 Yeah, great job. That is a really fascinating job. Thank you. Thank you. How are you guys? Rob, how are you? Good to see you. Thank you. How are you? Good to see you. I'm too worried to pay for you. You're going to have to update me. It's always rough. Yeah. So we're finally broken after five years. And so it's really, it's happening. And Cali has been raised for two years. So Bella first, you've got the ball first. So we're a new city planning guy. Basically they want an extra four-day building. So we've been thinking for a long time. And so in your renovation district, you've got a hundred greens on the farm. And I'm not just, you know, there is this new sculpture that's cascading in the trees. They're also putting these on easy trials. They have seating, shaded plugs outside. They recharge your homes and then fountains. That's his honor, boys. I've got a head total for the weekend. It's on just two grades. It's in the same boat. She was sick and better all day. I got up and kept going. Yes. And I think we're, I think we're there. The ideas is, you know, they got a budget this week. Mine will be over in a week. Mine will be a lot more painful, trust me. So Stacey Plouce did work around with her. She's in the ADA as a project. They're now talking about putting a line on every project color, which that's worth more than having the Plouce station tell people. But it's, let it, so I think that's going to be a stage three. The first thing that was big in that open glass area and then there is a Good evening. We'd like to call the Durham city council meeting to order at 7 o'clock PM on June the 19th. And certainly want to welcome all of you that are here for us tonight. If we just take a moment of silent meditation, please. Thank you. Recognize Councilman Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. We are privileged and honored to have with us to lead us in the pledge of Kayla Beasley. She is the daughter of Dr. Tamara Conan Beasley and Mr. Darrell Beasley. She is a rising senior at Hillside High School ranked number two in her class. She is the indoor and outdoor track champion. I'm sorry. Indoor and outdoor shot put champion state champion for North Carolina. And she is the national champion for the Hershey U.S. T.A. U.S. Track and Field. So she's a national shot put champion. And she led the Hillside girls track and field team to a state championship this year. So we're honored to have Kayla Beasley with us to do the pledge. To lead the pledge. May we stand please. In the name of the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Madam Clerk would you call the roll please. Mayor Bell. Present. Mayor Pro Tem Cole McFadden. Council Member Davis. Council Member Johnson. Council Member Moffitt. Here. Council Member Reese. Here. And Council Member Schultz. We have several proclamations that we're going to present this evening. The first recognizes the Neighborhood Spotlight Award recipients for May 2017 and also for June 2017. Now I'll ask first of Mr. George A. Long Sr., if you would join us please. George, I don't know if you want to bring in your family or friends. If you can. As most of you know, the Neighborhood Spotlight Award is given versus award is put together by the Neighborhood Improvement Services. Their department is pretty much all through the city of Durham, neighborhoods, and et cetera. But it's put together and recognizing individuals who have done a tremendous amount of work in their neighborhoods. Tonight we're presenting George A. Long Sr. And the certificate reads is awarded in recognition of valuable contributions to East Durham. Serving as the volunteer community liaison to East Durham for the Good Shepherd Church of God in Christ, for coordinating community events, voter registration and fair housing sign up, and for offering support, resources and information to senior citizens in the area. And assigned by Thomas J. Bondfield, the city manager myself as the mayor of the city of Durham, and I want to present this to George. And if you know George, he's all over town. I mean, and he's walking all over town. So he gets a lot of exercise, but he's a person that cares deeply about this community. And anytime he has an opportunity to help out, to offer advice, he doesn't hesitate to do that. So I'm going to present this to George and for any short comments you might have. On the television, it doesn't seem like there's many people in here. There must be Trump, one of Trump's things out there anyway. Now, my name is George A. Long Sr. I first touched foot in Durham back in 1986 when my brother Kenny was going to North Carolina Central at that time. And my parents moved here like 27 years ago. So I traveled back and forth for 12 years before I moved here 15 years ago from Boston, being there 33 years, 17 years in New York, Connecticut, 50 years up north. So now I'm back almost to Florida, but I stopped here in North Carolina just to, you know, say hello. Hi. George Goebbels. George, John. I thought I saw John. Yeah, okay, good. I know you will. I don't know why I said George or whatever. Again, John is the recipient of the Neighborhood Spotlight for the month of June 2017. This month, John is the resident of the Waterbury, Lansbury neighborhood, and he was nominated and selected because of the wonderful work he has done in his neighborhood, including but not limited to leading the city and community efforts to improve the accessibility, safety, and use of Santa Creek Park by creating a bird blind, by developing the Monarch Festival, by improving the bridge and trails over the park. And again, I want to congratulate John for being the Neighborhood Spotlight recipient for the city of Durham in June. And I can tell you that I know well the work that he does. He's been in my office a few times. Plan of the tree. Plan of the tree, right, plan of the tree. But a real testament to the type of persons we have in our community. We talk about Durham being a place where good things are happening and it's happening because of residents such as we have here tonight. So John, I'm going to present this to you and for any comments that you might have. Yeah. All you guys that are here supporting John, come on up, please. Come on down is a thing, if you don't mind. First, I'd like to thank Neighborhood Services and the City Council for this award. As Mayor Bell likes to say, a lot of great things happen in Durham and a whole lot of them are done by volunteers, commission members, board members, and the like. They have really facilitated a lot of what I've done. The Parks Foundation, Keep Durham Beautiful, the county matching grants from DOS, and without those kind of support groups, it would be a lot more difficult for us to do the kind of things we do in Durham. So, thank you very much. If some of you were here earlier, you were probably witness at an event that we had both as a reception out in the lobby and later in the council chambers. We're recognizing the impact that arts is having across the nation, but particularly here in Durham. And I'm going to ask Sherry DeVries and Senator Mike Woodard to still present. Oh, right behind me. I should have known that. Sherry was apologizing early on about the time that it was taken for her to go through a program. But when I saw the figure of the contributions, about six plus million dollars, I said, well, you own this place, so you've got plenty of time. I was getting ready to make another presentation, but it speaks to the fact that Americans for the Arts, the nation's leading art research and advocacy organization, conducted a fifth benchmark study of the national economic impact of the nonprofit arts, earth industry, and 341 persons that participated in studies across the region in the United States. And it speaks to the fact that arts and economic impact prosperity fire study found that the nonprofit arts industry generates 166.3 billion annually in economic activity. It supports 4.6 million jobs from large urban to small rural communities. And that the nonprofit's art industry annually returns 27.5 billion in government revenues. And whereas arts and economic impact prosperity fire study found that the nonprofit arts industry in Durham, North Carolina, generates 154.1 million dollars annually in economic activity. It supports 5700 jobs and the nonprofit arts industry annually returns about 6.96 million in local government revenue. And that's the 6.96 that I say she's helping pay for this place. And the 6.397 in state government revenue. And whereas arts and economic prosperity fire study collected extensive survey data from more than 14,000 plus arts organizations and 212 plus audience attendees nationwide and in Durham from 69 local arts organizations and 824 local attendees. Whereas it's demonstrated by arts and economic prosperity fire study, the nonprofit's arts in Durham, North Carolina, substantially contributes to the local economy. And now therefore I, William V. Bilbell, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim that we support the findings of the arts and economic prosperity fire study and urge all local state and federal officials to not only recognize the economic and social value of the nonprofit arts, but to also invest in nonprofit arts organizations directly through their local and state art agencies and the National Endowment for the Arts as a catalyst to generate economic impact, Stimulate business developments for urban renewal and attract tourists and area residents to community activities and to press the overall quality, improve overall quality of life in American cities. And witness my hand, Corporate City of Durham, this is the 19th day of June 2017. I will present this to Sherri and she will present your Chairman and Wayne for his comments. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and ladies and gentlemen of the council. It's great to be home, considering where I usually am on Monday nights. It's good to be with a good friendly crowd and to get to see so many good friends in administration. It's particularly great to be here tonight to talk about the economic impact arts and culture has on Durham. Arts and culture has always been part of Durham's DNA and we do it better than just about anybody. My good friend Barker French, my predecessor as President of the Arts Council Board, has a license plate on his card that says Durham, the cultural arts capital of North Carolina, the Triangle. But I expanded it tonight to call Durham the Arts and Culture Capital of the State as we do it as well as anybody. So tonight we had the chance earlier to share with you all the great numbers about the impact arts and culture has on our economy. So I want to say to the council and administration, your investment in arts and culture programming is paying back. Sherri is going to share some of the numbers with you, so we thank you. As you adopt your budget tonight and as you make important policy decisions throughout the year, your investment in Durham's arts and culture is important for the vitality, the life of the city, but it pays back in real dollars and cents. And you can take that message out to constituents and taxpayers like me and all the folks here and who are watching on TV. So thank you for that continued investment. With that, I'd like to ask Sherri DeVries, Executive Director of the Arts Council, to share some of those numbers with you all. Good evening, City Council members. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Mayor Bell. Durham is an overachiever in arts and culture. And I just want to recognize we have some of our arts and culture representatives here this evening. If you could stand up, any of you that are still here. Thank you for staying. So, looking at the overall numbers, total economic activity in Durham. This is the not-for-profit arts and cultural sector, $154,170,023. Full-time jobs, $5,722. Household income generated, $132 million. Revenue generated for local city and county government, $6.9 million. And revenue generated to state government, $6.3 million. So considering the investment that the government, state, and local make in arts and culture, we're proud to say that we are returning on that investment and hopefully making you proud of the arts and cultural community in Durham. Also, the arts and cultural sector in Durham are a tremendous driver for visitors, for tourism in Durham. And just overall, we're very proud of the activity. We've had tremendous growth in our numbers over the last five years. We're up from about $125 million in economic impact to $154 million in economic impact five years later. So thank you so much. And I just want to turn this for a moment to Wayne Martin of the Executive Director of the North Carolina Arts Council and thank him for his support as well. I'm not Wayne, but I just wanted to step in before Wayne made his remarks. I had an opportunity to meet this gentleman about a week or so ago at Chuck Davis' funeral. So I'm again at the opening of the American Dance Festival. Again, he's here in Durham tonight, so we're going to have to get him a room. But the more important thing is I think it shows the importance and how much of an outreach the arts council has and the impact it has had across this community. But more importantly, the highest recognized at the state, the importance of arts in the community. So Wayne, we appreciate you being here and appreciate your remarks. Well, I'll be very brief. I also, like Sherry, want to thank all the nonprofit arts organizations here in Durham and Durham County and across the state for all that you do to give our state energy and life and character. And for all the individual artists, those who make their living through their arts and those who do it as an avocation and don't even necessarily designate as an artist, but make music, do visual art, write. You are the spice for North Carolina that makes people want to come to our state to live here, to work here, to start businesses. So I have to agree with the senator. Durham may be the cultural capital of North Carolina. And I'm certainly, like the mayor said, I come here a lot. I come here for shows. I come here to soak up the essential character of Durham and Durham County Arts here. So congratulations on this study, which shows that you're a state leader. David Reese. Is David? Okay, good. This recognition is really about our children. It's Durham Kids Save Day. It speaks to the fact that the city of Durham recognizes that higher education is an important pathway to economic opportunity for children in our community. It speaks to the fact that it shows that children with a savings account in their name are three times more likely to enroll in college and four times more likely to graduate, even if they have as little as $500 in an account. It speaks to the fact that whereas Durham Kids Save launched in 2015 as a project of the finance task force of the 10.01 transformation intent initiative to provide savings accounts for children attending school in census tract 10.01, whereas Durham Kids Save automatically enrolls eligible kindergarten and first grade children in savings accounts with $100 in seed funding and subcommittee matches deposit in these accounts, dollar for dollar, up to $100 per year through the fifth grade, whereas through the first two years of the program, accounts for kindergarten and first grade families at Y. Smith Elementary School have accumulated over $20,000 through parent deposits earned in census and seed funding, whereas the city of Durham and its partners, including the East Durham Children's Initiative, Self-Help Credit Union, Durham Public Schools, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, and BB&T Bank remain committed to supporting savings opportunities for children and their families, and therefore I, William and Bill Bell, mayor of the city of Durham, do hereby proclaim Durham Kids Save Day in the city of Durham and hereby I encourage all residents to celebrate and participate in programs that promote college savings for the children of our community. What is my hand, Corporate City of Durham? This is the 19th day of June 2017. I'm going to present this to David as the Executive Director of East Durham Children's Initiative. But in saying this, I want to recognize that this is really an effort that really sort of came out of the effort we have in terms of reducing poverty, neighborhood by neighborhood year by year starting in 2014, which we initiated over in the Northeast Central Durham, and we had six taskforce, one of them was the finance taskforce, and Steve Shul, Councilor Steve Shul co-chair of that along with former County Commissioner Fred Paulson and others involved, but it was an initiative that they undertook, and I think it's really having great promise. This initiative has really started, I guess, out in San Francisco. That's where effort is heard about it. But the fact of the matter is, this is a very promising program, and I want to congratulate Steve and the whole taskforce, but more importantly, the students and their parents who have chosen to participate in this program. So I hope I didn't steal your thunder, but I just wanted to add that to it. Mayor Bell, Council, thank you so much. Thank you for taking the steps to have our children back in our community, our larger Durham community have the opportunity to think about college, to no longer have that thought in the back of their mind of, I can't afford it. The data says that kids who save, actively save are more likely to attend school, and so here in Durham, I'm just super proud to say that this is what we do. We go ahead and we put our children first, and allow them to have the opportunity to succeed. Councilman Shul, I appreciate you much. Mr. Mayor, thank you. I'm going to turn the microphone up. Oh, you missed something. We missed something. We missed something. So this is one of our families, and this is one of our families who are super savers. And this is important. This is going to make my day. It's probably going to make their day, but make my day more importantly, to be able to take this picture with you. I appreciate you. Thank you for what? Your investment, right? Back in the success of our child? There we go. Mr. Mayor, are you going to join us? Steve? Steve? We'll go down here. Can we go down there? Is that one down? Yeah. Well, it's Councilman Gillian Johnson. If she would come to the podium, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I'm presenting a proclamation tonight affirming the City of Durham's commitment to reducing greenhouse gases under the 2015 Paris Accords. I'm not going to read the whole proclamation because as our commitment to having an impact on reducing climate change is very strong, our proclamation is also very long. But I just want to highlight a couple of key points. That the City of Durham desires to protect and enhance quality of life for all those who live, work, learn, and play in our community, as well as for our children and our grandchildren. And climate change has been widely recognized by government, business, and academic leaders as a worldwide threat with the potential to harm our economy, safety, public health, and quality of life. And whereas the federal government of the United States has announced the decision to pull out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement undermining this critical global effort to confront one of the greatest challenges facing our community and communities all across the one planet that we all share. And whereas in response to this action, the Mayor of Durham, along with 1,219 other mayors, governors, businesses, investors, and colleges and universities from across the U.S., signed on to a letter to declare that we will continue to support climate action to meet the Paris Agreement. Let's all give Mayor Bell a round of applause. So we are, as the rest of us on City Council wanted to also affirm our commitment to continuing these efforts under the Paris Accords and that we remain committed to our goal of a 50% reduction in greenhouse gases from government and 30% reduction from the community by 2030 from the levels that were recorded in 2005. And we plan to continue these efforts and also encourage further efforts in the community. And we have a couple of folks here tonight from our Sustainability Office to receive this proclamation. Yeah, there we go. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Tobin Freed. I'm the Sustainability Manager for the City and County and tasked with helping to implement our greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan. And I particularly want to thank the Mayor and all of City Council for our commitment. Durham was the first community in all of North Carolina to adopt a greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan. And we should all be very proud of that. To date, the city has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 11% from our levels in 2008. So we're on our way. A lot of more work to be done, but the departments have been doing a wonderful job of trying to reduce our energy use and increase our alternative fuel use and in turn of energy use. So I'm very proud of us. And I look forward to working with everyone in the city government, the county government and our community as we continue to work on these really important goals. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Johnson and Tobin and others. Before we get started, could I ask persons that are standing if you could find some seats so we won't have the doors in the seats up front and anywhere. And while they're doing that, I would ask other comments by members of the council. Recognize the Mayor pro-town. Good evening, everyone. I would just like to share some good news with you tonight and present some officials and young men who have been touched by the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club of Durham. So if you will, come up here, Charles, and just share and your executive director the good news about the black boys that you're serving and the successes that they have experienced. Thank you. Good evening. First, I'd like to thank the council for recognizing us. I've been with the Salvation Army for about 30 years, 20 years as executive director, 20 years, I'm sorry, 10 years serving on the board. And in those 30 years, we provided a lot of kids, male and female, opportunities to go to college, to go to school, and to better themselves. I also serve on several youth committees around the city, include men of vision, and male poverty programs, several other programs. One of the best decisions I've made in my life since I left the Salvation Army as an employee was to bring a board. This young man, Joshua Dorsett, I'm sorry, Joshua Dorsett, as the executive director. We've had a string of successes through Mr. Emmanuel Croson, who was there before me, and then I had the opportunity to bring Mr. Dorsett above, I'm sorry, a board. And since we bought Mr. Dorsett aboard, he's kept the home fire burning. He kept kids going to college, he's kept his run of the mill. We started with his present group we had when they were in fifth grade. We hung with him for seven years all through high school, and I'll let Mr. Dorsett explain his program, because he's done an outstanding job. Joshua Dorsett. Good evening. Thanks for having me really quick. So basically the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club, we've been in Northeast Central Durham for over a hundred years, and to sum up what we do is basically Boys and Girls Club of America module called Formula for Success, Impact Formula for Success. So basically we take kids who need us the most and put them, pair them up with programs and academic success, character and leadership and healthy lifestyles. So like Mr. Lyons said, in 2009 we started an AAU travel basketball team called Save Sports, and basically to make a long story, make a long story short, the kids just graduated this year, 2017, and a big, big time accomplishment was that we sent all 12 kids to college to play basketball and scholarship. So I couldn't get everybody, but I got a couple of the kids with me tonight. Malik Frazier, he'll be at Johnson & Wales University starting August. Deshaun Hicks will be at Fayetteville Tech. We also have A.J. Davis from Riverside. He's going to Fayetteville Tech. Isaiah Reddish from Riverside. He's going to Barton. Javier Rogers from Kestrel Heights will be at Washington Prep Academy. Rashad Dixon from Southern will be at Fort Union Military. Gerard Bradley from Northern will be a student, just a traditional student at ECU. Jordan Biel of Voyager Academy will be at Concord University in West Virginia. Tamia Williams will be a cheerleader at Johnson C. Smith University. Jake Juan Diel from Research Triangle Academy will be a student athlete at Methodist University in Fayetteville. So that's what we came out to talk about tonight. Thanks for having us. Also, I have my chair, board chair, Dean David Green from North Carolina Central. He does real good work for us. He's with us tonight too. Thank you. I just want to briefly point out there's so many things going on in Durham. Sometimes we get a lot of discussion about things that are not going well. It is my absolute privilege as an African-American male to see so many young African-American males doing the right thing and going in the right direction. To be able to come today and say that we have 15 of our children going to college. Despite what's going on, they found the path and they found they got on track and they're doing the right thing. And this city council and this city should be extremely proud because this city produced, you supported them, you continue to support them. It makes a statement for the kids that are following. There was nothing more special when we announced that these kids were going to college with the young folks sitting in the audience and they now know they can do it because someone that looks just like them, someone who grew up in their community did it and they know they can as well. So God bless you all. Thank you, Charles and company for coming and sharing that great news. I was impressed that they knew all the kids that were going by name and everything. No, no, sir. That's very key to it also. Well, Mr. Mayor, what it wants to is what you've been telling us year after year after year, the importance of mentoring our children. That is so important and this is a perfect example. Can I ask out there? Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Are there other comments by members of the council? I'll have to get to that. I recognize the Mayor Pro Tem. Mr. Mayor received the Silver Anniversary Award last Saturday from El Centro on their 25th anniversary. So let's give him a round of applause and during the same week, he received the Founders Award from M&F Bank. Let's give him another round of applause. So who knows what he's going to receive next week in the weeks to come? Congratulations. Thank you, Mayor. Let me ask whether prior to items first by the city manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Good evening, everyone. No priority items. Likewise, City Attorney. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. No priority items. Likewise, City Clerk. Yes, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. We have with us this evening John Rooks, who was recently appointed to the Human Relations Commission. He's here to be sworn in before the City Council. Thank you. Hi, John Rooks. Hi, John Rooks. Do hear by solemnly swear. Do hear by solemnly swear. That I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States. That I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States. And the Constitution and laws of North Carolina. And the Constitution and laws of North Carolina. Not inconsistent therewith. Not inconsistent therewith. But I will faithfully and impartially. And that I will faithfully and impartially. Discharge the duties of my office. Discharge the duties of my office. As a member of the Human Relations Commission. As a member of the Human Relations Commission. So help me, God. So help me, God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you, John, for your willingness to serve. And of course, we can be of assistance. We would appreciate letting us know. But we know it takes time. And it's not always easy to give up your time to provide service. But we look forward to your service on Human Relations Council. I will proceed with the gender-consistent consent gen items, which may be approved with a single motion. Unless a council member or a member of the audience chooses to pull an item, we'll discuss that later. The first item is item one, approval of city council minutes. Item two is citizens advisory committee appointments. Item three is the Durham Convention Central Authority reappointment. Item four is the Housing Appeal Board reappointments. Item five is the Durham Homeless Services Advisory Committee Appointments. Item six is Durham City County Environmental Affairs Board reappointment. Item seven is fiscal year 2017-18 budget in 2018-23, capital improvement plan. And I'll pull that item. We have a person who wants to comment on that. We'll move to item eight, Bloomberg, philanthropists, law pharmacies, innovation, team project grant. I'm not on tonight. Item nine is request to amend the FY 2016-2017 budget and other grant project ordinances. Item 10 is in a local agreement with Durham County for City County Youth Initiatives Manager position. Item 11 is the Housing Authority of the City of Durham request for city loans of ordination. Item 12 is the Purchase Contract for Replacement Hybrid Batteries for the Coderm. Item 13 is the Williams Water Treatment Plant Terminal Reservoir Concrete Apron Replacement Contract Award to Thale Construction Company Inc. Item 14 is Professional Services for Lake Mickey and Little River Raw Water Pump Station Improvements. Item 15 is American Tobacco District Waterline Replacement Amendment Number Two. Item 16 is the Purchase Contract with Musco Sports Lighting and the LLC for Sports Lighting at Crest Street Park. Item 17 is Benefits Consultant and Broken Services Evaluation and Recommended Selection. Item 18 is the Physical Year 2018 Agreement to Fund Economic Development Programs and Services operated by Downtown Durham Inc. Item 19 is Physical Year 2017-2018 Contract for City Services and Programs for the Downtown Durham Municipal Service District with Downtown Durham Inc. Item 20 is the Contract with Educational Data Systems Incorporated to Operate Durham's NC Works Career Center and to provide Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Adult and Dislocated Worker Services. Item 21 is the Contract Extension Amendment with Achievement Academy of Durham to provide Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Youth Program Elements Services. Item 22 is the Contract Extension Amendment with Community Partnerships Inc. to provide Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Youth Frame Work Services. Item 23 is the Contract S.W.A.-45 D. Cornwalls Road Bike and Production Improvements under Tip Number U-4724. Item 24 is the Contract for Southwest-42 and North Carolina-55 Cecil Street to Roll Road Sidewalk. Item 25 is a revision to City Code Section 70-17 for Payment of Frontage Charges. Items 27 through 30 are items that can be found in the general business during the public hearings. Entertaining a Motion for the approval of the Senate General with exception of Item 7. So moved. Second. It's been proper to move to the second. All in favor of the motion. I'm sorry, I recognize the mayor proclaiming. Item 17, excuse me. The benefits consultant, no, I just want to make sure that staff got the question that I asked about their hiring practices because there was one vacancy and he still has no diversity in his workforce. So I just want to make sure that we are vigilant with him and his treatment of vendors of color. I understand. I have not been that pleasant as well. Okay, that's it. All right, it's been proper to move to the second. All in favor of the motion. Indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion passes unanimously. Let me go back to, since we only had one item pulled from the consent agenda and there's one individual to speak on that. Let me recognize Chris Tiffany who pulled Item 7 for comments and then we can act on that item as appropriate. Half the budget is public safety. 21st century. Sorry, Chris, I should have told you it's three minutes. I'm sorry? You have three minutes. Okay, that's plenty. Half the budget is public safety. 21st century policing in Durham has cost roughly a billion dollars so far. You'd think for billion dollars you'd want more information and more control over how all that money is spent and how much is wasted. Unless a 5% bad cops paying dozens of bad cops millions of dollars to harass non-criminal pedestrians profiled by age, sex, race, color, class, clothing or where we live is a waste of time and money alienating those from whom you need information rather than silence after threats for complaining about systematic harassment in unposted target areas where we need public safety officers who do not harass or threaten public safety. But, well, it's a target area. Fear is not respect. The result is protecting ordinary criminals as well as bad cops. And both are typically repeat offenders. The best predictor of behavior is behavior. I'll repeat that. The best predictor of behavior is behavior. Most other women interviewed in your target areas said a cop had called them bitch. How likely are they or their target area neighbors to trust two-faced cops who treat them like that or worse? You don't even know how often they pull weapons or search pedestrians in target areas with or without force or how often do cops sick other criminals on people in target areas like a big dog cop who calls women bitch and threatens complainants and witnesses and their families and pointed at someone near the police chief and barked that's one of my snitches. Snitches get stitches. I do not like to talk to cops. They're often dangerous and cannot be trusted. Management can't even manage their resources to revise a single mission critical document general order 1036 that keeps secret the use of funds to pay for drugs or to pay informants but fails to clearly protect the identities of your informants. We're supposed to protect people not throw them to the dogs. Half the budget is public safety but both public safety and the budget for public safety are literally out of control. Thank you. I recognize Councilman Schuylen. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to comment briefly on the budget. Let me just first of all say that we have an absolutely terrific budget this year and I think it's one we can really be proud of and moves the city forward in so many new ways. And so first thing I wanna do is thank our budget department and our department directors, city manager for the budget that we have in front of us. I just wanted to hit briefly a few of the highlights just some of the new things that we're doing that I think people in the city might like to know about and probably don't. We're doubling the dedicated housing fund to $5.5 million to help build affordable housing here in Durham where increasing the amount of money we're spending on street paving which we hear over and over again from our residents is a high priority to $6.5 million this year. We're adding 30 firefighters to the new station 17 which is people have been waiting for for a long time which is great. We're greatly expanding our after school programming for teens at our recreation centers. We're making our recreation center a drop in program and swimming pools free to our youth. We have a 4% average pay increase for our city employees 5% for public safety which are critical to keeping the good employees that we wanna keep here in Durham. We're advancing the pay of our lowest paid city workers and one year from now all of our city workers will be paid at least the $15 an hour minimum. We're having 12 weeks of paid parental leave which we're adding to the budget. We have launched with this budget a pilot recycling program for organic waste food to begin to take food out of our waste streams and we won't have to ship it off at an expensive per pound rate to put it in a landfill in another county. We're working on a pilot for that. We have new educational programs for recycling. This budget establishes an innovation office with three new staff from a grant from Bloomberg and their first project they'll be focusing on is helping our residents who are reentering Durham from prison succeed in reentering. Think how important that is. We have 760 people this last year reentering Durham from prison and helping them succeed is crucial to our community. This budget has take home cars for police officers living here in Durham. We very much want to encourage our police officers to live here in Durham and this will help do that. This is the second of a three year rollout. It has a new police and fire pay plan and our objective should be to hire the best, pay them well, train them well, hold them accountable and support them to succeed and this budget with this pay increase does that. We just completed, it's not in this budget but just as of today, this council supported the purchase of Fayette Place which is now back in public hands. This budget retains a solid fund balance that's well above our minimum requirement and retains our ability to have a triple A bond rating from all three agencies, one of the few cities in America to do so. It provides funding for the purchase of the Duke Belt Line Trail, our portion of that and four other high priority trails. Those are built into this budget. This budget includes $20 million in the coming several years on new sidewalks and sidewalk repair. It creates a new city county office on youth with a joint staff member to coordinate and enhance our youth activities in the community. It enhances the city's cyber security by adding a security analyst to keep our data safe from hackers and other cyber threats which as you all know is really important now. It provides racial equity training for an additional 150 employees, a diversity recruitment initiative so that we can increase the pool of qualified minority and women applicants for city jobs. It provides staffing to support the new financial inclusion work which will help our city residents build their assets. It includes $75,000 for public art up from $20,000 in previous years. And over the next five years, it includes $500 million, half a billion dollars for water and sewer repairs and construction program that will keep it so that when you turn your tap on, you'll get as much water as you want out of it. It'll be clean and it'll be safe. And we'll also, through that construction program and rehabilitation of our water and sewer system, be keeping our lakes and rivers safe as well. And we'll be spending about $121 million to do that this year to rehabilitate that crucial infrastructure. So these are all new things, things that we, there are many other good things that this budget does, but these are mainly the things I've highlighted or things that we're doing that are new. And I think we can be really proud of the budget. And I wanna thank the city manager and our department directors and the budget department for what is a really outstanding budget. And it was hard to get to it, but I think it's really moving our city forward and I'm just most appreciative of it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Steve. You know, we as a council spend time going through the budget and after the administration has made its presentations and we probably take some things for granted, but I appreciate you highlighting that for the general public. I recognize, I'm sorry, I recognize Councilor Rees. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I had some comments on the budget, but I don't think I could do it any better than my colleague, Steve Shul, just did. I'll just, what I did wanna do is those respond to Mr. Tiffany's remarks just briefly. Chris, I think you may be thinking of the proportion of the public safety, the portion of the general fund expenditures that are taken over by public safety, but if you look at the entire city budget, public safety takes up somewhere around 22% of the budget. And though the budget for public safety did increase this year, it increased at a lower rate than the rest of the budget. And so as a percentage of the total budget, it is less than it was last year and less than our peer cities here in North Carolina, such as Winston-Salem and Greensboro spent in the last fiscal year, I guess the current fiscal year. I would also point out that the overwhelming majority of the increase in public safety this year involved the hiring of 30 new firefighters, which were required to staff a new fire station. Having said all that, I wanna just echo what Councilor Shul said about how strong this budget is, how much I appreciate all the work of city staff, especially the budget department. I also wanted to point out something, I don't know that we've ever, I've heard members talk about the transmittal letter on the proposed budget, but it was especially strong this year, carrying forward a really strong theme of progress and opportunity in our city and I wanted to thank the budget staff for their work on that and of course the city manager as well. I'm especially heartened by the cities and the city council and staff's recommitment to the dedicated affordable housing fund and literally redoubling our efforts. That does not come free. It requires an increase in the levy. We're doubling it this year. I don't think that's gonna be enough over the next four or five years. I think we're gonna need to continue to make additional investments in affordable housing, try to make Durham a city where working families can afford to live and work and raise their kids, but I'm heartened by the step that we're taking today with respect to the affordable housing fund and I know that we are headed in the right direction. Also just briefly wanted to thank our human resources department for making the commitment to our employees to pay to offer 12 weeks of parental leave that puts us in the elite class of governmental employers here in the state of North Carolina. It's something that folks in the community have reached out to many of us about individually and I know I've had some conversations with staff about this over the last several months and I just really, really appreciate our staff making that commitment to our employees to be that first in class employer here at the city of Durham. So again, with that, thank you, Mr. Manager and the budget department. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for giving me this opportunity. Are there any other comments? I recognize Councilor Moffitt. I appreciate both my colleagues for their great comments. If nobody else has any comments, I'll be proud to move the budget. I'll probably move the second in the further discussion. Hearing none, call to question. All in favor of the motion, indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion passes unanimously. I recognize Councilor Moffitt. I will make a comment, which is simply that I think it was Vice President or former Vice President Joe Biden who said, don't tell me what your values are. Show me your budget and I'm really proud of the values that's been highlighted and embedded in our budget and the work that we're doing. That's all, thank you. Well, I wanted to wait until the budget was passed before I made any comments, since this is my last budget. My last, I was 16 plus 26, I guess almost 42 budget, somewhere along in there, but I do appreciate all the comments that my colleagues have made, and I'm not gonna repeat that. We have a strong leadership in our city manager, a strong staff, and it's something that I think we all should be proud of. As far as I'm concerned, the city's in good hands financially through the administration, and we just hope that as you move forward, we'll continue this, that effort. But this is really, the fact is, it's a unanimous budget. In fact, we didn't have to go back to any makeovers. We had a date to set up for that, but we didn't have to go through that. And it's all because of the way it was presented, and I don't want you to think that we didn't raise questions because we did that, but having raised those questions, obviously we got sufficient answers to be in support of what's been presented here tonight. So again, I wanna also congratulate the administration, staff, and my colleagues for this effort. Let's move to the next item on agenda, which is the General Business Agenda Public Hearings, item 27, consolidated annexation for 1000 Infinity Road, Village Hart, Co-House and Community. Thank you, Jacob Wiggins, with the planning departments. And before I begin, I would like to note that both of our planning items tonight have been advertised in accordance with state law and the unified development ordinance. The item in front of you presently is a request for a utility extension agreement, voluntary annexation petition, and zoning map change, which has been submitted from Village Hearth Co-Housing, LLC, for a contiguous 15-acre parcel located at 1000 Infinity Road. If approved, the annexation of the site would become effective on June 30th, 2017. The subject site is currently Zoned Residential Suburban 20 and Residential Suburban 10, and is also located in the Eno River Critical Watershed Overlay District. The applicant is petitioning to change the zoning designation to Plan Development Residential 2.110. Some key commitments on the development plan included with the rezoning include a maximum of 32 residential units, age-restricted living, a mix of unit types with a maximum of 1,600 square feet per residential unit, and a maximum of 24% impervious surfaces. The Public Works and Water Management departments determined that the existing City of Durham water and sewer mains have capacity to serve this project, and the Budget Management Services Department determined that the proposed annexation will be revenue positive immediately upon annexation. The Planning Commission at their March 14th, 2017 meeting recommended approval of this request by a vote of 12 to zero. Further staff determines that these requests are consistent with the comprehensive plan and the other adopted and applicable policies. The action on this item will require two separate votes. The first motion includes the extension agreement and the annexation ordinance. And the second motion includes the consistency statement and zoning ordinance. And I'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have at this time. All right, thank you. This is a public hearing. The public hearing is open. Let me ask other questions first by members of the council. If not, we have four persons that have signed to speak on this item. I'll say that all four were proponents of the project. Is there anyone that wants to speak in opposition to the zoning that did not sign up? In that case, let's limit the comments to 12 minutes at the most. I recognize Pat McNally, James Taylor, Paul Stuntzler, Anderson, and Dan Jewel. You all can choose the order you're going. Mr. Mayor, Dan Jewel, Culver Jewel Thames. It's okay with you, we may reshuffle that order just a little bit for the speakers, but 12 minutes is plenty of time. So thank you very much. Good evening, again, Mr. Mayor Bell, Mayor Pro Tem Cole McFadden, fellow council members. I am Dan Jewel, president of Culver Jewel Thames at 111 West Main. Our firm has been asked by the Village Hearth folks to assist them with land planning and design of this site at 1000 Infinity Road for the proposed co-housing community that they very much desire to build. Staff has described the location and the generally outlined our proposal. And there are a series of a few speakers, as you know, who will follow me, who can explain much more eloquently what co-housing is all about and the intent of their community, why some of them are choosing to live here and how they've worked to engage the neighbors over the last many months. What I'd like to do is give you a little more information about what we are proposing to do and what we are not proposing to do. We are proposing to develop an intentional community of up to 32 units. By our calculations, this is an equivalent density to what the current zoning on the site would allow. The reason for the zoning request is to allow us to cluster the units. So rather than having to spread the houses all over the property on the minimum lot size required by the ordinance, they would like to cluster the development. A single family subdivision of the same density would obviously impact much more of the property. The community will be oriented around common open space and designed in such a way as to have much less impact on the land than a conventional subdivision would with the goal of preserving as much of the property and trees as possible. In fact, we have committed to a development envelope on the development plan that is much smaller than would otherwise be required by the ordinance. We've committed to having none of the residential units be over 1600 square feet in size and most of them will be attached. Most of all, our goal is to create a community which is sensitive to the land, sensitive to the neighbors and still preserves the original appeal of the property which brought the group to purchase the land in the first place. Yes, they've already purchased the property. You all probably know this is a relatively unusual in this business. Land is generally put under contract and a purchase is not closed until zoning and other entitlements are in place. That's how resolute and how passionate they are about living here and moving ahead on this property. And I think this reinforces the key point. These folks are not developers for development's sake. They're working to create their community that they will live in and grow old in together. The folks in attendance tonight are the ones that will be living here. What we are not proposing is a conventional single family subdivision the current zoning of the property, RS 10 and R 20 is already appropriately zoned to do a single family subdivision of about 32 units by right with no zoning, no public hearings or a vote by you. It would simply be all staff level administrative approvals. Instead, these folks have willingly come to you asking for a rezoning to the same density so that they can cluster the homes. We very much understand that the primary neighborhood concern has been about traffic impact on their neighborhood by connecting to the end of Button Bush Road, which currently dead ends at the property line. This is understandable. The neighbors have enjoyed a quiet dead end street since their neighborhood was created. I know this well because some 40 years ago my old partner Ken Coulter did the zoning on this property which eventually became Eno Trace in the associated neighborhood. Our proposed connection to Button Bush will add some cars to Button Bush but not nearly to the extent that the neighbors fear. Folks who live in co-housing are traditionally older and drive much less than a typical household that might have two people working separate jobs, taking kids to soccer practice, after school activities, all that sort of thing. We have agreed, we have committed, as Mr. Wiggins said, that the community will be restricted to age 55 and older. The city transportation department has confirmed that this will generate less traffic than the right by right single family subdivision could be built on this property would and that subdivision likely would have a through street from the end of Button Bush all the way out to Infinity Road. The city transportation folks have asked us to construct a city standard cul-de-sac or hammerhead turnaround at the end of Button Bush on their property with right of way dedicated to the city at their expense. This is to ensure that emergency vehicles, school buses and large trucks will now actually be able to turn around safely at the end of the street rather than backing all the way up to the last intersection or in some private driveway as they do today. That, again, is a committed element on the plan. Finally, we've also committed at the request of the neighbors to require that all construction traffic will use the Infinity Road entrance to the property, not the Button Bush property. So we hope you can agree that we've gone to great lengths to minimize the impact on the property and on the surrounding communities. And for this and other reasons, we would hope you would follow the unanimous recommendation of the Planning Commission and move for approval tonight. I'd now like to ask Pat McCauley, one of the founders of the Village Hearth Community, to speak to you about the vision and the community outreach. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Good evening, council members, staff and neighbors. My name is Pat McCauley and I, along with other members of Village Hearth Co-Housing, are planning a small senior co-housing community. While co-housing is different from intent from a typical subdivision, we're not so different from our North Durham neighbors. We're looking forward to our small quality homes where we expect to live for the rest of our lives. Because co-housing communities are self-developed on a small scale, it's our money on the line. There's no deep-pocketed developer nor hundreds of units over which to spread the significant infrastructure costs. So we're making a real effort to keep our homes as affordable as possible for our members. We couldn't afford property in downtown Durham. We looked for a long time. We found this great piece of land in August of 2015. We wrote a letter to our neighbors, our adjoining neighbors, introducing ourselves and letting them know that we were going to work within the existing zoning restrictions and would keep them informed. We had a couple of inquiries, mostly hoping that we weren't going to build a hundred apartments on that land. In 2016, Dan helped us prepare for the development plans of middle and in May of 2016. And then in June of that year, we invited 115 of our neighboring households to a community information session. We weren't required to host that, but we wanted our neighbors to have a chance to see what we were proposing. We located it conveniently at the North Regional Library and four households joined us to find out about the project. Three were supportive. One didn't want us to use Button Bush as our access. Word spread after that meeting and a total of eight additional neighbors sent us emails welcoming us to the neighborhood, but requesting that we not access our property through the stub on Button Bush. We offered to meet with each person and did meet with four of those folks and one of them understood why we were wanting to come in where the land is the flattest, which is where we plan to build. Many neighbors attended the first public hearing with the Pilling Commission and several spoke against our community. The commissioners wisely requested further clarifications in our development plan and for us to consider our neighbors' concerns. Dan worked to revise the development plan and we agreed to the concessions that Dan has already described. We held another voluntary meeting with our neighbors and about 25 households were represented that night. Most were satisfied with the concessions that we had made, but a few neighbors still object to the Button Bush access and expressed their displeasure at the March 14th, 2017 Planning Commission meeting. Thankfully, as you know, the Planning Commission had no objections to our revised development plan and some commissioners even applauded our efforts to work with the neighbors and our design changes. Being a senior community, we're finding that most of our members will have only one car and we know that we'll do a lot of ride sharing when we do go out. We really won't increase the traffic through Eno Trace by a significant amount. We do recognize that change is hard for everyone, but development is an inevitable outcome of living in a really cool place like Durham and we did come back here specifically to build this here. Village Hearth Co-Housing presents the best kind of development in this area possible. Instead of a multi-story apartment building, we're adding a small number of really friendly neighbors. Thank you. Hello, my name's James Taylor. I live at 14 Hummingbird Lane in Eno Trace. I back up to this property and I think this is gonna be a great for the neighborhood Button Bush being a dead end for years, trucks backing down there, back in Eno. There's a lot of houses down in there what they're proposing everything they said I think would be great for Eno Trace. Good evening, my name is Paul J. Stinson. I'm a native and a realtor here in Durham and have held many positions in the association of realtors as well as served on the Housing Appeals Board with the city of Durham. But to here I am here tonight as a member of the Village Hearth Co-Housing. I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about our proposed community. Make sure I didn't miss anything here in the last few minutes. Co-Housing is a form of intentional community where people agreed to be good neighbors and good stewards of the earth. Senior Co-Housing takes this idea further by including smart universal design features to aid in accessibility. We're planning to build up to 32 single story cottages in close proximity resulting in homes clustered near a clubhouse. The further construction savings as well as future energy savings we're planning to attach our homes in duplexes, triplexes or quads as they fit on the available land. Building on the flattest part of the land will keep our paths accessible for seniors with cranky knees. Our rezoning request is not to increase residential density rather to accommodate clustering and attaching homes. In fact by building only 32 homes will have much less impact, actually far less impact on the land compared to a typical developer. I think this is even more important down in the watershed issue area. Thank you. Okay that concludes all of the persons that had signed up to speak. Dan you got 12 seconds, do you want to conclude? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, are there other questions? I remember the council. I'm not going to close the public hand and recognize Councilor Schultz. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I'm planning to vote for this. I think this is, I wish we had more of these. The concept is great and I think the idea of having all that green space salvaged and clustering these houses is really, really great. And appreciate your willingness to work with your neighbors on the button bush issue. My question is these houses I know are designed to be quite affordable. We also have an affordable housing fund as you know from the city of Durham that serves people that are, it's predominantly 60% of the below the area meeting income. And I wondered if you all had considered a proffer to the affordable housing fund Mr. Joule. Councilman Joule, appreciate the question and you asking that. I had spoken to a few of the members several weeks ago in advance of the meeting that this might come up. As you know, I've had many developer clients that have come before you who have made a proffer and contributed to the affordable housing fund. Those have all been for-profit developers with deep investors who had some backing to contribute to that fund. These folks now that we are a year into this rezoning even though there's not a design done, they're already really getting concerned about what construction costs have done over the last year and their ability to be able to put these homes together in this neighborhood in the way that will allow them to meet all the handicap or accessibility requirements living in place and that sort of thing. So I guess in a nice way what I'm saying is that they look forward to doing their annual contribution through their taxes to the fund that you just approved and the excellent budget that the city council approved. But at this time they're limited means, they're all folks of modest means, they do not have the wherewithal to do a proffer but I will be before you again, I'm sure in the future with other projects that will. So here's an answer. Are there other questions, comments? Recognize the Mayor Pro Tem. I'm very excited about my new neighbors in Northern Darrow. So welcome even before you get there. Any other comments? Recognize Councilwoman Johnson. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to make a quick comment that I think co-housing is a really exciting and innovative way to build the development that we need to see in Durham. I really like the idea behind co-housing and that it allows people to live in smaller units and have more shared common space and be more environmentally sustainable. So I'm also really excited to see this project come to Durham. Any other comments? Recognize Councilman Moffitt. Yes, Mr. Mayor. Based on what I heard from staff, there are no more comments, I think it's a great idea. I'm ready to move. Yes, so first motion is if I understood correctly is to approve the annexation ordinance and the utility extension agreement. So improperly moved and second. All in favor of the motion, indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion passes unanimously. And then I'll move the consistency statement and the approval of the zoning ordinance. Is that here? So improperly moved and second. All in favor of the motion, indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you, moved item 28, consolidated annexation for 301 Atkinshite's Hyatt property. Thank you, Jacob Wiggins again with the planning department. Request for utility extension agreement and voluntary annexation and initial zoning have been received from Poltay Home Company LLC for a 63 acre parcel located at 301 Atkinshites Boulevard. If approved, this annexation will become effective on June 30th, 2017. The applicant has requested an initial zoning designation of residential role, which is an exact translation of the existing county zoning designation. If these requests are approved, the applicant intends to construct a conservation subdivision, approximately 90 residential units at the subject site. Public works and water management performed the utility impact analysis, which indicated that the existing city of water utilities, I'm sorry, city of Durham utilities have capacity to serve this project. And the budget and management services department performed a fiscal impact analysis, which determined that the proposed annexation will be revenue positive immediately upon annexation. Staff determines that these requests are consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances. And as was the case with the previous item, action will require two separate votes. The first being a, the first motion includes the extension agreement and the annexation ordinance. And the second motion includes the consistency statement and zoning ordinance. And I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have at this time. Again, this is a public hearing, the public hearing is open. I would ask other questions by members of the council. If not, we have three people that have signed to speak on this item. They signed up as two opponents and one proponent. I'm gonna call the names to make sure we've got the right people here. We have Chris Mail, Jessica Engelhardt, and Tina Sanders Hill. As anyone else that wants to speak on this item that hasn't signed up to speak. I'm trying to gaze the time for the item. Okay, let's see if we can take 15 minutes on this at the most. I recognize the opponent, Chris Mail. Good evening council. My name is Chris Mail. I'm a civil engineer with Eden's Land, 2314 South Miami Boulevard in Durham. I'm here on behalf of my client, Polti Holmes. Also with me tonight are Bob Anderson with Polti and John Blackley from my office, a land planner with my office. Don't wanna take up too much time. I echo Jacob's comments about the project, 90 units, access to the site is proposed to be to an existing stub street in Oakhaven neighborhood, which is to the east of the parcel. Other options were considered, especially to the west. To the west, we have significant floodplain area and a stream in order to make a connection through the floodplain across the stream would require a no practical alternatives analysis. And it's our opinion that the option that was chosen is a practical option. And really the only option we have for access to our site. We also are proposing a stub street to the parcel to the south currently undeveloped. If that were to be developed, that would provide an additional access point out eventually out to Herndon Road. There is an existing Oakhaven neighborhood. I just discussed also to the north of Oakhaven neighborhood is a new subdivision streets were recently paved. It's called Herndon Trace. And that subdivision will provide a couple of other access points from the Oakhaven neighborhood out to Herndon Road. As Jacob said, water and sewer are available and capacity is adequate. The, so no utility extensions are required. I think that's about it. I would like to say that my client is willing to make a proffer of $25,000 to the Durham Affordable Housing Fund and made payable prior to the first final plat for this proposed subdivision. I request your consideration for this annexation and proposed project. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. You're welcome. Are there any questions of the developer at this time? Yes, sir. Jacob Williams of Plain Parkman, I'd just like to point out since there's no development plan with this initial zoning or an actual rezoning petition, there's no ability of proper commitments in that manner. Okay. If that concludes your comments as a developer. Yes, sir. And we have no comments from the staff, I mean from the council at this time. I recognize those persons who had signed up in opposition to this item, Jessica Engelhardt and Tina Hill. Well, let's do this before you start. We only have two speakers. So are you all together? Okay, well, is it okay if we give seven minutes to one, eight minutes to the other, is that fine? Well, it's a public hearing. So if she wants to sign up to speak, she can speak. All right, so let's go with five minutes for you all initially and then we'll see where we go. First, I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to hear our concerns. I'm sorry. Say your name and address. Oh, Jessica Engelhardt, 901 Marchie Road. Thank you. My name is Jessica Engelhardt. I am one of the 43 homeowners in our small community in Southern Durham. Can everyone who came to support us please stand? As you can see, this is important to so many of us. Thank you. I am here today representing my neighborhood, Oakhaven. This has been my home for over 12 years. As one of the original homeowners, I have seen Oakhaven transform into our amazing close community with over 50 children. Here is an image from our annual neighborhood Egg Hunt, which I host at my home on Marchie Road. Higher Residential is proposing to use Marchie Road as their only entrance into their new development, potentially adding 180 or more cars, threatening the safety of our neighborhood. This annual event would become extremely dangerous if Marchie Road becomes the only entrance to an additional 90 new homes. Higher Residential's incentive for using Marchie Road as their only entrance to their neighborhood is motivated by their interest in their own finances and not that of a community as a whole. We are requesting the City of Durham to deny the annexation for Higher Residential's plans. We want Higher Residential to modify their plans and use the existing road, Atkins Heights Boulevard, that connects directly to Fayetteville Road as their only entrance to their new proposed development, keeping our neighborhood safe. Marchie Road is the only entrance to our community. Higher Residential's proposal to extend Marchie Road and add an additional 90 homes will turn Marchie Road into the sole entrance of 133 homes and disproportionately affects our existing community endangering our residents. Our primary concern with Higher Residential's proposal is the safety of our residents, children, pets and guests. The increase of traffic and speed of vehicles will greatly jeopardize the safety of our neighborhood. In addition, the increase of vehicles and children will make our school bus pick up and drop off location much more dangerous. The width of our roads cannot accommodate the added traffic. Emergency vehicles have challenges maneuvering through the roads as they currently exist. As shown in this picture, the garbage truck had to ask the homeowner to move his trashpales back so the truck could get up the street because our roads are narrow. The current conditions of our roads cannot handle the additional traffic from 90 additional homes. Use of Marchie Road for Higher Residential's new neighborhood affects all of us in the community and will cost taxpayer dollars to repair, upgrade and maintain the road over time. Another concern is having construction vehicles drive through our neighborhood, making our roads extremely dangerous. Construction equipment will cause damage, excess noise and debris in our neighborhood as our roads were not built for the use of heavy construction of vehicles. The additional traffic on Herndon Road from Marchie Road, along with the new developments already under construction will add more traffic congestion to the small back road. Herndon Road and Barbie Road is a major intersection for many neighborhoods. Currently with the volume of traffic, negotiating the intersection is very dangerous. Poor visibility and vehicles driving over the speed limit on Barbie Road make it extremely difficult to cross. Allowing Marchie Road to be used as the entrance for another 90 homes, potentially 180 or more cars, will further burden and endanger those currently navigating the intersection. Fayetteville Road is a four lane road with greater capacity to handle the additional traffic. Again, we want Higher Residential to modify their plans and use Atkins Height Boulevard as their only entrance to their new proposed development. Do not let Higher Residential pass their costs along to us tax players. We the residents of Oakhaven believe the extension of Marchie Road as the primary entrance for Higher Residential's development would impose undue safety concerns to our residents of Oakhaven and be detrimental to the future development in South Durham area. Please help us keep our neighborhood safe. Having our concerns represented at the city level reaffirms that Durham cares about its residents and is committed to pursue growth in a responsible manner. Thank you. Hi, I'm Tina Sanders-Hill of 1503 Carrick-Purgers Court, also in Oakhaven. I'm a 10 year resident of Oakhaven in South Durham and I'm here to ask you to oppose the annexation of 301 Atkins Heights Road. The developer plans to build 90 homes and have only one entry point, an exit point, and that point is Little Tiny, Marchie Road, and Oakhaven. Oakhaven is home to 43 houses. Marchie Road is our main street, the heart and soul of our neighborhood. It's where our neighbors gather, children learn to ride bikes, and where 18 homes sit on less than a half a mile stretch. The proposed annexation will add 180 plus cars to a road that is only 15 feet wide. Our neighborhood is a racially ethnically diverse community of people invested in the betterment of Durham, not just our little Oakhaven, but Durham as a whole. Our community members work in Durham, volunteer in organizations such as Mills on Wheels, Porch, Ronald McDonald House, PTA, Seeds, Girl Scouts, Boy Scout Leaders, STEM Robotics Programs for Durham's students that are at risk. We love living in and supporting all things that are Durham. Please support the safety and livability of our neighborhood and vote no on the annexation at 301 Atkins Heights property. Thank you. Is there anyone else that wants to speak on this item that's not spoken in opposition? Okay, developers, do you have a developer present? Do you have any other, where's the developer? Do you have any other comments that you wanna make on this? How much time does he have? 11 minutes. Just a couple of brief comments. The connection to Atkins Heights Road that the residents are discussing, as I mentioned earlier, that would require our project to construct a roadway through floodplain and across a stream. As part of the site plan process through Durham, we would have to submit a no practical alternatives analysis if we were to propose such an access point through the floodplain and crossing a stream. And I contend that the only practical alternative to that is the proposed access. The ordinance requires interconnectivity between parcels. The reason that Stub Street is there is to connect to a future roadway. Just the same as we are providing or proposing to provide a Stub Street to the south for someone else to connect to if that project to the south or parcel to the south were ever developed. That's the only point I'd like to make. Thank you. I recognize City Manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Can I ask somebody from the Transportation Department to please come up and clarify from the staff's perspective the issues related to both access from Mar-Tree and the Stub Street as well as the Atkins Heights Boulevard and any evaluation we've done to date on that? Thank you. Yes, Bill Judge with Transportation. Yes, the development ordinance requires street connectivity to existing public right-of-ways as well as connectivity in all four cardinal directions. So they would be required to connect to Mar-Tree Road as well as Atkins Heights Boulevard. Although I think there are exemptions in the ordinance for dealing with steep slopes, flood plains, wetlands, and I believe that's what the applicant has indicated that they're intending to seek through the site plan process is an exemption for making that connection atkins height through that. So that would be a termination that will have to be made through the site plan review process. And Mr. Judge, could you clarify what's the, what evaluative criteria you would use to allow only one entrance to a subdivision of that nature in this case? So the ordinance has a separate section that allows up to a maximum of 90 units with a single point of access. So if it is determined that due to the environmental features that that connection cannot be made or is not required, then they would be limited to the 90 units which they are proposing. And is cost an allowable factor? Not typically. That planning department may better able to answer all the criteria because it's a combination of transportation, environmental, planning, stormwater factors that they're looking at when making that termination. Thank you. Let me ask other questions or comments. So I'm sorry, I'm gonna ask Councilor Moffitt. Yes, Mr. Judge, I wanted to ask you, you said that the ordinance allows 90 units to be connected with a single connector. Yes. Is that in sequence? Because it looks to me like that the development, it would be connecting two has at least another 30 homes that are on a single connector. So could you just continue to stack up 90 unit projects? Yeah, the cumulative impact of development is taking into consideration. Right. There's another development that's currently under construction that has that just to the north of the Martry Road, Oakhaven, that out of line court that you may see on the context map. Right. So they would be limited, I believe there's 43 in the existing neighborhood. So they would be limited to no more than 90 plus, including the 43 until such time as that second connection was made, out of line court, which is under construction now. But we're talking about somebody adding another 90 homes to their single connection, in addition to the 43. I know, but once Martry Road is connected to out of line court, then where the 90s calculated gets basically calculated right there at the property line at Martry Road in the proposed development rather than Martry Road and Herndon Road because, so it sort of shifts where the 90 gets calculated from. Okay, thank you. Thomas? Just a minute, please. Are there other comments or questions by recognized councilman Schuyl? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So the, could you say a little bit more, or I guess I would like to hear from the planning department in terms of staff's recommendation and any comments that you could add to what Mr. Judge had to say about the potential to use or not use Atkins Heights Road? Sure, thank you council member Schuyl Pat Young with the planning department. As Mr. Judge has indicated, the UDO does allow and in fact requires connection to Martry Road so that we can have a coordinated transportation system in order to not connect to Martry Road or to Atkins Heights. They'd have to either close the terminal connection to Martry Road or close Atkins Heights. What the applicant has indicated to us is that they wish to close Atkins Heights on their property and connect to Martry and they're allowed to do that under the ordinance if you all approve this action. Certainly if there was a development plan and they were to proffer improvements to Atkins Heights, they could also close Martry and have sole access through Atkins Heights. The issue and I'll let Mr. Judge speak to the technical aspects of this are that the Atkins Heights is not in any way, shape, or form developed to a current public standard so they would have to voluntarily proffer to improve that to a public standard or the city would have to improve it to a public standard in order for it to be an appropriate access point for this property. Because as you get off of this site, it doesn't even appear that there's adequate right of way. There would have to be additional right of way and the road would have to be improved and there's no way administratively for us to require that to be done off site. Does that help answer your question? It does, I have another question. I'm not sure I understood all of it but I think part of what I heard was that you can't, we can't require them or the city could not require them to improve Atkins Heights because it's going through, partially would be going through lands that's not theirs, is that right? That's correct because the scope of this development did not trigger a TIA transportation impact analysis which is the tool and mechanism we used to coupled with development plan zoning to require off site improvements and that's not available here. So staff approval of this or staff recommendation for this. How is based on, is it in part based on the staff's belief that Marchery Road is the, is an appropriate road single outlet for this subdivision? Yes, sir. As you've heard from Mr. Judge, Marchery Road is a city, maintained city accepted street that's been accepted within the last 10 years. Atkins Heights is a substandard platted right of way that is only marginally improved off site. So the connection to Marchery is the one that the ordinance would allow without any further improvement and that we could require connection to without any off site improvements. And would you say that this is, the neighbors are understandably concerned. They have a, their neighborhood is happy with the situation that they're in. This will bring them more traffic. I live on a busy street. I know what more traffic can be. I wondered if you would comment on, or maybe Mr. Judge could comment on. I know you all haven't done a TIA on this, but would you anticipate that the amount of traffic on this road would be in any way atypical of what we see in Durham in situations like this? Could you comment on that? I don't believe it would be atypical. I'll let Mr. Judge characterize the estimated impact of the proposed development. Yeah, Bill Judge Transportation. A typical residential single family house generates about nine and a half trips per day. So the 90 units would generate little less than 900 trips per day. So I mean, the street from capacity standpoints more than adequate for handling that traffic. So it just becomes, but we do encourage street connectivity and for routing and services and school buses as well as city services. Are there other recognized Councilor Davis and Councilor Reece in that order? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to ask Mr. Judge if he could answer a question that was raised when Ms. Engelhardt, Engelhardt spoke about the narrowness of that street. Is parking allowed on both sides? I believe parking is currently allowed on both sides, although if we do have ongoing issues with either vehicles parked, we can on-pond request from the residents and act parking restrictions on one or both sides of the road. But typically we try not to do that until there's actually a certain problem so that people and residents and their guests have an opportunity to park on the street if they can be sure. And the other thing that she mentioned was the heavy flow of traffic at the intersection of Barbie and Herndon, but she didn't mention anything about the proposed roundabout. Is how close are we to that at this point? The contractor was waiting basically for school to close for the end of summer, so they should be charging ahead any day now, starting with their work and they have a completion date of August 15th before school goes back in the session, so. Yeah, I see that the initial work has begun with the dealing with the issues. This is not far from my neighborhood. I'm concerned about the narrowness of that street and the flow of traffic, not only for solid waste vehicles, but also particularly emergency vehicles that may have to come through. Is there any concern about the fact that that narrow street, if that's the only entrance and exit for this development, what kind of impact would it have on emergency vehicles? Yeah, well, as I've indicated, we do work with the upon request of either the fire department or even Durham public schools if they're having difficulty with routing their vehicles will notify the neighbors that we've had concerns and if necessary, we can restrict parking on one or both sides of the road. We, like I said, we typically try to avoid doing that because if you build the street wider to allow for on-street parking all the time and then residents don't utilize it because they have two car driveways, two car garages, it can lead to increased speeds on the road, so. Thank you very much. Mr. Judge, is that a 50-foot right away typical subdivision crossing? Yes, the existing road meets our current standards, 50-foot right away. What's typically in any new subdivision? Correct. I can ask Councilor Maurice. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have a question for our planning staff. If the Council were to take the action recommended by staff in the agenda item, the developer would be able to begin construction of 90 units on this property. Is that correct? Is there any other action that need to be taken by the city council? Not by city council, Councilor Maurice. They'd have to file a final plat. Okay. What's the significance of the site plan that's attached to this? I'm a little bit confused about what they're committing to and what they're not. I heard Mr. Wiggins suggested that we weren't allowed to have any committed elements, and so can you help me understand? Sure, because this is not a development plan zoning, this is a straight zoning, there's no legal ability for the council to accept commitments through the zoning process. So in terms of proffers or other, anything that's attached is simply elustered of in that regard. Thank you, that's what I saw. Oh, Mr. Mayor, I didn't want to ask if you'll allow Ms. Igelhardt to respond to something that she heard. I think that's appropriate. Thank you very much. So one thing I wanted to point out is Atkins Heights Boulevard is an existing road already to get to that property. So I'm not sure how that all works, but we have 43 homes. Pardon me, could you repeat what you just said? Yes, so Atkins Heights Boulevard is an existing road that leads to the property 301 Atkins Heights Boulevard. So there is a road directly from Fayetteville, as you can see on the map we drew, leading to the property as it exists. So our home is 43 homes, and they had mentioned, so if you add 43 homes to the 90 homes, and then he mentioned the neighborhood going in next to ours will have however many homes. So if you combine all of that, and then he's talking about adding possibly more neighborhoods to the south, that would mean those extra houses and cars would be coming through their neighborhood, and then onto our street also. So yes, there would be another way out, but you'd still have to come down Marchie Road and go up one of our streets to get to Herndon Trace. So I don't see how that would be beneficial to anyone. Our streets are extremely narrow, and it has been a concern getting emergency vehicles down before. So do you want to say something? Oh, I just want to clarify, it's a street, it's a dirt street, so you can actually drive down all the way to the horse farm that's there. Can you speak into the microphone, please? Just to clarify what Jessica said, it's a dirt street that's used by the people who own that horse farm, so you can drive down it, and we have to see the condition of the street and it's drivable. So it's not like it's un-paved, but it's not like it's just trees there and you can't even access it. It is an existing street, although not a city street. The other point I was gonna make is, like Fairfield has a lot of connected neighborhoods that have come together, but they have much wider streets than we do, so to have all this traffic come down that one small street, Marchie Road, I think is really unrealistic and unfair to request of our neighborhood and our children and our families, so. Mr. Mayor, I have a question to the staff again, I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Lockhart. I noticed there was some time spent in the staff memo on the question of donut holes. Can you, I noticed one of them seemed, I don't know, especially large to me, 294. Anyway, it seemed somewhat large. Can you talk about the general, some of the, some of the planning concerns and other concerns that arise out of the creation of donut holes number one and number two. Can you talk about how these two donut holes rate in terms of other ones that currently exist where portions of the county are subsumed inside the city? Sure, thank you, Councilor Maurice. Yes, as you indicated, there would be a large donut hole created to the north here with this annexation. However, with the change in 2011 to this by the North Carolina General Assembly to annexation law, which essentially eliminated the ability of local government to do involuntary annexation, we really are gonna rely on voluntary annexation requests like the one you have before you tonight to fill that donut hole in over time. But anytime there's a donut hole, there are concerns about service delivery in terms of police response, fire response, making sure adequate appropriate services are provided in the city jurisdiction versus the county jurisdiction. Something we just wanted to make sure we pointed out to you, but really there's no viable alternative other than this entire property coming in as a common plan of development in the future to prevent the possibility of a donut hole. Well, I guess the other alternative is that we don't annex it, correct? Sure. Okay, thanks, appreciate it. Count Mr. Mayor, may I add a point of clarification to my early response to Council Member Shull and then to some of the comments that the citizens made to make sure the information is clear. There is an existing a roadway connection from Fayetteville across the creek onto this property to the existing horse farm and there's two or three residential properties. What I was trying to say earlier, and I think maybe I did a poor job was when this property is developed into the current ordinance standards, we would require a connection both to Atkin Heights and to March Re-Road because the ordinance requires that we coordinate the roadway system and the infrastructure system. What I was trying to suggest was in what the applicant indicated is there is a provision in the ordinance that allows you to request variation from that requirement if there are significant environmental features and there is a significant floodplain and a significant stream crossing that even though there's an existing crossing would have to be significantly enhanced. The existing culvert would have to be replaced, there have to be work in the creek bed that have to increase the width of that crossing. So that's something that is possible to do but that the ordinance would allow them to request to get out of because of the environmental impact of that. March Re-Road doesn't have any environmental impacts the only way we could relieve any developer of this property from that connection requirement is if they close the end of March Re-Road and put in a hammerhead or a cul-de-sac bulb or something that would eliminate the connection. I just wanna make sure that point was clear for your considerations. Thank you. Recognize Councilwoman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just had a couple of questions for staff. So would the, would higher residential be able to build the requested number of homes in the zoning that's requested? Does our zoning allow them to build what's being asked or do they have to come back for more zoning? That's a very good question. Councilwoman Johnson asked to have to look at that earlier. Under the county jurisdiction, if they were willing to develop on well-inceptic tanks they could develop the property. It's very unlikely with the quality of the soils out there that they'd be able to get adequate percolation capacity for septic tanks to get this number of units on this property. It would probably be significantly less. It's very difficult to estimate how many without doing on-site tests, probably in the range of 40 to 50 units. But they could do that by right by just coming to the planning department and filing a plat. Thank you. But if they're annexed into the city they're able to build 90 units? Correct. And that's because of the water sewer capacity and the number of connections they could get off that access point, which is one of the point clarification I'll make. Any additional units to the south would have to provide either a point, a step out to Herndon or over to Fayetteville. So there could be no more additional units added to the 90 without an additional connection point. Okay. And are the, is Marshallry Road narrower than usual? I don't believe so. I'll ask Mr. Judge to address that. No, we do have different street widths depending on whether or not we anticipate significant amounts of on-street parking or not, but it does meet our current street standards. Okay, thank you. Recognize the council member. Yeah, Mr. Judge, I'm sorry. I was looking at my iPad at the time. I think you mentioned the width of the cross section of the, not the street cross section. For Marshallry Road? Yes. It's a 50 foot right away. And I believe it's probably 27 feet back to back. It's either 27 or 25 feet back to back. And how does that compare to, say West Club Boulevard that oval part, well, oval park has a median in the middle of it, but just off oval park, do you know? I'm not exactly certain of the street width, but I mean the 27 foot back to back, basically, you would subtract out four feet for the, for the curbing gutter. That would be 23 feet of asphalt, which would be about, yeah, 11 and a half foot lane in each direction. With no parking. With no parking. Right. If I think about Ninth Street, for example, which carries a lot of cars, but that must be more closer to a 45 foot curve. Yes, correct. Right, okay. Okay, I thank you. I have a question for a planning department. One of the things, I was more interested in the second donut hole. The, one of the comments that you made was that y'all did a little bit of research and determined it looks like there was a survey error and, but did the applicant refuse to amend their zoning application? I mean, is that, do I have that right? Yeah, Jacob Wigginsville Planning Department, yeah, the applicant indicated an apparent de-gap that they had found as part of the survey we checked with Durham County Land Records. Durham County and Land Records felt that it was something that was not a de-gap and the applicant probably had the authority to annex this area if they want to and then we staff relayed that information to the applicant. Can I get a representative of the applicant? Right. To just address why you didn't want to include that. Now we have a little sliver that's going to be out in the middle of this. No, I understand. We do a lot of title research as part of our due diligence and all the surveys that match both the title research and the survey applicants. I'm bobbing or something, both of you, I'm sorry. And unfortunately, whenever that deed was transferred over to Mr. Hire 30 some years ago, we found that there was a gap between surveys which is typical during property development but we can't, Mr. Hire doesn't own the property to give to us under our contract to then annex it. So that little sliver, we could do it, we would put it in there but according to our title and our alto, Mr. Hire does not own that sliver or it was not deeded to him correctly whenever he received the property or purchased it. Okay. I wanted to ask you a little. It's not that we don't want to, we're not trying to create a dough in a hole. We don't feel that we have the legal ability to put that into it. Okay. I wanted to ask you, I wanted to ask you, I'm interested in this and the one that just came before this because in a sense they have some similarities. There was an adjacent neighborhood. The development will have to use the adjacent neighborhood for access. They talked about, but they put an age restriction on in order to limit the number of daily trips and they talked about where they placed the units. They talked about building a turnaround for large vehicles. They talked about leaving a place to the driveway to the main road. Can you compare all that? Like what is that, did you all work on? What things have you all done to mitigate the traffic impacts on your neighboring community? Well, we approached this site originally because of the floodplains and the environmental features on the site. So by using the conservation zoning and preserving 50% of the site, that's how we originally looked at this piece of property. Again, crossing over there and getting Atkins Heights and getting that to work out, we just didn't feel it was feasible. We knew there was gonna be another access point on Herrington Trace coming north. And if anybody was to connect onto our property to the south, they would have to get an additional access point onto Herrington Drive. I don't know anything about the case before you, except for what I've heard tonight. So I'm not prepared to make a comparison. Yeah, that's okay, that's fine. Let me ask a question this way. What have you all done to mitigate the traffic impacts on the neighboring community? What did you do? We minimized the density of the project to two units an acre, which is... I thought you maximized the number of units you could have for a single connection. It's, okay, well, there's 90 units proposed. There's no townhouses. This is all single-family detached. That's where we're at. Okay, I'm gonna look here just for a minute. Okay, so thank you. I have a question for, I'm not sure who and staff, but the applicant has said that they believe that there's no practical alternative, excuse me, that to build out Atkins Heights would require them to do a no practical alternative study and that that practical alternative, no practical alternative study would indicate that they would have to do exactly what they're doing. And I realize that study hasn't been done. My question is, using your judgment based on your professional experience, are they, is that likely to be true? Council Member Moffat and Pat Young, again with the Planning Department, the no practical alternatives analysis are in PAA that the applicant referred to. It is an analysis that's done anytime there's an encroachment or a crossing of a stream. And really what it is is an assessment that whatever's being done, a crossing or an encroachment by a roadway that is being done with minimal practical impact on the environment. So really what it is is an assessment that the techniques, practices, specifications being used are being done in a way that has the least possible impact on the environment. I'm very confident that it would be approved as long as high quality practices were used in installing a culvert or roadway crossing at that creek. I'm sorry, so I'm gonna ask you to repeat that. Did you just say that you are confident that if they wanted to do a connectional act in heights, it would be approved? Yes. All right, thank you. I just wanna comment that I observe a difference between the applicants. And that is that the first applicant when we just find the approving are people who worked with the neighboring community who worked to address their issues, who came back, they went through the planning commission unlike this one, but they returned to the planning commission with additional commitments in order to address the concerns of the neighbors. And it's frustrating to me that the first of all, I mean, I realize that this is really a petition for annexation and a utility extension agreement, not a rezoning per se, but it's frustrating to me that the applicant treats the adjoining neighborhood as more of an annoyance that has to be dealt with than a neighboring community that is part of the fabric of what they're building as well. And so that's all my comments for now. I'm gonna be voting against this item. And I share the residents comments relative to the traffic. I know they're very fairly well. I don't live too far from it, but I do think it's something to be said in terms of the existing traffic. The traffic will be generated on the streets that are coming in there. I would have preferred to seeing the street closed and then somehow the development exit on Ackens Heights Boulevard, notwithstanding what we've been told that the issues are, but it doesn't mean it can't be done. I'm not supportive of creating this type of a doing that hold in this part of the community based on what else we have there. So I appreciate the comments, the conversations. I know that a lot of times been spent on this, both at staff level, developers level, and the neighborhood level, but I'll be voting against this item. Are there other comments or questions? If I'll close. Let me say this. I asked early on, was anyone that wanted to speak? And no one responded, and I closed the public hearing. Thank you. Is there anything else? I'm sorry, I recognize Councilor Moffitt. One of the things that we've said before is that all of the easy development property in Durham County has been developed. We recognize that this is a challenging piece of property, but these kinds of developments with this council, I believe that to develop these kinds of products is going to require working with the community and with the neighbors a little more closely than we have seen. And that is part of the challenge. I think that if this project came back, I have a somewhat similar position as the mayor, somewhat slightly different. I don't mind the connection to Marquery if there's a connection out to Fayetteville Road on Atkins Heights. I recognize the need for having connectivity, but funneling all of these homes down that one residential street in my mind is not appropriate. So I'll be voting against it too. Recognize, count. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So let's say Mr. Young or Mr. Judge, I'm not sure who the right person here is, that this developer wanted to extend out through Atkins Heights full of art what would have to happen to make that happen? As Mr. Young indicated before, it is an existing right-of-way and there is an existing gravel roadway and culvert within that right-of-way, but it's not currently maintained by either the city of Durham or NCDOT. So they would need to improve it to a public street standard which would require basically widening the roadway and potentially acquiring additional right-of-way because I believe the existing right-of-way is not more than about 30 feet. So they would have to likely acquire additional right-of-way from one or more property owners to expand it to a 50-foot right-of-way and put in a standard city of Durham street and as well as the culvert to get access to the rear portion of the property. If there are no further comments I would entertain a motion on the item. Motion to approve with the intention of voting against it. It's been proper to move to second. All in favor of the motion they kept it to say aye. Those opposed nay, nay. I think that's unanimous. Thank you. We move to item 29, public hearing on the draft FY 2017, 2018 annual action plan. Mayor Beall, members of council, Reginald Johnson, Director Department of Community Development. This is the third public hearing on the annual action plan and I will turn it over to Ms. Wilma Conyers to outline a particulars for you. Ms. Conyers. Good evening Mayor Beall and members of council. Wilma Conyers, federal programs coordinator. The purpose of this public hearing is to receive citizen comments on the 2017, 2018 annual action plan. The annual action plan specifies how the city of Durham will address housing and community development needs through the use of community development block grant known as CDBG, home investment partnership known as home, housing opportunities for persons with AIDS known as HOPWA, and emergency solution grants known as ESG. According to the formula allocations released by HUD on June 14th, 2017, the city expects to receive $1,798,016 in CDBG, $822,366 in home, consortium funds, $164,728 in ESG funds, and $335,316 in HOPWA funds. The recommended figures in the draft 2017-2018 annual action plan will be revised to align with the published entitlement amounts. The draft annual action plan was made available from May 19th, 2017 through June 19th, 2017. Notice of this meeting was advertising the Capasa, Harold Sun, and the Carolina Times newspapers on May 18th, May 19th, and May 20th, respectively, and also via general listserv. As a recipient of CDBG, home, ESG, and HOPWA funds, the city is required to hold at least two public hearings. This is the third public hearing. The first public hearing was held on community development needs on January 17th, 2017, and the second public hearing was held on June 5th, 2017. An application workshop and release of the application for the subject entitlement funds took place on December 6th, 2016. The application submission deadline was January 24th, 2017. In accordance with HUD guidance, the city will need to submit the annual action plan no later than August 16th, 2017. A summary of these comments from this public hearing and written comments received during the development of the annual action plan will be incorporated into the final plan. In closing, we will ask later on the agenda that council approve the draft 2017-2018 annual action plan. Thank you. This is a public hearing, and the public hearing is open. I would ask other questions, but I remember some of the council on the staff report. Any questions? I don't have anyone that has signed up to speak on this public hearing item, but let me ask is it anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this item that's been in the public hearing? Let the record reflect that no one in the audience asked to speak on this item, and it's not even being a public hearing. I'll declare the public hearing to be closed in my respect before the council. Mr. Mayor. Recognize? Yes, I just wanted to comment that the issues here are very important, but this is the third public hearing that we've held. We'd have had comments from citizens on this, and I know they've been incorporated into the action plan, so I'm prepared to move the approval of the 2017-2018 annual action plan. It's been propped and moved in a second. It's a further discussion. Hearing un-called question, all in favor of the motion? Indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Moffitt, does that include the ordinances also? Okay, thank you. Okay, we're moving to item 30. Public hearing to consider adopting a resolution for sending six previously ordered petition utility improvements. We held this item open. We've had this item was presented at the work session, and it's now back before us for consideration. I don't know if the staff has any comments. I have several people that want to speak on this item. Is the staff having any comments you wanna make before? Good evening, Mayor Bell, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, Marvin Williams with the Department of Public Works. We are essentially here to answer any questions that you have regarding this item, based on the information that we have provided to you in the follow-up memo that we discussed at work session. So staff is prepared to address any questions that you may have, or residents may have. Let me proceed. Now, the sign-ups, I guess, people speaking for their individual projects appears. Although I do have someone who has item 30. I have people who sign up for item 30, item one, item 30, item two, item 30, item six. So let me, I'm gonna allow three minutes for each person. Let me call the item person who signed up for item 30. If you state your name and address is John McLean, is that correct? If you come to the podium, just restate your name and address please for the record. Thank you, hello, my name is Jonathan McLean. I am the vice president of the HOA board with, oh, I'm sorry about that. Let me say thank you first for having us. I appreciate your time today. Specifically, I'm representing the Ravenstone community. Currently, I understand this isn't in reference to our community directly. However, the proceedings of this decision does adversely affect our community, potentially. And so with that, I would like to go ahead first highlight all of the residents who decided to stay here since the beginning of this city council meeting, please, if the residents of Ravenstone can stand. Thank you. So that in specific, I wanted to call out the amount of attention that our community wants to be focused with this. Currently, if you all are not aware within the Ravenstone Stone Hill Estates street paving projects, we've been told that we will be special assessed some number of money. And so what we're looking to at least discuss with the council, with you, Mayor, is the idea to rescind on these other utility repairs or such. And we ask you to first come back down to our community as we have been actively paying taxes for the last decade, which with an average of about $3,000 per household per year, around 300 households equates to about $9 million of taxes paid back into the city. We would ask for the city council here to just reassess their decisions and to reinvest those funds back into the Ravenstone community. Or communities such as ours, not necessarily only ours. Stone Hill Estates suffer the same issues that we have had, but I represent Ravenstone. So I will leave it at that. Thank you. Let me make sure I'm clear about what's, this is a question of whether or not we rescind, Correct. Propose. Correct. And you sign up in opposition so you don't want us to rescind? No, I do. I would like you to rescind. Okay. Well, I am sorry for that confusion. You sign up as opposed to it. That's all I want to understand. Yes. Sorry. It is to oppose such or to approve. I'm just a supporter. A supporter. Nice to meet you. What, no. What is he saying? Are you supporting to rescind? Yes. Okay. All right. That's my question, Mr. All right, sure. I just want to make sure I understand. Yes. You and your neighbors are here. By the way, thanks for sticking around to this point in the evening. I think the folks who are here about the rescission were at an even longer meeting two weeks ago. So I think they've got dibs on you there. So am I to understand that you saw this item on our agenda and organized your neighbors to come down here to argue that these other folks should not have their utilities extended? Is that, am I right in sensing that? In a sense, that's slightly accurate. However, in a different... Okay, please help me understand. Well, in a different view, what I'm trying to put in a perspective into the city council here is that we have been actively paying funds in the last 10 years as a community, but yet we're still being specially assessed funds as we now promote other funding outside of such. Do you understand what I'm trying to convey? I heard your presentation. I mean, I was here. I heard it. I'm trying not to come off as aggressive any type of way. I'm sorry if I am. But it's essentially that we're still looking to be specially assessed as a community, even though these projects are coming through for other developments that are outside of Ravenstone. And I apologize for any confusion or stepping, you know, jumping the gun. All right, I'm not confused. I just wanted to make sure I understood. So that's, so I got it right. You heard about this. This was on our agenda and you and your neighbors decided to come down here and say these folks shouldn't have the utilities extended. We wanted to show our support for the Ravenstone community and for the city to represent the Ravenstone community first and foremost, yes. Okay, thanks. Okay, let me, I'm sorry. I recognize Councilwoman Johnson. I'm sorry, I'm still a little confused. I'm sorry about that. So your neighborhood is not one of the neighborhoods that's being considered tonight. Correct, we are a separate neighborhood. Okay, but you're asking, is there something that you're asking us to do for your neighborhood? Are you saying we shouldn't do this because we should be doing something for y'all instead? We want, I'm just here representing Ravenstone neighborhood to say that there's some funding being allocated by the city council outside of that for Ravenstone and our neighboring communities. Okay, I think I'm confused because like we allocate money for stuff all the time. Are you asking for something specific? Okay. Specifically, I'm just here to voice Ravenstone's concerns with the potential for these, for these hearing or for these improvements, right? So I am in agreement with rescinding these and I'm sorry for that confusion. Okay. That's Councilwoman Moffrey. So let me try. The two newest members of council when the Ravenstone and Stonehill Estates issue came up. When they were annexed into the city, their stormwater facilities and their streets were not accepted by the city because they were not improved adequately. The developer failed. Developer did not complete the infrastructure that was required to be completed. This issue is also dragged on much like these utility agreements. And we finally got to a case and Robert, I'm gonna ask you if you know off the top of your head but what we did about two years ago was to agree to, we finally got to, Mr. O'Toole finally got us to a place where we had a legal case that dragged on for years having to do with the bonding and we finally got to a place where he said, okay, we're gonna develop, we're gonna improve the streets, improve the stormwater treatment and we're going to assess the people who live in Ravenstone and Stonehill Estates. And it's several million dollars, right? Yes, sir, that's correct. And I think that what they're here tonight saying is, look, you guys are, you're charging us several million dollars to fix our streets and our stormwater and we are neighbors adjacent to the utility extensions that people are asking for tonight that are outside the city and that's why they're talking about millions of dollars and where it's going and investing in our neighborhood. So that's sort of the backstory for what it's worth. I don't know if that reduces any of the, or helps, but that's the backstory and I'm just trying to make it a little more clear. I appreciate the backstory. I actually did my homework a little bit about Ravenstone back when I first came on the council and learned a little bit about that. I guess I was just taking it back that y'all were here to talk about that in the context of your neighbors who are here for a different reason. So, and I was surprised and wanted to make sure I understood why you were here. There's no real confusion. I just wanted to make sure I was right and I was. So thanks for clearing it up. Thank you. Let's move on to the speakers that signed up. Terry Jones, Terry Jones, president. David Furr, if you are. Alfred Eisner, Alfred Eisner, president. Kelly, is that King, Kevin? Skip Couch. Let me stop there. They're the ones that signed up to speak for item one on this area. And Craig Morrison is signed up. Craig around? Okay. Let me go to you first because you signed up for 30. You didn't sign up for a specific look. So you're speaking for item one also? Okay. All right, if you can just state your name and address, please. Good evening, mayor. Ladies and gentlemen of the council, staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is David Furr. I'm director of the Water Sewer Division of the Public Staff at the North Carolina Utilities Commission. We're here to talk about the first of the six projects on your list there is the Redcoach Grand Oaks area. I'm gonna ask you to speak a little bit more into the microphone also. Sorry. Most of these people are on a sewer system serving approximately 14 residents in the Grand Oaks area. And there's one or more lots that have a failing septic system. The original developer owner of the wastewater treatment plant there abandoned the system many years ago. In March of 1993, the ORC resigned. Power Trump was terminated for non-payment. Department of Environmental Quality stepped in and made system operational emergency funds available to get the system going again. In August of 1983, the Utilities Commission appointed and merged the operator for the facility. In 2002, discussions with the city of Durham began to see about connecting these people on to the city of Durham. The residents put together their petition in 2007 and the council approved that petition in 2007. Currently, Department Division of Water Quality and their inspections are continuing to request the connection to Durham be made and that their system improvements needed to bring the system into compliance. Customers current sewer bills are about $112 per month at a flat rate. We're currently on our fourth emergency operator and the current EO has notified the public staff that he is resigning at the end of the month. The public staff is currently working to try to find another emergency operator. Residents in this area need this sewer service from the city of Durham and have been working for over 10 years to make this happen. This is still in their best interest. It's in the best interest of the environment. And if this doesn't happen, this connection to the city of Durham. A homeowner's association will have to be eventually formed to somehow take ownership of this wastewater treatment plant, one that probably is not qualified to operate a wastewater treatment plant. Significant improvements if not a total replacement of the plant will be necessary. The resulting system will still not be economically feasible. The cost just to do the standard operation with no significant repairs or recovering the cost of the plant will be extremely high. And we'll have an unnecessary sewer discharge in Durham County on the edge of the city. I'm here on behalf of these customers to ask that this project continue. That's all I have. I'm available to ask for any questions. Mr. Peters. I can ask Councilor Rees and Councilman. Mr. Furr, can you just- Can you just- Councilor Reed, you did raise your hand right. Councilor Rees, Shul, Johnson, and Moffitt in that order. Can you just satisfy my curiosity? I've never heard of a state employee come before a local board to advocate for a particular matter in this way. Is this something you do all the time as a part of your job? I'm just curious how that works. The public staff represents the- excuse me. The public staff represents the using consuming public before the North Carolina Utilities Commission. The commission has an emergency, has had several, has an emergency operator assigned to this sewer treatment plant. And in an effort to resolve the emergency, we get involved with trying to get the solutions to the problems. And the solution to this one has been for some time to get these people connected to the city of Durham. Mr. Furr, I don't want to belabor this, but you didn't actually answer my question. Is this something you do frequently go before local governing boards and advocate for a particular action? I have not, Ned. So this is the first time you've ever done this? This is the first time I've done this, yes. Okay, thanks. I'm sorry, I didn't know how to answer your question, Drake. Councilman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, sir. You're only here concerning a red coach in Grand Oaks. Is that right in terms of these decisions? That is correct. That's the only one I'm familiar with. So I'm just looking at our staff's analysis of the situation, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Yes, sir. NC Deaner would allow for a new package plant to replace existing package plant with a new permit for the following conditions. Homeowners would need to formally create a homeowner association, become the responsible owner of record, so forth. This would cost approximately $300,000 to obtain a permit with NC Deaner, buy a new plant, install the plant, and set up operations. This is based on an informal estimate by local companies, applies these types of package plants, staff recommends this as the least cost alternative. I'm comparing that $300,000 to do that, to what this would cost according to our staff, which is $300,000 to the existing homeowners in Red Coach and Grand Oaks subdivision, and almost $800,000 additional to the Durham taxpayer. So, can you speak to that, or do you have any thoughts about why this would be better than that? I understand your observation, and I will be the first to admit the upfront cost. It sounds like that's the better alternative, but what it costs to operate this treatment plant versus what city of Durham can provide the service for is a huge difference. You know, I'm mentioning the $112 flat right now. I anticipate that's gonna go up significantly in the near future, and that doesn't even cover any significant cost of any repairs. That's just if the plant operates routinely with no problems. Over the next several years, the cost, the economic cost of going to the city of Durham would be much better than having a sewer treatment plant out there. For the folks who are there? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, it seems like the reason that the North Carolina Utilities Commission would want us to continue this project is that it's not costing the utilities commission money to run this plant. Is that the case? The utilities commission is not paying, does not own this plant, is not running this plant. They have assigned the emergency operator. So, who's paying for that? The customers are paying for it. For the emergency operator. And so, you believe that it'll cost them less in the long term if we do this rather than what Councilman Schultz suggested. The formation of the HOA to run the plant. It will cost these customers, it'll be in their best economic interest and the environment's best interest that we connect these people to the city of Durham. What's the utilities commission's interest? I'm not, I'm unclear of why you're arguing for this. You personally, in your capacity as a representative of the utilities commission. Well, we have a sewer utility with no real owner. He's abandoned the property. There is no real owner of this sewer utility system. There's no one to actually put up the cost and make the improvements for a wastewater treatment plant. These people don't even own this plant. The option that's being discussed is for them to go in and replace the plant. They don't own the existing plant, they don't own the existing real estate that the plant is owned. Yeah, so I understand why it's bad for them. I don't understand why it's bad for you. Do you tell, again, I'm with the public staff who represents the use and consuming public before the commission. I represent these people before the commission. And I'm advocating for them here. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. So what our staff has told us that it would cost and increase costs above what we could assess based on our existing agreement is $432,000 that the taxpayers of the city of Durham would have to pay. So what I'm not clear is it feels like this is a transfer from the city taxpayers to the folks that live in this community without much benefit to the city. I understand your concern. When these people petitioned the city of Durham in 2007, based on the city of Durham's estimates and costs involved at the time, they agreed to pay for, through the assessment once the project was done, would have covered all the costs. I understand that cities had other items that had higher priority that they wanted to spend the money on at the time. And the major cost of these increased costs is because the Department of Transportation has increased their requirements for road improvements and items involved with construction of the project, which changed over that time period. Okay, thank you. Okay, now it's Councilman Moffitt. The, one of the things I wanna do, you've answered, it's the Utilities Commission. I was like, which State Department is here? Do you know that the big part of this problem is that NCDOT is actually layering on tremendous amount of this cost? And would the Utilities Commission be willing to intercede with NCDOT on behalf of these neighbors to get this cost? They're requiring the city, and I'm not exactly sure what the language here is, but to completely rebuild cross sections of these state roads in order to put the utilities in. That's the major reason why these costs are so escalated. And so the question is, would you be willing to intercede with NCDOT? At this point, it's my understanding that your staff has attempted to do so, and our involvement here, our knowledge of what was going on as far as this recension and the emergency operator resigning on us has just happened here in the past month. Time hasn't permitted us to go there yet, but that is one of the things that we want to pursue. Say that one more time, that last statement. That's one of the things we would like to pursue is getting DOT to re-evaluate what their additional requirements are. So you would talk to NCDOT about the situation here? I don't know what influence we could have, but to talk to them, yes. Okay, because the biggest challenge I have is somewhat on the order of Council Member Johnson's, which is that, I mean, this is a very difficult situation, and I feel for every one of you. But the question is, is not, you know, the best estimate about what it would cost at the time these were ordered, you know, was under a million dollars? Yes, NCDOT has increased the cost of $3 million. The question is, who should bear the cost of that? And so as people speak, please convince me that Durham City taxpayers should bear that cost. And thank you for coming tonight. Thank you. I'd like to ask a few questions. And I think Don has gotten to the real issue, which we all know what the costs are, because what NCDOT is doing. But about the same token, I can't avoid the fact that for whatever reason, we didn't act any sooner than we did, which caused the cost, when we decided to act, NCDOT had gotten into the act, and therefore the cost up. So I think we bear a certain amount of responsibility just on our process and procedures, in terms of what we say when someone signs a petition, and we say we're gonna extend water and sewer, and for whatever reason, we don't do it until later. And when we decided to do it, the costs had gone up because NCDOT had gotten into it. So I understand that's basically, I think where we are. The other question that I would raise is, all of these properties are outside the city limits, all of them outside the city limits. And I don't know if we've given any consideration at all in terms of if those properties were annexed into the city limits of what our position would be. I don't know if you signs that. I know we just talked about this other project earlier, where we didn't want to create donut holes, to a certain extent we would be that. But I see most of these are pretty much connected to this. I write adjacent to the city limits for a lot of these things, but did the staff give any consideration in terms of what the cost would be if it went annexed, these properties went annexed? Then I'm gonna get back to the NCDOT issue. Dono told the city attorney's office, Rob can correct me if I'm wrong, but I actually don't, I guess the first question would be, could all of the citizens get together and petition for annexation, assuming they could, I don't think that really changes anything. There still isn't the water and sewer infrastructure there. So the two alternatives that they would have, which is what normal developers do, they could enter into a utility extension agreement in which they could agree to extend the water and sewer, and they would bear the full cost. Or once again, they could petition for annexation, the only difference is they would be inside the city. Well, let me tell you what the difference is. If they're inside the city, now they're starting to pay city taxes down the road. Now, true, we provide services, but for the long road, they're in the city, they're paying city taxes. Now, how long would it take to recoup that investment as a definition? That's why I ask anyone looked at that. If they were inside the city, paying city property taxes, what type of revenue would it bring in and how would that revenue count over the long haul versus the investment we're speaking about? That specific issue has not been looked at by staff, sir. That I think is another piece that, and then it's up to the citizens decide whether or not they want to choose annexation. The other piece is, I think it's fair for the Utilities Commission to go to the state of North Carolina Department of Transportation to explain the situation. They were now in and to see if there's any type of relief that they might be willing to assist us in providing the extension of these lines to these residents. I think we owe ourselves to take that step. No matter what we do, we're not gonna start extending ward and sewer for the next week or next month or so. The people are where they are. The only issue is that you've got a utility package that you've got to go find operator for. And you find operator, you already said that more likely than not, what they're paying now is gonna be entries. They're paying $112 a month or whatever it is. If you get another operator based on where they are, they're gonna have to pay a higher rate to keep getting the service that they're getting now. But that's a different issue. But I do think it's some value to take time to go to the NCDOT to explain the situation we're in and then find out whether or not they're willing to consider it. I also think it's reasonable for the staff to come back and tell us what would be the revenue that the city would receive if these persons were annexed into the city and you take all the service we've got to provide to police with service and garbage collection and all that stuff. What's the net revenue that we would be able to see over a period of time? And I know that property taxes don't support ward and sewer. I understand that that comes from fees and services but it is additional revenue into our general fund. Another source of funding if we really wanted to do it we could very easily go to the fund balance and take the money out to make it happen. I'm not saying that's what we do but that's their possibilities. But I think what I'd rather hear first is what it would take for and what would be the revenue if they were annexed and I'd like to see Utilities Commission go to the Department of Transportation to explain where we are and see what kind of relief we might be able to get on that. That's my comments but we've got other speakers and I would like to hear them all some. Thank you. Thank you. Alfred Eisner. Mr. Mayor, City Council, thank you for the time. I'm just a little guy. I just property owner on Red Coach. And just like a month ago, I would like to express my rejection of the idea of a city considering rescinding that commitment. I heard a lot of sentiment tonight about how City Council is proud of its budget and how it's proud of its commitment to provide to its citizens services such as sewer and water. And I hope that this Council can actually stand up to those commitments. I just have one little thing to bring to Council attention when I was in the process of buying the property, five, six, 10 Red Coach. We made a contact with Mr. McHenry who at that time was a engineering service supervisor. And he wrote to us briefly that indeed this was petitioned and the public hearing did take place and the project was ordered on October 1st, 2007 and the project is now assigned to our WS-84 contract. I of course don't know what that means but it means contract, means contract and it will probably not be built but for another two or three years which I patiently waited, of course it's many more years than that past since then. I think that just like Mr. Mayor mentioned that some responsibility needs to be shared for the fact that it was delayed. Obviously there were other priorities. Some of them I can argue about like parks and others but there were bad weather, there were hurricanes, I don't know what, there were all this money that had to be spent but right now we are facing the new situation, new costs and I think it needs to be spread between the city and state and of course the residents I'm sure are willing to pitch in but their abilities is limited. Thank you for your time. Kelly King, Kevin? King, okay. Kelly King, five, six, one, one, red coat through, I kind of had an agenda but I kind of had an agenda but after what's been said I got to change it a little bit. I think whatever y'all are reading about about the condition of the sewer system, the cost to upgrade it and what could be done, I'm afraid if you look back it's 10 years old. That was 2007. So you're comparing all those numbers to 2017 and you're looking at a 10 year old document so all those repairs, cost and things like that you can just know good. Those repairs wouldn't meet the restrictions of the state of North Carolina for 2017. They just barely would for 2007. So that could be rethought of or updated but what y'all are reading? Go ahead and look at it if I'm wrong. Tell me, it's 10 years old though. What I was gonna talk about and I got a document here that says final resolution to ordering and making a certain local improvements. And it's signed by the city clerk. It says approved by the city council October 1st, 2007. Which is the final resolution that this neighborhood made with the city council 10 years ago. And it states a lot of things in here but I think one thing and Mayor Bell kind of brought it up. Item F in here says that the work on said improvements as here and set forth, ordered and provided for shall be commenced at once. That was October 1st, 2007. Commenced at once. This was out of R. Lee Murphy's office the first day of October. I said the manager of engineering is hereby directed to cause a notice of ordering the making of said improvements to be published. This was all 10 years ago. I really don't know what the DOT situation with the street was 10 years ago. 10 years ago this neighborhood came to you guys after we went and stayed in North Carolina, after went to Durham County and after we tried to find an emergency operator for sewer system that needs a licensed utility to operate it, which it does not have because no one knows who owns it. Nobody wants to buy it. Nobody wants to take it. Nobody wants to have responsibility to it. So when we came to y'all 10 years ago, we were out of ideas. So a lot of these ideas that have been kicked around this meeting and the other meeting, they've been kicked around 10 years ago. They were kicked around and kicked to the side. That's what made this agreement 10 years ago. And don't think this, thank you. I appreciate your comments. Again, I don't know what the cost of a package frame. I'm just going about what the staff person says. I'm not looking at any numbers. He's just said that it would be more expensive. He's in that business. I took his word for it. So I'm not doubting any figures, but I'm not looking at any reports that says what it's gonna cost. But I got your point. Thank you. My knowledge is I don't think you could replace the package system legally. That's what the Utilities Commission would decide because they're the ones that would have to approve it and not approve it. Skip couch. 1823 Grand Ducks Road. You know, you guys don't mind making an investment sometime or throwing some money at something sometime to enhance our property and enhance the folks of Durham. But I don't know, you know, this thing has been going on for a good hard 10 years when he said he was gonna make the move on it. It's about 15 houses in that, just on this system. Our average property tax with county taxes at per year is about $3,000 per house. So if you do, I don't have anything to add with or whatever you're looking at. County taxes alone, that'd be somewhere around 50, $60,000 per year. In 10 years taxes, you're looking at $600,000 just in county taxes alone. Now, if we'd been at annex into the city back then, generally the taxes double. So if you double $600,000, that's about $1.2 million that someone would've been collecting since 2007 to make this whole deal work. Folks, the people living in that neighborhood, they're not going anywhere, you're not gonna lose any money. Sooner or later, the city and county is gonna get all their money back. You have nothing to lose. This is a win-win situation. When it's paid off, it's nothing but pure profit right there. What in the world are you looking at? Pure profit, thank you. I would just comment, the county is not putting any money into this. You're really coming back for the city. The county is not putting any money in this, so any money that goes into it will come either from the city or from the state and the property on this. But the county, whatever taxes you pay in the county, they aren't missing in your water and sewer. But I understand your rationale. I understand. Thank you. All right, Craig Morrison. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I'm Craig Morrison, I live at 1803 Grand Oaks Road. 10 years ago, we came and asked, what could we do? We had been a lot of other places trying to find a solution. We got a description of what you could do. We were told, you will have to pay the bill. We said, okay, we'll pay the bill. And the numbers were calculated, the documents were created, and we all executed them and said, good, let's do it. And we're cautioned that it may take some time. I don't believe any sort of a plan or any other temporary treatment facility of any sort can be permitted in that bottom that it's in today. I think the only solution is municipal sewer. And we'd really appreciate you figuring out a way to not terminate our progress if we can call it that. For us to have to start all over again would really be a bad thing. And I think it's an environmental issue. I don't believe there's another plant to be permitted there. That's an opinion, thank you. This is Terry Jones. My name is Terry Jones, and my address is 5625 Red Coach Road. I wanna thank Mayor Bell and the city council for hearing our concerns this evening. A lot of what I'm gonna say has been said before, but I just wanna give you kind of an insight on our unique situation here within the system. This issue regarding our sewer system is very important to me, my family, my neighbors, and Durham County. We bought our home 15 years ago in the Grand Oak subdivision. And we also bought the premise that our present community sewer system was environmentally outdated and was about to be replaced with city services. This was 2002. We were told the EPA would also start levying fines because of this horrible situation. The former owners of our house inquired about this change. During our purchase negotiation, they placed funds into escrow to be used for this future project. We felt confident about the home we just purchased and the city would act accordingly. We waited five years, and our homes were finally assessed for the project in 2007. I have all the very detailed documents and paperwork just like other people do, and individual homeowner costs that were given to us from the city planners that were gathered at taxpayer expense. We thought this was a great sign, then we waited. After 10 long years of waiting for this project to go through, houses on our street have sold, often taking a severe loss in value because of this delay. The remaining homeowners are still waiting for this project to take place. We've been counting on it. Now the clock ticks away on our outdated sewer system. It is not environmentally friendly. I wish you could see this system. It is on a sloping lot near a creek that flows into the Eno River. Who knows how much of this spray or whatever it, however they treat the sewer is getting into Crystal Creek, which is in turn going right into the Eno. Our city and our county cherish the Eno River. Why let this continue? It's an outdated system and it cannot be replaced where it is. It's a horrible, smelly system and it's unclear how the system affects the Eno watershed. As for selling our homes in the future, we have to disclose this problem and communicate that it's still in limbo, not a great selling point when you're trying to retire into a smaller home. As citizens, we should be treated fairly as promised in this contract. We utilize Durham businesses and bolster the city's economy as if we were paying city taxes. We should have access to clean water and environmentally safe sewers, not failing wells, as some of these folks have, out data septic tanks or inefficient community sewage treatment and broken city contracts. Please continue to push this project through. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, most of the discussion so far has been persons who are being impacted because of the sewer. We've got people who are intact and packed because of the water. So I'm gonna call these names and I, Mr. Teresa Price, Sheila Eason, Andrew Shankle. Is there anyone else that, anyone else whose name I haven't called? All right, Ms. Price. Mayor Bail, City Council, thank you. I'm so short, sorry. Thank you for your time. I wanted to also say since our last meeting I've had more conversations and more information actually in the last three days than I have in 10 years, which is great. I wish I'd had gotten it 10 years ago. I know I caused a lot of confusion my last time up here saying I had paid assessment fees. I've now been educated and I've learned a lot about the ordinance of the city. I've become actually very versed and I'm very glad to hear that you guys are considering revising code 70.17 about the temporary water service and the assessments charged for that and how it's handled because that's where my confusion came in. My property, as I explained last time, we followed all the process and to follow petition is a great, it's not an easy process. For a citizen to follow petition, they're at their last resort. They've done everything else. Since I filed my petition, two of the neighbors that signed the petition have passed away. They're no longer alive now to even see that go through. So I just wanna point out that there should be a time limit. When the city approved something and says it's ordered, I hooked up to a neighbor's, I got a temporary easement. It was temporary. So if anything happens, it's temporary only. It can't be handed over to my family. I can't sell my home. I've turned down promotions, turned down opportunities to move because I can't sell my home all because of this easement. When I got the easement 10 years ago, the city required that I started paying frontage fees. At the time I didn't realize it was frontage fees, I thought I was gonna pay them on the end when the project started. So after it didn't start for a year, I stopped. Well, I know Robert has thick skin and has taken the beating from me and helped me kinda start getting that straight with the frontage fee part. But I'm still in a process where I'm negotiating from a temporary easement, but it's still not gonna fix the problem. I'm paying a cost, frontage fee cost of over $5,000. That I've paid already some and will pay unless something changes. And still I'm paying this fee and have no water. I'm hooked up to a temporary service that's not permanent, that I can't do anything with. It was a requirement of the city that I pay these frontage fees in order to even get hooked up to the temporary situation. So I wasn't even allowed to get water without agreeing to pay the fines. And I do think potholes are important for the other residents, but not having water, not having a well is more important. And I did pay my frontage fees, I'm sorry. Don't wanna cause that confusion again. So I just asked that you consider that, but even more importantly, our road is having a whole bridge taken out. And there's a whole, that whole construction piece with the concrete and the repaving. There's also another project, which I'm sorry, I wasn't aware of at the end of that supports a community ball field at the end of Stallings Road that also got denied in petition 10 years ago. The sections in between was founded by the construction developers, but they're gonna have to repave the road. I'm assuming since they're replacing an entire bridge on the road and our road's been shut down for three months, I'm assuming that the cost for the city from the repayment may be already there. And this may be an opportunity for at least, if not for my mind for the community ball field from Stallings to Husketh or Husketh to Patterson. Thank you. Welcome. Sheila Eason. Well, Miss Eason's coming forth. I will say, Miss Price, I read your emails today and it sort of educated me also on this whole process of what you've gone through and what we were doing. Sorry, I appreciate that. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council members. My name is Sheila Eason. My address is 3325 Summerlin Road, which is a road that cuts off of Eastgear Street in the area that number six addresses under item 30. The reason that I'm here tonight is to ask you to please not rescind your decision. For many years, my family has lived in this particular part of the community. My husband and I continue to live in this part of the community. And we were able, recently within the last two years, to buy some undeveloped property, which is in the area that's covered by number six. So that's why I'm here is to ask you to please keep your promise to the citizens in this area. When we were able to purchase this property, part of our negotiations and deciding upon the price was because the buyers told us that this was set up that there would be city sewer coming through there. Had we not known that, I'm sure that the price would not have been settled upon that we purchased it for. And we may not have even purchased it at all. I can tell you because we've lived in that community that a number of years ago, my family, my husband and I had per testing done on our property, which is less than a quarter of a mile from this area. And we could not get a passing per test. So the undeveloped property that we have purchased on East Geer Street, I feel very strongly that it will not pass a per test. And so we'll be just really stuck. And I know I'm just one person in this neighborhood, but I believe that when the promise was made that this extension would be done with the sewer, that it was definitely the intent of the council to go forward with it. What's caused the delay, I certainly don't know. I was not at the last meeting in May, but I have gone online and listened to the comments. And as Mr. Mayor said, we're not in the city. And I realized that we're not paying city taxes, but that was known at the time that the promise was made too. And we would ask, my family would ask and others in our community, some of them are elderly people. Some of these homeowners have been there 20, 30, 40 years. And some of those folks can't come out and speak for themselves. So I'm speaking for the community and would ask you to please consider that strongly that we would really appreciate if you all would keep your promise to us and go forward with this sewer extension. Thank you for your time. Thank you, you're quite welcome. Yes, sir. If you wanted to get my email, I sent it to the mayor and the other six council members. I'm Andrew Shankle, 2919 East Gear Street, Durham, North Carolina 27704. I think Steve Shull responded to that. Did the rest of you get that? I don't know if I got it or not. Okay, I just wondered, because I want to recap some facts here. We started back in 1997. Mr. Shankle. Yes. You're gonna have three minutes. Huh? You got three minutes. I know that. Okay, turn it back to three minutes. Please. Thank you. Okay, we started this back in 1997. Residents were asked to pay for linear footage of water and sewer. 2001, we got water all the way down to Red Mill Road. Okay, 2017, two surveyors started marking for sewer. And understand when they put these sewer lines in, they put the water on one side and sewer on the other, they don't dig up the middle of the street anymore. Okay. Oh, the way y'all lump this together, all six at once, frankly, it's a little disturbing. These are individual proposals and projects. And as I said here, it's like a negative pork barrel. You know, it's not fair, but that's, you know, I guess that's status quo. Some of the neighborhoods a mile further than the Gear Street community, which is called Gorman, by the way, have water and sewer. Two or Annex Cooksbury Drive is city out. They don't have, I mean, they do have water and sewer, but they're not in the city. And I think it actually may jump across over to Gorman Church, I'm not sure. But we've got water, but Cooksbury has water and sewer a mile past that. Between Beck Road and Cooksbury Drive, they have water and sewer. Gorman in the middle does not. Okay. So, and yeah, as far as the DOT goes, I watched them with jackhammers out there. Gear Street sold highway 15. It was before the Eisenhower Road Project was put in, which Bob knows about. It's 14 inches thick of concrete and rebar, with asphalt over top of it. You can run it on a bulldozer over all day and just put new asphalt down. So it's not gonna hurt that road. It was handled, unbelievable. Back in 2007, the Durham Planning Department in regards to the Panther Creek Industrial Zoning. Okay. They wanted to take three pieces of land right in Gorman and rezone them as industrial. Well, the first art of deception is misdirection. They had absolutely no reason to do that. The owners of the land didn't show up. All the other residents did, worried about them having big trucks and putting in industrial operations out there on top of us. And I stood up, I said, they're not doing that. It's low density residential. They want you to shoot this down so you can bring in medium density and start building these cracker box villages on top of us. My property value went down $10,000 this year. Don't know why. House looks good. Should be going up, you would think. Well, what they did is imminent domain, drop the property values, come in there and take our homes cause the septic systems don't perk anymore and we lose our homes. It's criminal, unbelievable. 1997. One more thing. We're gonna pursue this in federal court. If you screw us again. Thank you. Is it anyone else who wants to speak on this item? This again is public hearing. I'm not gonna close the public hearing. I still have some comments and discussion. One of the things I would ask the staff and to his point, I was gonna ask that early on. These projects are separate. They're separate. And I'm not sure where the state, has the state road caused all these problems? Do they have problems with all of them? I see the ones on Stalin's and Bangkok and the one he just talked about. These are all state roads. But I'm talking about the problem that we're having that you're having to discuss. Yes, sir. There's two specific problems with NCDOT. One of them is the rebuild of the roads. And the second one is what they refer to as active shoring. And active shoring is a process whereby you put the utility lines in and you have basically special restrictions and heavy plates that are placed in the road on either side as you dig the utility. It's a very expensive shoring system. And those additional requirements have been placed by DOT. And those are the things that add to the major portions of the cost. There are still pieces of the cost that have increased over time due to the length of the project when it was first looked at and the timeframe we're in now, 10 years later. So it's the shoring of these roads that is the big cost from DOT. Shoring and reconstruction, yes, sir. All right. Recognize, did you hand up, have you hand up? Councilor Hew. And Councilor Ruiz. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So, Robert, this is now kind of routine then with state DOT. That's just what they do. It's not these particular roads. That's just the way they're built now. That is correct. It is a change in policy at the DOT level. And when did that take place? I don't know the exact date of it. I believe it was a couple of, I think the policy change was made a couple of years ago, ultimately. We started seeing things creep up. This is a standard policy that is followed in particular in the coastal portions. It was not adopted statewide until fairly recently. Okay. Let me ask you a question. The gentleman from the public staff, I guess I would say has questioned whether or not having a, and sir, I'm gonna put words in your mouth and if I'm wrong, you can tell me. But my understanding is that he has questioned whether or not what we've listed here is option. He's here for the Red Coach and Grand Oak subdivision, as you know. Yes, sir. That whether or not this would be feasible, this option one here that you have, that the Tana Perman with NC Dean or Bioplant install the plant, set up operations and that I think it would be fair to say that he's not sure this could be done and that it would be more expensive in the long run for these people and he's saying a lot more expensive. Do you have any thoughts about that? So I contacted NC Dean or the head of the unit who actually would approve the plans for this and spoke with them directly. As this was permitted previously, it can be repermitted. There are notable exceptions in this and those include that there would need to be an owner, an HOA, they would have to obtain the property and they would have to form an HOA and in the case of Grand Oak's Red Coach, they have covenants that were adopted for their subdivision but they were never, and LLC, the Homeowners Association was never formally created under the Secretary of State's website as a corporation. So it would have to be incorporated, obtain that property and they would be the permittee of record and then they would have to obtain a group like ACWA who would actually maintain the plant on their behalf and charge them for that. But they would ultimately have to own and operate it. Okay. Well, Mr. Mayor, I'll just tell you where I'm at on this which is I think I'm not sure whether, you know, we ought to continue the public hearing or close the public hearing. I don't know how you want to do that and what's the appropriate thing to do but I just think we need to, the IR folks and the folks in the public staff need to go see NCDOT and see what kind of relief we can get before we want to make a decision on going forward with this. I just think that's a crucial part of this and given the situation we're in, the length of time that this has gone on, I can certainly understand the feelings of the people out there. On the other hand, this is something that has been thrust upon us by DOT. Granted, it took a long time for us to get the job done but I would like to have find out about what the possibilities of them sharing this cost before we would move forward to do the work. Who's? Councilman Rees. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank the staff for putting together the additional information in the interim from our last, from the first portion of the public hearing two weeks ago. I think it's helpful to clarify for us where the costs are coming from, how many homes are located in each of the areas that said I appreciate that. Also really appreciate you working with the one homeowner who emailed us and by the way, I also, that was price, I thought that was, you've been through quite a bit and I'm glad that our staff is working to help you kind of understand some of the issues involved in your temporary easement. Also want to thank Mr. Furr, is it from the Utilities Commission for providing us some additional information, specifically as it relates to the legal status of the treatment facility currently in operation, the need for a new emergency operator, your, I'm sure, quite good professional opinion about the cost associated with upgrading that facility or operating it over time as compared to the extension of city services. I would just, you could, your position here strikes me as incredibly odd. And you've never done this before so I'm guessing it strikes you as incredibly odd too. And so I think, in any event, I appreciate the factual and opinion, professional opinion based information you've put before us because I think that's important to know. Long story short, the city committed to extending utilities to these Durham County residents. The Durham residents waited for almost 10 years now for that to happen and it is not. And in many cases, as they have told us, and in many cases we want and can never hear, these homeowners made decisions about their homes, their lives based on the assurance that the city gave them 10 years ago that city services would be extended pursuant to the decision that this council made. The reasons for the delay are many and varied as are the reasons for the increased cost in doing what we said we would do 10 years ago. And I think I appreciate my colleague, Steve Schuol's desire to go back to DOT and find out if we can get some kind of waiver on the type of reconstruction that's gonna need to be done in order to accomplish these extensions. I also appreciate the mayor suggesting that we look at the possibility of annexation, although I know there are lots of complications and that that's a process unto itself. But ultimately, for me, and again, this is nothing, this is probably the most politically unpopular thing to do in the city of Durham, is to suggest that we spend, I don't know, 2.152 million dollars on folks who don't live in the city and don't pay city taxes. But ultimately, for me, the question is the increase in cost from 2007 to 2017 is who is to bear the burden of that increase? Who, which entity made choices that created this situation? And I'm not asking for a staff's input, by the way, I'm just, I'm talking myself, but you can stand where you want, I just saw you moving up to the microphone. That's not the portion of the conversation I'm in right now. Which entity ought to bear the cost? It's not which entity can most easily bear the cost, it's not which entity is it politically popular for them to bear the cost, but from a moral perspective, like from a perspective of the right thing to do, which entity should bear the additional cost? I don't personally believe it's these homeowners, even though if they were to apply today for a utility extension agreement, they would pay far in excess of what they agreed to pay seven years ago. That, to me, is completely immaterial. The issue is what's the right thing to do? It's not popular, it costs us a lot of money. It's the right thing to do, we should do it. Like I said, I'm perfectly happy to explore some of the other options. I totally get the fact that, oh, I also wanted to say to the folks from Ravenstone, I appreciate your concern that the city council be good stewards of the city's money, and the city taxpayers, you have every right to be concerned about that, and I appreciate you being here tonight to do that. I would just encourage you to get involved in the city budget process a lot earlier. We start in February with coffees with council. You should come and see how we spend all of our money, not just two million dollars to help folks we agreed to help 10 years ago. So, I encourage you to get involved a little earlier in the process, because I think you'll get a lot out of it. And I think that's all I wanted to say about this, Mr. Mayor, thank you. Anyone else have comments on this item? If you have comments, you can make them now at the appropriate time. Okay, I'm not asking for comments, I just want to make sure people have the privilege. Unless I have some objection, I'm going to continue. I'm going to hold public hearing open. And I guess I need to do it to a date certain. I think we really ought to try to explore what possibilities there are with the North Carolina Department of Transportation relative to this issue. I would appreciate if the staff from the Utilities Commission would be a part of that discussion. I would hope, Mr. Mayor, that our staff could be a part of that discussion also, relative to what's involved, what's been, what has occurred. I would also like to get a response to my question about what would be the revenue that the city would receive if these areas were annexed. And you do it the way you normally do it. Okay. If I could, Mr. Mayor, as you're thinking about this, I'd like to ask the city attorney's office for clarification of deferred to Patrick, whether he, you know, his best answer, Don O'Toole knows and worked on this. But it's my understanding that if the council is going to do anything different than exactly what was done when you ordered the improvements, whether that's annexation, a different financial model, whatever, you would have to do that by rescinding the order and then issuing a new order. You couldn't just amend this order. That's correct. Can somebody clarify? Yes, that is correct. You can't come up with some sort of hybrid or change the fee sharing structure today. Or require annexation or any of those kinds of things. We certainly can get the information for you as a part of that consideration, but ultimately to do anything different than the order. Than the 2007 order would require resending and then issuing a new order. Yes. I understood that. But the question before us now is whether we rescind it or not. If we choose not to rescind it, then it means we gotta go through and do what we say what we wanna do and figure out where the money's gonna come from. So that's why I'm not saying, I don't wanna say don't rescind it right now because ultimately that might be what we end up coming back saying. After we've had discussion with DOT and we get some information about the annexation piece and all that. So I'm straight on that. So let me, I wanna put a timetable on this. When do we have our next meeting? I know we, is it in August or July? August, August 8th? August the 7th, man. Okay, let's do it. When do we have our first work session in August? No, in August. Oh, August. Yeah. I wanna give people enough time to really look at this. So if we could bring it back to our work session, the first work session in August. It's the first work session in August and August 10th. Okay, bring it back then and hopefully we'll have time to have those discussions and ask some of the questions that we have. Okay. So to be clear that we would be continuing the public hearing, if it was at that August 10th work session, the public hearing would be August 21st. Yeah. I recognize Councilman Schuhl. Just wanted to check in with the gentlemen from the public staff. Are you on board with the idea of trying to work with the DOT to get them to work with us here? I'm sure we're willing to have discussions with different parties all across the spectrum. Okay, and I wasn't clear exactly the extent to which you've been talking to our staff about this previously. I know you probably didn't just show up here at our work session for the first time without that. So you're in good communication with Mr. Joyner and so forth. I've been in good communication with Mr. Joyner. I thank Mr. Joyner for all the information that he shared with us. He's doing an excellent job. He always does. So thank you. Councilman Marshall. Let me ask you, I'm sitting there thinking, state has a stake in this. Package plants located in the county. If there wasn't a municipality located nearby, what would happen? I mean, you're coming and asking us to foot the bill to fix the problem that the neighbors have, the state has, the county has. I'm just curious about what would happen if there was no municipality? What solution would the state be pursuing in the absence of a nearby? I'll be honest with you. I can't answer that question. We have some emergency operators around the state that I would call it a perpetual emergency operator. Each one has its own specific set of issues. This particular one, the customer base is so small that their rates are just gonna be outrageous. In my world, the utilities that the utilities commission regulates in the water sewer is typically small community systems where in the case of something like Aqua North Carolina is a conglomeration of a huge number of them spread all over the place. The economies of scale are just poor and that's why their rates are always higher. And when you have a sewer operation like these people have, it's really bad. I don't know that I even answered your question, but it's not a good situation. Okay, is it any other item to come before the council? If not, we're adjourned at 10, 16 p.m. Thank you.