 30 seconds now we are on the air. Good evening. I want to call this meeting of the Durham City Council to order at 7 o'clock p.m. on Monday, April the 19th. And I certainly want to welcome everyone here tonight. My city council colleagues, our staff and all those who are here with us who are listening from home. Thank you for being with us. Before I go into our normal order of business, we've been having a little bit of difficulty making sure that our interpreters are being able to get everything that they need. So I'm just going to pause here before we get going. And I see from Angie Scevone that you're all set. Murtado, are you all set as well? He is. Great. Okay. Thank you so much and thank you for the wonderful tech staff of the City of Durham for helping to make this happen. I really appreciate it and I know that we all do. And now just one second here, let me see if my agenda will come up. And now as we gather together on this important occasion, it's a good time to consider together the work that we're going to do tonight and be ready to do it well. And so I ask you to join with me in a moment of solid meditation. Thank you. Council Member Reyes, could you please lead us in the Pledge to the Flag? I'm happy to do that, Mr. Mayor. Thank you and good evening to my colleagues, city staff and Durham residents watching at home. I'll say the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much, Council Member. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Council Member Caballero. Here. Council Member Freelon. Here. Council Member Freeman. Present. Council Member Middleton. I am here. Council Member Reyes. Here. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. We're now going to move to ceremonial items and I am, we have two ceremonial items tonight. The first is National Crowd Victims Rights Week proclamation and I am going to call on Council Member Reyes to please do the honors with that proclamation tonight. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Appreciate you giving me that opportunity. Do you have anyone here from the police department to talk with us after we do the proclamation? Or is it just us chickens tonight? Let me look and see. I don't see anyone, so I think it's just us chickens, yeah. Great. Fantastic. Well, this is proclamation honoring National Crime Victims Rights Week and I'll go ahead and read the proclamation now. Whereas these are unprecedented times in the history of our nation, region, state, and the city of Durham as the coronavirus pandemic evolves and continues. And whereas even in times of a worldwide health crisis, the critical work of law enforcement judicial systems and crime victim rights advocates remains necessary. And whereas dedicated victim service providers continue to work each day during the pandemic to meet the needs of crime victims. And whereas crime can leave a lasting impact on any person regardless of age, national origin, race, creed, religion, gender, sexual orientation, immigration, or economic status. And whereas the formation of the city of Durham Police Department's victim witness services unit in 1997 demonstrates the department's strong commitment to providing essential services to victims and witnesses of crimes and to ensuring that crime victims are treated with respect, compassion, fairness, and dignity. And whereas the department's victim services advocates continue to render services during this challenging time as traditional barriers faced by victims such as isolation, distrust of authorities, lack of resources or cultural barriers are further heightened by the effects of COVID-19. And whereas the ideals of compassion, respect, healing, recovery, and hope resonate now more than ever. And whereas the theme for National Crime Victims' Rights Week 2021 is support victims, build trust, engage communities, provides a timely opportunity to collectively make these ideals as a community by focusing on our common humanity. Now therefore, I, Stephen M. Shull, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim April 18th through the 24th 2021 as National Crime Victims' Rights Week in Durham. And hereby encourage Durham residents to take the time to learn more about crime victims' rights and to find ways to support victims, build trust, and engage communities in improving our response to all victims of crime to ensure they find justice. But it's my hand this 19th day of April 2021 and it is signed by Stephen M. Shull. That is the proclamation. Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to add real quick that there are three full-time victim witness service coordinators who serve the victims of violent crime within the City of Durham's jurisdiction. And so those folks do an incredibly difficult and challenging job every day. I want to thank them for their efforts. And that's the proclamation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Council Member. I'm now on a call on Council Member Freeman for our second item, which is Durham as a breastfeeding family-friendly community proclamation. I'm not sure if there's anyone here to accept that proclamation either. Is there anyone else here to, is there anyone here to accept the proclamation? Yes. I'm Love Anderson, the director of breastfeed Durham. Oh, great. Thank you so much for being here. After Council Member Freeman, reach the proclamation. If you would like to take a moment to make comments, we would love to have you do so. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm having a little bit of video trouble this evening, so please bear with me. I would love to share great thanks for this proclamation and the opportunity to share it with the people and just reading along. Whereas families are a priority in Durham, North Carolina, and part of helping families to thrive is ensuring that they receive community support to develop and sustain healthy lifestyles. Whereas the American Academy of Pediatrics affirms its recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding for about six months, followed by continued breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced with the continuation of breastfeeding for the first year or longer as mutually desired by the mother and infant. And whereas the American College of Obstetrician and Gynecologists state that the obstetrician gynecologists and the obstetrician care providers should support women and encourage policies that enable women to integrate breastfeeding into their daily lives and in workplace. And whereas, according to the American Diabetic Association, American Academy of Family Physicians and other leading health organizations, breastfeeding and human milk is the optimal way to feed infants. And whereas breastfeeding is associated with the lower rates of childhood illness, such as obesity, diabetes, and infectious diseases, as well as reduced risk of maternal breasts in ovarian cancers and faster recovery from childbirth as compared to formula feeding. And whereas a parent's decision to feed human milk to infants directly or through expression should be supported by family members in the community. And whereas collaborating on community resources and building community awareness can positively impact breastfeeding success. And whereas our community is proud to have attained board support and direct community action, including the Durham County Health Department, the Chamber of Commerce, the community health workers, lactation support providers, community and community advocates. Now therefore, I, Stephen and Shul, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim Durham as a breastfeeding family friendly community and hereby urge all citizens to provide a supportive and welcoming environment for families of all races, ethnicity, family structures to initiate and continue optimal infant feeding and nursing. Witness my hand in the corporate seal of the City of Durham, North Carolina, this day, the 19th of April 21st. Thank you. As a breastfeeding mom, I just wanted to note that one year probably would have sufficed. But I think I pushed for the two. And it has definitely been a mild, like a very helpful thing. And I have not seen any childhood illnesses with my children. So I encourage all women where possible to make sure that they are breastfeeding. Thank you. And Ms. Love Anderson, Anderson. Thank you so much. And I really thank you to the City Council for all of your incredible work. Three years ago, IBCLC, who works with Family Connects, brought this to me as a parent here in Durham. I was a late to lead leader and the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute has written these 10 steps to transform communities to welcome, proclaim and support breastfeeding because it turns out babies are born mostly knowing how to breastfeed. But parents, we don't know. It's a learned behavior. And it's hard and lonely and isolating. And it's also the only thing that we can do to protect our infants during this global pandemic. But when this was brought to me, I said, no, it's too much work. I don't have time. I went to a conference, and I shared this with you before, where I mourned with a woman as so many in our community mourn over the loss of an infant. And this parent that I was talking to felt like if she had no more about infant feeding, that she could have protected her infant from the loss that she experienced. And while we certainly don't know that to be true, we do know that there are tremendous health benefits associated with breastfeeding. And we do know that breastfeeding rates increased with support. And so I came to this council three years ago, having found 20 community advocates to help me start this process, who were wanting to send one, one email a month to begin this work. And now we have over 1000 advocates that receive our newsletter that occasionally send us emails, we have 10 people who volunteer their time and give their energy to share this information with our families. And I especially during minority health week, health month, we bring this to the city council to repo claim, because for for families in Durham, this really is an equity issue. We really want to focus our energy in this work around historical marginalized communities. And we always want to take a special moment to ask for healing for all those who have lost a child, for all those who have experienced trauma, we're standing with you, we're mourning with you, we're reaffirming our responsibility to fight against racism and uphold our commitment to make central equity and health equity for all families in Durham, especially during minority health month, especially during the fourth annual National Black Maternal Health Week, as we're working on reclaiming power, resilience and liberation. And we thank so many in Durham for all of your fantastic support, as we've worked together to solve these challenging issues. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. That is phenomenal. Thank you very much, Ms. Anderson. And thank you so much for being with us tonight. And thank you to you council member for reading the proclamation tonight. All right, we'll now move on to announcements by the council. And I'll first ask if there any any announcements by any of my colleagues. Councilmember Middleton. Mr. Mayor, I'll probably be no surprise. I was going to speak to the announcement today of our chief being called to Memphis. But as the singular voice of our city, I certainly want to defer to you. If you had planned on making comments about it before I made comments on it, please make comments. I was going to mention it and but I you are go for it. Absolutely. If I'm in order, if I'm a thank you. Absolutely. First of good evening to everyone. And good evening, colleagues and to those watching residents and citizens are watching into all in I was going to say in the chamber tonight, but virtually in the chamber. Tonight, Mr. I want to extend congratulations to his honor, Mayor Strickland and to our colleagues on the Memphis city council and to the residents and citizens of Memphis, Tennessee on what I believe is a master stroke of a higher. Chief Davis is part is in the vanguard of the cadre of law enforcement leaders around the country that are transformational figures who understand that we need radical change in law enforcement. We've seen this type of attitude evidence in chief Aragondo in Minneapolis when he took to the witness stand a couple of weeks ago in the Derek Sheldon trial. Leaders who are willing to push against this wall of science silences, blue wall of silence. Leaders who aren't afraid to snatch badges and then take the stand to tell us why they snatched the badges. Chief Davis is a part of that group of law enforcement leaders around the country. And I know that eyes of the country have been around her been on her for a long time. So I want to congratulate Memphis for making that higher. It occurs to me, Mr. Mayor, that part of chief Davis's new charge will be working in concert with the United States Park police to safeguard a sacred and iconic shrine that many of us around the country actually make pilgrimage to visit. And that is that that vaunted balcony upon which Martin Luther King was martyred. There's an almost poetic tent to this. Of course, Dr. King taught us that, you know, we can't use military or police to get ourselves out of situations that we've got to do those things that buttress life that give people opportunity and jobs. He was working on a poor people's campaign when he was assassinated. So I think this is this is actually an interesting time for us to to think about those things as we get ready to choose a new leader, those things that work in concert with having great police leadership to address root causes. And I know that's something that's not unfamiliar with my colleagues here on this council. There's a almost a poetic tent to this because on April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee. On April 4th, 1968, had Martin Luther King followed his schedule, he would have been in Durham, North Carolina. So once again, these cities are kind of brought together in this almost Shakespearean dance that we would be dispatching someone from Durham to Memphis to help safeguard the shrine of that man who taught us so much. So I just want to say I think that as she goes, this is a great time for us as we think about new leadership in our police department to double down on our efforts that will help us not only transform policing, but to make the context for contact with police less likely. We ought to be looking to double down on our commitment to guaranteed income beyond the $500,000. I think it's pretty likely we're going to get we ought to be thinking about our commitment to a shared economic prosperity plan, redoubling our efforts to do violence, interruption, in addition to getting the type of leadership in our police department that understands our values. Anyone that thinks that policing needs to be reformed and revolutionized in this country, you are right. But anyone who thinks that it's not important to have partners in law enforcement that understand that, and that will help us get there that are committed to making the changes wherever you fall on the on the spectrum, whether it be total transformation or even abolition, to get there, we're going to need partners. And anybody who thinks that that type of leadership isn't important, well, you got to learn today. It's really important that we have a leader that understands our values. So for those that are feeling a little trepidation or concern about the departure of this trailblazing black woman, I would just like to remind my fellow Durhamites that there's another trailblazing black woman that's still at work here, who gets up every morning with us on our minds, imagine that life, imagine that burden. She thinks about us every day. Our city manager, Wanda Page, she makes her bread and butter by identifying talent and recruiting them and retaining them and managing teams. And I have no doubt in my mind that she will find us a chief worthy of Durham, a chief that will continue to take us forward, not take us backwards from the incredible cultural work that's been done. We've still got work to do. So I just want to say, Durham, we're going to be I, we're going to be I because we're in good hands. So on tonight, I want to congratulate Chief Davis on this accomplishment. I want to pray for her family, pray that God protects her family as they start this next great chapter in their life and may God bless and protect forever our beloved Durham. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Council Member. Colleagues, other announcements? Council Member Freeline? Yes. Wow. That was awesome. Council Member Middleton, just very, very deep. I always appreciate hearing your announcements. I also just want to extend my prayers and props to City of Memphis and to Chief Davis for, you know, and thanks and gratitude for the wonderful way that she served the City of Durham. My announcement is kind of related, but a little bit different. It's actually about something Brother Middleton said last week when he mentioned kind of the rise of shootings in Durham. And, you know, he extended his sentiments of love to the families and communities that have been experiencing violence. And he said something that really stuck with me, struck a chord with me. And I just want to talk about what the past two weeks have meant from our previous City Council meeting. I don't know if you remember this, Brother Middleton, but you said, let's get creative. And when I hear that about solutions, when I hear that, you know, something kind of sparks in my mind, not just because I'm an artist, but because I know there are folks in our community that have the creative vision to solve solutions around violence in Durham. And we have a lot of stuff going on with safety and wellness task force. You know, we are the ones you mentioned, the guaranteed income. So I think we're doing a lot. But I was really sitting with that question of what else can we do and how can we get creative about addressing violence in Durham. And, you know, and then, you know, the day after that meeting, a young brother was killed. He was shot in the car in the, you know, in a neighbor in a middle class black, you know, Durham neighborhood. And it was, to me, that was just, you know, not just an affirmation of everything that was said the previous day, but it really lit a fire underneath me personally to do something and so this question ringing in my psyche, what am I doing every day to address violence? I started really kind of brainstorming around the outer limits of my imagination to address this problem. And, you know, of course, my heart goes out to the family of brother Joshua Garner, who was a hillside senior on the cusp of graduation, you know, who was shot the day after our last city council meeting 18 years old, just really, really tough. And so I started calling black men. Initially, my idea was like, let's play basketball. I called maybe 30 brothers and said, let's go to these courts and round up some young black men and talk to them about what their ideas are for ways that we can transform our communities to make them safer. Kind of going with that idea that the people closest, you know, to the pain should be closest to the power and into the creation of ideas and solutions. And so I've had maybe three dozen conversations just over the past two weeks with black men and boys. And last week, second week, I got up with Laura Khalil at our office on youth and looked in our wonderful city manager, Wanda Page. And we're talking about creating an emergency strategy for young black men and boys here in Durham. We're going to be convening on Thursday with some folks and doing these kind of guerrilla style conversations with black men in the community to talk about, you know, to come up with some solutions and talk to brothers about what we can do and then to come back to council with some recommendations. So I just wanted again to, you know, I know some folks may be feeling a particular type of nervousness with the departure of our police chief coupled with the fact that it's getting warmer outside and, you know, violence goes up when it gets hot and we're coming off a very violent year with a lot of shootings and it hasn't seemed to subside. And, you know, this is, for me, was a very, you know, grassroots emergency response to kind of address this issue. And we're already making some really good progress and have some good foundations laid from the office on youth and other partners, Black Men Build, Durham Boys of Color Coalition. There are several organizations that are going to be involved in this effort. So I just wanted to say that, you know, my heart goes out to the families that are experiencing violence in Durham and that I personally take it very seriously. And, you know, one of the things I learned from Chief Davis, she said all the time, you know, by the time the police get involved, it's already too late. You know, what else can we do to create safe communities here in Durham? And so anyway, I'll keep colleagues, everyone updated on that progress and welcome collaborators if anyone's interested in hearing or learning more about that. Members of the public, please feel free to reach out and email me if you have Black Men or Boys that you would like to be involved in this conversation. But I take, you know, I take a sense of personal responsibility because it's Black Men and Boys who are getting shot and many times it's us doing the shooting. And I feel like it's our responsibility as Black Men to wrap our arms lovingly around one another and to come up with the solutions that we need to lift ourselves, you know, out of this dire situation while acknowledging that, you know, structures of white supremacy, you know, going back long before any of us were born created the conditions that were in that make it so difficult for us to survive. So anyway, I'm going on a little bit of a tangent, but just wanted to say that there is an effort and a strategy to design some solutions for Black Men and Boys, and it will be led by Black Men and Boys. And, you know, that will be a partner effort to what law enforcement is doing to attempt to address the rising violence in Durham. So thank you, Mr. Mayor, for giving me an opportunity to share that testimony. Thank you very much, Council Member, and that's fantastic. And please let us know ways we can be supportive. I will. Thank you. All right, colleagues, further announcements? Council Member Caballero? Yes, good evening, everyone. I just wanted to thank my colleagues for their wonderful words. We will definitely miss Chief Davis in this city, but also very, very happy for her. We understand why Memphis poached our chief, so we like her too. I was actually wanting to speak around the three anti-trans bills in front of the General Assembly right now. It's House Bill 358, and then Senate bills, both 514 and 515. Last week, I know that there were many trans kids and their families that went to the House Judiciary Committee meeting at the General Assembly to speak out against this bill, which is hateful. One of the proudest moments that I have had on councils when we passed our anti-discrimination ordinance just back in January. And to see, you know, again, just such hate-filled legislation at the state level is extremely, it's extremely harmful. It causes a tremendous amount of pain in many of our communities. Charlotte saw the death of two, the murder, I should say, of two trans women last week. I know many community members are worried and concerned and filled with grief. And so I extend we're thinking about our trans brothers and sisters. We love you all. I said that in January, you're always welcome in Durham. And we will continue to push against this terrible legislation. Thank you very much, Council Member. All right, colleagues, thank you all for those great words and wonderful announcements today. And Council Member Middleton, I'm going to let your words stand for mine. I could not have said anything about Chief Davis more eloquently than you did. And I really appreciate that. I did have a press conference today where I was able to express the gratitude of our city, the bittersweet nature of this, because as Council Member Caballero said, we are happy for Chief Davis. And we all applaud her and wish her Godspeed. At the same time, we know that we are losing a great leader. But Council Member, and I'm glad you I don't I don't have one of the things I don't I really don't have any any problem endorsing the eloquence of others. And you said it much better than I could. So thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Appreciate it. All right, colleagues, we'll now move to priority items by the city manager, Madam Manager. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem members of the Durham City Council. I have three priority items for you this evening. Agenda item number 13, South Durham Phase 3, hydraulic model amendment number one to the professional services contract. Additional information has been provided in attachment number six. Agenda item number 18, green and equitable infrastructure project. Information has been provided in attachment number two, located under the priority items by the city manager, city attorney, and city clerk section of your agenda. And finally, agenda item number 21, consolidated annexation, Falls Village North attachments number one and number 18 were updated. That ends my list of priority items this evening. I'm sorry. Thank you, Madam Manager. Madam Attorney, any priority items tonight? Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Madam Mayor Pro Tem members of City Council. Good to see you all this evening. The city attorney's office has no priority items tonight. Thank you, Madam Manager. Madam Clerk, any priority items tonight? Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. The city clerk's office has no priority items this evening. All right. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Colleagues, before we move to consent agenda, I saw in the chat that Councilmember Freeman also had an announcement. And go ahead, Councilmember. Thank you. I appreciate my colleagues touching basis on the shootings and the departure of Chief Davis. I just wanted to note that the Durham Youth Works applications are now open for students, ages, students and youth, ages 14 to 24. And I want to make sure that those applications are completed. I know the deadline is coming up pretty quickly. I think it's April 25th, if I'm not mistaken. And the applications are available or the actual signing forms are available on our website through the Office of Workforce and Economic Development. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Colleagues, when I move to the consent agenda, the consent agenda can be approved by a single vote of the Council. It consists of items that the Council has previously worked on. Items can be pulled from the consent agenda by a member of the Council or by a member of the public, in which case they will be held until the end of the meeting for consideration. I'll now read the consent agenda. Item one, Approval of City Council Minutes. Item two, Carolina Theater of Board of Trustees Appointment. Item three, Durham Cultural Advisory Board Appointment. Item four, Durham Workers Rights Commission Appointments. Item five, Resolution and Support of Immediate Action to Solve the Black Maternal Health Crisis. Item six, Resolution and Support of the Local New Hope Audubon Society Chapter Designation of the City of Durham as a Bird Friendly Community. I'm going to pull item six at the request of a member of the community. Item seven, Durham Performing Arts Center Depak Oversight Committee FY 2019-20 Annual Report. Item eight, Ashton Place Apartments Notice of Intent to Award Conditional Permanent Financing. Item nine, Hardy Street Apartments Notice to have Intent to Award Conditional Permanent Financing. Item 10, Revised and Restated Loan Commitment to Develop Adventures, Inc. for Commerce Street Apartments. Item 11, Municipal Agreement with North Carolina Department of Transportation, NCDOT for R. Kelly Bryant, Jr. Bridge Directional Sons. Item 12, Air Release Valve Enforcement Assessment Professional Services Contract Award to Brown and Caldwell, Inc. Item 13, South Theorem Phase III Hydraulic Model, Amendment Number One Professional Services Contract. Item 14, Change Order of Construction Contract with Bar Construction Company, Inc. at Valley Springs Park. Item 15, Purchase Contract with Barbizon Charlotte, Inc. for the Durham Performing Arts Center Depak Performance Lighting Upgrade. Item 16, Marist Hispanic Latino Committee 2020 Report. Item 17, Contract SW41C Inspections and Ombudsman Services for Roxbury Street, Sidewall. Colleagues, you've heard the consent agenda. Can I have a motion for its approval absent item six? I moved. Seconded. Moved by Council Member Reece, seconded by Council Member Freeman that we approve the consent agenda. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Potem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reece. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously and the consent agenda is approved. Colleagues, normally I would hold the items pulled from the consent agenda to the end of the meeting, but we now will go ahead and go to that item because I know there's one speaker who has introduced this item to us and has been in communication with us about this important item, who would like to be heard. And we'll go ahead and do that now. And Madam Clerk, if you could make Lynn Richardson available to be heard. Ms. Richardson, welcome. And we're, thank you so much for advancing this to us through the work session process. And we're really glad to have you here and you have three minutes. Ms. Richardson, can you be heard? I think you're still on mute. Madam Clerk, has she been upgraded? I believe that she has to be able to be heard. Unmuted, Mr. Mayor. Unmuted. Ms. Richardson, can you, are you able to be heard? How about unmuting again Ms. Richardson and C? Unfortunately, we still can't hear you and I'm not sure why. And maybe something with your computer, are you wearing headphones or do you have any other accoutrements that might be, yes I see from Ashley Wyatt, please remove any headphones. Is there anything else like that that might be causing you not to be able to be heard? Mr. Mayor, I just promoted Ms. Richardson to panelist. All right, let's see if that works. Ms. Richardson, how about now, can you unmute and be heard? I see you. What, can you unmute? We should be able to hear. Even when she's unmuted, we can't, we can't hear her. Unfortunately. Now we can't. If she could go to her actual audio under the mic, she can change her speakers to the same as a system and it should fix it. That's what it looks like right now. Thank you. I love it that I have very tech savvy colleagues and I do not include myself in that. Council Member Freeman, can you tell her again what to do? If you're looking at your microphone where it says mute, on the right, there's an up arrow. If you click it, you'll see select the microphone and it says same as system. When you click that, is it show, is it showing a check mark? And then you hear, can you hear me now? Yeah, there we go. Council Member Freeman gets tonight's tech award. Thank you. We're glad to hear, glad to hear, have you and you, we have three minutes. Thank you and thanks Councilman Freeman for, for getting me live. So I'm Lynn Richardson, I'm co-chair of New Hope Audubon Society's Bird Friendly Durham Committee and this committee will be spending the next year and a half working on projects that benefit Durham's environment and the birds other wildlife and the people who live here. The New York Times ran an editorial in September 2019 with the headline, the crisis for birds is a crisis for us all. And one quote by the eminent scientists who wrote this piece really caught my attention. They say nearly one third of the wild birds in the United States and Canada, that's 2.9 billion with a B birds have vanished since 1970, a staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America's ecosystem is unraveling. And, you know, of course, this is very sobering news, but it's also news each of us can do something about. And we're fortunate to live in a city that's already doing a lot to address environmental issues. The recently updated Durham landscape manual, for example, includes a number of the practices found in our committee's best practices document, including a robust list of prohibited plants and adding many more plants to Durham's prohibited list was a huge positive step, because these invasive plants are second only to habitat loss and causing the alarming decrease in the diversity of life on earth. And although the resolution mentions our partnership with the planning department, this work will go far beyond them. We're partnering with a number of others in city and county government, local businesses, nonprofits like aqua and trees Durham, schools and private individuals and Audubon hopes the work we're doing in this next year and a half will inspire the city to do even more in the coming years to improve our natural environment. And Audubon's work aligns with and expands on the city's Durham roadmap to sustainability document, which states the city has long recognized the need to protect and restore our natural resources and strives to take an ecosystem approach to conserving biodiversity and ecological integrity in our urban environment. And support of this resolution by you all means so much as our committee goes forward and it means a lot for everyone else in Durham who's working toward environmental health and environmental justice. It tells us that that you're behind us. Your support also has the potential to impact other communities in New Hope Audubon's territory of Durham, Orange and Chatham counties and beyond. Since this project we're doing in Durham is a pilot project that we hope will be used as a model and other North Carolina cities in town. So I just want to say thanks so much to Mayor Schuyl and all council members for your support of this resolution and of this effort. Ms. Richardson, thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here and we're grateful for the leadership that you and the Audubon Society have shown. We really really are. That includes your work in updating the landscaping manual as you mentioned. I know you all were integral to that so much gratitude. Right. Thank you. Thanks again. Colleagues we need a motion to approve this resolution. So moved. Second. Moved by council member Freeman. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Madam Clerk will you please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council member Caballero. Aye. Council member Freelon. Aye. Council member Freeman. Aye. Council member Middleton. How about aye. Council member Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you Madam Clerk. The motion has and the the the ayes have it and the motion passes unanimously. Colleagues we'll now move to General Business Agenda public hearings. As you all know we have quite a number tonight and we'll begin with item 20 annexation item triple crown and first we'll hear our report from staff and I see Mr. Culture is with us. Welcome Mr. Culture. Thank you. Good evening Mayor Schuyl. Madam Mayor Pro Tem Johnson and Honorable Council members. I'm dealing in culture with the planning department. Before we begin staff would lock state for the record that all planning department hearing items have been advertised and noticed in accordance with state and local law and affidavits for these notices are on file with the planning department. A request for utility extension agreement, voluntary annexation and initial zoning map change has been received from Neil Gauch with Morning Star Law Group acting as agent for individual landowners, triple crown farm, Ernest W. Warner Jr. and David E. Blake for four parcels of land totaling 183.438 acres located 5424, 5430, 5432 and 5438 Wake Forest Highway. This annexation petition case BDG-20017 is for a non-contiguous expansion of the existing satellite corporate. State does want to recognize that as for the purpose of NC general statutes related to voluntary annexation petitions this case must be processed as non-contiguous because it was non-contiguous at the time it was submitted. However, as subsequent to the submittal there was another voluntary annexation petition BDG-190022 551 all branch it was approved in the immediate area which results in the site being contiguous once the city's boundaries are at reconciled. The site is presently zone residential RR and residential suburban 20 RS 20. If annexation is approved staff recommends an exact translation of the zoning designation and this request would become effective on April 30th 2021. Staff determines that this request is reasonable given one that the development of the property proposed for annexation is found to be revenue positive based upon the cost-benefit analysis conducted by the city's budget management services department two another city department identified it an operational impact associated with providing city services to the proposed area and three the site is technically contiguous due to another recently approved voluntary petition. The public works and water management departments also perform utility impact analysis for the utility extension agreement and determine the existing water and sanitary sewer infrastructure has capacity of so the project. There are three motions required for the application. The first is to adopt an ordinance annexing triple crown and to authorize the city manager to enter into a utility extension agreement with one our colorinas LLC. The second is to adopt an ordinance for the transitional zoning and the third is to adopt a consistency statement. Thank you very much. Staff and the applicant team are available for any questions. Thank you very much. Much Mr. culture colleagues you've heard the report from staff and I'm on now declare this public hearing open and I'm going to first ask if there are any questions for staff on members of the council. All right I don't hear any and so we will now proceed to hear from folks that want to be heard on this item and trying to get back to that right this red hot second I see several people have signed up to speak on this item I'm going to list those that I believe have signed up and if there are others that would like to sign up if you could please let me know. I have Mr. Patrick Biker, Mr. Preston Royster, Charlie Yokely, Steven Dorn and Matthew Partiz. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on item 20? Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on item 20? I don't believe that I've seen anyone else that would like to be heard on item 20. I'm looking at the attendees list. All right great let me make sure yeah I don't see Mr. Biker. Is Mr. Biker present? Yes Mayor Schull can you hear me? Yes I did for some reason it's are you are you on the are you with Preston Royster Mr. Biker? Mr. Biker are you leading the presentation on behalf of the proponents? Yes Mr. Mayor I need about three minutes for our comments then we'd be happy to reserve on your remaining time. Is everyone else here on who are here as proponents are they members of your team? I did not recognize the last name. No I'm sorry Matthew Cartis is here as an opponent I'm sorry but for Mr. Dorn, Mr. Yokely and Mr. Royster? That is correct. All right and Mr. Cartis is also here but he is an opponent. All right Mr. Biker please go ahead I want you to begin with your three minute presentation and then once we hear from Mr. Cartis if either party would need more time we'll make that happen. Good evening Mayor Schull, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, members of the City Council. I'm Patrick Biker with Morningstar Law Group and I live at 2614 Stewart Drive. I'm here to represent Lenar, Carolinas for this agenda item. With me this evening from Lenar are Steven Dorn and Charlie Yokely along with Preston Royster from Coulter Jewel Towns our landscape architecture and civil engineering firm. We are here tonight to request your approval of this annexation for 183 acres on the south side of NC 98 just to the west of Kemp Road. Within that 183 acres we have submitted a conservation subdivision to allow for 105 townhomes, 130 small single family homes, and 124 medium single family homes with a price range from the mid 200s to the low 300s. We think this will create a neighborhood with diverse mixed income housing opportunities. I do wish to highlight that this 183 acre site was a farm and so most of the land where these homes will be built is already cleared. In addition there are superb onsite amenities such as the two acre farm pond that will have a walking trail around it and a four acre open greenfield that residents can use for sports or relaxation. Perhaps most important in addition to what the UDO preserves due to environmental standards this conservation subdivision preserves 19 acres of woodlands that Lenar is voluntarily conserving above and beyond what is required in article eight of the UDO. Next I want to address traffic which is often a major issue with these types of agenda items. Our understanding is that this segment of NC 98 at Kemp Road is slightly under capacity according to NC DOT pre-pandemic traffic counts. In addition the new residents of this neighborhood will be able to go south on Kemp Road to access the Durham section of Briar Creek for basic shopping needs. Lastly Lenar will be repaving Hester Road on the west side of this site as a community benefit for the long-term residents of this area. In closing I want to touch on the small area plan for the Searles Basin that is underway. I think all of us applaud that effort. I need to point out that Kemp Road is the eastern boundary of the Searles Basin area. Accordingly approval of this annexation at this low conservation subdivision density is appropriate for these 183 acres because it is important to taper down to what will be very low density on the east side of Kemp Road since water and sewer will not be available there. I do wish to add that between this annexation and Kemp Road there remains another 10 to 12 acres that would be available for a neighborhood commercial node if the small area planning process concludes that commercial uses would be appropriate at this location. For all these reasons we respectfully ask for your approval of this agenda item. Our team will be happy to answer any questions and we thank you for your time tonight. Thank you very much Mr. Biker. We'll now hear from Mr. Cartes and Mr. Cartes. I hope that I'm pronouncing your name correctly. If not I apologize. We're glad to have you here tonight. Can you make yourself heard? Oh yes Mr. Mayor. Do you guys hear me okay? Yes we can. Thank you. How much time do you need for your presentation Mr. Cartes? Less than two minutes. All right. Thank you for being here. Go ahead. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Thank you for the time. I am a long time resident on Alla Branch Road and I joined tonight to voice my opposition for this development. If you guys have not been in the area recently there are numerous subdivisions within a three mile radius that this council has already approved or in planning stages and not yet constructed and on top of that there is even more that is they're clear flooding everything around the area for massive subdivisions. The infrastructure for this area of Durham just cannot support the traffic. You know in my neighborhood in my you know Shaw Hills right Alla Branch Road, Shaw Hills was actually a neighborhood a subdivision but it's not really defined as that anymore because of just the way things have changed. However the traffic on the road on Alla Branch Road it over the past 10 years I've had five vehicle accidents in my driveway with people hitting my cars or running off the road or going to those items and this has just been a compound. On top of that this is a this lit creek area which is part of this property was recently invested in and it's you know because it was designated as an impaired screen. This development will eventually have runoff that will go into this impaired screen which also then flows into Falls Lake and our water supply. And you know those are the major points that I have for opposition for this right it's it's the infrastructure it's the water runoff to the impaired lit creek and then the the proponents for this they mentioned the conservation subdivision. I would say that that is probably a requirement simply just because there's large portion of this property is in the flood plain. So to say that it's designated or or something above and beyond is probably a play on what can already be developed just because the flood plain is here. That's all I have. Thank you very much Mr. Cartes. Mr. Cartes I'm going to let Mr. Biker respond and then if you have any further comments I'd be happy to take them. Mr. Biker you heard Mr. Cartes's issues and I was wondering if you could address them. Yes certainly Mr. Mayor we appreciate those concerns very much and so we have done a traffic impact analysis which was required by Durham planning and transportation in conjunction with the site plan for this development. We respectfully submit that there will not be much impact on all of Branch Road from this conservation subdivision due to its location. The main arteries again are NC 98 and Camp Road and we did not our TIA did not find that there would be any measurable impact on all of Branch and so again I just want to confirm that there is a there is road connectivity from Camp Road to the Harris Teeter at Breyer Creek that's within the city limits of Durham for people to get their basic shopping needs met and then of course NC 98 is a major thoroughfare that serves people commuting to downtown or Duke University and again at this segment of NC 98 it is still under capacity so we appreciate that again I do well we appreciate the comments about the floodplain I did mention that there are at least 19 acres of woodlands that are being preserved on this site that are above and beyond what our UDO requirements so we think this certainly meets all the intense intense statements within the UDO for this type of development. We thought the staff report was right on target and we respectfully ask for your support and again our team will be happy to answer questions I believe our traffic engineer Nate Boken of Rainey Camp Associates is available to answer any questions as well. Thank you Mayor Sherwell. Thank you members of council. Thank you Mr. Biker. Before colleagues will go to questions I'll ask Mr. Cartes if he has anything else to say at this time. No sir. All right thank you Mr. Cartes. I'll begin the questions by just asking Mr. Judge who I believe is here with us. Mr. Judge do you have any comment about the contention of the applicant that because of the location of this it will not be significant significantly affect traffic problems in the area? So yeah Bill Judge system director of transportation I do want to point out that since this is this is just an annexation with the direct translation on the zoning the traffic impact analysis was not part of the annexation but it is part of the company site plan it has been reviewed by the city and NC DOT they estimated about five percent of the site traffic would utilize Isla Branch so I would agree that that would be a minimal impact for the additional traffic on Isla Branch there certainly are issues along the NC 98 corridor with many of the intersections beginning to operate at or near capacity particularly in the peak hour meaning signalization, naming term lanes but all those are either requirement of this development or other developments in the area that were considered in the TI. Thank you Mr. Judge. Mr. Judge can I ask you another question that is really tangential to this particular development well actually it relates very directly to this particular development but it's a little bit longer term there's now a study going on of NC 98 with the various jurisdictions involved all the way into Wake County could you talk about the state of that study at this time are you familiar with how that's doing? I do not have the latest on that I'll be honest with you so I don't really can't speak to that I mean it is obviously a heavy commuter corridor between Durham and the counties in northern or the cities in northern northern Wake County so I mean long term I think there is likely the improvements the portions of NC 98 obviously very environmentally sensitive at some portions near the lake crossing there's also a lot of investment being made by the state in the US 70 corridor currently I think that that's the more likely area where you'll see improvements in the mid term and then NC 98 further in the long term but yeah that original corridor study did go all the way to US 70 in Durham and recommended some safety improvements closer to yeah closer to the US 70 section. Thank you very much Mr. Judge. Colleagues, questions or comments? Council Member Caballero and then Council Member Ruiz. Yeah and I may have missed it I know it's part could somebody just share what the traffic improvements are going to be and wait and and I don't know if Mr. Biker shared where the I know you said Kemp Road and then Highway 98 is that we're going is that the two entrants and exits for the development? Yes there are access points on the Kemp Road and to Highway 98 and I would defer to Nate Bowpoint our traffic engineer for the specific improvements that would be that are being required on the site plan for this development. Nate are you on the line? Yes I'm here. Good evening everyone my name is Nate Bowpoint with Ramey Kemp and Associates we conduct the traffic impact analysis for the site so we had quite a few improvements that we are providing as Mr. Biker mentioned we'll be doing an additional overlay of Hester Road as well as a turn lane turning on to Hester turn lanes at our driveways both on Kemp Road and on it's in 98 as well as a turn lane and signalization of the intersection of 98 and Kemp Road so that would be on the northbound approach there on on Kemp Road the turn lane. Thank you. Thank you Council Member. Council Member Reese. Thank you Mr. Mayor where are the I missed the part of the materials that showed us where the connections are going to be to this property where the road connections and I'm just trying to figure out where the development will access those roads. I've heard a couple of different things and I don't know what the answer is so if someone could tell me that that'd be great. I think that that's not in our materials because this is not uh the I believe that that is uh we're not doing a rezoning this is so but there is a site plan that should tell you tell us that and maybe we can hear more about that from Ms. Young. Good evening Mayor, Members of Council. You're exactly right Mayor Shul. This is simply an annexation therefore it does not have an accompanying development plan so I think what what the developer is trying to convey are the the items that are shown on their site plan. I am not up to date on all those details so I will actually defer to them on that but just a reminder that those are not commitments those are simply elements of a site plan that can be changed there is no no mechanism through tonight's action or possible action for any commitment so I just wanted to make sure that the everyone um was aware of that since uh it's not often that we get just an annexation by itself. Thank you Ms. Young. I'm going to call on Mr. Judge and then see if Council Member Reese has anything else. Mr. Judge did you want to add something? Yeah I can just tell you based on the traffic impact analysis that they did submit with the site plan there was um they estimated one uh full movement driveway along Kemper Road and a single right in right out driveway to NC for the site presumed that they'd be street connections most likely public streets but Thank you Mr. Judge. Council Member Reese. Thank you Mr. Mayor. It looks like Mr. Curtis is also suggesting there'll be uh access off of Hester Road. Is that is that what the applicant intends to indicate with that comment? Was Mr. Curtis part of I didn't know which I can't know. No, no, no. Mr. Curtis. You guys want to hear me um so we may I my concern was the traffic on Alla Branch Road. Hester Road is a small uh road that that feeds off of Alla Branch so any traffic that would go on to Hester Road into the subdivision would would flow down Alla Branch Road. Can the applicant tell me whether or not they intend to use Hester Road as access to this project going forward? I know there's no way to commit to it. I understand that. I'm asking what the plan is. Yes. Council Member Reese. Patrick Beiker with Morningstar Law Group. Hester Road is an access point for this 183 acre development but our TIA estimated as I believe Mr. Judge referred to uh at uh approximately 5% of the site traffic would use that access point and then connect to Alla Branch. So 95% of the traffic will use will use either 98 or Camp Road. And I do hasten to add that the UDO requires that connection to be made. We've had previous cases from last year where required connectivity was an issue and again this is a UDO required street connection. Great. That's what I was trying to get at. So I appreciate everybody's input as we figured out what what y'all are required to do. That's awesome. I think I guess um okay that's my question and it's been answered. I don't have anything else any other questions about that. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you Council Member. Colleagues, other questions or comments at this time? All right. I don't hear any and so I'm going to ask now is there anyone else that would like to be heard on item 20 before I close this hearing? Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on item 20? If you are, if you would please and you're an attendee please raise your virtual hand. I don't see anyone and so I'm going to declare this public hearing closed. The matter is back before the council. Uh I'll uh I'll I'll be happy to accept a motion to adopt an ordinance annexing Triple Crown into the city of Durham effective April 30th. Mr. Mayor, I just have a question. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Because it wasn't really for the applicants. It was more probably more for staff. It's educational question on my part. I noticed the attachment to the resolution from the Planning Commission and I just wanted to ask about how to how to operationalize this moving forward and I guess let me ask my question this way. I understand the logic behind bypassing the Planning Commission when it's a direct translation but if it's a direct translation with a development plan, I know there have been times when folk have been seeking not to change the zoning but their projects still raised questions whether it was architectural flourishes, whether it was impact on quality of life, whether it was perceived impact on traffic, notwithstanding what the traffic impact analysis had said. I'm just wondering does this um if we if we if we approve a translation but they have a development plan does that preclude the Planning Commission from still asking questions even if even if they're building within their right because I've noticed as I've said there's been times when they've still had questions about specifics of a project even when it's within if that makes sense the the zoning designation. Sure that's a good question and I think it's important to denote that the site plan is not a development plan from the legal standpoint of what the Planning Commission has purview over so that's one reason why they they do not to get a seat at the table for administrative things like site plans and because they also don't have a role in annexations that's why they they have traditionally done this blanket resolution if you will. There I think there's a lot of things that we're looking at potentially revising in terms of our land use processes to make them more equitable to make them more responsive to what we hear from the community and so I will say this my kind of um you know standard boilerplate answer of why they're not involved um I will wrap up by saying that we are looking for input for folks from folks on how to change our current processes so first part is kind of the standard answer the second part is we're we're open to changing processes. Sarah brilliant as usual just to buy me a little bit more for tomorrow so if in so far as they're not involved what is this resolution trying to fix what what is it is it a workload issue or um the resolution I think is um it's kind of an efficiency measure if the planning commission I think he gets frustrated just like anyone would when something is brought to them that they really have no um way to influence right um and so while I think some jurisdictions do probably take their initial zonings um that's something we can definitely look at but it's been a long-standing practice that honestly predates me um to have this kind of standing resolution for initial zonings from the planning commission so I can look into it further um if if that's uh something you're interested in me digging into. No no I think I wouldn't tax you like that I think you you've answered it more than sufficiently for what I had tonight thank you so much and thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you council member I'll just say that you know I think that um sometimes we we get these annexations that are direct translations without knowing what's going to come next and we want to know more and now we're in a situation because the site plan has already been submitted that we do know more um and then it causes you I think very reasonably to ask well then the county you know the planning commission didn't get a look at that uh but I I do think that I felt when Ms. Young gave a great explanation that that's at the administrative level but I do appreciate that we actually know more um from the applicant because the site plan has already been submitted earlier than we sometimes see it if you see what I'm saying. No absolutely and and I just having it you know my experiential reference point is that the planning commission are not shy about opining on site plans from architectural flourishes to you know height whatever it may be so that that's that's that's all the reason I asked but I appreciate it I think that's those are good questions thank you. I yield. Yeah I think um yeah but I appreciate I appreciate Ms. Young's comments um I'm gonna after we have the uh the first motion I do have a brief comment on this uh but if there are no other comments at this point I'll accept a motion to adopt the ordinance amending triple annexing triple crown into the city of Durham effective April. Mr. Mayor I think Councillor Caballero was seeking recognition. I'm sorry. Thank you um I just wanted I because this is thank you councilmember Middleton because I was in the same kind of muddled place um my interpretation is basically because it's an exact translation and because it's a site plan versus a development plan that whatever is said is not binding so we can write and then it's essentially by right because it's an exact translation and I just want to make sure I'm understanding that correctly okay so that is I see thank you Ms. Young I see you nodding I just wanted to make sure I was understanding it correctly um because of that I I'm not sure if we're opening it to motions yet or not I will not be supporting this and I just wanted sometimes it's helpful for some of our colleagues if we're on the fence I'm just going to go ahead and share that up front uh because because of that um I appreciate everything that the developers shared this evening but I have no real way of of really making sure that what they're saying is going to happen and so I drove this um I actually go when I when I'm able to go out to sites I usually try and go at peak hours because of that's when people are out so I was out on friday on friday at five and um luckily the route that I drove had me going right on 98 instead of trying to make a left which would have been an interesting um attempt at a at 5 p.m on a friday so I will just leave that there um and uh I hope that where I'm sitting with this helps my colleagues if you know if at all possible thanks thank you okay then I'll go ahead and make my comments um I will be supporting this uh I understand council member Cabrera's concerns but I think that uh we put developers in an impossible bind if we say uh so so they this is an exact translation um and there is no change in the in the density you know that would require us to do a rezoning um and so I think that uh it's very fair for a developer to come into us and and ask for this exact translation in fact I think it's kind of the only alternative they got um and I think that although it is true that the uh that the site plan that they have submitted is not uh that yes they could I assume they could pull it and change it I think that's really unlikely and of course they would have to come back to us again the next time they wanted something from us and I don't think we would uh trust the developer that did that I am comforted by the fact that only five percent of the traffic will be out on all of Branch Road but as you all know I've never made traffic on all of Branch Road a reason not to vote for a for more density out there um I uh I appreciate Mr. Cartes's concern about the traffic but I don't think that this will be a significant factor at all in increasing that traffic so those are my thoughts all right colleagues other comments while we're all making them councilman Freeman thank you Mr. Mayor as always I appreciate your comments and I just wanted to note I think I've raised the issue a number of times and it's just a growing concern around olive branch road especially down 98 acknowledging how much electrification has been occurring um this has been the offshoot of where folks have been moving to towards um since the downtown development kind of took off and I just want to note that the the developers are in a would be in an impossible position but I think the residents are also in an impossible position acknowledging that there are some folks who are who still live in that very rural area and to plan 183 acres um based on an annexation it just doesn't feel like Durham and so I'm I've raised those concerns before and I cannot support this this evening thank you thank you councilmember any other comments on council memories thank you Mr. Mayor I want to thank everybody for their their comments it's really good to get a sense of where folks are before we vote I'm grateful to that um long ago I um I made a mistake and did not explain why I voted no on something and I lost six to one and then about a year and a half later they the developer came back and said yeah we didn't mean to do that was a mistake we would like to do this instead so after that I was promised I would I would explain my votes to my colleagues even on ones that are fairly straight forward um I will say that I am persuaded by the remarks uh councilmember Kabir and Freeman this has been the the developed the land use topic of the last I guess two years what are we doing in this part of Durham um how many more acres of land are we going to convert to residential use how many units are we going to put in this part of the of of Durham how many more cars are we going to send to that part of Durham and what kind of city are we building if we keep doing this over and over again I know Mr. Mayor you made some very compelling arguments about the fact that this is translation zoning that um that you know we're not you're not sure what else we could ask a developer to do in this situation um I think in my mind but those are good questions but I think as it's often the case when a project comes to the city council like this we have to decide is this the best in the best interest of the city of Durham does it make sense for us to bring uh this many acres into the city for the sole use of turning it into housing and I don't think that's the case here I know we have a difference of opinion about that amongst our membership and that is as it should be we all come at this this from our different perspectives like Councilmember Kabir I drove out there deeply concerned about the connection to Hester Road because it is not a road that is amenable to to being an access point to this many houses trying to take a left from Hester on the olive branch is a nightmare it's it's a hairpin left turn if you're trying to get down down olive branch I know the TIA indicated that only five percent of the traffic would go there that that's scary to me but but beyond that beyond that you know we just have to decide what we're willing to put up with in order to add housing units to Durham's inventory you know this is the constant push and pull we have with development out here we need more housing in Durham to offset the increase in prices that is a force that is gobbling up entire neighborhoods that ring the downtown core it is driving gentrification and our at-risk communities and it's something we've got to get our arms around but I have come to believe that that bulldozing you know many many acres of trees clear cutting mass grading to put houses in these types of places is not how we build a sustainable future for our city if that makes a tree me a tree herger that's fine but the fact is I walked that property it's absolutely beautiful I just don't know that our city our county our world is better if we do this to that piece of property and I'm voting no thank you mr. mayor thank you councilmember other colleagues count mayor pro tem johnson thank you mr. mayor um this may be a staff question or an applicant question I'm not sure but with this the existing zoning in the county does that allow for this to be built I'm sorry could you repeat that yes of course does the existing zoning that this property holds in Durham county does it allow this this density this kind of project to be built um the density would actually stay the same regardless of if it's city or county the difference being that in the county they would have to require one acre lots if they didn't have the infrastructure so by having the city's infrastructure it would give them the ability for a conservation subdivision to have the lot sizes they would need to be able to cluster lots in the conservation subdivision there is no minimum lot size it's very similar to a pdr development it the difference being that you have to commit to a 50 open space with a conservation subdivision but uh in the county you would still have to have that minimum one acre lot size because you would have to have a well in septic great okay so how many additional homes does this annexation allow um I would have to let the applicant answer that because I have not about evaluated the site plan that was done by others thank you would you like to hear that from the applicant mayor pro tem yes please mr biker the question was if I understand it uh how many more uh homes would you be able to get on this site uh with the conservation subdivision that you've proposed versus the uh the county if it was to be done without annexation I believe the answer is it's it's uh zero mayor pro tem uh mayor shul that the density is the same under the county zoning as it would be in the city zoning and so there's really no difference the of course it would be subject to being built out with uh well in septic as opposed to water and sewer but it's it's simply a calculation of density and acreage and what the net acreage is based on the udl requirements I see sarah has popped up zion yeah I think the main difference is the way that the neighborhood would be designed so the resulting density the amount of units is the same it's whether they're chopped up into large lots on well in septic or whether they're clustered on really small lots with a with half or more of the site preserved as open space so it's really a design and character difference in addition to the utility difference does that help that's very helpful thank you um yeah so I mean my general thoughts I'm going to be supporting this annexation primarily because I think that we are going to continue to struggle with providing enough housing for this community if we do not if we don't move in this sort of direction with sites like this and while I while my personal views on sustainability are much more that we should be building denser um higher density infill closer to the city I'm just deeply concerned that if we don't do some development in these kinds of areas where we and and do as much environmental protection as we possibly can that we're that we're continuing to exacerbate a really serious problem um in our community right even you know right now people who are trying to to find homes to rent to find homes to buy are really struggling and I you know I get emails Facebook you know conversations constantly happening where people are unable to to find affordable places to live in this community and I don't we aren't able to prevent people from building on these kinds of sites um you know I I think that a piece of land this close to the city is going to get developed and so it feels like a much better use of our influence to bring that land into the city to ensure that we're not you know that people aren't digging a whole bunch of septic fields which we know are much less sustainable than just being on a city sewer system um and that we're preserving as much open spaces we can on these kinds of sites ultimately you know it's just like our our ability to to really get what we want is is so limited and so we're having to make choices between you know a house between housing which we really need um and and the preservation of these kinds of areas which is also really important and I think it's you know they're just they're just really hard decisions but for me I feel like the housing shortage in this community is at is at is so bad it is getting worse I mean I feel like it's getting worse um all the time and so I feel like I really need to prioritize getting additional housing especially when we can you know we have the opportunity for 100 townhouses that will be affordable to folks at 80 to 100 percent of AMI which is you know really really hard to find right now um out on the site as opposed to one acre lots where the houses are going to be much larger and much more expensive um and people are going to have to provide their own infrastructure so that's just my general thoughts on where we're at this you know this keeps coming up we're going to just keep having this conversation about how we you know develop these outlying areas um and I really wish that we had more developers who were excited about doing um denser infill projects in the city we also have you know a lot of barriers to doing that kind of work right now especially affordably um and for and providing affordable housing people who want to build affordable infill housing um are having a lot of struggles doing that even though we've passed regulations to try to make it easier and I think we need to continue to do things to try to make it easier for people to do infill and denser housing um in this inner city but I I just worry that turning but by refusing to allow development like this we're just making our housing crisis worse and that feels to me like the most urgent crisis um right now thank you thank you I also want to um you know I don't like to speak twice on these things when I'm going to I also want to be the ones that claims the uh if there's a tree hugger mantle to be claimed I want to claim it for the conservation subdivision and not for the one acre lot okay there I've said my piece uh council member Freeman thank you mr mayor I I really appreciate um mayor pro tem's comments I I can agree on a lot of those areas I think the one question that just raises up for me I just want to I was trying to gauge in my mind how many acres are Northgate mall right now if anyone could share that that would be helpful give us just a minute and we'll we'll look at that thank you and I'm just thinking about how much engagement that the community has been able to give and being involved in that project and just acknowledging how as we develop our city we talk about equitable engagement but we're not walking that walk when we're talking about new developments coming in and planning a city the size of 118 acres and so I'm mindful that the shortage of housing is great but I think I'm even more mindful that the people closest and proximate to the issue should be involved in the conversation at the very least and also just note that there are there are a lot of developers of color who have been interested in developing infill in the downtown area and within the city limits and I know that there's been some concern about the approvals and non approvals and I would love to get feedback on on that comment because I was concerned that there was a missed some input even I'm getting misinformation or may a protein has misinformation and I just want to make sure we're clear on the level of engagement that you're getting from developers on infill and then also just noting that urban sprawl is urban sprawl no matter how you swish it up with how you feel about things I think that it's important to preserve the open space and to actually have environmental protections but those things are not in place because we haven't updated our comp plan and I just note that our process all of the things that need to be done thank you so about 50 acres and just acknowledging that that's half let more than half of the project that we're talking about today and the developer coming in with an annexation may move forward may but the opportunity to send the message to developers that we need to have more community engagement in these processes is more important to me than just developing housing because the people who actually end up in that housing um based on the needs of the residents in this community need to be at the table in that conversation thank you thank you councilmember councilmember melton thank you mr mayor and once again I think the way this discussion has proceeded tonight is is why you should hang out with people smarter than you and just be quiet sometime and just listen um this has really been helpful um I uh I I appreciate all of my colleagues comments I appreciate uh deeply uh council reese's uh comments and and also the reminder that we're a deliberative body we make decisions um and I'm really I'm really struck by the mayor pro tem's uh comments uh tonight if I I'm going to support the development if I thought that we could guarantee that you know this piece of land would remain pristine and unmolested in perpetuity um that would be one thing for me but but I know that's not going to happen so the question for me is what's the best outcome uh given you know what's before us it's interesting it just kind of harkens back to what was behind my question about the resolution from the planning commission on this space this seems like a pretty straightforward vote right direct translation nobody's asking for any rezoning but yet we've managed to come up with nuance and and issues even in a direct translation which is precisely my point about the planning commission you know not shying away when something seems straightforward to to opine on things we'll we'll find something to talk about that's a good thing we're a deliberative body that's not a I don't mean that in any purgerative sense I mean it so I am I am persuaded uh by the mayor pro tem's uh offerings on on what would be the best outcome in use for this land um I see no way in keeping it the way it is something's going to happen out there and I prefer um sewer and water rather than septic uh tanks out there um septic and wells so so I will be supporting it I I you know it's a direct translation if the if they want to come back and try and do the the remix and switch it up then we can have a different conversation uh with that point but but I will be uh supporting the uh this proposal tonight thank you mr mayor thank you colleagues for for helping thank you very much council member council member freelon yes um I will also be supporting this um uh yeah I heard the I heard laurax when charlie said uh environmentalism and then but you know it's a great point that um you know uh we can't we can't keep it pristine and untouched um we've been getting a lot of emails at a north term about the same issue and I know we're going to talk about that in the today and in the weeks to come but really yeah the price thing you know single family houses versus a lower um cost product uh for seems like you know it's kind of six in one hand and that gives the yes vote a little bit of a bump to me all other things being equal ish uh so I will be supporting this as well thanks I like you're equal ish all right colleagues um I think we've all had our say I was planning to make have that all happen after the motion but you wouldn't let me uh so we're going to now now I'll now go back and if I can uh pull this up here and uh as for a motion to adopt an ordinance annexing triple crown into the city of Durham effective April 30th 2021 to authorize the city manager to enter into utility extension agreement with on our carolinas LLC move is red seconded moved by councilmember middleton seconded by councilmember freelon madame clerk will you please call the roll mere shul aye mere pro tem johnson aye and some member caballero no councilmember freelon aye and some member freeman may councilmember middleton aye and some member east I don't know thank you thank you very much madam clerk uh the eyes have it four to three uh I'll now accept a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the udo by taking property out of the residential rural our residential suburban 20 rs and falls jordan lake watershed protection over la district b fjb county jurisdiction and establishing the same as residential rr residential suburban 20 rs 20 and falls jordan lake watershed protection of relay district b fjb city jurisdiction move is red second madam clerk will you please call the roll mere shul aye mere pro tem johnson aye and some member caballero no councilmember freelon aye and some member freeman no and some member middleton I vote aye councilmember reese no thank you madam clerk and the motion passes four to three and now we'll need the motion to pursue to approve the consistency statement move to approve consistency second it's been moved by councilmember middleton seconded by councilmember freelon that we approve the consistency statement madame clerk will you please call the roll mere shul aye mere pro tem johnson aye and some member caballero no councilmember freelon aye and some member freeman no and some member middleton I vote aye and some member reese no thank you madam clerk the motion passes four to three I want to thank mr car test for being here today and raising the issues that he did I want to thank the applicant as well and I want to congratulate the applicant but also let them know that we will be observing this development and looking forward to it fulfilling the verbal commitments that you gave us tonight and are on your site plan and thank you so much for being here all right colleagues we're now going to move to item 21 consolidated annexation falls village north and we will first hear the report from staff first hear the report from staff and I see mr culture's with us welcome mr culture thank you mr mayor shul uh dany culture again with the planning department request for a utility extension agreement voluntary annexation future land use map our flume amendment and zoning map change for cases z19 0001 and bdg 19 0005 have been received from jacob anerson for falls village development LLC for 209.19 acres with a proposal for up to 425 single family and townhouse residential units located at 739 baddest road and 117 santi the site is presently zoned residential rule rr is being proposed to be rezoned to plan development residential 2.883 or pdr 2.883 and residential rule with a development plan rrd the area to be rezoned to pdr is located within the suburban development here and into the falls jordan watershed protection district b or fjb and the area to be rezoned rrd is located in the rural development tier and falls jordan watershed protection district a or fjb the site is designated very low density residential and recreation open space on the future land use map or flume the request for low density residential designation at less than four dwelling units per acre in the pdr zoning would exceed the current flume designation of very low density residential which is two units per acre or less and is inconsistent with the designated future land if the proposed zoning is approved the flume would be re-designated to low density residential only for the pdr portion of development to ensure consistency with the zoning and this request would become effective on april 30th 2021 the planning commission recommended approval at their january 12th 2021 meeting by vote of 12 to 0 there are three motions required to approve this item to adopt a ordinance annexing falls village north and authorize the city manager to enter into the utility extension agreement falls village development llc number two to adopt an ordinance for the rezoning and map amend the future land use map and motion number three to adopt a consistency statement thank you very much staff and the applicant team available for any questions thank you very much mr culture colleagues you have heard the presentation from staff i'm going to first going to ask if there are any questions for staff by members of the council all right seeing none then i'll ask uh we'll hear from the um folks here who have signed up to speak on this item mr bob's unwalt and mr jacob anderson are the two that i see for this item but let me check in the attendees and let me ask if there any attendees who would like to speak on this item i did not mention if you could please let us know in the chat or if you could um if you could please let us know in the chat or if you could please raise your virtual hand i don't see any and so now i'm going to move to um to hear from the folks who are here to speak on this item uh mr zumbwalt are you available to be heard yes can you hear me okay yes are you and mr anderson both speaking on this item tonight it'll just be me jacob's really here just to answer any questions all right uh and i see mr curtis is also uh saying mr curtis uh would like to also speak in opposition to this item it looks like mr um mr zumbwalt uh how much time will you need for your presentation that's about eight minutes all right thank you very much uh thank you and and let me just also see ronald stevenson applicant for the item is our mr mr stevenson and mr anderson planning to speak as well only if there's questions all right thank you all right mr zumbwalt uh welcome we're glad to have you here tonight thank you uh dany do you mind pulling up the powerpoint or the presentation certainly uh i'll do that just a second thank you great thank you mr zumbwalt before you get started i'm going to ask the mayor pro tem to preside at this item madame mayor pro tem would you mind uh presiding at this item sure thank you very much no problem everybody see that okay yep we can see it all right great well good evening um mr mayor mayor pro tem and members of the city council um as i said my name is bob zumbwalt i'm a licensed landscape architect and i'm in charge of design at alliance group my office is 7208 falls of noose road and raleigh and i am thrilled to be here tonight to uh see you guys um i'm joined by jacob anderson the owner of alliance group and ronald stevenson from uh ramy camp we are excited to present this case to you tonight we've been working hard to create a quality community that responds to the principles that are important to the city of durham and the council implements high quality sustainable design practices and responds to the community's need for diverse multi-generational and attainable housing choices as danie mentioned we were thrilled to have received a unanimous approved recommendation for approval from the planning commission back in january and i must say it was encouraging to read their comments i enjoyed that um next slide please danie all right i'd like to to start um by just addressing the community's proximity to the path of development in the area this map here um we created to shows the overall area and how growth in this quadrant continues to expand in an orderly fashion from the south and west as utilities are upgraded in the basin and you can see the orange colors are developed properties the purple are entitled properties and then the green are things that are currently in the review process i think one of them was triple crown that was just approved and you can see where the searls um basin pump station is located you know the next slide danie when we zoom in uh on fall's village you can see how close it is to other developments in the area shown in orange and purple in the blow up at the bottom you can also see it's less than a mile from the ravenstone shopping center which contains a grocery store two banks anytime fitness a dentist gas station auto parts multiple restaurants and three churches this proximity to services is something many larger communities in the area don't have the benefit of it's also the reason we believe this community is contiguous to other existing and planned developments in the area you go the next one danie falls village north shown here in yellow is immediately adjacent to the falls village public golf course community this approved community will consist of 378 homes with a golf course clubhouse and over 175 acres of open space if approved these combined communities under common ownership will provide a diverse multi-generational blend of housing types with miles of connected sidewalks and trails over 257 acres of open space and a great recreational amenity in the form of a beautiful and affordable public golf course next slide i'd like now to just touch on age qualified housing with supply diminishing in our market our region has a growing need for active adult communities according to a market study conducted in november of 2018 55 plus adults represent the fastest growing demographic in the triangle 55 plus adults currently make up 25 percent of households and are expected to add approximately 45 000 new households over the next five years we had this study updated back in january before the planning commission and that study further stated that durin county alone has a potential demand for 600 new 55 and over homes per year over the next five years with virtually no impacts to schools or traffic property tax revenues generated within this community could be redirected to other areas within the durham city that have greater needs 55 plus communities also have a positive and measurable impact through their ability to spur on other types of development in the vicinity we saw this at delweb arbors with the expansion of commercial and medical in the briar creek area we believe this community could be the catalyst for similar development and redevelopment along the 98 corridor next slide housing choices at the combined falls village communities would include both 55 and older and traditional homes on varying lot sizes as well as townhomes which provide a smaller more attainable housing option falls village will provide a buyer the ability to age in place or even live near an older relative the desires the lifestyle it comes with a fully maintained community when combined these communities offer a total of 803 units uh yes 803 units 340 which would be restricted to age over 55 leaving 463 or 58 percent of the overall project as traditional lots next slide and i just want to take a minute to summarize some of the key commitments associated with the community this community is 425 total units maximum in accordance with federal regulations a minimum of 340 of those have to be 55 and older a maximum of 85 could be traditional it also will provide diverse and more attainable housing choices by us limiting 50 of the units will have to be townhomes or small lots and 50 of townhomes will have to be alley loaded which would create a varied and more attractive streetscape that fosters community interaction this community would also have over 82 acres of open space and then all homes would be located within 1300 feet of an open space feature which is about a five minute walk the udo would require it within 2600 feet so that's about doubling the udo requirement we've also committed to a minimum of 4 000 feet of connected walking trails this is in addition to sidewalks these trails would link a series of pocket parks and open space areas in the community and then we've also committed that solar panels could not be precluded within the community and then finally the multi the project will offer a really unique multi-generational housing opportunity that's not available anywhere in the community the appearance of the homes is also vital to creating lasting community with that in mind we're offering some architectural commitments related to style material and color compatibility varied townhome roof lines facades with a minimum percentage of brick stone and cultured stone or stucco no vinyl siding five foot wide porches decks and patios and decorative garage doors next slide now I want to shift gears just for a second and talk about transportation issues while retirement communities have little or no impact on peak hour traffic we want falls village to make a positive impact on the surrounding community with that said we did prepare a traffic study and have worked with transportation to offer substantial improvements at the following locations full frontage widening of baptist road including bike lanes and sidewalks turn lanes at site driveways and then intersection improvements you can see on the slide there at the intersection of highway 98 and baptist and highway 98 and camp we will be installing traffic signals the signalization of baptist and highway 98 will greatly aid in the safe ingress egress of school buses onto highway 98 from neo mill school even though these improvements are not required we believe the community as a whole will benefit from them so we're committing to their construction at an estimated cost of $1.5 million we believe these commitments ensure a community that is walkable and connected diverse multi-generational and more attainable but we are also pleased to offer $100,000 contribution to the dedicated Durham Durham's dedicated housing fund this project's been in the approval process for almost two years while we'd love to have been here much sooner we are we're grateful to be here we believe the extra time it took working with the planning commission and listening to your concerns on many other cases has resulted in a well-rounded and thoughtfully designed community with that I'm done I really thank you for your time and we're here if you have any questions thank you um are there any other folks from the development team who wish to speak at this time no I think we're good thank you very much and everyone who's a proponent is with the team is that correct that's right okay um so we have one opponent Mr. Cartes um and they're the proponent took nine minutes so you have the right to also take up to nine minutes to speak good evening guys this is a my comments remain the same right so we just we just approved uh close to 250 homes right and said well traffic's minimal and now we have 800 more homes on the same roads and say traffic's minimal that impaired scream the infrastructure is not in this area to support this many homes but that's that's the basis of my rejection the plans look wonderful I'm sure it'll be very nice it's just the infrastructure is not here that's all I have thank you Mr. Cartes um if anyone from the development team would like to respond you can take a minute to do that sure this is Bob Zumwalt um with Alliance um just a couple things that make this different we are committing to making substantial improvements and we are an age restricted community that has zero peak hour trips so that that's the difference between most of these communities you're seeing thank you very much thank you um all right are there any questions um or comments from my members of the council council member kind of here yeah I just had a real quick question for the applicant for the neighbors on santi road will they be able to access the it's a public golf course but is the open space in the neighborhood also available to the public yes thank you and then I know you all had neighborhood meetings I was just curious how many neighborhood meetings you had I'm glad you asked um the community engagement on this project has been pretty significant we had I believe four neighborhood meetings total um we've had countless calls in interaction with neighbors who are looking for community services who are looking for extended services who are looking for parks and open space and recreation as you mentioned we've also had significant community interaction and engagement with neil middle school um related to um just the community engagement and um relationship with them as the community is built and how we interact with community gardens farms um and and just ways to contribute to making their school better thank you thank you council member freeman thank you my question is specific to staff I just wanted to ask how how I guess how many of these elements and commitments would be trackable and actually like um accessible or kind of like you'd be able to create an assessment based on the commitments that have been made uh Danny calls for the planning department uh they are all all these commitments have to be uh shown on the site plan the age restricted uh commitments have to be tracked I believe on a yearly basis I can have uh am I planning directors nodding yes yes those actually uh I believe and I believe they may have to have an annual report on that if I'm not mistaken uh to to uh confirm the age restriction requirements on those but all of these uh all these uh commitments are tracked the especially in the transportation commitments have timing mechanisms as well but all of these commitments will be tracked through the site plan process uh and they are are they have uh again uh timing mechanisms for how they have to be implemented through uh co's or building permits uh or or other mechanisms thank you thanks y'all um sarah did you want to jump no she's done okay you're good okay uh other questions by members of the council or comments we also have the a resident who's indicated that she'd like to speak um but I'm not sure um this item is whether you're a proponent or an opponent miss Wyatt do you know I'm sorry mayor pro tem I do not know but I do know that she was requesting to speak maybe diana can make her available and then she can let us know sure thank you um council members I just wanted to ask the um developer about the 55 and older designation it has fair housing implications and I just wanted to understand are the 55 and older are these um going to be for um purchase or are there going to be some rental um are they town homes or are are we talking about single family homes and um how they're how they're gonna um I see that they're um meeting the 20 percent requirement for families but um um what are their um I just want to make sure they understand that the fair housing act requires um gives them the ability to exempt families with children from that 55 plus but all other protected classes are um allowed to to live there and um and that includes handicapped persons who are under um 55 in those units is the developer aware that that's my question okay thank you miss adams um I the developer can respond to that please council member johnson we're aware of the federal federal housing act and all the requirements surrounded by it and um are willing to meet those and exceed those thank you appreciate that um are there any other comments by members of the council i'll head back to council member freeman thank you just a follow-up acknowledging um miss stella adams wonderful question and just acknowledging that in the protected class that um lgbtq lgbtq um plus folks are not included including the trans and would you be willing include that as well in your protected class as you note council member freeman i have uh no issue i don't believe that would be any problem whatsoever thank you uh other questions by members of the council for the applicants or staff well i just i'll just say that i think the this is uh the developer's gone way above and beyond and unless every single area i can think of to make this development work and i'm very appreciative of it uh this is exceptional uh listening over a number of years after uh their initial rejection uh and uh i'm very grateful for that thank you mr mayor uh council member reese is this the time when we're going to talk about what we want to do yes so we should close the public hearing great so i will close the public hearing the matter is now back before the council uh council member reese are you ready to make the motion um yeah we have to talk about it a little more after that that'd be awesome sure uh i'll make whatever motion i'm supposed to make then i'll have let's see exactly what that's supposed to be um so our first you got it motion to adopt an ordinance annexing falls village north into the city of durham effective april 30th 2021 and to authorize the city manager into into utility extension agreement with falls village development llc second council member all right so now uh any comments or questions of emotion council member reese thank you so much for putting on the matter mayor pro tem very very kind of you um i'll be supporting this particular measure tonight um and i want to just be clear about why and why this is very different from the matter that we just heard um this is a project as the mayor alluded to uh that has been ongoing for a number of years and the progress that's been made on the proposal that's in front of us tonight is truly remarkable um and uh i want to thank the folks at the planning commission for laying out exactly why especially uh commissioners buzzbee and miller who laid out a very clear detail why this proposal makes a lot of sense for this particular location i think part of it is the the the carving out of the top want to say third i guess of the property that is nearest the most environmentally sensitive areas of this particular property um and putting that and not developing that um i think it's hugely important the the the design commitments that a commissioner miller always likes to highlight um are actually important to me as well um and those make this not the kind of sprawl development that you see in a lot of places that the same house like squashed up against each other for you know rows rows rows of these that's not what you're going to see here which i think is really important for the lived experiences of the folks that are in this neighborhood that are going to be in this neighborhood um and as councilmember calviero sussed out with her question the amenities that are on this site in terms of open space and trails are going to be available to the general public um and so that in combination with the with the fact that that a significant portion of these homes will be reserved for um our older neighbors this is obviously something that we're going to have a continued need for as we go forward um and the more that we can make sure that we have that housing stock available for folks um it's all that that's really great the other brief comment i wanted to make is that i feel like i've come a long way on the city council about about road improvements um in my first i don't want to say three or four months in the council we considered um a rezoning on farrington road um that ultimately passed the council four to three um and my colleague uh former councilmember eddie davis had a good conversation with me about that project before we met and um his vote was uh what really put his vote for yes over the over the line uh was the tremendous road improvements that the developer on farrington road um was willing to put on that intersection of highway 54 and farrington road which desperately needed it and probably and and is now now that they've built it out actually not as horrible especially coming out of farrington road onto 54 um and so now i'm in a position to say that of all this it's probably the road improvements that i find most appealing probably because this council i suspect is going to continue to approve developments out here we're going to continue to see more cars out there the more improvements that we see on the roadway uh the the more that will the bad experience will be better for the folks that live there um there's a lot more i could say but my kids are here to say goodnight to me and i'll just be voting yes thank you mr mayor thank you council member uh councilmember freeman and then mayor shul thank you mayor pro tem i appreciate following up with councilmember reese's comments and including the road improvement that aspect is also been important i think i've had the privilege of serving on the planning commission prior to joining the council and that has made my stance and and these votes very different and so i appreciate the the difference and making sure that folks understand that even though this is 204 acres that you can see the difference and how with community engagement noting the four meetings in the community and then also with the planning commission how a process could actually shift and actually be more equitable in ways that actually reflect our community and so i noted the the fact that they even included solar panels walkability and spent an additional two years that i'm certain they did not intend on spending um shows that this is a developer that we want in our community and so i look forward to supporting this with a vote tonight and i also hope that this developer will look to develop other areas thank you thank you councilmember mr mayor thank you i did forget one thing and um that i wanted to to add so the the one of the uh one of the uh commitments is that they won't prohibit solar panels let me just say i was shocked to know that you could prohibit solar panels and i hope that in our uh yeah we need to change that and so uh let me just i was that was the i i'm and yeah so um i hope that our planning department and whoever needs to think about that will think about that for us because i i don't think that that would i don't think this council wants to prohibit wants to allow anybody to prohibit solar panels thank you mr mayor i think you got a bunch of head nods for that one miss young i just want to chime in and let everyone know that there are pending bills in both the house and senate that would prohibit um hoas from being able to restrict um folks from having solar panels so there's nothing in our ordinance but um i think there's potentially some positive movement um from the general assembly to to help us on the private covenant side thank you that's great to hear any other comments by council members all right so we have already our motion in our second so we just need our clerk to please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi mr river middleton i vote i it's member reese hi thank you thank you madam clerk um we need another motion to adopt an ordinance amending the udo by taking property out of the residential world falls jake falls jordan lake watershed protection district county jurisdiction and establishing the same as plan development residential pdr 2.883 one second madam clerk please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi member middleton i vote i councilmember reese hi thank you thank you madam clerk and our final motion is to adopt a consistency statement so moved second moved by uh councilmember freelon seconded by councilmember freeman madam clerk would you please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi it's member middleton i vote uh reese hi thank you madam clerk um thank you colleagues so we are just after nine o'clock uh so we're gonna go ahead and take our five minute closed captioning break um so we'll see you all back here at nine ten thank you everybody thank you thank you all all right it is nine ten we are going to move on to our next agenda item which is item 22 zoning map change chandler run and we are ready for the staff report great thank you madam mayor pretend johnson uh and honorable council members alexander kale here with the planning department tonight i'm going to give dany culture a little bit of a break uh we did receive a request to rezone um from tony wittaker of civil consultants and this is on behalf of simlin llc this pre-zoning proposal is to change the zoning designation of about 25 acres of land located between chandler road and clayton road uh the existing conditions of this assembled site are relatively unique the eastern portion of the assembled parcel parcels which is also known as the greenway subdivision uh was originally planted as 53 townhome lots which is essentially the same area which is previously zoned for 120 multifamily units and then the western portion of the assembled site also known as arborstone subdivision was planted as 31 single family lots this assembled 87 parcel site is presently zoned pdr 8.5 and residential suburban 10 and residential suburban 8 and the applicant proposes to change this designation to a pdr 3.118 the development plan associated with this request commits to a maximum of 66 single family detached residential dwelling units um and allowed accessory units the properties are designated low density residential on the future land use map at four dwelling units an acre or less which is consistent with the rezoning request uh the planning commission by a vote of 13 to 0 at their february 9th 2021 meeting did recommend approval of this request this is a case where the planning commission initially continued the case and asked the applicant to go back to the community to work with them to better understand their needs and make the project stronger staff has recommended approval based on criteria that you can find in the staff report as a reminder there are two motions required for this application first is a motion to approve the zoning ordinance itself the second motion is to approve the consistency statement we want to thank you very much staff and the applicant are both here this evening and available for any questions thank you so much mr cahill um this is a public hearing item so i'm going to declare the public hearing open um and we have several people signed up to speak um who i believe they're all proponents okay um thank you madam clerk who are all proponents of the item um y'all can you let me know how much time you think you need uh this is randy herman attorney from the law firm ba folk um i'm i would say about five minutes or so um i'll be doing the main presentation uh tony whittaker our engineer is available and also craig morrison uh from simmer on homes if you have any questions but otherwise i'll be the one speaking okay thank you mr herman you can go ahead with your presentation thank you and i have a couple slides alex has those um so this is an unusual project in Durham because we are asking for uh down zoning um at least in part uh but as we go through this site i think you'll understand why it makes sense in this case uh we can go to the next slide to start with the uh builder on this project is simmer on homes who probably all are are familiar with them but just as a reminder simmer on's a local builder founded in 1982 and based in Durham um they build throughout the triangle and have constructed several projects in Durham um and they're known for reasonably priced moderately priced homes um but they managed to incorporate a lot of environmental environmentally responsible um building practices green building practices in those homes uh without raising them to an unreasonable price um next slide please so again it's about 25 acres in this project between chandler road and clayton road this is right off of 98 but um significantly further in toward the city than some of the projects we've been talking about earlier tonight this is between uh 70 and mineral springs if we can go to the next slide this shows the location of the subject property so again just north of 98 there again about halfway between mineral springs and 70 and as you can see the property and as alex mentioned it's currently subdivided for a combination of single family homes and town home units but if we can go to the next slide you can see on the current conditions that none of those units actually exist they are paper lots only and paper roads only the site is right now completely forested and basically there's a history to the site which i won't spend too much time on but um the eastern half or so was originally zoned for a multifamily development but way way back in the 70s that project obviously was never built um much later the property was planted for town home lots as you can see here um but if we can go uh let's see if we can go to the next slide um you can see that the the part shown in purple on this slide is what was originally intended to be the multifamily um the other uh kind of orangish and peachish colors are currently zoned for single family and if we can go to the next slide uh let's skip that one for a minute and go uh one more because i want to show so uh currently um the the original multifamily zoning and the town home plating were both done years ago before we had um uh the current kind of flood zone protections and environmental protections in the city code that we have now and so some of those lots quite a few of those town home lots that were planted are actually in the flood zone and are currently unbuildable and so basically the intent of this rezoning is to rationalize all these different uh zoning um designations that are currently on the property to make all the property under the same zoning designation in a way that makes sense allows something actually to be built here and also makes it more uh more like the surrounding neighborhoods and not incompatible with those uh neighborhoods uh if we can go back one real quick i want to show on the future land use map um again uh the most of this property is designated as low-density residential a significant portion on the eastern end where the flood zone is located is designated as recreation and open space and all of that property will remain undeveloped uh and in fact when we get to the commitments you'll see that uh in addition to the required open space there will be um quite a bit of additional open space that's going to be designated as undeveloped on this property so i think in the end we'll end up with quite a bit of recreation space on the property uh if you can go forward two real quick there we go um so the way this fits within the future land use map and the comprehensive plan the idea is to provide significant home ownership opportunities as we all know there is a housing shortage in the city of Durham and i think particularly in this area um in the suburban tier not in the city but also not out you know in the uh excerpt and edges where most of the new development is going on this is an area that significant that needs a significant amount of housing and this is a track that has land available that could be built for housing if we can just get the zoning to a rational state where we can actually be allowed to build something and so that's basically the idea and again also to protect the flood plain from inappropriate development if we can go to the next slide this shows the development plan so all of those hatched and dotted and dashed areas on the eastern end of the property i'll all kind of overlay each other but the overall effect of all of them is to prevent development from that whole eastern area there's a little bit of developable land to the east of the flood plain but that also is not going to be developed it doesn't make any sense to develop it because you would have to cross the stream and so that all is going to be allowed to remain vacant as well and then on the remaining developable portion of the property the intent is to subdivide it into uh 66 single family homes um when we initially appeared before planning commission uh there were some neighbors that appeared and asked to um if we could provide more specificity on what exactly is going to be developed and if we can go to the next slide that's how we came to these tax commitments and also the design commitments that we'll see on the following slide in just a minute but again the the neighbors wanted to have it restricted to single family detached and allowed accessory use uses so we provided that commitment in order to give them that certainty again we're going to provide four acres of undisturbed area in addition to the required open space and that's on a total track that's only 24 acres that's a pretty significant amount of property um and also because we believe that that um that housing affordability isn't an important factor in the city um again these will be market rate homes um but we are also going to provide a contribution to the city's dedicated housing fund um and if we can go to the last slide real quick uh design commitments um uh this was at the request of planning commission that wanted to see more certainty as to the type of homes that would be built and so we provided them with a series of design commitments um giving a sense of what the homes would be like um again uh we believe these will be uh modestly priced homes uh that will be similar to the neighborhoods that surround it and provide again additional 66 homes um in this kind of inner suburban part of the city um where uh homes are needed um if any members of council have any questions we're happy to answer them but otherwise that is all we have thank you mr herman um so we can move to questions from council members we have no opponents questions or comments all right so we can go ahead and close the public hearing y'all stop me if i'm doing any of this wrong i'm going to declare the public council member milton always likes it when you preside every time you do he who hurt you mr mayor who hurt you do you want to ask if there's anyone in attendance who might want to speak first and i would be the only suggestion sure is there anyone who would like to speak our clerk has informed me there is not but if there's anyone who's changed their mind now's your moment all right great so i'm gonna declare the public hearing closed and the matter is now before the council council member rice thank you madam mayor pro tim and night i just say you're doing a spectacular job residing okay so thank you um i'm i'm going to be voting what about chop liver did someone speak i couldn't quite tell at least whole liver not chopped up not chopped up boy we're we're punching it's only 923 wow i'm gonna be supporting this i hope the rest of you will as well um this is a very complicated history i can't remember having seen anything quite like this before in my time in the council council member freeman may have seen something like this in the planning commission but i have not um and uh the the plan that we've got in front of us does the one thing i really wanted to happen with this project which is protect the environmentally sensitive portion of this lot of this particular parcel um assemblage whatever uh from development and this does that um and i'm excited to see also for a project that like this to see these kinds of of design commitments is also really encouraging as well but i think the thing that is most exciting to me is that um because of the of what happened at the planning commission uh the proponent or the applicant um engaged in a real conversation with their neighbors uh about about the concerns that they had um really glad to see uh that's one of the great things our planning commission can do in a situation like this is bring folks together and so you know you've got some folks out here that have real questions um why don't we pause and let y'all talk about it and so really great so grateful to the applicant for taking that additional step after the first planning commission meeting planning commission obviously uh rewarded them for that and for the fact that that this is a thing that actually needs to happen because the the current zoning makes absolutely no sense that or the current layout and planning makes no sense at all of what we want to do out there so i'll be supporting this thank you madam mayor pro temp thank you council member other comments council member freeman thank you i think uh i'm just thinking specifically around in the past the one case that comes to mind i don't want to say the developer's name because i don't think it came to flourishing and i i too am very excited about the way in which some of these uh zoning map changes have been coming forward in a very well thought out way i think it's proven that over the last seven years how impactful um the work has been from the planning commission from commissioners and themselves you know engaging in a different way and so i i'm very supportive of this and i look forward to so actually making the motion when you ready somewhat less productive since you left but still pretty good oh no they're really good now they're phenomenal any other comments council member cabillera i realized the question asked the applicant this while we were asking them questions i was just out of curiosity having driven the site just noting the the demographics of the street was was curious about um what what the neighborhood outreach um what um what demographics of neighbors um were you able to reach out to um i actually don't know the answer to that question because it was all done remotely so i never saw anybody's face but we did get comments from several neighbors both directly across from chandler directly across chandler and also from some of the other neighborhoods farther up chandler um and uh none particularly negative just questions that they wanted to know and have a better understanding what the project would look like thank you council member i also got a question mr herman could you um let us know why you all decided against um a higher density development at this site townhomes or duplexes for example this seems like a place that would support more residential density on the portion that you're developing leaving the environmentally sensitive area alone um yes so when we initially came before planning commission we were keeping open the possibility of duplexes or townhomes but both planning commission and the neighbors felt like it was too uncertain to get behind the project without knowing for a certain what kind of units would be there um and because of the um because it's a pdr of course we have to set the maximum number of units so we couldn't leave it totally open so we had a conversation uh with the developer and with neighbors and since all the surrounding neighborhoods are a single family that seemed to make the most sense and that was ended what we ended up going with um so you know if it were 66 townhomes you still would have the same density overall um and uh and we felt like we wanted to honor the wishes of the neighbors who wanted to see it be single family thank you that's helpful um just want to point out that this is again another situation where the desires of neighbors are in conflict with the city's needs overall for additional housing and for higher density less expensive housing and that that's something we're going to have to continue to grapple with any other comments or thoughts from members of the council councilmember free one yeah thank you uh mayor protem i noticed the um i'm still you know becoming familiar with uh the tax commitments and proffers and things like that i noticed the $5,000 commitment to the affordable housing fund i don't know if it was just me but does that is that low does that seem to that strike anyone else is low i don't know and i know we that's not a basis for the decision i'm just kind of curious for what the standard is for a development of this size perhaps a completely inappropriate question i'm looking at steve's expression like we're always happy for more yeah mr herman would would you like to consider a higher profit for our affordable housing fund well i think i think the main thing to keep in mind is that unlike some of the other projects that you've been seeing recently this is only 66 homes it's not several hundred homes and so we try and think of it in terms of scale you know basically although we didn't do it this way um thinking about something like 150 200 per home uh and so that's how generally how we come to um a number but you know there there's no specific formula for it of course because it's not it's not something that the city requires but it generally scales to the number of homes sure so $150 per home for 66 homes would be $9,900 and they all have offered $5,000 um that was the offer that um basically we we talked to members of planning commission um and uh that seemed to them to be a reasonable amount and so that's what we went with all right thank you any other comments uh so i believe we are ready for motion and the motion is to adopt an ordinance amending the UDO by taking property out of the residential suburban 8 residential suburban 10 and pdr 8.5 and establishing the same as pdr 3.118 so move second moved by council member freeman seconded by council member cabillero madame clerk could you call the roll please mere shul hi mere pro tem johnson hi and some member cabillero hi and some member freelon hi hi and some member freeman hi and some member middleton of what i and some member reese hi thank you thank you madame clerk um our second motion is to adopt a consistency statement so move second moved by council member freeman seconded by council member reese um madame clerk would you call the roll please mere shul hi mere pro tem johnson hi and some member cabillero hi and some member freelon hi and some member freeman hi and some member middleton i will die reese hi thank you thank you madame clerk and thank you mr herman and the rest of your team um we are gonna um scoot things around a little bit because our interpreters need to leave and so we're gonna move to item 24 the public hearing on the draft fiscal year 21-22 annual action plan and i will turn that over to ms wolmer khan years for a presentation oh it's mr johnson hello hello hello hello the reginal johnson director of the department of community development greetings mere pro tem mere members of council what i will this is a public hearing on the annual action plan and i will read some statements into the record and then you may begin the purpose of this public hearing is to receive citizens comments on the draft 2021 2022 annual action plan the annual action plan specifies how the city of Durham will address housing and community development needs for the use of the community development block grant cdbg funds home investment partnership program and consortium funds emergency solutions grant esg funds and housing opportunities for persons with aids hopper funds uh for f y 2021 2022 the city expects to receive two million one hundred and seventy one hundred and seven thousand seventy seven dollars in cdbg funds one million one hundred and ninety nine thousand one hundred and sixty one dollars in home consortium funds and one hundred and seventy four thousand three hundred and forty four dollars in esg funds and five hundred and forty two thousand seven hundred and twelve dollars in hopper funds for the u.s from the u.s department of housing and urban development the annual action plan was made available for a public review from march 19 2021 through april 19 2021 notice of this meeting was properly advertised in the herald sun and kipasa newspapers posted in the department's webs on the department's website and also disseminated via a general listserv to interested citizens and stakeholders as the recipient of cdbg home esg and hopper funds the city is required to hold at least two public meetings prior to the submission of the annual action plan previously two public hearings on community needs were held on january fourth and march 1 2021 a summary of comments from all three public hearings along with other written comments received will be included in the final plan in closing on may third 2021 we will ask that the city council vote to approve the 2021 2022 annual action plan for submission to hood by may 15 2021 thank you so much thank you mr johnson um i'll go ahead and declare the public hearing open we have several residents signed up to speak um and i'm just going to go in order of the folks who are on my participants list here on my screen um and each person is going to have three minutes to give us your comments so we're going to go first to iran lorenz are you available hi good evening can you hear me hi we do we hear you thank you so much for being here and you have three minutes hi good evening my name is iran lorenz and my colleague lee gans and i are here representing both city tenants united or bctu and i'm here to implore the city council to listen to the needs of tenants and fund adequate rental relief during this national housing crisis which has been exacerbated by the covid pandemic the national eviction moratorium while it's a good first step only kicks the camp further down the road as it doesn't eliminate the backlog of rent the tenants still owe furthermore many landlords are sidestepping it entirely by claiming causes other than failure to pay rent even when it is about failure to pay rent this has been backed up by observations by duke's civil justice clinic here in durham i also want to bring in my experience from elsewhere because i think it's important for durham to hear about what's happening in other cities facing a housing crisis i've done tenant organizing in another city with a high proportion of renters kansas city missouri i live there from 2016 to 2018 and helped to pass the healthy homes ordinance there which enforces basic health and safety standards for kansas city missouri rental properties kansas city's issues are not that different from durham's and include gentrification and displacement speculation abusive and unaccountable landlords and eviction in fact there have been 2460 evictions filed in durham between the first covid case there on march 12 2020 through the end of march 2021 in early 2019 kansas city's robust tenant organizing led to the formation of the group kc tenants prior to the pandemic based on their tenant organizing kc tenants passed or they produced a people's housing platform and got their city council to pass a tenant bill of rights just since the pandemic thanks to the power of tenants there kansas city has gained a million dollars for a tenants office in city hall a city-wide eviction halt by blocking doorways to the courthouse a land bank sale to help provide homes for those who are unhoused or risk of becoming homeless a requirement that developers in kansas city that get tax incentives include at least 20 affordable units and just last week the kansas city homeless union met with the mayor for four straight days at which point they recognized the union and the homeless that received temporary housing so i hope you can see just from this abbreviated list that kansas city tenants have made huge gains in what they're able to demand from city officials and so i just want to make the point that if elected officials in kansas city can learn to give tenants that much attention and dignity with just a couple years of organizing i think we can do the same in Durham thank you for the opportunity to make these comments thank you our next speaker is lorisa cybull miss cybull are you available to be heard hello hi hi thank you for thank you for being here and you've got three minutes okay and also i'd ask to share my screen but i'll start off by just saying people's alliance housing action team asked you to prioritize keeping people lorisa you're breaking up we can't hear you anymore can you hear me now yes um so starting with tenants to prevent eviction and homelessness with emergency rental assistance particularly to legal aid so that they can help tenants prevent eviction um number two helping homeowners stabilize their taxes so they can keep their homes and number three of a bagtown community to do a plan for development that benefits all and serves as a model to serve people of all incomes with the affordable housing community services and other needs and i have a video it's just two minutes um so share screen and share sound and here there we go hello my name is lorisa cybull and i'm talking with walter best and a neighbor in northeast central drum are you doing walter yes how you're doing angel great thank you i love that yes ma'am so i wanted to talk with you about the long-time homeowner grant program because i know that you've been um using that program and you've been telling your neighbors about it you want to talk about that oh yes ma'am i'm gonna advocate for that program because uh i'd like to speak for some of my neighbors who might not can attend the meeting tonight uh in a lifeline that the city council can help this community uh to be able to have a sound mind at night it will be greatly appreciated because with judification in this pandemic it's economically wrecked my neighborhood because some of us homeowners are paying double taxes you know you got you to feed the kid at home you got to make sure that they are being you know i'm saying school at home you not now in the home got to make sure lunch breakfast and and everything like that some of these people did not see this economic boom that was going to come with the judification and then with the pandemic because some people got to raw peter to pay paul just to bring dinner to the table at night time so i'm asking the city council please give my neighbors and me a lifeline to survive because you might can go to sleep at night time with a clear conscience but some of my neighbors we need help we need help we need help you're wonderful thank you walter yes ma'am all right appreciate all you do take care call me anytime you need anytime you need me because i am a voice for the people who can't speak you can call me anytime you need me that's right we help each other thank you all right all right have a good evening thank you angel thank you take care bye thank you city council and may are for the long-time homeowners grant program that really makes a difference thank you miss nibble and um please communicate our thanks whoops no no worries please communicate our thanks as well um to mr best that was an interesting uh experience that we can do with virtual meetings um that we you know couldn't do in person so that um yeah thank you our next speaker uh will be constants right i believe you're here yes we can hear you thank you for being here tonight you've got three minutes all right good evening how's everybody um good evening mr mayor council members and other city officials um i am constants right and i'm the vice chair of bragg town community association and i'm here to speak um on behalf of our needs here in bragg town as far as the um tax dollars are concerned of i'm a 34-year resident out here in bragg town and in all of my 34 years living in bragg town paying taxes to the city and county of Durham and i have not seen very much if any improvement in my community now big development has come to Durham forcing higher um taxes and increased home prices that are so high that the um average Durham resident cannot afford to purchase a home many residents can barely afford to pay rent but you all already know all of that so i'm just asking that we in bragg town realize that the current comprehensive plan and the ending and a new one along with the new budget is about to be voted on and approved we have worked hard as ambassadors for the city giving and receiving input as to what is needed but um not just wanted but needed in our community and all over Durham as far as underserved communities and um you know under invested communities in in Durham and especially in bragg town uh we need affordable housing out here we're asking for um we've done a lot of work as far as um planning uh trying to plan our own community we want to be able to have input as to what we have out here in our own community um and that would then uh would require funds coming in from this new um the cdb grant all these grants that are coming in so we are asking that you all consider us as a part of that plan we need things such as infrastructure such as sidewalks i'm sure you all got our letters um regarding the sidewalks uh along the major streets we need safe bus stops we need street repairs and um all of these things are needed in bragg town the focus um the focus by your promise will be under um for underrepresented under invested and underserved communities in bragg uh such as bragg town and bragg town fit all of these adjectives because we have like i said have not had nothing uh invested in our community please keep your promise prioritize bragg town and communities like ours in your annual budget and in the annual action plan give us what we need and what we have um paid through our years for in taxes it from from our communities and thank you for listening thank you for your comments our next speaker is howard moctinger thank you for being here yeah we can hear you thank you for being here we got three minutes thank you um i'm a former member of the racial equity task force and i served on its housing subcommittee and reading the reports i had certain things i wished for and wondered about the first thing i wished for was a narrative around housing which would actually describe the scale of the housing problem the city faces so that with some understanding of what the scale is we could maybe realistically judge the adequacy of the city's response absent that it's hard to tell um i'm also wondering how the city's preparing for the post moratorium period uh when other speakers have pointed out accumulated rents will come due and which the current as everyone's calling it housing crisis is likely to become pounded also the city talks about community engagement but when where the where is the plan to engage the most directly impacted the city seems to rely on traditional methods of outreach how successful have they been what has been the participation of those most directly impacted including renters how much are they involved in policy formulation and not just merely to ratify an already form formulated policy real community outreach requires creativity and support when the task force and when we went around with our report we encountered a great deal of distrust of city efforts in communities around town does the city recognize this as a problem and how does it over how does it plan to overcome this kind of distrust and then how are we ensuring that the people in dha's housing that's being refurbished according to the plan are rehoused locally and can return to their previous living spaces that's a concern i've heard from me then how can the city rein in gentrification people talk about it but i haven't seen any plans how is development being tracked has the city considered the use of its taxing power to provide negative consequences for those involved in real estate speculation some ideas for an anti-speculation policy including the land value uplift tax a flipping tax an out of state transaction tax a blight and vacancy tax an anti buy rehab re-finance repeat law that many speculators use some of these ideas have been tried in other places around the world and even in the us i and others would be glad to provide elaboration of those ideas if people are interested and finally it seems that adequate resources are not available to adequately confront the scale of the housing crisis how does the city plan to advocate for sufficient resources thank you for your time thank you for your comments our next speaker will be mario phason this phason are you available to be heard yes i'm here thank you for being here tonight you got and you also have three minutes okay well hello everybody i'm extremely tired i don't know how y'all do this but i i i stayed up to support uh brattown and uh i do that because i think that brattown is a historically uh black township that has a lot of history that we don't want to lose and uh residents in there that have contributed as we heard earlier so much to our community that we should not forget uh our history and how we we got where we're at and not everybody has that opportunity to preserve the history so not only did brattown benefit from it but as a community we all benefit from it because we we should always remember how and how we got here and uh and uh with the different things like gentrification erasing everything uh we need to preserve places like brattown it's it's it's so very important because uh it it's it's a healing for the whole community when you help part of the community that helps the whole community so i'm here to support brattown we need funding uh so that they can uh try and develop a model plan for neighborhoods and that benefits everybody not just uh the few and this is what the problem is as uh was spoken earlier is that it's not getting to the people that really need it and that deserve it and have been waiting for it so uh listen to the voices of the people that are saying uh they're being left out and i i understand what that feels like but we you know we have to keep pushing for what uh will benefit the whole community and that's why i stayed up late with you guys because i i want to support brattown i think it's very important that we do that and i will be with them until we push through this because it's it's something that is very important um and we want you to understand that and know that we we feel that way about it so i appreciate y'all listening and i hope that uh we will be able to work work through this you know it'll be something that we all could be proud of thank you very much thank you thanks for staying up late with us we appreciate your comments bye bye bye um our next speaker is mistella adams miss adams are you available i am available thank you all for allowing me to speak um i am here tonight to once again encourage that we have meaningful public engagement and public participation in the annual action plan and um the city budget the purpose of the public participation process process is to hear the needs of the community and to address them the people from the brattown community have participated in every forum that has been made available to them to share with the city through this public participation process what their community needs are they were at the january first january fourth hearing they were at the march first hearing they participated in focus groups and at each and every turn they asked the city through this process to prepare for them and to allocate funding through the annual action plan for them to have a small area plan developed and yet there is no change in what was presented by the city on january fourth and what is presented to the city tonight there is no reference to the community needs expressed by the brattown community not one word except in the back where they made their plea but no changes made to assess them i am asking because i understand how the process works so i'm putting this on the record i am asking that there be a relocation of funds to address the request of the people of brattown you can put it under other programming for public public services i am asking the city to reallocate fifty thousand dollars of the money that has been allocated in the draft plan to prepare a small area plan for the brattown neighborhood if this is not available as an alternative then i am asking that the city council direct the community development department to amend their f y 2020 their f y 22 budget before you pass the budget to include funding of a small area plan for brattown community the budget process public program has to include the needs of the community if you have to address what has been asked for time and time again by the brattown community and i am encouraging you to reallocate funds using the other category public services in the annual plan and if you are told that is not possible you have not yet started public hearings on the city budget there is time for them to adjust that what they are requesting in the city budget and don't pass the budget without encouraging and including and addressing the needs of the brattown community and their simple request for a small area plan thank you for your comments when we get through the rest of our speakers we will have an opportunity to respond and there is a plan that we can let folks know a little bit more about for brattown it won't be through the community development department it's not really their area it will be through the planning department where we do where we do these these sorts of planning this kind of planning work but there is a plan a plan this is lots of plans there's a plan in the planning department for brattown focus area that we'll be able to share a little bit more about but i'd like to get through the rest of the speakers on the community development plan first and our next speaker is lee gans are you available to be heard yes i am thank you for coming tonight and you have three minutes all right yeah my name is lee gans i'm here representing bull city tenets united first i wanted to endorse the proposals of my colleague iran lorenz and also of howard moctinger who spoke and additionally demand that the city council address the real estate investment practices that contribute to skyrocketing rent rising homelessness and rampant gentrification here in durham rents in durham are rising much faster than in the rest of the country a recent study by apartment guide found that last year rents in durham rose 30 percent while the national average rent increase was just 1.7 percent rent is the single largest expense for many families for that expense to suddenly increase by several hundred dollars renders living in durham impossible for many community members people in durham particularly communities of color are being displaced from their homes and removed from their neighborhoods at a faster rate than ever increasing demand for housing in durham is only one driver of this rent increase much of the blame belongs to corporate real estate investors that are engaging in risky investment practices here in durham one of the things these investors are doing is taking out expensive refinance loans on their properties and who ends up being responsible for making the landlord's monthly mortgage payments tenants the price of the mortgage is built into tenants rents the landlords then use these loans to buy more properties thus tenants from one property end up paying down a loan the landlord has used to buy another this is not a long standing or standard practice in real estate for decades the industry moved along just fine without it the reason why refinance loans weren't common practice prior to 2007 is that investors themselves deemed them to be too risky the common sense wisdom was that purchasing new property properties with the proceeds of a refinance loan causes an investor to become over leveraged this practice has only become popular in the last decade big banks make these loans and then repackage them into mortgage back securities if what i just said refinancing loans and mortgage back securities is setting off alarm bells in your head it should it's because that's what caused the first housing market collapse in 2007 fortunately the state of north carolina responded to the 2007 housing market collapse by passing the north carolina predatory lending act this law reduced the maximum amount for a refinance loan from 90 to 75 percent the city council in durham should act to reduce this percentage further for investment properties specifically there is no reason why community members should be priced out of durham because they can't pay enough in rent to subsidize a landlord's risky refinance loan this by the way is what my colleague howard was talking about when he mentioned an anti buy rehab rent refinance repeat law thank you for the opportunity to make these comments thank you thank you for your comments just want to ask folks in general to speak a little bit slower so that our translator can keep up with you thank you our next speaker is reynolds chatman are you available yes can you hear me yep we hear you thank you for being here and you have three minutes hello council thank you for inviting us to speak tonight i uh i'm part of the brag town community association and a resident of brag town and i just wanted to also put my um my voice in for support of the brag town community in these funds that are there um per your common council or johnson it is confusing sometimes which plan uh where the funds come for which plans and we appreciate um the time that you've taken to work with us on the small area plan however that's done we really this we've put a lot of work into that small area plan and um we don't want to get passed from one place to the next and then have it not happen um and i think that even if that does happen from a different source of funding i think there's a lot of opportunity to get funding from these sources too the community has been working for decades i i remember the first resident in brag town i talked to talking about the sidewalks that he advocated for in brag town and uh it's an incomplete infrastructure and we see kids getting off the school bus and walking in ditches to avoid traffic on deadly curves and we've had people killed because there is very poor infrastructure in the brag town community and so we want funds for basic quality of life so that we can walk about with each other so that we can have community together and the brag town community is what what you want in a community because we work together and it's a community that really wants the flourishing for for our community and for the whole city and supporting supporting the brag town community with funds to be able to do that is just super important and so uh i echo the words of everybody who's already spoken um and just grateful for the work of that everybody has done for that um but we really need more support and it's just not it hasn't cut it so far um and so we just ask for as much of that support as possible thank you thank you for your comments um our next speaker is kamaria fason and kamaria is currently our last speaker if there's anyone else who would like to speak on this item please raise your hand or say something in the chat so we can call on you kamaria fason are you available to be heard yes can you hear me we hear you thank you for being here tonight and you have three minutes wonderful thank you all members of the city council for allowing me to speak i i am a case manager my name is kamaria fason i'm a case manager with lincoln community health center i'm also an advocate at germ prices response center as a shelter staff relieved during the weekends as well as the spanish crisis live overnight during the week and i just want to shed light on the what could happen if we see many you know as more homeless folks on the street and let alone families so i'm here to support and advocate for those who need rental assistance to prevent eviction and who have pass or those folks who do have debt with rent due to covet and using jobs and fluctuating circumstances with their families as well as you know helping other family members out and trying to figure it all out and in this pandemic and i just want to stress upon all of the members of the city council the infrastructure that we already have in place for our homeless population is already being stretched then we have a full shelter now we can't accept new clients we've moved from a home that's dilapidated to a motel that houses fewer people so we can't even we don't even have the capacity to help more people even though we'd like to we certainly don't have the means at this time and i can only imagine that if we see more homeless families and stressors start to pile on top of more folks and as domestic violence rates go up that this has the potentiality to get worse if we don't provide some sort of assistance to these families because we simply don't have the capacity to fill the amount and the need that is there as it is let alone if it gets worse so i'd love to see that be supported and all efforts be put through for homeowners who are already existing as well dealing with developers who are honestly building you know fancy homes that have higher taxes or require more upkeep and raise their taxes yes it's beautifying the neighborhood but it's also making people struggle and i just wanted to share my experience as a social worker and as a community advocate thank you for your time thank you for being here we have one additional speaker Vanessa mason evans if there's anyone else who'd like to speak please raise your hand um or type your name in the chat miss evans are you uh can you be heard yes good evening marshal and city council members thank you for letting me speak um i just want to re-innovate on what um just about everyone else that spoke on tonight so i'm gonna be short and sweet um it's it's very untrustworthy when we have people that work within a community and city officials say they're gonna work with you and i didn't know that we want on the annual um action plan and to find that out is hurtful um in all the work that Constance and i have been doing throughout um the bradtown community um because the work we do is not about us it's about people who have less and i have to say that the god that i serve he would never have us to be in the the predicaments and the situations that we're in the world wasn't built just for the rich it wasn't built just for the middle class there are people who are at a space that meant i have the income we've gone through a pandemic people have lost loved ones and we're at a state of where we're not sure what's gonna happen next uh gentrification isn't isn't pretty putting trees in black communities isn't comfortable um because to me it's just another way of redlining the black communities in which we live in so many black communities have been destroyed and taken away um and i feel that should be spaces for black brown and indigenous people and as long as we're not getting true transparency from the city of Durham um it makes you wonder because by us working as ambassadors and when we go out and do surveys with these people who live in these areas that have been unjustly served and they don't want to fill out the surveys because they're not trusting the city or they're not trusting what we are trying to get them to understand we want we want our communities to be better but some of the people we're talking to us and they don't want to do the surveys of things because everything we asked for for years we've never gotten our taxes have gone up a hundred percent and we're still not getting anything and then to have someone tell you that we need to get another bond for taxes that's not helping us that's hurting us it's not it's not helping when is the city going to really see the hurts and the pains of those who are suffering and you you think you have homelessness now the homeless rate is going to go so high if we don't make some changes and make spaces and places for all people to live the world was not built for just one group of people we have got to understand there have got to be places for affordable homes and affordable means people who are making seven eight and nine dollars an hour ten dollars an hour we haven't even met the quarter of 15 and when we get to 15 dollars an hour guess what you're still at minimum wage because what we need to be making in Durham is between 25 and 35 an hour to truly make it and you're still not making it you're comfortable you can pay your bills you can take your doctor's appointment you can pay your for your medications but we have really got to sit down and strategize and I think when we have meetings separately from different agencies we're not getting a full picture Durham has got to be more transparent in what they're doing I thank you for listening to me I pray that everyone has a blessed night thank you miss Evans is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item um I don't see anyone else's hand so um I'd like to clarify the conversation that we're having right now but also open up some space for us to talk about the Bragg town small area plan since there are a lot of folks tonight who are interested in and how that work is going just just to clarify what this specific item is about it's and we have a lot of things in the city called plans and action plans so I understand that it's not always clear exactly um what plan we're talking about when um but this item is specifically around how the city is going to spend our federal entitlement money um for that we get from cdbg community development block grants home esg which is emergency solution grants I believe in hapwa housing opportunities for persons with aids um so those that's just the specific part of money that we're talking about right now in this public hearing there's lots of other and in our community development department doesn't do doesn't do this sort of small area plan work and so then this is the funding that they that we're talking about tonight is in community development but we do have other sources of funding that we can put towards things like small area planning um in our planning department and uh we'd be happy to give folks an update about um what we're thinking about in terms of bragtown um and the response to the community concerns that have come up over the last few months about the bragtown community and what we should be doing um to help residents of that area if um should I close this public hearing before we talk okay I'm going to go ahead and declare the public hearing this public hearing closed um but would like to ask um sarah young our planning director if she's available just to give us a quick update on bragtown to respond to the folks who are here who are interested in that item tonight thank you good evening everyone um sarah young with the planning department again we are we have been meeting the planning department staff that's working on the comprehensive plan has been meeting with representatives from bragtown um to try and flesh out a scope for what we would cover in um what folks are calling a small area plan but what we're trying to um I think more accurately rebrand as a focus area of the new comprehensive plan I think I've shared with folks a couple of times that this doing it not as a standalone plan but doing it as part of our comprehensive plan effort has a couple of benefits one is it will hopefully move faster than a standalone effort and the second is that the policies and ideas that will come from that we think will be transferable and applicable to other neighborhoods other parts of our community they're undergoing and experiencing the exact same types of pressures and challenges that that bragtown is so we um I just uh checked through and it looks like there's still ongoing fleshing out that needs to happen for the exact scope of what we might cover um in this engagement with them but we're very much looking forward to to working on that with them and are committing to doing that as part of the comprehensive plan project mayor protempted that answer your question yes thank you appreciate it um yeah so just want to you know let folks who are here to talk about bragtown know just the fact that you're not in this plan does not mean that we're not moving forward with a bragtown focus area and that we have heard your concerns and we very much are are interested in coming up with a plan to address those may or should did you have your hand raised yes i did um madame or pro tem thank you very much um yeah i just thought that it'd be good for miss young i have a few comments but just if miss young could also say what the schedule is for when this focus area for bragtown would would begin sure so in our conversations i think with the uh bragtown folks we've indicated that um we will be ready to start in earnest on that part of the comp plan as soon as our goals and objectives work is wrapped up which should be later this summer um so we would be ready to to start um we have already started doing a little bit of work with the neighborhood as i mentioned but in earnest working um on actually coming up with policies doing deeper engagement and really digging into um what needs to be addressed later this summer in terms of how long it would take that depends a lot on what the scope that gets worked out in terms of all the things that bragtown may identify to us um that they want to try and tackle um and how many other departments um or other agencies we may need to bring into that work um for things that go beyond just land use so that part is yet a little bit of the unknown thank you madame or pro tem just a few more comments um i appreciate what miss young has said and i want our friends from bragtown to hear that we uh miss right miss evans have been fantastic leaders and there are others here supporting them as well from the neighborhood and from without and i just want people to hear them i want i want the i want them to know that we hear them and that our planning staff um i know has been talking to members of the community as miss young has said and that we are this summer beginning the work with this bragtown focus area it's the terminology is being changed from a small area plan to a focus area but it's the same thing and we are very committed to this the council is very committed to this we've heard you and our staff is committed to it and so the funding is not coming through the community development department that will come through planning uh but it is there uh and uh i am very supportive of it i know the council is very supportive of it and we all look forward to that work and appreciate your advocacy which has brought this about without your advocacy we would not be here but i think you can look forward to this in the summer and i think it's a really super important process um the community development uh mayor pro temp talked some and you can read the details in the community development uh in in this annual action plan uh and uh this is money for uh money for homeless services money for affordable housing uh money for housing for people with aids this is not money that goes to a particular neighborhood these this is not like money that a certain neighborhood gets allocated this is money that is put into various programs that the city has supporting those things and so and this will benefit people throughout the city in every neighborhood i do want to respond to some of the other things that were mentioned in the in the public hearing one is about uh the people's concerns about evictions and rent and this is a huge concern uh it is one of the most important concerns that we have in our city is the potential for evictions and people as as the as the moratorium as the eviction moratorium ends and people have mentioned that that eviction moratorium is not enough and that's very very true uh we have already put about nine million with another about nine million coming uh into eviction prevention uh paying people's rents rental assistance and we will be keeping an eye on that we're receiving further funding from the federal government and we'll be putting keep an eye on that as potential use for those funds uh depending upon that the size of that need and the other acute needs that we have in our community but we have prioritized it and we will continue to we also have uh we put five hundred thousand dollars in annually into legal aides uh into legal aid lawyers for uh eviction prevention uh they they work with tenants represent tenants to stop their eviction uh i could talk a lot more about the things that we do on housing but i think those two things are are particularly worth mentioning this is a huge commitment of ours and we'll always continue to be and we put our money where our mouth is on the big picture uh mr mochlinger mentioned the big picture of housing needs there is uh our community development department has reports to us once or twice a year about the about the uh overall housing need about the number of houses about the number of families who are using more than 30 percent or using more than 50 percent of their annual income for uh to pay for their rent and uh that is where the the big picture of housing where we learned this big big picture of housing uh a big picture about housing need one of the things i'll say about the big picture is uh we are so far from being able to meet that need with all of our federal funds with our bond issue our housing our affordable housing bond all the housing that that's going to be able to leverage which is a lot which is going to be thousands of units we're still going to be far from being able to meet that need we have a long long way to go and the city cannot even come close to meeting that need we don't have the money and we what we will not have the money to meet that total need we can make a big effort and we are making a big effort and there are already hundreds of affordable housing units as we heard two weeks ago at our community development department in design or under construction uh and those units will continue to come uh because of the of our of our affordable housing work uh and the bond issue but it's i don't think we should be telling anybody we're going to be able to meet the full need that way we're not we have no uh the um i do want to say something about the real community outreach i just want to say you know mr. marketinger talked about real community outreach the city of Durham is making extraordinary efforts in community outreach even during COVID our engaged Durham blueprint has been fantastic we fund it well and it operates through all all of our so much of the work we do the outreach around transit the outreach around our transportation plan the outreach around our comprehensive plan i think has been extraordinary especially given COVID and we are prioritizing marginalized communities and we're doing it as i say well resourced and uh our our neighborhood improvement services uh has done a fabulous job working with our other departments to ramp up a level of engagement that we've never had in Durham and uh so i just want to make that clear and if you're not aware of it you you should uh you can check it out on uh just even going to the city's website you can learn a lot about it about Durham housing authority rehousing it was mentioned how can we be sure that people be rehoused if they're moved first of all it's a federal law now what you didn't used to be a federal law would hope six happened but it's a federal law now that people have to be have to be rehoused and that has to be monitored and they have the right of return it's also a moral obligation and we will be fulfilling that moral obligation making sure that the housing authority does but there's now teeth in that through a federal law which is important um the tax ideas that were mentioned by a couple of people uh in order to um in order to tax uh well uh wealthy developers i wish the heck we could do that we all wish we could do that we don't have the power to do that state law is very explicit about that um and and this has been tried in court more than once including uh Durham county had a uh tax a decade or so ago uh taxing real estate transactions this was challenged by home builders in the county not only lost but was a force to pay all that money back this is not unfortunately a state where we have the ability to do that i know it happens in other places our state constitution is really clear about our ability to to tax locally without state approval we don't have it um and uh i wish it was otherwise we all do i wish we had inclusionary zoning where we could require uh where we could require uh affordable units in in uh in these expensive developments but we don't so we have to do it ourselves and we're doing a lot of it ourselves uh but we are not going to be able to do it all um and and i will i will just challenge my friends who are who feel that uh who want these kinds of taxes to be available to us which i do as well we've got to change the legislature we've got to change our state legislature and when we change our state legislature we can change the taxes we're i wanted to thank uh kamaria phase on this phase on what a great um what a great what a great service you're doing just hearing you describe the work you do um and i have so concerned about the people that you talked about um we're doing a lot more in terms of homelessness this year we're putting a lot more resources into our street outreach uh into our rapid rehousing and we still have so much more to do and i really am grateful to you for the work that you do and for bringing the the the what's happening in those people's lives that you serve uh to our attention again and they are our our our most vulnerable and it's been so hard during the pandemic to serve them well and i'm grateful to you so i think those are my uh my comments madam mayor protam uh perhaps over lengthy but i did want to address some of the things that i heard in the comments and i want to assure the people in bragg town the leadership there that our planning department will be working closely with you on this focus area plan and you can count on them thank you very much madam mayor protam thank you mr mayor i always appreciate your comments um councilmember freeman and then councilmember middleton thank you thank you i completely appreciate uh mayor steve schull's um commentary and for all of the details that he included it's important that you know the community feels like we hear you and just acknowledging uh just one additional note around the focused area planning in the comprehensive plan i think it's specific to land use and i don't want to miss the opportunity that i think folks in the community are asking for around actual dollars being spent on projects and so community development would be where that happens and so acknowledging that um the community development black grant is a federal grant program designed to act as a catalyst in leveraging private dollars with public assistance to further the capacity of private and public developers to provide affordable housing opportunities i think that specifically to what both misconstance and reynolds Chapman mentioned it would be hoove us to make sure that they're included in our plan whether that's the affordable housing of oxford manor being addressed and you know finding ways to add more units on that property as accessory dwelling units or would have you i think that that could be a private public partnership that could be something that community development would look at i also think that there are opportunities around just acknowledging that we don't have a program around homelessness prevention we have a homeless services kind of arm once you are homeless to push you through but what does it look like for us to actually implement a program with federal support and public and private dollars working together to make sure that folks are not losing their housing i think that that formation is something that the city as a body could uh i mean that the city council as a body could come up with a an arrangement around i think we've come up with task force many other areas and this one i think has been uncovered or un un we have not gotten to that point i know that the the sentiment around making sure that you know the tenants have their rights um we could pass a tenant bill of rights and hope the same way that we do with many other options that folks will will adhere to it i think it just kind of lays our body of values and acknowledging something like a protected class i think it's important to to just note that lg tb lg tb q folks are not included in that and it's unfortunate because that there's so much discrimination that occurs in housing i know that these are things that community development could lead on acknowledging that these are the areas that um they're focused on i do want to also just note that it would be misleading to say that we don't specifically focus on a neighborhood because that's how southside was built it was with cdbg funds and um i would also know i want to say that franklin village and many other areas were also funded with cdbg funds and so i i want to be clear like if we don't set an initiative around it it won't happen and so the folks of brad town are are calling for help and i hear you and i think that there are there are some things that we should kick around um i i also just noted uh that design is very different from construction and so just noting that each and every step the the lack of trust and the lack of of um openness or transparency in it uh does i mean it does speak to to my understanding of how you know organizations institutions and the other operate with people of color not acknowledging how the disparate impacts call for different resources different um levels of engagement in ways that are very different i think we've done a good job of laying out a blueprint i do not feel like we have necessarily made that leap to where it's somewhere where we're where feels comfortable like just letting the blueprint work i am hopeful and i know that staff is working really hard um but i do know that the lack of tools to do that uh work and acknowledging that many times you're not even able to capture race class or gender i don't think that the question that councilmember caviero asked earlier was out of left field it's something we asked all the time before a planning case that information is not available and i don't know that the planning staff has tools for that but i i'm mindful of all of that and i'm i'm not trying to make this believable point but i do think it's important to note that as these folks have gathered today the support that they have pulled together is something of a great you know i mean i mean it just speaks to the work of miss vanessa evans and constance right acknowledging that they've been pushing really hard to make sure that their voices were included and as she noted as as as vanessa evans noted it's not for her it's for the people in that community who cannot be here this this evening and so i appreciate that and i just wanted to note that as your taxes continue to increase i am mindful of how the lack of infrastructure and being put in place is disparate as well and so i know that that's not a community development area that's something in our budget and i'm hopeful that will address it as we move forward i would also note that i i'm really appreciated uh miss fazan's comments so that as a social worker and someone who is a community advocate i know that as us as a nonprofit administrator faith like having those conversations with families repeatedly the solutions are as as mayor shul mentioned not all going to come from the city but i do think that as a community we've got a lot of work ahead of us and we can do this and so i'm confident that with the with our staff with the folks in the community and all of us here um we'll get to some solutions that really that really become models that are replicated in other areas i think i took a took a little offense to the young lady um sorry i don't mean to say i gotta i'm gonna call your name i'm sorry i think it was iran laurance noting that you know kansas city was doing better than derm i want to note that uh we can do better than kansas city and i'm almost certain that uh if both city tenants has um ideas around it is something we can work on and improve uh for for the city of derm i'm i really wanted to hear more about the tenant office because i have i've i've kicked that notion around with the north east center derm uh folks and we've gotten nowhere um i think that there are a lot of long-term homeowners who will miss out on if we don't expand that long-term homeowner grant acknowledging that the county has not put the grant in place for the taxes and so i'm mindful of that and i heard in my bones what miss venessa evan said about the redlining and how it looks today as racism continues to re-envision itself and i am i am also mindful that at the same time we can't we can't do it all at the city and so i really would love to have some town hall meetings around uh what it looks like to support for-profit businesses like the i think it was the american veterans i don't know i'm gonna mess it up but on the corner there the vfw was trying to develop a product develop their property with you know some some affordable units in mind and for some reason it kind of fell through the cracks and i have not figured out what's going on there and i think there are a lot of ingenuity of ideas that are not coming through to council and i'm not sure why and i'm going to look into that thank you thank you council member council member middleton thank you madam mayor pro tem i want to associate myself with everything that the mayor said um and i want to fully acknowledge to a person uh everybody on this council's desire to do right by our legacy communities in this city um i vouch for each and every person on this council um but i do want to speak to something um that that that i think is animating this this whole conversation first i want to honor every activist and community organizer many of these folk i look at as as mentors and activism and organizing in our communities who've come and spoken to us tonight i also want to honor the voices from areas like merrick moore and i also want to honor the voices from the fayetteville street corridor and haytai who have been coming to us for years and talking about things like when i say us i mean as an institution not this particular council um you know and i'm appreciate when i made my comments when we were talking about the green and equitable infrastructure plan and i talked about an escalatory approach and because we were doing a comp plan and we were talking about southeast Durham and all these legacy areas that maybe look tethering those discussions about small area plans or focused planning to our comp plan for these precise reasons but you know black areas are the most studied areas in the history of our country we know what the hell the problems are and and we know what they needed for decades so you know a comp plan is a great thing but it's a plan it's not an allocation and and future councils may or may not be i mean it's a spiritual document they may or may not be guided by it the decisions we make based upon those comp plans may comport with it or they may not but i i just want to encourage brothers and sisters that have come before us tonight to and i think i heard stella adam's do it don't be afraid to ask for specific things right now even as we do plans kids walking in ditches we could fix that now i mean we we have something called a cip plan through an equity lens we could start shifting projects around i don't need to talk in a planning session to decide whether or not we're going to build sidewalks for kids in ditches i mean there are some things we can do right now and i just want to encourage our activists there are groups in this city i've said it's the Durham committee i've said it's a friend of Durham i've said it the people of this alliance i'll say to anybody there there are groups in this city that use their power to ask for things right now that ain't half as important as what you've come to us to for tonight we've got groups in the city that will use their muscle to try and get people fired to try and get us to spend money from one place take money from one place and put in another we've had people groups in this city that'll tell us you know freeze this unfreeze that expecting results um the same type of swag and the same type of insistence should be taken by many of you came to us tonight don't be afraid to put a price tag on it and don't be afraid while we're doing the planning we know because we've been talking about for decades you know what your neighborhood needs uh uh uh if if you want us to to switch the cip around like other people have asked us to switch things around in the budget de-emphasize one thing and emphasize another you should put the you should bring that smoke and you should put that pressure on us and i'm talking to every organization that's ever written a letter from Durham committee down to anybody else a to z any organization that's ever written a letter to this council or government start using some of that muscle to ask for some of this stuff from these legacy communities uh and see how that works out right now even as we do the comp plan uh we've been studied we know what these communities need we we know how we got here we know about historic disinvestment we we know a sidewalk's important we know that bus shelters are important we know that parks and rec centers are important and and through an equity lens we now understand that sometimes governments have to take actions that to the uninitiated to those that don't understand equity from the outside might look discriminatory but what it actually is is corrective action based upon an unflinching sober read of history and an acknowledgement of how systemically we have created some of these conditions for those things plans are good but we know right now what these communities need so i just want to encourage all of you who came tonight and for Merrick more if you're listening and for haytai and for that whole Fayetteville street corridor um there's some stuff we can do now uh just like we've done other things for other groups there's something we we can move some stuff around in our cip our our our capital improvement plan to fix some stuff now and i hope that as we continue our conversations not not only about the green and and equitable infrastructure bond but but possibly muscular rising our cip plan some of the stuff that you talked about tonight bragg town we can start addressing in our cip plan now some of the stuff that merrick morris talked about we can start prioritizing some of those things now we have that flexibility and we have organizations in our city and groups in our city take note bragg count start asking us for some specifics and put some muscle on us to do some things now even as we in good faith and it isn't good faith engage in small area plans and focus groups there's some things we know we need right now kids out of ditches when they get off a bus we don't need the way to the summer to to fix that we can do some things right now so thank you all so much and i associate myself with everything that everyone said but i also want to just remind our friends that you know you can put some heat on us from some stuff now everybody else does thank you mr mary yield back thank you council member uh council member freelon thank you i'll be really brief i just wanted to extend some words of gratitude um it occurred to me as we were watching the presentation uh miss evans and miss right miss adams especially you know leadership of black women in the role that they've historically played and continue to play in Durham and advocating for um what's right for our black communities is paramount um i really resonated with what council member meadowton said about seeing them as organizing mentors uh and you know up until the wee hours of the night letting your voices be heard is really important um and uh one thought about a particular thing i heard that hasn't been addressed or maybe i think maybe may or sure may have mentioned this about the community engagement piece um i just wanted to echo that i've heard a lot of concerns from community community members and lack of trust uh when i've been out in the community especially recently over these last two weeks i've heard that quite a bit um but i wanted to reassure everyone who's here with us today that um i'm very confident in the culture of this body of elected officials and especially our staff under the leadership of city manager page that we're moving towards better communication and meaningful engagement every day so it's underscoring something that steve already said but just wanted to um wanted to let you know what i've observed from the inside that i've yes i've heard that um and i think that slowly that's changing for the better um so appreciate your patience and your advocacy thank you council member other comments from members of the council thanks everyone um yeah i just want to thank everyone who came out tonight it is it is late we appreciate you hanging on um till almost 11 p.m to share share your thoughts with us and we hear you we are uh dedicated to moving forward with all of these really important really important issues and we've got a fabulous staff who are ready and waiting to to work with y'all so thank you all again so much for coming out and we will um go ahead and move on to our um back up to item 23 um zoning map change for harriett's place and we are ready for the staff report thank you thank you dany culture again with the planning department um this is a request for zoning map change received from our partner rla of howard partner landscape architecture representing joel r skill engineer of reinvestment partners llc at and harriett's place lc for two parcels of land totaling 0.7093 acres and located at 312 east umsett street and 1206 docking street the site is presently zoned uh residential urban 5 2 or ru 5 2 and is located within the urban development here the applicant proposes to change this designation to residential urban multifamily with the development plan or rumd to convert an existing structure into maximum of 17 dwelling units for either a congregate living facility and or affordable housing the use table in united unit excuse me in the united unified development ordinance udo paragraph 5.1.2 requires congregate living facilities proposed within residential districts to receive a minor special use permit or ms up in order to allow the use within the district however udo paragraph 3.5.6 d 10 eliminates the use permit required when the zoning is approved with the development plan and the use location access building height and size are defined the applicant elected to rezone the property to illustrate these requirements in order to eliminate the use permit the properties are currently designated medium high density residential on the future land use map or flung the proposed rumd zoning is consistent with the designated future land use as at the february 9th 2021 planning commission hearing the commission voted 13 0 to recommend approval to the city council i did want to point out one modification which is referenced in an update from the staff report you receive subsequent to the recommendation for approval uh planning commission there was an uh issue identified with a previously proffered text commitment number three which stated prior to the issuance of certificate of occupancy a sidewalk shall be constructed on the west side of docking street along the frontage of pit 118 300 uh the Durham department of public works engineering evaluated this the constructability of the sidewalk section due to its insufficient right of way existing utility impediments of a power pole and fire hydrant within the right of way and also proximity of the existing dwelling adjacent to the right of way being approximately four feet from the back of curb the corner of the house at the nearest point the public work staff determined that the public sidewalk section is non-constructible as such it was agreed is agreed that the applicant removed this text commitment from the developer plan moving on there are two motions required for this application first is to adopt an ordinance to approve the rezoning and the second is to adopt the consistency statement thank you much uh staff and applicant team are available for any questions thank you mr culture uh this is a public hearing item so i'm going to declare the public hearing open we have four people who are signed up to speak um and i believe they're all proponents could someone correct me if that's inaccurate great um so i'm not sure who is um taking lead on this presentation from the the development team um y'all all should be available to be heard if someone could let me know who would like to speak first and how much time you need oh that should be peter schiller and this is howard partner and i think if peter is here he will take the lead he'll take the lead thank you uh mr schiller are you are you available i am thank you council member um my name is peter schiller and i'm director of reinvestment partners a non-profit agency serves Durham county um our mission is to foster healthy and just communities by working with people places and policy as examples of that we provide housing counseling services to about 800 clients a year help them to save their homes from foreclosure or to help purchase their first home we serve over 1500 low-income families to help file their taxes through our vital program we provide a healthy produce program uh locally and statewide we provide a healthy homes program we provide um we also do commercial and multifamily redevelopment and services for those experiencing homelessness um we're here today to ask for the rezoning of the Harriet Tubman YWCA at 312 east umstead as a requirement for us to proceed with the revitalization of this very important and historic building uh to Durham and the african-american community in particular i have heard many stories of great memories um and it's of its importance and the love that the community has for this building um it's kind of helps to inspire our work and we some of our plans include to keep the exterior of the building as it is um and a restoration of the interior as well uh we anticipate being able to put in 15 studio efficiency apartments serving low and very low-income persons um the rezoning will will allow us to put in a driveway going down 1206 Dawkins into the rear of the building where we'll be able to put in the parking so it's a pretty simple plan as far as restoring the building to its kind of historic nature and its function of providing affordable housing we think one of the benefits will also be to help stabilize the neighborhood both as it tries to recover from the distant years and years of disinvestment as well as providing affordable housing when someday if investment comes and it gentrifies we'll still be able to have a diverse neighborhood so we believe that there's a most both short term and long term benefits to this project be glad to answer any questions that y'all might have thank you mr. skiller um are there other folks with your team who um would like to speak or folks just here to answer questions mr. partners here to answer any technical questions but i think that's the team presentation at the moment okay thank you um so we also have Jarvis martin april johnson david chrisbell and peter chrisbell signed up for this item could y'all indicate in the chat whether you are proponents or opponents i'm a proponent thank you no worries um okay great so um thank you all right so everyone's proponents so i'm going to give each of you three minutes to speak um mr. martin you can go ahead first thank you for coming tonight uh thank you may upper town mayor men's of the council i'm here to speak in favor of this development uh as a private property owner myself in the neighborhood i own a unit over at two fisher place which is a duplex and have been an owner over there for the past several years as we all know that this building has been vacant in somewhat of light on the community for many years this is a positive step also this this building does have a significant historical aspect to the african-american community and that as a young citizen um with my first professional job in Durham there used to be a weekly luncheon there were members of the african-american community got to meet members of the majority community and just had care on conversation about what me and darin chick and i got to meet uh you know people like um many of the former mayors and council members etc and so did all the young african-americans coming to Durham back in the 70s from that standpoint so that's another historic aspect of this building i'm glad to see that it's being repurposed and used but uh as a taxpaying citizen and we had a lot of talk about property owners and taxes tonight i do think this is a positive step for the community and i support it full-heartedly and ask for your support and thank you for your indulgence tonight thank you mr martin uh our next speaker will be april johnson madame clerk can we make um make april johnson available good afternoon uh mayor uh mayor bro tim and council city council persons this my name is april johnson i am the executive director preservation darman our mission is to protect Durham's historic resources through action advocacy and education um so as many of you may know i was when i came back to darman 2018 i found out that this building was being condemned by the city because of some code violations and the new owner wasn't able to um get it get them up to date in time um so with some advocacy talking to the city manager working with the um neighborhood improvement services i was able to um get them to hold off for a while until we can figure out what to do so um and also i thank you doctor i'm sorry not doctor but maybe soon but um council person for you men for helping me out with that um as well as in their process um but finally thankfully reinvestment partners where they were able to step in and um take on this task uh well i'm grateful for that because i was concerned um i feel like we are losing enough of our black cultural resources as is and i know that this particular building is not necessarily the most beautiful it's not not an archi high architectural style but it doesn't mean it doesn't have a story for our community um so i'm happy to see that it has been used um for something similar for what it was used for in its past and um to provide affordable housing for folks and transitional housing for folks in need um and i do also appreciate the fact that that it is being used as a place for affordable housing and it's also a preservation project um so i just hope that you support um the rezoning so that it can be used and activate and bring this community back to life over there in that corner thank you thank you thank you for being here uh our next speaker will be peter chris bell you available sure can you hear me we can hear you thank you yeah you have three minutes all right um i live in the neighborhood um on umstead street where this building is i own the house across the street from the building and um i think uh we've heard over and over again tonight we need more affordable housing right we need uh especially subsidized housing for our most vulnerable citizens um it'll be great to have supportive housing that does not exclude persons recovering uh from unhoused situation or especially citizens returning from incarceration um i think we need to make sure these these folks are included um as we as we build more affordable housing um and i support having more supportive housing opportunities in our neighborhood um i'd also like to really send some appreciation to our council um especially members who recognize the dangers and threat of unbridled gentrification and uh and those that insist on community involvement with new development um i really appreciate the insistence on that and and focus on that um i'd like to ask that this neighborhood be included as planning and programming for harry's place goes forward and i encourage our council to support more supportive and affordable housing options and that's uh that's all i had it's way past my bedtime my brain's starting to melt down you're not the only one thank you thanks for being here um our next speaker is uh david chrisbell come on it's only been four hours we can keep going mr mayor members of the council um i'm dav chrisbell i'm the uh ed of jubilee home which sits on 404 east umstead and the owner of 1208 docking street and i'd like to speak on support of this project um we hope that this project can become an anchor in this neighborhood that has really suffered from long-term disinvestment uh if i remember correctly i believe that uh councilpersons freeman and middleton joined us on docking street one evening with rob belcher many months ago and i know that mayor schul has been on a couple ride-alongs to the corner of umstead and dockins and uh you all know that the only investments made in this community for years have been investments in bigger guns larger quantities of drugs and increased police presence uh just to just to demonstrate the disinvestment currently 312 east umstead and 1206 docking street are surrounded by uh let me see my count here we have uh two owner occupied dwellings uh six rental dwellings 12 empty lots and 12 vacant properties the the need for some investment and presence in this community is is outstanding and and we really look forward to Harriet's place joining jubilee home as community members working to create stable and supportive housing in a community that's been forgotten and and create some housing for neighbors that have been missed time and time and time and time again um so we uh myself and our organization really look forward to this development and are excited uh to see um life breathed into this historic part of our community thank you thank you thank you for your comments um all right is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item this evening please raise your hand or comment in the chat all right thank you so much everyone for being here tonight um i'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing and the matter is back before the council for comments uh over motion and councilmember reese thank you madam mayor pro tem i've prepared 20 minutes of remarks about why this is a great idea so let me go ahead and get started on that i actually know um uh this is a fantastic project i'm really grateful to everyone that came together to make it happen i intend to support it happy to make the motion with time comes thank you thank you councilmember councilmember freeman thank you mayor pro tem i appreciate uh councilmember reese's comments being so brief i wish i could say the same i just have a few thoughts and comments to share i just want to say that i really appreciate the work that miss april johnson and peter skilling and david chrisp and peter chris and chrisbell and so many others have done to try and stabilize this area i just want to note that they are outmatched um just acknowledging that since that fish tables spot on the corner opened things have gotten extremely difficult and i have had the calls for more police presence from a number of residents over there and i am perplexed at how to move forward because i as while i'm very supportive of us moving forward with this project i want to note that there needs to be a plan on how to address those types of issues and it can't wait until a community health and safety task force comes up with solutions because that could take another year i um i'm very willing to support this project i really really really want to just call out the the actual like writing on the wall acknowledging that we're where institutions and organizations that are coming in are predominantly white led in a legacy neighborhood it's important to acknowledge that tension and to make sure that we're working to support with accountability measures and accountability um recourses so that they are not alone in doing the work in that neighborhood i know that also student you and um the witted school are also there and each have experienced similar issues and have been trying to work on them separately and again i continue to push um this federal street corridor to come together in a way that that um doesn't rely on just the police department to address the issues that are there and i am at what's in i i i bring that to this conversation because when we talk about affordable housing if we don't discuss the fact that these are these are communities that are legacy neighborhood as as councilmember middleton mentioned um that are black and on darkened street i am continuously heartbroken for the family on the corner that is not black but um spanish speaking that has to endure through day in and then day out what is happening on darkened street and we can't turn a blind eye to that i'm grateful to uh to david and peter and the work of jubilee home uh but acknowledging that that is not enough and i'm not sure what's next but i but i do know that i did want to bring that up tonight i also want to thank um mr martin for for inputting the that bit of history acknowledging just how how history can repeat itself in ways in which when we're intentional about what we're doing and so the programming that follows could be very much like the programming of the 70s but uh i think it would be who of us to make sure that uh we're cognizant of the difference in the majority community in the 70s to the to the majority community today and so the conversations in our community around around race and racism have to continue in a way that are intentional especially around affordable housing and so i i just want to call those things out and just know that that i am really um apprehensive around supporting this but i know that this is the best solution for right now and so i'm i'm just just noting most concerns thank you thank you councilmember uh councilmember middleton thank you madam for him uh thank you uh colleagues for your comments i want to fully associate myself with uh councilor freeman's comments and and good to see so many friends working on this project and agreed all of you the work that preservation derm is doing this is really sacred ground um if if there is an area that could further propel derm into being a a you know a um a place where folk want to come a make pilgrimage visit i mean i think of neighborhoods like sugar hill in harlem or sweet orburn in atlanta these legacy black neighborhoods where folk plan trips there just to see it just to breathe the air i mean this is the heart of this area so i'm excited about supporting this project even with keeping in mind and holding very taking very seriously the admonitions the councilor freeman has brought forth but what what other use could there be for a building that bears the name of our sainted queen elder harriet tubman um what other use could there be and the preservation of this building was as important is as important to me as the old police headquarters is when we talk about you know preserving that area some folk you know said we got to keep that building i think we got to keep this building as well when i was just wetting my feet in derm i once happened years ago i you know i was regaled by stories about the meetings that used to take place in that building and how important it was and it was it was alluded to during the comments and the means that used to take place and the connections that were made there it's sacred space um council freeman already alluded that down the block is with the wittett school um one of my parishioners is actually the coordinator of the pre-k program at the wittett school which held a place in my heart i was i was a head start kid uh back in the day which made a difference in the trajectory of my life um so so much in that area and that whole fayetteville street corridor and and we got to reclaim that area you know i i recall going on a ride along and just sitting at the corner you know on umstead and just kind of watching stuff happen uh all night long in a mark police car and it was still you know it they didn't even dissuade you know uh some stuff that was going on um so i just think this is a really really important step if you will it is not the comprehensive plan it is not you know the panacea or we'll bring the millennium to the area but i think we have to we we have to do everything we can i think as a government um and as a community to to to reclaim the sacred claim on that neighborhood because in the long term i think it's going to be good for us as a city because this is the area when people come to Durham not just d-pack or downtown i gotta see haytie i i gotta i gotta see the harry at Tubman building i gotta see the wittet school i gotta see where these black millionaires and and and this black community where rich and poor were together and they thrive uh uh this is the heart of it so so so it's really difficult i think to overstate the importance of it um again holding intention the warnings of of uh in admonitions uh of counselor freeman about the the character of the area but i think this is a good first spot i can't wait to when this building uh is brought back to life and we can all hang out at a ribbon cutting and celebrate uh this great renaissance and that area uh thank you madam mayor pro tem thank you friends thank you council member uh any other comments mr mayor thank you madam mayor pro tem i just want to thank the people that were here tonight to support this it's fantastic um and um for those who haven't heard uh peter skeller's story of the last minutes before he was able to uh complete reinvestments uh purchase of this the role of the city uh the potential for losing this building uh it's a good story worth hearing not tonight because it's too late uh but i recommend it to anyone who uh is interested in how uh historic preservation and affordable housing really does happen um it was uh it was nip and tuck um and took incredible creativity and stick to it in this end uh and and really fast running down to the courthouse um and i and and for the folks at jubilee home uh i'm just so impressed with the work that you do and uh that is you know the it is heartbreaking uh what happens on that corner and you all are working so hard with the people who are hard is to help in so many ways um and i i think that you know one of the things that uh dav krispell said was about the he talked he characterized what this housing would be able to do and who would be able to serve and uh i would i just want to tell mr krispell that i'd like to have some more conversations with him about that uh and so if you could get in touch with me mr krispell i'd be grateful to have those conversations uh because i know the people that you're serving i know many of them coming home from prison uh and uh the difficulty in housing them uh the places where they can't be housed even even affordable housing where they can't be housed or uh by either regulation or uh yeah uh so uh i appreciate that and just uh i'm this is exciting and the city has been such a a big part of this in many ways and i'm glad that this is one more way we can do that thank you mr mayor any other thoughts or comments um i'll just say that my youngest son spent a fabulous year at the witted school a few years back he's now in first grade but he spent his pre-k year over there um and we had a great time really really dedicated community of of educators in that building and we so we spent you know a good bit of time driving through the neighborhood and it's great to see some investment going in there and this kind of investment i feel like we're often um struggling between communities that really need investment um but also really concerned about the potential for that to create more gentrification and this kind of nonprofit investment in affordable housing is exactly the the kind of investment that um that i'm excited to see in neighborhoods where it's both improving the community and also creating space for people who are already in that community um and for our residents who've been in Durham um for a long time creating resources that we really need in the city so i really appreciate that councilmember freeman did you have something else to say i do uh i it would be irresponsible of me not to mention um the role the city played in this project um prior to uh three investment partners acquiring the property is very uh problematic is is the word that comes to mind acknowledging how the units or the site was condemned and the process that went forward the the call for help that came from the gentleman who was african-american um that did not meet the same kind of support is also the reason why i am really torn this evening acknowledging that there's so much more work to do and i i just want to make sure that i call it all out because i am really um i'm grateful that we're at this point but we didn't have to get here this way and so um thank you thank you councilmember um i believe if there are no more comments we could hear a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the udo so second madam clerk i'm sorry moved by councilmember freeland seconded by councilmember caviero madame clerk would you call the roll please mere shul aye mere protan johnson aye member caballero aye and some member freelon aye member freeman aye and some member middleton i've all died member reese aye thank you madam clerk uh and our next motion is to adapt a consistency statement so moved second thank you moved by councilmember reese seconded by councilmember caballero madam clerk would you please call the roll mere shul aye mere protan johnson aye and some member caballero aye and some member freelon aye and some member freeman aye member middleton i've all died member reese aye thank you thank you madam clerk um that is our final item so unless someone wants to you know keep talking till midnight so that we can say it's tomorrow i don't see a lot of excitement for that option so i'm gonna uh declare this meeting adjourned at 11 14 p.m. thanks everyone enjoy these at least blowing locks while you can friends that that going away oh no that's it that's it i i'm no councilmember freelon's gonna shed bitter tears it's happening all right great good job have a good night everybody i would say it was a great job julian but uh people are so sensitive yeah you already heard my feelings like last time don't do it again