hours with our team sharing his deep knowledge of racial inequity in our city you all have helped us in our thinking and in our growth throughout this last 21 months we thank our families without whose support we wouldn't have gotten any of this done well maybe a little bit but not all of it and we've been grateful beyond words for the opportunity to serve the people of Durham in this way at this time and in this moment this has been our labor of love and this story and all of the work within it stan is our love letter to you thank you i'm gonna turn it over to elaine to close us out well mayor and mayor pro tem and all city officials this is this is what how we do it this is how we do it i just like to close what they call to action to the city of Durham we are everyday people as you can see us everyday people going about our everyday lives but what is uniquely different about these folk and i hope that i'm included in that is that we care we care to make a difference in the lives of those who need our help we care to make a difference and what happens when a community comes together and makes a difference can be phenomenal and life changing just as this task force has done for each of us so how do we go for it first you have to realize there's a problem Durham we have a problem the second you need a critical mass of people who are committed to changing and repairing the breach now there are going to be others who will hate this report but they will pick out parts and they will hang on that and that's okay but i will suggest that we can find a critical mass of Durham residents in this moment who will be prepared to help us to focus in on that one thing that we may like versus all of the things that we don't like and we will be committed to do something about it so i ask you Durham to give five hours of your personal time not to your church not to your family you're already going to do that anyway but to someone that you do not know and may never meet and let us make this moment count we need a critical mass of Durham's caring people and that's the operative word people who love Durham who love its citizens who are who are filled with grace and kindness towards people who may not have or may not look like you it is our time now and we need an example of a city that can show this nation and i will suggest to you that it is Durham north carolina that's why i love this city that's why i love this state because we are people who care and we can make a difference so we send this love letter to you with the ending of saying this is just a beginning let us go forth together for our children our children's children and our children's children's children thanks mayor thanks task force you're a lot of best this is our report wow wow that was fantastic um that was indeed a loving and urgent message i my my mind and my heart are both full at this time from hearing what you all have had to say and i'm really looking forward to reading everything and to digesting everything and to figure out how we move forward together and i think what i i know that one of the our big task is going to be to figure out how to move these things forward and we're going to need your help i know judge anil said that you were retired from this day forward but i want you to know that we're going to be calling on you again and this group to help us figure that out because thank you for the recommendations but now we have to move them forward and we're going to need you all to help lead uh it was we hear a lot of presentations most of them in person um and a lot of them are great but really in my years on the council this is one of the best presentations i've ever heard and to be able to do it over this zoom format and to still have the the the power that it carried is amazing i'm very grateful to you all for that those are beautiful and eloquent words and i know that they came out of an amazing amount of work and thinking and i just want to express my gratitude i think what i'd like to do now is just hear from our other council members any questions any comments any thoughts that they may have uh and then uh we'll we'll have a little conversation about how to move on next with these things so uh colleagues who would like to comment or has questions i see council member freeman thank you i um i am also uh so grateful to you all uh 17 members of derm just uh expanded my hopes and dreams for derm into written form and ways in which i couldn't do alone and i'm so grateful to you all and i know i continue to say thank you but i can't say thank you enough i know that each and every one of you report so much time and effort into this and i know the derm is eternally grateful to each of you and i am interested in one piece of the conversation that um was spelled out and i would love to hear your feedback on how to continue to move this work forward um as you noted in the report that this board or this task force needs to be moved and elevated into a board and maybe being city and county and i would love to hear your thoughts on on how that how you if any of you are looking to stay involved like how many of you are looking to stay involved like what exactly are we looking at here that's mainly where i'm at i know that all of the areas i saw the the the recommendations and the vision and this is at least a five to ten year process of like implementation until it's institutionalized and i really would like to have as many of you as possible involved in that process um just to make sure that it happens in a way that's um true to the report that you put together and true to the work that you've been doing with this with the various people that you mentioned who reported as well in addition to yourselves but thank you so much d driana council councilman freeman i think that we are all we all live this work you know it's it's not a thing that you can sit down and say okay i'll walk away you don't walk away from being black um you can't walk away from the things that we deal with on a day-to-day basis so we live in this space and i am committed and i know many of us are committed to seeing this through one of the things that we talked about is perhaps having a we hope that you all will invite us back in one year so that we can gather as a group to see where we are as a city and reassess i know that there are some of us who are interested in sitting on what we hope will be a permanent commission i'm not sure where i'm at in that but certainly i'm going to stay involved at some level uh and then i think also that um we are all just committed to making sure that we do the best that we can to interact on a daily basis in some of these arenas one of the other things that we talked about me and steve is perhaps having a tap time capsule moment where we uh sort of put this in a context uh we want to have something that's uh when we can a more formal presentation or informal presentation to the community at large where they can see all of us rather than on the box so that's one of the things that we'd like to do and at perhaps at that we could do a time capsule because we want to keep keep track of what we're doing uh it's going to take everybody in Durham to pull this off you can't just ignore this stuff as a community resident you've got to own it even if you don't own it you own it so let us be proactive and we're all committed to that to being proactive in this space mayor tia hall has her hand up i think we may have lost him and i do see tia's hands up um yeah i'll i'll jump in until he gets back um tia go ahead i just wanted to add a bit about what we've had as a discussion as a task force around um the longevity of this work being that it is about racial equity um there is a certain amount of privilege that affords you the ability to attend these meetings with the amount of time that we have put into many of us i dare say all of us because of the love for our city but if we are to practice equity we want that to be resourced so that community members who need to be at this table actually have the ability to be at this table so i don't want that left from the conversation thank you there any other comments or questions from council members uh council member middleton thank you so much madam mayor pro 10 madam mayor pro 10 and to her honor judge o'neill good to see you and to my friend karen uh until all of these wonderful um commissioners thank you so so much for this work um it one of the most awkward things is to tell somebody you love them and then there's that silence they don't tell you that they love you back um i don't know how many of us have had that experience but it's it's not a it's not a pleasant experience so let me let me let me return the love let me firstly say um that we love you back and we got your letter um in my faith tradition uh there's a notion uh that there the greatest love that a person can have is to lay down their life for a friend uh love is an action word it's a verb um you do things when you're in love so i i want to say uh in response to your love letter that that i want to publicly commit uh to doing the work because racial equity uh the speeches are nice but the work of racial equity is hard and it's uncomfortable because it calls for divestment and reinvestment in other areas and sometimes we don't know how vested we are in an area until we start taking money from it and sometimes we don't realize how much work we have to do personally until our own sense of of stake investedness uh is challenged so i heard you talk about spending money in some areas and and investing in some areas and and then community players that may not have been traditionally uh at the well and when we spend money so i i want to commit uh uh for me um publicly to doing the hard work of of rethinking even the way we do our budget uh as a city uh to making sure that money uh and funds and resources for the type of things that you've talked about are available i don't want you to say you love us and there's an awkward silence love is an action word and finally i'll say uh most of us uh when we think of dr king's i have a dream speech we get excited about the high art uh he was a black preacher so that high art i have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and about the true meaning of its creed that was the end of the speech uh that was the celebration the first part of the speech was really about a check uh that was written to america it was about economic resources being moved from one area of american life to another area of american life that was the main part of the i have a dream speech what are we going to do systemically and what are we going to do in terms of resources to actually make the promise of this nation uh and who we say we are uh reality for those of us that have been left out most vulnerable so so i heard uh all of the wonderful things that you had to say uh in the beautiful language but i also heard the check part of your presentation and i look forward to reading this document at least twice um and to to having my actions as a public official informed by it thank you bear pro tem for for birthing this um so long ago in the life of our city and i think all of you who took up the call uh for it um we love you back thank you so much thank you madam mayor pro tem thank you council member mayor schull are you is your um connection going in and out do you want me to keep presiding my connections going in and out and i okay why don't you go ahead and and uh keep presiding man madam mayor pro tem thank you all right no problem um any other thoughts or or questions from the council i'm sure we have a lot uh council member rice and then council member cubby arrow thank you madam mayor pro tem i want to thank the members of the task force for 21 months of incredible work uh to bring this report and presentation us today one of the things that friends do is we care for each other we support each other we also tell each other the truth and i think this report um is is a love letter as they said but it's also um a reminder that this city uh has been failing uh in many key respects for 151 years um i'll i'll steal my my colleague council member middleton's theme about the check what this city's written a lot of checks over the last 151 years that have bounced um and many of those have been written uh to our black and brown neighbors this report and the call to action it represents is in my mind a seminal moment in the life of our city as we start the next 150 years uh of who we are as a people as a community and i hope that all of us on the council understand what an incredible responsibility it is to be in service to the people of the city at this time today um and i just pray that we will be equal to this moment um as everyone who's spoken has said um this document calls us to make some of the most difficult choices possible it calls on us to make choices that aren't even possible today it calls on us to imagine a legal and governmental framework that will allow us to make these choices and so before we can even get to the starting line in some of these areas there's a ton of work to be done here in Durham and Raleigh and in Washington DC and i am so blessed and privileged to be in this position to have received this report to be told by our friends um that we have failed as a city in so many ways because it gives us an opportunity to begin to build the community that we want to be that we can be and that we have to be um i uh echo the calls for members of the task force um to agree to serve on some larger more permanent uh commission um that will obviously have to be a partnership with our county colleagues and others um and that'll be some work that i think we want to get done very very quickly but uh let me just say as everyone has said thank you for all the work thank you for caring about our city and our people enough to tell us what's wrong to tell us how we have failed and to point us in the direction of a beloved community that we can be and so thank you very much and um i look forward to the work thank you madam mayor protan thank you council member east council member cabillero thank you uh just wanted a same thing echo so many of what my colleagues have already said i know many of you put in a lot of time and effort and i feel that uh some of the best things that we get as a city are from our residents who choose to serve on these types of boards and commissions and it is a volunteer basis and it is a lot to ask folks and uh knowing that many people who would like to serve are often not able to for a variety of reasons also because of the barriers of time um so a huge amount of appreciation for everything you all have done i look forward to fully diving in uh to the full report uh i hope you all think about potentially presenting to both county and school board um i look forward to the time where we can gather in person because i think a time capsule idea sounds fabulous and uh again look forward to seeing we have a lot uh of work ahead of us but i believe in us thank you thank you council member any other council member freeman just a question i didn't know if um it had already been entertaining i know that there was a recent question about items for the city county um joint meeting i don't know if this is one of the items that will move forward um just so that we're sharing what we have from the city to the county at least and uh i'll leave that to you may pretend to decide on when or how yeah thank you um for that suggestion we have you know obviously a lot of these recommendations um impact the county and county actions and funding um we have a joint city county meeting um next month but i requested another agenda item be added and believe that agenda might be full so i'll follow up with um with our mayor and the chair of our county commission and the task force co-chairs to find a time um that might work for a presentation to the county either either at joint city county or just you know at a regular county commission meeting i don't think since we've all seen it it doesn't necessarily need to be at a joint meeting um but i agree a lot of these initiatives need to move forward with both uh with both governing bodies and with our school district as well a lot of the recommendations will impact how how our schools run so we all need to be we all need to be um working together and collaborating effectively to move this work forward any other thoughts from from council members mayor shul thank you madam mayor pro tem so the other thing i think about is uh and and you all mentioned this uh we we do need the governing bodies to hear it but we need other people to hear it too and it's a really hard time for that uh so i do think uh what you said judge uh they're going to be some you know it's it's this is not going away this the need uh and your report's going to be relevant in you know for a long time uh but i hope that you all uh or the successor group will give some thought to how that ought to happen uh so many other people need to hear this and i think that another thing to think about is kind of what the format for that is you know yeah we're we're meeting nerds you know we are happy to sit here and hear long and and amazing reports but of course that's not true of everyone and so i think that we're going to have to figure out how to make that make your message available to others in a format that all kinds of people uh can can learn from um and so i would just say to you all uh we hear you and we need to as a council we need to give this some thought about how to begin to move forward how to create a successor to you all uh how to uh you know once we've really digested some of my reactions to some of the things were hey we're we're we're we got a good start on that you know we yeah good job us you know um and then some of them were wow we're just so far behind and we have so much work to do and where do we begin with that and so i think that we're going to have to make some we're going to have to give some thought to those things too as we as we go through these recommendations and we'll be seeking your thoughts and advice so those are my comments and uh madam mayor pretend do you have any wrap-up comments that you would like to make i do thank you um i just wanted to once again um share my deep appreciation for all of the members of the task force and the amount of work that they've done we have a lot of boards and commissions in in this city um and but we have put i think we put in especially complex and important and difficult task before all of you and i just want to again um say how grateful we are as a city and on behalf of the entire community for the incredible amount of work that you've put in um to this and to this report i am excited to dig in further on on all of the recommendations and to think about ways that that we can move this work forward even on issues that right now don't seem like we have any power or that we have any authority to figure out how we can get to a place where we can move some of this work forward um even for things that don't that don't feel possible now none of us could have predicted when we started this this group that um we would be finishing up and giving this report in the middle of a you know national black lives matter uprising and a global pandemic and all of the you know incredible challenges that were facing now as a country and this conversation about race and racism that were that we're seeing now in all parts of the country so it's just incredibly it's just such good timing that we have these recommendations from you all now um when we're all when our whole community is paying attention to to these issues and to these questions it's a really good time for us to to move this work forward in a significant way and i think that everyone on this council is committed to doing that um and we're i'm really excited to have um to have this work and to to dive in more and i hope that as many of you as are um as are willing and are not retired though i hope that we'll convince Judge O'Neill to once again once again delay her retirement for what like the third time um to be a part of the the permanent body that were that were you know established because we could all really use your continued um expertise and and knowledge and guidance to make this work happen but thank you all so much it's been a joy to work with you over the last 21 months and we are so grateful for your efforts and for your commitment to Durham um and to and to racial equity and to having the kind of community that we all deserve so thank you all so much thank you we love you Freeman did you have a comment i did uh your comment actually just sparked a question in my mind i wasn't sure if these recommendations and this i mean with the with the task force kind of like shifting away if these recommendations would live somewhere if the office of equity and inclusion were where we would kind of tackle i guess what we have kind of covered and what hasn't but some way to measure where we are and some of the recommendations that have been made where we have started and then to kind of see where we might need to go going forward it might be helpful to have some department within the the administration focused on this yeah we've had staff um from both the office of equity um the and the um and nis come to meetings and be present for some of these conversations i think it would be yeah i hope maybe tom can give us some thoughts on what kind of um staff support we could get to institutionalize some of the the work we need to do moving forward uh thank you mayor pro tem and uh council member freeman certainly we have been anxiously awaiting this report uh our staff the equity inclusion department in particular has been super hyper focused on our internal racial equity work not so much the external community work uh so we uh we will take this and and you know obviously absorb it take a look at it and look forward to continued conversations with the council about what are the next steps and what are the resources that will be required to if nothing else administratively support the next steps so thank you so thank you very much question do you think that's like a three six or one year process off the top of your head just i'm not sure what you mean by that you know so as for as far as absorbing kind of the report and kind of giving some feedback maybe six months i don't know that it'll be that long uh again we just received the report you know very few of the staff have have had a chance to look at it i've glanced at it but haven't had a chance to read it so i think we you know we'll put a group together to give some thought and come back with some recommendations you know in fairly short order about what that what that might look like thank you i appreciate it i just want to make sure i have a kind of context of what what the timeline might look like that sounds great thank you councilmember thank you uh mr manager and i believe if there are no further comments or we can move on to our next item elaine or carndy y'all want to say a final let's get to work let's do it let's go to work thanks y'all that's it thanks thank you talk soon thanks everybody thank you thanks all right whoo that was dizzying melbourne mr mayor we have uh if you would like to keep presenting that would be great sure uh i think that we have a very quick report from oe wd then the discussion of the violent gun crumb situation uh and i told councilmember middleton i spoke to him yesterday about leading that conversation off and then um and then just a very brief discussion of funding for the recovery and renewal task force proposal that we're going to be getting so those are the items that i have left and then we have the closed session and i'm happy to take over presiding again in the closed session but if you want to um preside over the next three items that would be awesome sure happy to thank you um all right so we'll move next to our presentation from oe wd uh i see andres already ready good afternoon mayor protin mayor members of city council my name is andre pedigree i'm the director of the office of economic and workforce development i'm here to give you an update on the Durham small business recovery fund program uh that uh we started and created at your direction this report is a demarcation of the first 30 days of the program and it reflects the partnership with duke university uh and the city for both a grant program and a loan program it also marks the beginning of our new partnership and our new investor in that county Durham county has joined the fund so uh i don't know where my slides are uh great we can stay right there so as i second thank you right there um as i mentioned this is an update uh for the program on june 8th uh through the 28th we actually launched uh our grant program uh the grant animal program was started on june 8th but the grant program had a 10-day window for applicants to be included uh again the loan program is being uh service on a uh first come first serve basis the key highlight is that we have served in that first month 81 Durham businesses in the city of Durham and there's now 750 thousand dollars of funds on the street and in the hands of our businesses uh i wanted to mention that on this call uh kevin dick who is the president ceo of the carolina small business fund who is managing the fund uh is on board to assist me as well as brian smith on my staff uh who have supported this effort and provided the troubleshooting around it to make sure that we were on track i want to acknowledge that we met our goal of getting the initial dollars on the street by july 10th and again that was a lot of yeoman work uh for uh our team and so again businesses have been impacted um i want to remind you that uh next slide that we made a particular emphasis in this program to touch the most vulnerable smallest businesses in our community again and to remind you that uh our parameters were businesses with less than 25 employees uh less than two million in sales uh but the grant program and the loan programs were further divided the grant program was targeted at businesses making less than 500 thousand dollars in revenue uh they were eligible to apply for the grant program during the first 30 days we had 132 applicants and 78 uh awardees uh with the average award effectively being just short of 7600 dollars the maximum award is 10 000 dollars uh we're really pleased with our effort to follow your commitment to make sure that this program uh met uh some diversity commitments and goals and as you can see from the awardees 62 of the awardees are women-owned businesses 56 percent uh are minority-owned businesses um again this demographic this result is very different than the results that has happened at the federal level and even at the state level and again it's a reflection of the commitment of the council uh and the team to make sure that we did the outreach and the technical support to make this work again I made a note here in terms of um you know in the first 30 days what the declination is the reason for the declines were again one of the requirements is that the businesses had to show a 25 revenue decline as a result of COVID I'll talk a little bit about the that later uh and so some of the firms did not meet that standard uh and we wound up getting a number of applicants um you know for maybe the county and other places who were outside of the city limits uh and again there are some businesses that have made the adjustment in pivots and they're moving forward next slide again as I mentioned the loan program uh is targeted at businesses making more than $500,000 but up to $12 million dollars this loan program is quite innovative again following your direction of council you know the innovations is that this is effectively an unsecured signature loan does not require any personal guarantees nor collateral again that is highly unusual in the small business debt market but again we took that charge and put together a program so 24 applications I think we've awarded six so far and again this is an ongoing basis half of those recipients are minority owned businesses and again we are making every effort to continue to keep women and minority participation levels high the maximum loan is 35,000 but on average we are averaging 33,000 the loans have included businesses in the food hospitality industry personal services and what have you you know the important thing is that we are continuing to look at some of the sole proprietors independent contractors and businesses of this nature as we move forward next and final slide so again we've built in continuous improvement we've listened to many of the small business advocates in terms of how we can continue to refine the the program and so we've made some modifications again the second round pretty much denotes the fact that the county has joined us and that we've made some additional modifications moving the program forward we still have 414,000 of grant monies available again we will now take these businesses these applicants on a first come first serve basis we expect to exhaust those funds again I would ask Kevin Dick to maybe give us a sense of how long these funds would last um one of the other modifications that we made in the grant program originally we allowed the applicants to demonstrate the impact that COVID had up to to April now obviously the impacts of COVID have gone beyond April and so we now have extended it to the months of April May and June the ability for companies to demonstrate the loss revenue during that period and we think that that's going to generate additional applicants to the grant program and then as I mentioned earlier this is now a countywide program where in the first 30 days it was only a city of Durham program we have 1.4 million dollars available in our loan program and another modification that we included had to do with businesses who can demonstrate significant business disruption flood fire things of that nature where it may have interrupted profitability for 2019 in those cases we are willing to take that documentation as well as look at the financial statements the profitable year for 2018 and again finally it is a countywide program I will conclude by saying you know the team has worked hard and we're continually committed to do that we are really emphasizing our outreach and marketing effort particularly to the Latinx community you know we have you know established some partnerships in the community and are looking to get greater participation in that area I want to thank council member Caballero who actually participated in our first Spanish language training program that we did with the Mexican consulate we're going to continue some of those similar trainings during this next iteration in the phase two so let me conclude there take some questions and again Kevin Dick and Brian Smith are also available to support answering any questions that you might have thank you so much Andre any questions from members of the council council member Freeman thank you I just had a couple questions I apologize I didn't see this in the priority items under the city manager and stuff I didn't get to ask them beforehand I just needed I just wanted to know if there was a minimum amount for these the loan in the grant there is no minimum amount for the grant it's up to ten thousand dollars the minimum amount for the loan is five thousand so you you we would give grants of like a hundred dollars well we made a choice there was a discussion about limiting the amount to a thousand or more again we didn't necessarily see the value add to that given that we know that there are a lot of self-employed independent contractors who if based on two months operating expense if it came up to five hundred dollars or two hundred dollars whatever it was we were willing to take the time to review that and provide that grant if they're eligible that that helps that gives that gives me more context the the only other question I have is so from June from the cut off date from the previous time frame to now no applications have been accepted they're not like sitting in a queue or anything so it's completely clear and we'll start well let me just again let's talk about the grant program we created the window in order to make sure that some of the smaller firms would not get bumped out of the program and so that generated I think 132 applicants and again 78 of those have been reviewed and that was cleared we are now taking grant applications on a first come first serve basis and up until the time the money runs out we made that choice because again we felt that there was significant outreach you know so if the individual applies we will put that in the queue we use that in a timely way and reward that instead of the first group that had to wait I think just a week before we got through the 132 application okay so there is a queue for the grant just not the loan no there there's there's no queue you can apply for both loan and grant on a first come first fair first serve basis we will review those applications as they come in both grant and loan now going forward Kevin you can jump in thank you okay can everyone hear me yep we hear you now thank you madam mayor pro tem and good afternoon council members and city administration Kevin dick with the carolina small business development fund um I did just want to amplify what andre was saying relative to the grant and loan processes now that round two has essentially been launched so we publicly noted the program changes and the accomplishments to date this past monday and coinciding with that was the fact that we started to accept grant applications and loan applications under the new rules so as of last night there had actually been 20 grant applications received this week and there had also been a few additional loan applications one thing i'm happy about is that the pace of the loans does seem to be picking up within the first 30 days there were four loans approved and this week three have been approved so we are starting to see a little bit more momentum there and with the grants um i know i think we have about 17 pending applications right now but as i said 20 have already been received um this week so i think that uh with that momentum combined with the fact that we're doing a lot of significant outreach to the latinx community which will really augment the fact that already 56 percent of the businesses that have been funded have been businesses owned by people of color and 62 percent women were already as andre said achieving a lot of the ideals and objectives of the program relative to diversity and we think that will just increase from here now with with that outreach plus the fact that we've opened up the parameters a bit um to hopefully be more inclusive with um with applications uh overall i'm just just noting i'm not thinking about right this moment but at some point there will be some breakdown that does show each of the areas that have been so if you're saying specifically people of color i would love to see the difference between i mean all the work you're doing to make sure that there's let's you know engagement happening or spend as we get engagement happening i would love to see that there's fruits from that so it'll be helpful to see what the numbers are councilman freeman um again we uh are sort of doing this first update uh we will get a much more detailed report uh from carolina small business fund with the full demographics uh we are so focused in making sure that uh we get the money out the door and get it processed and so uh first 30 days in um maybe uh in another 30 days we might be able to have a little more detailed uh report i just want to keep the momentum going um you know one of the other things that we're doing as a part of our program is making sure that we continue to promote the funds that remain available at the federal level so there's payroll protection dollars that are available through august 8th uh and there remains dollars in the golden leaf rapid recovery loan program which is statewide uh again it's my goal to make sure that our firms are getting access to those federal and state funds in addition to our funds thank you councilmember cubby here yeah thanks for the great update happy to help with whatever next round you need um and would love i know that information is coming but it would be great to see um the you know what the outreach in the lot next community has been what the return on that has been uh and if there's lessons learned that can be applied and some of our other uh programs in the city yeah maybe just to give you some additional data brian uh you sent me a brief report uh earlier today could you maybe highlight some of the modifications that have been made to the program that's targeted at the latinx community and again i think that it will demonstrate our commitment to reach out to that community absolutely uh good afternoon brian smith oewd as andrew mentioned kevin a small business and the city are making some additional outreach efforts to reach the latinx community so i'll just give a few highlights about some things that are happening in the next couple of weeks we've translated the information um into spanish the press release that went out on tuesday was translated into spanish and shared with the the hispanic chamber of commerce the mexican consulate bbnt which is now truest q poson newspaper univision el centro hispano and the economic development partnership with north carolina so they all have the information from that press release they've asked univision to potentially do another interview they did an interview on the in the first round so we're going to see if we'll do can do another interview with univision the north carolina hispanic chamber of commerce is hosting a facebook live presentation possibly tomorrow at one but we're still working on the details on that to talk about the second round q poson news newspaper published the press release yesterday and just to give you a little bit of context about how those efforts have helped bbt bbt has already referred for latino clients to apply for the loan after these kind of secondary outreach efforts so it seems like they are working but we have some more work to do we're going to continue to continue that outreach to the latino community thank you thank you just wanted to thank andre and kevin brian and the team this these are very encouraging and it's great that kevin you all were able to get the money out the door so fast thank you for that i know it really helped a lot of businesses and um you know one of the things i hope at some point we'll be able to do is tell some of the stories related to these businesses right now their numbers uh but it'll be great to to know some of the stories and we know that they're not all going to be success stories because this is a difficult time these loans are not you know going to be able to save every business but i know they'll contribute to a lot of successes and i hope we'll be able to hear those in time as well as as get the numbers thank you for your kind for your commitment to diversity that the council has set forward you clearly been doing a great job on that and that's super important so just wanted to offer my appreciation thank you thank you councilmember middleton thank you madam mayor pro tem and andre kevin and brian it's good to see you gentlemen thank you for your hard work two quick questions two quick questions firstly i've heard from at least two businesses that haven't heard anything uh that submitted applications uh for the grant in particular um is is it our policy that whether you're going to get money or not you will hear something yay or nay from us and uh do i need to this afford those businesses you offline perhaps to get some information as to the state of their application sure they should get a yay or a nay uh and again that process is is is is again uh forwarded to caroline a small business fund but if you want to forward it to to brian Smith we'll make sure uh that that's trouble uh that we troubleshoot that to get the answer but everyone will get an answer okay that that's good to know thank you and i will follow up with you second question when we uh when this process first started there was some some consternation on the part of some business owners that we didn't fund it at high enough levels and we made a commitment that we would come back and look at at pumping more money and if we need it as of today there's the money hasn't been exhausted yet but i'm wondering from the the money people the financial gurus what trigger or what's the threshold that these funds uh need to get to or how low do they need to get before we should start considering whether or not we need to have another cash infusion is there is there a trigger amount uh for you folks or is it going to be necessary so uh councilman uh we've been thinking about that and talking about the timing of that we're very interested in making funds available i'm going to ask kevin to maybe because he's closer to the cash flow aspect of that and maybe give us some wisdom in terms of some of the things that he and i have discussed thank you andrey councilmember millington great question um i think that based upon current pace we look at for example the grant program i'll take the grant program first there have been a hundred where there's been a hundred and fifty two applications received and again 20 in the past in the first three days of this week so when we look at the pace of applications coming in as well as the average grant size we would expect to run out of the current allocation for grant monies probably um i would say stretch goal end of next week likely the week after um based just based upon the current pace of applications approval approval rates and so forth um and i say that especially now that we have opened the criteria of it uh at that point um you know i know that uh count uh mayor shul and some and others in the community have also been talking up to some private sector individuals who may want to donate money and so i i guess a similar answer would apply to both and that is probably in the next two weeks will come to the threshold point of if the money's going to run out but i would say at the same time that we have to assess what the future demand is because at that what we don't want to do is is collect more money or make a recommendation that you all put more money forward and then there not be demand so i think it i think the outreach efforts that we've been talking about will tease out if there are more businesses who have not applied yet who uh still may be in need of to possibly qualify as far as the loans are concerned um roughly 200 000 has been approved um there's actually uh roughly about 1.6 that's still going to be available with the county contribution as well in terms of actual loan and some of that money we're using um for administration and technical assistance to businesses after they get funded so remember that's an important part of the program in terms of actual loan monies 1.6 is available so i i'm not sure really at the the pace of loan applications that that 1.6 will be will come to that limit anytime soon i wouldn't but i think with the grant program our threshold point is probably in the next few weeks but again assessing and making sure that there is um significant demand above and beyond that is applied by the grant laws to rub for me i mean we we were admonished at first that we definitely didn't have enough money and i what i what i'm my concern is if we see a slow down and demand that that's not necessarily reflected that we've done such a great job at penetration but i'm wondering if those businesses are still around uh that they've survived this period so i i want to make sure that whatever that if if we if we make the political decision that we're going to put more money into it and you're talking within two weeks and i would disrespectfully put to the mayor my colleagues that we probably need to have that conversation sooner rather than later uh to prevent any type of gap or lag time if we're going to do another cash cash infusion for those businesses who so desperately uh needed um so i'm i'm glad that we're still somewhat flesh now but i'm i'm concerned that that fleshness if i might might be reflective of those businesses no longer even being in existence so i want to act with all due uh deliberate speed and making sure that if we are going to do another bump that we we have that conversation sooner rather than later uh that's above my pay grade as to what we'll schedule that but i'll leave that to uh leadership thank you very much gentlemen i appreciate you thank you madam air for example thank you councilmember um mayor shul and i think kevin were you trying to say something no okay mayor shul thank you i just wanted to respond to councilmember middleton who's raised a good point and appreciate the questions that he had for kevin and andre um i think that the the problem is going to be that or let me just call it the challenge is that if we that the area where we'll need more money in anytime soon will be in the grand area which we aren't able to provide and that's why we're thinking about trying to raise some private funds and so um i've been in conversations with andre uh and kevin and also brian has been on the calls now with this group of people um some local business people who are interested in trying to help us raise some private money um but it sounds a lot i i think that you know what i'm hearing is kind of what i've heard also last time we had the conversation which is we're not quite ready to dive in yet because we need some more analysis of what we think the demand would be and uh and i i hear uh what you're saying mark anthony about you know a gap in time to threaten businesses and i think that we we need to kind of measure it with the help of of kevin and andre and brian what the what the demand is going to be and what our target should be for trying to raise more money thank you mr mayor so madam mayor pro tem now i would like to uh just make a point um based on what the mayor said and and just offered this not necessarily as a prescription but just as um food for thought as you consider engaging the private sector community excuse me i know one thing that worked seemed to have worked pretty well in raleigh is that at the time around the time of launch um and and raleigh ironically bigger market but actually a smaller amount of money was committed for grants so i think they kind of knew going in that private money would be needed and and so what happened is that around the time of launch the mayor did a call to action engaged the chamber and one local pr firm to help out in terms of corralling businesses but there was sort of a singular unified message um and that resulted in roughly five hundred and fifty thousand uh to six hundred thousand dollars in private sector funds being raised that augmented the eight hundred and fifty five thousand at the city of raleigh put forward so in essence there we deployed about one point three million in capital and uh our funding there's actually still a little bit of private money that we're still processing there we'll probably fund roughly 200 businesses um with that amount but i say all of that to to mention that there was kind of a coordinated approach um it's definitely great to have a groundswell of individuals in the community that not not only want to give but also want to enlist businesses and individuals to give but just a coordinated approach and kind of a singular message is what i'd recommend um that will probably would probably be most palatable to the business community and and cause um you know a pretty good uh rate of return in terms of the time spent so i just i just offer that as a as a thought and a way to proceed if you should need to uh raise additional funds thank you kevin that's helpful mayor shul thank you kevin and that puts me in mind of another aspect of the timing which is that right now the campaign to support the digital learning and digital equity for our students is happening and that's a private campaign uh you know privately funded to try to raise a million and a half dollars uh jeff durham from our chamber commerce is the co-chair of that and so one of the things that we talked about is since that needs to happen right away uh that we didn't want to and the people you know who work it on you know think about raising this money and that money also didn't want to get those things in competition with each other at the same time so part of the idea is that that campaign's going forward while we learn about the need for this and then we'll try to figure out some sort of unified effort like kevin's talking about so that's kind of what i know about the private fund and let me let me take a minute actually to acknowledge one company called no novisai they have done an employee match program and already donated to the durham fund so i didn't want to publicly acknowledge them and and maybe use them sort of as a an example for other private companies to follow that's great yeah it's great to see company stepping up like that and we'd love to have more participation other thoughts or comments from council members our council member freeman go ahead yeah thank you i i appreciate that um explanation it helps to round out i guess where we're going and i want to make sure that we're pushing in um because from the presentation we just received we acknowledge how all of this is weave together and so the digital divide is really um undergirded by the economic instability of families and so just noting like if you are a you know a uber driver and you have kids at home it helps to be able to kind of sustain your your work so that you can stay home and we want to make sure that we're telling the story that we sit all together as opposed to one versus the other so the business community understands how they're all tied together um which is why the race equity aspect that this is important of acknowledging just how much um each of these all if you just if you just pick one area and don't address the others they kind of you get off kilter and out of balance anyway thank you thank you council member middleton for distinction on where our money our municipal money can flow not the grants but my question was universal whether it's grant or loans i just don't want that to sneak up on us now i don't know if we're going to make the determination that we need to replenish that plot that pot uh for loans as well but but if that becomes imminent i i i want us to be in a position to move as quickly as possible so you know we look to you gentlemen to whatever that trigger is um letting us know uh you know that we're protein and threshold so we can we can facilitate that conversation sooner rather than later if in fact we're going to uh dedicate more money towards loans so thank you thank you for the clarification thank you council member um thank you for the presentation and for all the work that you're doing to get this money out into the hands of folks that really need it during this crisis we appreciate your work and look forward to hearing more um as time goes on thank you yeah thank you for your time thank you madam thanks yeah um all right our next item is our discussion on gun violence and i'll just turn it over to council member middleton to get us started thank you excuse me council member middleton yes i apologize i'm trying to be sure that chief davis is on she was having a difficult time uh getting the link and i don't see her here karmisha do you know she was able to find get the link i'm communicating with her on that now so maybe we could jump to the other item first while we're trying to wrap that up if you don't mind is it okay mr mayor um great so that's the funding for the recovery and renewal task force okay thank you um and i think uh mr mayor that you're our speaker on that i am thank you colleagues i don't uh i want to you all i sent the the letter that was the attachment to this item just to explain to you all that where we are uh with the a potential budget request coming from their recovery renewal task force as time has gone on uh the task force the various round tables have realized there's certain things that are important that they would like to see funded uh some of these things are things that you know about ppe for vulnerable populations that kind of thing uh others are specific businesses uh in restaurants you know we've gotten some emails for example restaurants want uh certain things paid for to help them do outdoor dining um and then in addition to that there are the big things that the emergency operation center folks have been dealing with over a period of time such as uh and and our own community development department's been critically engaged in such as uh how do we how we uh handling our how we're dealing with our homeless population to keep them safe and housed uh over time we just spent we just okay a whole bunch of spending today to do that uh there are issues of quarantine hotels and they're just a whole lot of potential expenditures and what we wanted to do was try to instead of hitting council and the county commission piecemeal with these things try to pull them together into a way that could be understood coherently uh and that would give the council and the and the county commission uh choices and an ability to prioritize so we've asked the um the the recovery renewal task force to pull together a budget at a very high level not to vet it in the way that our staff will typically vet uh because this is not their expertise but to come up with the things that they would like to see funded uh and to try to prioritize them and especially to prioritize those things that they think are are very immediate needs the most immediate needs um uh there have been a couple of things that have been very immediate needs that um i have asked tom to approve within his approval his budget approval limitations there have been two things one is language access uh the city has funded language access for the recovery renewal task force uh and also um the some initial publicity publicity for the back on the bull campaign so that we could kick that off so we could kick that off in in in uh good fashion uh but those are the only things that have been spent uh the second the the money of $13,800 i believe is the number uh was spent out of our our covid relief funds that that the council voted for uh tom did that on his authority but we don't want to do that in general we want the council and the county commission to be able to make decisions about these things other than those very small uh immediate items so i just sent the letter and just wanted to say today that you all should expect that that will be coming and to explain that there'll be some things that for example the restaurant request in fact downtown durham ank has already buying chairs it's buying tables it's uh you know uh looking to borrow tables and chairs for outside dining the city is already providing barriers uh through you know as as we know for this outside dining so some of these things which look like requests now will actually not end up being things that we need to fund but of course our staff will help us with that so i just wanted to inform the council that met and mayor pro tem and um ask if if there are any questions from my colleagues or any any comments that anyone had at this point i think we should see these between in the next two to four weeks great thank you mr mayor council member middleton one question is do we anticipate that uh from the task force would that be drawn down from the five million dollar pot if the manager spoke of creating for covid response or is this a separate part of money that's a great question i think that so i think that there are a lot of moving parts still so for example you remember collin mentioned that there's additional esg money coming if some of this is related to housing the homeless it may be that there would be esg money that would contribute to that um the county has cares act funding which we don't so i think some of the things might be funded through cares act funding that we don't have um and then some uh could certainly be funded and i think our main source of this and i think uh you know tom can uh confirm this but i think that our main source of this of any additional funding that we would provide would be through the uh money set aside for the covid fund tom would you agree that's correct and as indicated to you in a response to an email uh mayor uh to date i think we have spent about a little over six hundred thousand dollars in the um internal you know costs related to a variety of things that likely will go up some more maybe not quite as fast as it has uh we believe that that those uh those expenditures are eligible for FEMA reimbursement or a percentage of them are uh however that is not guaranteed and uh has a a fairly long duration before we get confirmation of that so i would also want to uh caution that you know that money was put aside not just for community needs but for potentially internal needs uh that we that we find you know around a variety of issues it's not personnel it's not any overtime it's it's all hard cost of things so uh that you know that's just kind of weird but right now that that now for a little bit less than four million is uh is the money that we have allocated for these variety of issues internally and external that that we know will continue to arise thank you councilmember freeman thank you i just just wanted to make sure that those expenditures that are covert related uh they are of the six hundred thousand i'm assuming that that's either it's come into council or there's it's someplace public where we're acknowledging this cause that's happening or occurring yes i mean it's not anything at this point that required from a purchasing stand but well in some case it might have required my emergency purchase authorizations but it's everything from extra ppe to uh you know sanitizing equipment sanitizing situations some modifications to uh to uh you know service areas and things like that but we certainly have a document the documented list of all that that we can share but like i said as of now we've kind of put that in the not not taking it out of that uh covid response fund but it's in a kind of the the FEMA reimburse and a reimbursable account uh as a as a potential source thank you thank you any other questions from council members all right thank you tom thank you mr mayor for um that information and update so karmisha do we have any update from chief davis and have we lost mark anthony chief davis is in um i sent her a default link but it's not um don't see where it right it's recognizing her she might need to be yeah she needs to be promoted to a panelist i see her in the attendees list okay so the clerk can take care of that yep there we go thank you and i see mark anthony i think he has a cell phone but not his video okay can you guys hear me yeah yep we hear you do you hear me uh okay that's my sound it's not great okay is it breaking up kind of it's breaking up a little bit yeah no you sound like you're on another planet i've been told you sound like my high school guidance counselor that's actually a little better now can you hear me is that better that's better yeah okay great um so councilmember middle you can go ahead and okay i'm i'm sorry i may need to turn your phone off you still hear me yeah we've got an echo now okay hold on one second if you mute your ipad well that that's actually the sound sound the music hold on one second turn your phone off that's gonna you know what i'm gonna do watch this can you hear me yep can you hear me can you hear me yes yeah we hear you great all right all right lost my notes though all right am i on now okay are we i mean are we on our agenda item that agenda item now am i too sorry yeah okay go give me thank you go right ahead no no you're good thank you madam air pretend and thank you uh mr mayor and i want to thank uh uh chief davis for joining us good to see you thank mr manager um a couple of weeks ago i asked uh this council uh and the mayor uh for the opportunity to um have a conversation about gun violence in this community i think it's rather fortuitous uh that grinn holderman uh spoke about the impact of gun violence um specifically on the black community and paraphrasing her she said the situation is unacceptable um and i agree with her and i agree that it's an equity issue so i want to thank this council uh and the mayor for for allowing us uh to have this conversation um i don't want it to be um um an abstract conversation i there are some very specific things that i'd like to say uh to this council first thing i want to say is while i have the the unique privilege of being part of this body uh today i'm addressing you not just as a colleague but as one of your constituents um because i don't know where else to go and i don't know who else uh to talk to and i want to try and convey uh some of the profound pain and hurt um that tens of thousands of our constituents um are experiencing on this day and in this season not just uh with with respect to covid but with respect to gunfire as well i miss seeing you in person and uh mr mayor the last couple of times we saw each other in person the last two occasions is one we were at a wake for 74 year old called that authority who was killed by gunfire just trying to enjoy the fourth of july holiday and then serve the next time i saw you in person i was at a candlelight vigil for a 12 year old tyvian mclean who was killed by gunfire on nrc i i don't know where else to come and i don't know uh who else uh to appeal to uh as an activist you know i was trained that when we protest we protest to create tension to ultimately bring about change and to force an audience with those in power and to bring our petition and our concerns to those in power and who have decision making power um you're it uh in Durham so so as a colleague i'm appealing to you today but i'm also appealing to you as a citizen as a resident as a black man um as a person who has had some of the most painful conversations i've ever had uh since being in public life that includes during my time as an elected and not being elected i um i think a good on ramp is what the uh racial equity task force reported to us and what some of us in tone today i want to talk about uh our failures and where we've come up short and i include me in this i i mean we in the collective sense our failure failure and where i think that we um have missed some opportunities but thankfully i think we also have an opportunity to to to move some things forward uh and to create some real change in our city when i um one of the things i love most about Durham is we don't mind our business there's no particular segment of our community that experiences a problem unto itself um if you mess with our lgbtq brothers and sisters in Durham you have a problem with all of them if you mess with our immigrant brothers and sisters in Durham they don't respond Durham responds our black community many in our black community are suffering and are afraid for their children to come outside um are afraid to just do the things that many of us take for granted so that section of the community is in trouble um and we need the help of our government uh today one of the things i i i'm most proud of is the ability to rattle off what we do as a government substantive things real things and one of the things that that i found myself able to do uh is when we've had discussions or when i've been engaged in discussions about hey what are you in Durham uh doing about uh the immigration issue and the immigrant community um and i smile and i start going into our quiver and i pull out faith id and i say our uh law enforcement community honors faith ids no matter what our government's doing our federal state government's doing uh it was an issue i know mr mayor you carry one it was an initiative that that i had an opportunity to work on uh during my days with Durham can with the North Carolina Latino congress and making those a reality um i i bring that up i bring up new visas i also am able to say that we were right on the threshold of funding um a a an immigrant defense fund with real money to the tune of half a million dollars as a matter of fact food on my family's table uh is placed on my family's table by that very work a dear member of my family works with the organization that we want to partner with um i'm able to say those things substantively that that's what we're doing despite it being within the federal bailiwick despite what they're doing in rolly here's what Durham is doing uh concretely uh to deal with the issue of immigration when they ask me what i'm doing about gun violence or what we're doing about gun violence the conversation goes silent um i don't know what to say uh other than uh we're putting together a task force and we're looking at ways to do things other than using police because we can't police our way out of it and i have to be honest with you as my leaders as my elected leaders um the task force was something that was proposed over a year ago um we didn't fund it i'm part of the week we didn't fund it um we kind of stopped talking about it until zion pierce was killed and we brought it up again um we put together some bylaws and we voted on it i didn't vote for it because i said i thought it was important that the other people that we named in that vote had an opportunity to talk about it it went to that other group a vote as of now but the county has been delayed because some of the things i thought would happen happened because some people felt that there wasn't enough there weren't enough people involved in the discussion to begin with when it comes to people that were even championing it championing it at the beginning or not having issues with it because they feel it was too top down um but we voted on it anyway we sent it to them so to this day um the task force while it's coming has not met has not been populated has not been set it's it's embarrassing um and it's disrespectful um from my point of view to to bring it up when i'm talking to grieving families when they ask what is my government doing about gunfire um by contrast um colleagues when this covid pandemic struck us and we realized the gravity of that moment mr. mayor you proposed populated charged and convened a renewal task force and recovery task force that has had multiple meetings already that that task force almost with lightning speed and was firm resolved was impaneled and got to work because we realized the gravity of the moment we realized how significant the significance of the trouble we were in i believe sir and colleagues respectfully that that same resolved has to be brought to this issue of gunfire and let me say right out right right at the outset i don't think we can police our way out of it so i'm going to agree with those who say this isn't something that we can police our way out out of or arrest our way out of but i do think there are some things we can do um we often hear that gunfire or guns are a federal issue and they are of course uh and that washington and raleigh oftentimes constrained what we can do i would respectfully submit that uh immigration is also a most decidedly federal issue we don't grant citizenship at the municipal level or state level but we as duramites have found a way to inject ourselves into that debate anyway we have found a way to stand in solidarity with our with our brothers and sisters in the immigrant community notwithstanding it being a federal issue i would respect that i would respectfully submit that we ought to look at gun violence the same way yeah we know it's a federal issue we know it's a state issue but have we done everything we can as a city and i believe the answer is no and i believe that until we do we will not have the moral authority to stand before families that have been ripped apart by gunfire and comfort them and be able to say that we've done everything we can do even if even if you argue that anything that we do and i'm going to talk about some some specific things and now then i'll yield even if you argue that anything that we propose would not have directly impacted uh tibian or or zion or any other number of people even if you propose that it still gives you the moral authority to say we have tried everything we can as a city we have thrown everything in our toolbox at the issue like we've done on some other issues here in Durham so at the very least we can say we're working to create a context where these things are less likely and i do not believe we have done it as a city and i am appealing to this council as my elected leaders and as friends and as respected colleagues that we bring the same level of resolve to this issue that we've done to others what might that look like i believe uh uh uh mr mayor and colleagues that there are some actions that we can take now and and again we spoke into the argument being within a federal bailiwick versus state we know that we get into federal business all the time and other issues also want to talk about the evidentiary argument what i'm about to propose if we suggest that uh well we're not going to do some things because the evidence doesn't support it or we don't know if it's going to work um then i would respectfully submit that in the same breath the moment you entomb the evidentiary argument was standard then it then it then it behooves us to look at evidence of things we have done we have tried you're going to make the evidentiary argument then what does the evidence tell us about the two and a half million dollars we spent on participatory budgeting does it warrant its its its continuation and when we look at it purely from an empirical point of view did it do what we wanted it to do and if it didn't do what we intended for it to do and we decide to double down that would be weird because then the question becomes why are we doing it if we didn't get the results that we wanted but we're going to spend more money on it two and a half million dollars for that five hundred thousand dollars for the the the the immigrant defense fund where's the money what what what do we tell black mothers who have been blowing our phones up what what are we where where are we spending the money on them right now in the in the in the near term tactically right now um and respectfully you know if we if we talk about shared economic prosperity well we've got a jobs plan that will show fruit 10 years from now or five years from now if if we're spending money in the right now on other things and not on gun violence in this city and we say to black folk well get a job the jobs are coming and this will give these young men the same thing to do something to do so they won't pick up guns and we don't have jobs for them ready right now to me that that's the equivalent of saying to our immigrant brothers and sisters well you know what when the federal government fixes the immigration issue that's when things will get right in the meantime we have no business spending city money on the defense fund because it's a federal issue intellectually there is no distinction for me if we got money for those things we ought to have money for some other things i believe that we as a government should be immediately immediately looking at city funds to expand violence and corruption you want to defund the police and you want to spend on root causes let's spend the month what root pick the root cause tell us what root cause we can do right now i have a recommendation there are organizations in our city that are working on alternatives to incarceration alternatives to to a traditional policing the the the violence interruption model that the county funds to bull city united we ought to be looking right now to expand that with city funding we ought to be looking at an experimental deployment of shot spotter technology that could potentially save lives because nobody called police and responded show up or could muscularize our investigative capabilities to take repeat shooters off the street if we seriously believe that most shooting are done by by by the same group of people then it can be argued that if we take those people off the street then we possibly could affect future shootings if we really believe what we say that's the same people doing it and if we can muscularize our investigative capabilities to do that i i cannot somebody needs to tell me why that's not worth five hundred thousand dollars or whatever it costs the possibility of saving the lives of black children who are being trained like soldiers to duck and cover to get into bath tubs to get off of their bikes and hide behind trees like they're in afghanistan or a rat but we've got money for other things where is the sense of urgency for black lives in the most progressive city in the south where is the money in here and in the now i'm asking us in the in the short term in the near term to look to look at funding uh uh uh responders that are unarmed right now in the nearer sense i don't think this does any violence to the mission or the task of the wellness task force that we're putting together um because let's be honest the trajectory of the wellness task force uh for many is to look for alternatives to policing let that work go forward but right the the however the work on gun violence right now is not at odds with the wellness task force both things can happen concurrently but we need the same type of of urgency around this issue as we do covid if that looks like a gun violence task force mr mayor or if it looks like repurposing the the the violent crime uh task force which are the meanings i go to oftentimes we just get reports from what people are doing perhaps that organization needs to be tasked and refocused but i come uh as someone who has performed the funerals of gunshot victims of someone who has tried to who has sat with families and tried to make sense of the of the of the utter nonsense of it and i'm also coming as someone who is able to rattle off a number of initiatives in a number of areas when people ask me about them but i am silent i am deathly silent when it comes to what this city is doing concretely about gunfire and it's embarrassing and it's heartbreaking and as our racial equity task force said it is unacceptable it is unacceptable so so i i i i put that to you all um respectfully um i think that the time for us to to prioritize and i know it's a priority for us personally as there are black mothers who sit on this council there are fathers who sit on this council there are lovers of Durham uh who's bona fide progressives who sit on this council uh but i think it is time for us to to to not be anesthetized or lull into thinking that we're hitting the mark in all areas because we're not and it's okay for us to be honest about that um it's okay for the racial equity task force to call us to the cartoon but but people in this city are absolutely heartbroken we are heartbroken and and we are tired uh and and we are we are we are not uh under any illusion that we're doing everything that we can do as a city and we're not going to throw up our hands and just say oh it's a federal problem because we don't do it on other issues where is the money and what can we do in the short term right now other than just tell black folk get a job or or the or the pathology that you're dealing with is somehow we don't say it explicitly but our inaction some people are beginning to read that as well that's just the way they act until they get their own act together that's just the way it's going to be and i know with everything in me that's not the way we feel that's not who we are as a city and that's not who we are as a council finally i know that this is not just a government issue i know that this is not just a we can't police our way out of it um there have been black mothers that have called and sent messages um and one black woman in the city i don't have permission to use her name now but perhaps she'll allow that moving forward that put a challenge to me and some other black men in this city um so so today i want to let you know that outside of my government i think we lost um connection with council member middleton i would just uh echo um council member middleton's comments and that i've had those phone calls and it's been hard i'm back i'll let you continue thank you outside of my government work uh sorry for that go uh the devil's business outside of my government work uh i am organizing uh with a number of black men in the city uh to organize 1 000 black men who are making a commitment to stand between our young people and violence in this city uh to buttress organizations that are already doing things i want to thank people like john rucks i want to thank on marbez Lee i'm going to thank uh antonio jones uh who i've been in conversation with we are outside of the government uh uh and let this word go forth now we're organizing 1 000 black men fathers uncles husbands uh educated not educated from the streets uh bougie some got records some don't have records it doesn't matter where you've been or who you are we're calling on 1 000 black men to join with us and stand uh in solidarity to place ourselves literally and figuratively between our children and gunfire in the city because we know this isn't just a government issue we know we can't police ourselves out of it but but but we know that there's some things we need to do as a community the question today Durham city council Durham government is do we have a partner in this work or are we on our own that is the question are we going to throw everything we have as a city the kitchen sink at this problem without resorting to the uh arguments about it's a federal problem or or or or evidentiary arguments which do not seem to hold sway with other areas uh that we decide we want to do something in where's the money where's our result so i'll in there for the for the sake of our children for the sake of the honor of our city uh for the sake of our own humanity let us meet this hour with righteous zeal and do all we can to save these black kids lives in this city god bless nerf god bless the mclean family thank you mr mayor thank you madam mayor pro tem thank you council member um chief davis did you want to respond well um thank you um mayor pro tem uh i don't have very much to say um thank you for giving me the opportunity to to speak and um thank you council member middleton and um just want to reiterate that we can't you know do this work by ourselves we've been in painful conversations as well as it relates to some of the shootings that have occurred and i wholeheartedly agree that if we could find other support mechanisms to assist in this overwhelming burden of of trying to intercept gunfire even as if it's from community sources like 1000 black men to help with our young people or just community members or other types of programming the Durham police department would be mostly appreciated is shocking to see our young people impact it the way that they have been in the last um you know a few weeks innocent people um just having to live with gunfire and and not in our hot spot areas just in other areas of the city the the level of brazenness uh of shootings you know in the middle of the night is has um sent shock waves uh to other citizens throughout the city and it's very disturbing so um thank you all for the opportunity and most of our concern has to do especially as it relates to crime right now is our aggravated assaults our aggravated assaults right now is driving violent crime about 30 up in aggravated assaults other violent crimes are down however this is uh enough to really change uh the quality of life you know in our in our community so um thank you for the opportunity mayor pro tem to speak thank you chief um tigriana did you want to finish your thought that you were making earlier i was just trying uh just kind of give middleton a chance to get back on the lawn yeah he's back i just wanted to give you the opportunity to keep speaking if you wanted to i'll just if there are any other um comments from members of the council mr mayor thank you minor mayor pro tem i really appreciate uh what council member council member middleton said and the heartfelt message that he's bringing us um i know this really is from the heart and it's moving to hear it and um i think that the a couple of comments just uh you know the interesting thing i think is the point that that you made about the uh the task force the coveted task force the recovery renewal task force i'm you know thinking about that you know what i thought about wow as hard as it is to move stuff on coveted it's easier than to move this um and uh you know to to to take some actions that i think are effective um a lot of what i say is i was trying to think of what you said was so good about and so right about uh being proud about when people say i mean people say all the time i you all get them you get the millions of emails saying what are you doing on this you know uh usually with some name calling or criticism to go with it and then i can always offer well you know what are we doing on affordable housing here's what we're doing you know what are we doing on you know COVID-19 you know you name but i agree with you mark anthony that mainly what i say when people say uh what are you doing on gun violence is i do several say several things i'll say one is uh we have a really good police force we have a really well-led police force and that is you know i i believe in them and i want to follow their lead and they have my support that's my first thing i say second thing i say is is what you also mentioned which is um we have a community safety task force that's going to be doing work and it's going to be figuring out things that can help us uh be alternative kinds of responses that can keep our help keep our community safe and both of those things seem good right and true but i also really understand your point that um it doesn't seem like from that it doesn't seem like yeah that's immediate action that we're taking and i think that's important uh and so i appreciate you bringing that perspective um you know it seems like the the tooth and let me just say one more thing and i think that the you know the thousand black men uh is awesome and uh those kinds of efforts on the part of community groups and individuals and so many people in our community that are trying to do good things like that are just so critically important um the the two things that i heard specifically in terms of specific comments uh are the shot spotter technology and the violence interrupters and um so uh i guess i would say i would argue with you a little bit about the the evidentiary test i i feel like we at least yeah i think we try to apply it all the time i don't know how well we always do with it but i think we're constantly trying to look at did this work some things we can easily measure some things is harder than i think that we we um we try on that a lot and uh you know i'm not i'm not going to make an argument right here for against shot spotter but i do think that the evidentiary information is important and that's also true for violence interrupters or whatever else we try um you know specifically violence interrupters right now are in a very difficult situation that because of covid the county has really shut down their violence interrupter operation which we've heard we talked about the other day at the violence criminal prevention roundtable which is a problem um you know i think it is part of our problem um and um we were at the uh you know we saw the the the uh the bolstered united folks yesterday uh at the vigil but by and large they've been very uh they haven't been intervening uh because of covid 19 and and the the not you know not being out at individual you know knocking on doors and those kinds of things and i think that's been a big problem for us so um i think that one of the things that you said uh i think would be you know i think about we have we have groups that exist we have um the crime cabinet uh we have the gang reduction steering committee and um you know maybe the thing to do is to try to uh talk to them about what are some of these what are some immediate actions immediate immediate always too fast what are some um actions that we can take expeditiously that would help us because i think a lot of these people um you know these are folks that are thinking about it a lot and uh you know we can ask them what do you think that we ought to do that would be immediate and you know what does it cost so i just want to um acknowledge the importance of what you're saying uh i think i should say one other thing too the other thing that i say a lot is another thing that you said is you're right i say all the time you know guns you know the federal and state gun policy is killing so to speak and i do believe that's true and i don't believe that's an excuse i believe that you're right you know we need to say that when you said it all the time um but we at the same time we need to be taking all the actions that we possibly can so i appreciate your remarks um i think that you're right that uh we need to be thinking now about what are some of the things that we can do that we're not uh and uh and i think we ought to figure out how to impanel the right people to think like this is my thoughts thank you mr mayor other council members or council member middleton do you want to respond madam mayor pretend if i might thank you ma'am mr mayor thank you so much and and i want to be clear sir i'm in no way eschewing evidentiary standards quite the contrary i believe in evidence i believe in science my point is that i watched um powerful people and i'm not talking about this council i'm just talking about in general i've watched powerful people implement ideas that they believed in evidence notwithstanding because they thought it was a good idea they thought it was what the moment required now i'm going to talk about our council um the evidence did not really support us spending two and a half million dollars on participatory budget but we had the political will to do it now we have evidence and the result was 60 percent of the participants were white that was not our intent that's not what we planned that was not the plan for participatory budgeting it was supposed to bring more people in who didn't normally participate so we funded a supplemental white voter initiative to the tune of two and a half million dollars so now that we have evidence what what will we do with that evidence now because if we double down then that suggests that this isn't about evidence it's about what we think is important and what we want to do and all i'm simply saying that if that's going to be the standard then we can't turn around and make the evidentiary argument against something that hasn't even happened yet because we just don't want to do it that you you can't have it both ways either we're going to let evidence be our god small g so to speak across the board or we don't get to weaponize it only for the things that we want to make happen or don't want to make happen and all and listen i'm so into evidence that if it don't work don't do it anymore so i'm listening shot spot is not a panacea it's not you know if it doesn't work if we don't if it doesn't provide listen we're grown we can stop doing it we can stop spending money on it but i think it's real suspect if we continue to spend money on things that the evidence shows that did not attain the results we wanted because now that brings other things into play that that calls into question what our motors are and what we're doing all i'm simply saying is that if we can find money for things that clearly are not linked to evidentiary uh an evidentiary standard uh uh or maybe they are uh then i want the moral authority for this council for this government i want us to have a moral authority to say to people whose kids are dying and ducky and cover that this one action may not have stopped this shooting or maybe it would have we don't know no evidence either way but at the very least we can say we've done everything we can and that's a different standard that's a different position to be in when you're trying to comfort someone when you can say you know that you've done everything you can as opposed to comforting them knowing that you have not died of api across every tea that's uncomfortable i'm talking it's embarrassing to be in that position for me uh personally so whatever my voice is worth whatever i've just vowed whatever capital i have i'm going to spend it on this issue and and i just want to say that that i am in no way suggesting that we should a shoe or do away with evidence i'm actually saying let's if we're going to claim evidence and let's let's let's do it across the board with everything and not just cherry pick issues so thank you thank you madam mayor pro tem thank you ma'am madam mayor pro tem has asked me to take over presiding so i'm going to do that she has to get one of her children on a zoom other comments councilmember reese thank you mr mayor i appreciate the opportunity grateful to my colleagues for the conversation we've had so far and mr mayor i want to say how much i appreciate your thoughtful response to the councilmember middleton's call to action this afternoon um i guess i want to get to some specifics um i'm very excited about the possibility of supporting uh violence and eruption work as a city uh obviously as you mentioned mr mayor that work is on hold in fact the the staff of bull city united just finished their COVID outreach this week um that's all you may have noticed some of the folks at the at the vigil last night were um exhorting people to remember social distancing i believe their training was very fresh in their minds um and and they were putting it to good use already uh and so in the near term those folks will be hard at work uh doing that particular work um i think um but i think as soon as we're in a position to feel those resources into the community again i'm i'm strongly in support of that i also agree with councilmember middleton that we uh don't necessarily need to wait for the task force to be formed start meeting to recommend things to start preparing for something very similar to the kahoot service in oregon uh that substitutes um sending our police officers into certain situations with uh different types of professionals i think those are things we can start planning to do right now uh the the problem we have is without knowing the extent to which the police department's time energy and money is spent responding to those kind of calls it's very difficult to figure out what what we'll need in terms of personnel resources training etc but i think we can start to answer those questions uh and begin to move forward with that i definitely support that with respect to shot spotter um i as the mayor said i don't necessarily think this is an appropriate place to talk about whether or not shot spotter is a good idea but i will say that when i uh took the oath of office for the second time back in december i made it clear that i was willing to leave um i was willing to keep an open mind about things that we had made decisions about as a council previously shot spotter is a great example of something that i have real concerns about that i think um other communities who have tried it have seen success but others have seen uh not success but having said that um if the administration believes it's an important use of resources and wants to come forward with that recommendation i'm very happy to take another look at it um and that's what i think about shot spotter the one thing i wanted to add to the conversation is i think it's possible to believe that participatory budgeting is a good program that did good things in this community and have flaws and still believe that and still believe in science and evidence and i think you can do that um and have that belief based on the fact that it brought an unparalleled number of people into the budgeting process um it generated tons of great ideas about how the city could be spending its money and is funding some of those ideas those are good things and were were there problems with it absolutely nobody's happy with the democrats or the people that actually ended up voting for those projects and that's work we have to improve on um but i think it's possible to believe in evidence and believe that the evidence is that there were some great outcomes uh from participatory budgeting i think it's possible to uh to support participatory budgeting and propose other measures that aren't supported by evidence uh and not have to question each other's motives about why we're doing either of those things i think that's possible um and while i've been told that uh i i have i'm reliably informed that this work is not about our feelings it's about the results i do think it's possible for us to consider in our minds and to make assumptions that people are operating under good motives and trying to do their best and that's what i try to do in my work mr mayor so with respect to the specific suggestions that councillor middleton made i think i made my opinion on those pretty clear i'd love to see us move forward on a number of fronts um and if the administration uh believes that shot spotter would make certain parts of the city safer i hope they'll come forward with that and we can have a full discussion on that again as we did last year um that's what i wanted to say about that thank you mr mayor thank you councilmember reese uh anyone else like to comment at this time mayor pro tem back from the back from the putting the kid on the uh we figured it out we're trying we're trying zoom piano lessons so wow we'll see we'll see how it goes yeah um thank you i just wanted to um say a couple of things about a couple of ideas that councilmember middleton brought up um violence interrupters specifically um is something that i feel is a is a great intervention to um to stop violent crime in communities it's i hadn't heard that they had had to cease most of their activities due to covid so that's um i'm sorry to hear that and i think that we you know need to need to figure out how we keep programs like that going during this period because we know this pandemic is is going to be here with us for for a long time and i'd hate to see these kinds of programs completely go away uh the role of the task force in in thinking about how to how to do violence interruption and how to um enhance our program that we have right now in the county i think it's going to be really important and i'm hoping that there'll be people who are both who both have experience with the criminal legal system from being justice involved or being advocates who will join that um who will join that task force and be able to help us make decisions about um about how to how to continue that work how to make the the violence interrupter um work more more effective it's working now i think that um they've had some good outcomes but i think we can always do better and if we want to have a serious and scalable impact on gun violence that we need to to figure out how to make that program um even more successful the second thing um was about the crisis response and that is something that i think we can move that that is something that i would support moving forward with in concert with the task force as we agreed at our last budget meeting um that we were going to move forward with making appointments and and assigning people to do this work after august whether whether or not the county had agreed to join in that we would hope that the county would agree to come on later if we chose to do that in that time the school board um has decided to sign on and appoint five people so we would have 10 residents ready to ready to engage on that task force um if we were to if we were to move forward and i think that the city should be working to set up the infrastructure um that we need to make that program possible um at the same time as we're constituting the task force and figuring out ways to get effective resident feedback so um if we if we need to think about as i think we do need to think about creating a joint city county office of community safety or office of violence prevention um as they have another in a few other cities that are um that we could ask our administration to all right to start thinking about that and i and i think that they are already probably thinking about that given that we've signaled a desire to um to move in the direction of of having a robust um non-police response to crisis services um so i think that that that also though i i don't know that that um i don't know that that directly get the the crisis response question directly gets to the point of preventing gun violence it's it's more of a it would free up police resources in some ways that don't necessarily need to be spent on um on non-violent issues to deal with violent issues if we um if we were able to divert you know say 20 of 911 calls that police are now responding to to a crisis service um but both of those both of those um ideas that council member Middleton brought up i support and would support moving forward with with both of them to the extent possible given COVID and um given what i feel is a need to have community community engagement and feedback through the task force but i think we can be moving we can be moving simultaneously we don't have to we don't necessarily have to wait for the task force to be fully constituted and make recommendations there are some things that we know we want to move forward on and we can move forward on those so thank you mr mayor council member Middleton thank you mr mayor um and i'm going to thank i'm going to thank all of you for for the spirit of this conversation um but i i think i i need to i need to respond to councillor reese because i don't want there to be any misunderstanding going forward from this conversation um i am in no way questioning anyone's personal motives what i am questioning is the stated intent stated outcome of initiative relative to what actually happened and i will not have this conversation obfuscated or obscured by by by any suggestion that anything other than that was intended i support and supported participatory budgeting it's a listen my whole life adult life is about increasing uh uh participation of participation in our democracy i mean that that's one of my core values but it was slated as an equity initiative it was under the general rubric of equity everybody watching this broadcast knows that white folk do not have an issue with access we listen to a whole racial equity task force presentation about the systemic barriers to black people and people of color participating in our economy in our credit markets in our democracy baseball well you name the area in american life and we know that there have been systemic and institutional barriers that's what i'm talking about we we build pb as a way to combat some of those barriers that have kept folk who didn't normally participate and to give more voices uh more access to voices who did not traditionally uh participate to have 60 white participation and me to call it out and to suggest that that's somehow me talking about personal motives is is is is misses the point of what i'm saying i'm talking about what we build it as how much money we spent on it our will to to to forgo what the staff recommended which was about 700 000 dollars and jack it up to 2.5 million dollars of course good ideas were generated i voted for some of those ideas look listen housing increasing housing stock is a good idea the question is how much of that housing stock is affordable you know we can have a million dollar houses uh increase the housing stock but if it's all above that price point then then the point is is that we got some great ideas how many of those ideas came from folk who normally don't get their ideas heard who normally have a problem with having their voice uh uh uh heated that was the point i honor and respect every single person on this council i have said time and time again you're all superheroes in the progressive world each of you have your own claim to greatness in the progressive world i've said it time and time again i'll keep saying it this is not about personal motives this is about our activities as a government as the final arbiter of policy in our city and that's what i was appealing to you as if if it came off as a personal thing please forgive me uh but let me be clear i'm talking about what we stated our intentions were and what actually happened that evidence that science that's what i meant that's what i said i stand by it and let let let there be no confusion about what i meant or what i said um thank you mr mayor thank you very much council member uh mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor i have some i have thing i don't want to continue this debate about participatory budgeting because i feel like this is not the place but i do feel like council member middleton has brought up several times his assertion that pb did not meet its goals with regard to equity and i think it would be good to put on a future work session agenda um a discussion or conversation with our pb staff and with our budget director about the evaluation that they did of the program um at the end of the cycle and their recommendations for um for how to change the make changes to the program moving forward there were a number of goals for pb with regard to equity that were met the data that that is being cited right now about the number of people who voted um was was incomplete leaves out the majority of people who voted with paper ballots and the majority of our during public school students who we don't have have racial data on um but our our pb staff and steering committee and budget department have done a full analysis in um cooperation with north carolina central university have given us a number of um proposals for improving the process and of course they're you know going to have some there will be i know an upcoming um some advice to us from the pb staff about how to manage the next cycle given coveted and all of the kinds of community engagement that we um that we normally do that are going to be um not possible during the pandemic but yeah i this issue keeps coming up and i would like to just have some time on an agenda to give our community accurate information about pbs metrics goals what happened this last cycle um and how we plan to improve upon our work for future years um and i'll just propose maybe our administration could um find some time to do that on an upcoming work session or if there's already a plan for the pb staff to come talk to us about the next cycle we could build the discussion into that um into that conversation thank you very much uh councilmember cabrillo thank you mayor uh real quick i would appreciate that conversation on pb because at least with latinx participation and some of the best participation we've gotten in any city programs so i i also uh look forward to that conversation additionally i'm happy to work with council member middleton since he did raise the immigration defense fund about all the background work i did as an individual all the meetings i held uh that i i was very um meticulous and the process that i followed that took me two years to get to and happy to work with you in any way i can to move the issues that you are raising here that clearly you are extremely passionate about and i think we all are passionate about um so happy to work with you on on any of the work that you would like to do around that uh i definitely am interested in violent the violence interruption that many folks have also said that they are committed to figuring out how the city can move forward it's something that i have a a lot of interest in and i think um i believe could have a deep impact in the violence that we're seeing in our city um so just wanted to leave it at that thank you very much council member middleton thank you mr mayor thank you council copier i accept i i would be more than willing uh to work with you i do not doubt at all uh the the amount of work and and and diligence and passion uh that you brought to the issue i want to be just like you on on the on this gun violence issue and i want i want the same type of passion and diligence uh brought to this issue so i i i accept uh without hesitation um i also uh uh want to associate myself with the mayor pro tem's comments in terms of having the review of pb um i also want to say for the record that i am i i want the same type of scrutiny uh brought to shot spotter if we should decide to do it and let the whatever the evidence or data is on that initiative um that is not aimed at necessarily um increasing democracy but literally saving black babies lives so so whatever level of scrutiny we bring to that i'm willing to have that same level of scrutiny brought to shot spotter and the evidence says that it's a bust then i'll be the first one to call for it uh to be discontinued but i think our children are worth it i think they're worth the experiment and i think it's with well due respect at this point in our development as a city i think it's a far more important issue than participatory budget which i support and i will continue to support so i welcome that same level of scrutiny brought to any initiative uh that we we uh initiate as a as a council so i thank the council for the discussion thank you and also in addition to that pb thing i'd also like to schedule what we're going to do about the violence thing which was actually the root of this conversation when what you know what we're going to do about moving on violence and corruption what our plan is in terms of funding some of these initiatives in addition to getting the record straight about pb i'd like us also to kind of be mindful of what the original purpose of this conversation was thank you mr mayor thank you uh colleagues i'll i'll plan to talk to the city manager about both of those discussions um let me just tell you all that um my um my attention span and my ability to keep going in this meeting are reaching a certain limit so uh i'll just say that i really appreciate this discussion i thank calzmer millton for bringing it to us i'll talk to the manager about uh scheduling additional thinking about it and um i think with that i think we'll move us on to the closed session so um can we set the agenda too please yes i'm sorry we need to press calzmer freeman and then we'll set the agenda thank you and we also need to hear about the appointments don't we yes thank you i i just wanted to um to just offer just a point and noting in the comments that uh councilmember middleton made it to start it was to speak to us as a constituent in the community and i just wanted to say that i i i too feel that failure and i want to apologize to you and to every um family member who has experienced this gun violence um in our community as we've all failed as a as a council to respond in a way that's actually measured to what's been going on knowing that the we're losing children and those children have friends and their friends are experiencing this trauma in a way that we have to we'll have to we'll have to count a balance and i am grateful that uh we've had this conversation i feel good about where we are i don't know what the next steps look like but as a representative of you in this community i would like to say that i i appreciate you stepping forward with the thousand black men and i would do whatever is necessary to support moving forward whether it's shot spotter or the violence interrupters or um any other great idea that comes forward that hasn't been tried i'd be willing to try because i have i am just sick of losing children in this community and that's not just physically it's all it's mentally it's spiritually it's just it's but i'm at it i'm at what's in on this and i know we can do more and i know we could do better that's it thank you thank you councilmember uh mr madame clerk do you want to talk about the appointments sure good after count good afternoon council mr maier i wanted to go through them fairly quickly you've decided to re advertise the carolina theater board of trustee position as well as the homeless services advisory committee there was consensus on uh nominating angela lee for her her reappointment and then appointing Joseph Jordan and Siria Estrada. There was also consensus on Terrell Armstrong to the Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. And you were able to agree on the open space and trails nominee of Mohammed Badshah, as well as the housing appeals board nominee of Madeline Miller. There are two items, the Durham Convention Center Authority nomination. There were three persons who wanted to re-advertise the position and then three who had selected Ashley Farrell. Would you like to know who chose which plan of action? Madam Clerk, I'll change my vote to Ashley Farrell. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pruett. And is there anything else, Madam Clerk, that we didn't do? There's one more for the Recreation Advisory Commission and there was quite a distribution on that. Karthik Sundara-Morthy received two votes from Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Caballero. Sterling Frierson received one vote from Council Member Reese. Larry Coleman received two votes from Mayor Shul and Council Member Freeman. And then David Lacey received one vote for Council Member Middleton. I will change my vote to Mr. Sundar-Morthy. Okay. And if another person would do that, then okay, Council Member Reese, okay. Okay, great. Yeah, I thought he was a good candidate also. Mr. Karthik Sundar-Morthy for the Recreation Advisory Commission and we're all finished. Thanks, Madam Clerk. And please thank Laverne for us. Definitely. I don't think she's- Thank you, Mayor. I'm here. Thank you, Mayor. I'm still here. Laverne, I'm sorry you're still here. Oh, no, no, no. It was interesting. I was listening. Even the stuff that Mark Anthony was saying? Yeah. Okay. It was interesting. Thank you, Mr. Everybody. I hope everybody's doing well. Night, Laverne. Good night. Thank you, Laverne. Miss y'all too. Thank you. No problem. No problem. Mr. Manager, shall we settle the agenda? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I believe I've got this right. Been a long afternoon, but items for consent. I have items one, three, four, six through 21 and 25 through 44 and GBA public hearings item 45 through 47. I think you're on mute, Mr. Mayor. I'm sorry. 22, 23 and 24 are taken care of, correct? All right, dispose or 25, 22, 23, 24. Okay. You've heard the manager's proposal to settle the agenda. Can I have a motion? So moved. Second. Moved by Council Member Reece. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reece. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously and we have settled the agenda. And now I believe, please help me, you all. Is there anything else that we need to do before we move into closed session? I don't think so. All right, Madam Attorney, could you propose the language for us to move into closed session? I will, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon again. So it's in motion to go into closed session for attorney-client consultation to discuss the newly filed case of Tony Scott, Jr. and Tony Scott, Sr. versus the city of Durham at Owl that was filed in the Middle District of North Carolina. It's a federal court case. The file number is 120-CV-558. So moved. Second. Is there a second? Second. Moved by Council Member Freeman, seconded by Council Member Caballero that we move into closed session for the purposes outlined by the city attorney. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Member Rees. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. What's our process now, Madam Clerk, in terms of the meeting, closing the meeting and so forth? Mr. Mayor, I am removing the individuals who are not in the closed session from the Zoom meeting and it'll take me a moment. Thank you. You know when it's done. Okay. And Diana, do the folks who are broadcasting the meeting need any additional time to make sure that their broadcast is terminated? I do not see anyone who's broadcasting on the Zoom meeting right now. And would you say that our, we're not live streaming it? I mean, you know, all the things that the city's doing is not happening either, is that correct? Well, I haven't.