 Have a year. Did you do the thing now? Good afternoon. I want to call this work session of the Durham City Council order at one o'clock on Thursday, December the 10th. I want to welcome everyone here today. We're really glad to have you. Madam clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Protam Johnson. Here. Councilmember Caballero. Here. Councilmember Freelon. Here. Councilmember Freeman. Councilmember Middleton. I am here. Councilmember Reese. Here. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam clerk. We'll now proceed to announcements by members of the council. Any announcements, colleagues? Councilmember Caballero. Yes, I just wanted to discuss a little bit with our community. Now that we've moved into orders from the governor about stay at home from 10 p.m. to 5 by 5 a.m. And also just reminding folks in the community we are in holiday season. I know for Latinos there's placadas and noche buena and I am pleading with folks to please do those things virtually really limit family gatherings. We're seeing a real big increase in Durham County. That is quite frankly frightening. My sister lives in Tucson, Arizona and Pima County. And the death and COVID rates that they're seeing out there is just devastating. And I would hate to see that happen in Durham County. We have been blessed with great leadership both at the state and local level and we have been able to withstand the worst parts of the pandemic up to now. And I would hate for us to lose all the ground that we have achieved these last really, really challenging months. I cannot stress how important the next two to three weeks are in Durham. And I know we want to see family and I know that it's important for many folks. There's lots of celebrations happening. Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, just stay home. It's not worth it. It's not worth not getting to see your family next year, all of them because of what you accidentally brought into a gathering. Whether you were asymptomatic and you weren't sure you maybe had a little slight something that was not a cold and you went to a gathering and got other sick. I also want to say that I've asked the administration, I've asked staff for them to bring a presentation to council. And I wanted to let you all colleagues know on both the green light app that the city will be using and is using. I've been privileged to see that presentation twice. I think all of us could benefit from it. It takes not very much time. And then secondly, an update on the vaccine and what we can expect to see in Durham. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. Other announcements today? Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon to you and good afternoon colleagues and everyone that's watching and tuning in with us. Happy holidays to everyone. First, I want to thank Council Caballero for her admonitions and directives. I want to fully associate myself with them and lean in and put emphasis on them and thank her for that. Mr. Mayor, last week was my first board meeting with the Durham Arts Council as the city's official representative to the Durham Arts Council. So I want to thank my colleagues for allowing me to carry our banner. In that context, the bar has been set very high by previous representatives, namely one Charlie Reese, whose impact was made heavily there at the Durham Arts Council. So I will try my best to keep up to the standard of the established there. I also want to acknowledge the other electives that have been making their mark there. Senator Mike Woodard, who is a great patron and champion of the arts. And I'm proud to be working alongside Commissioner Heidi Carter, as well, representing the county there in the Arts Council. So I want to thank them. And I want to plug something this holiday season. Council Caballero is right. We should be staying home. So a lot of us will be doing our shopping online. And the Durham Arts Council has a winter wonderland auction going on. So if you're looking for some really cool gift, somebody that's on my nice list, hopefully will be getting something from the Durham Arts Council auction, you can go to the Durham Arts Council Facebook page. And then there's a link where you can click for a winter wonderline online auction. So everybody watching this broadcast today, if you're in the midst of your holiday shopping, the auction will be going on to December 15th. This is some place where you can get some really unique gifts on art. We know that art has a tendency to appreciate. Hopefully the artist won't have to die first, but you can get some pretty unique gifts. So I want to encourage everyone to support our Durham Arts Council. We know that one of the marks of a truly great metropolis, well, there are several of them. You can't really be a truly great metropolis without being accessible, without a car, you have to be a safe place. But what really makes a city pop is what's going on in its art scenes and stuff like that. And one of the reasons why Durham enjoys such a great reputation is because of our art scene here. So I hope that all of us will be supporters of the Durham Arts Council and we'll go check out that online auction as you do your holiday shopping. So thank you for that. Secondly, Mr. Mayor, I just want to again send out condolences and heartfelt concern to the family members of one of the members of our community who were slain, slayed last night and shooting and to continue to just give a voice to the continued issue of gun violence in our city. The cold weather does not seem to be mitigating or ameliorating the issue here in our city. I want to thank this council for the leaning in that we've been doing. I know we've got a number of things in the pipeline. So on today, I'd just like to ask for some type of forecasting from the staff of when we can expect to hear back. And I know they're working diligently. This is not chastisement. This is not complaint. And please, it's not complaint anyway, but I would like some type of forecasting as to when we expect to hear back on the items that are in the pipeline, particularly the violence interruption expansion and both City United is where we are on that as we are we are thinking to be ramping up rather than getting better in terms of violence, even with the weather, even with COVID. So I just want to keep us focused on this issue because with all the great things going on in our city, as I've said before, I believe that if we don't get a handle on this issue, it will eclipse the prevailing narrative of our city as emergent and descendant. And no one no one wants to see that happening. I know we're the biggest brand ambassadors our city has since on this council. So I hope that we'll lean into that and look to that for the staff, look from that for the staff. That's it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for the time. Happy holidays, everybody. Thank you very much, Council Member. I think what I'll do, I will ask Manager Page that at perhaps at the end of the meeting, she could give us that schedule for what she's thinking about. So in case she needs to check with staff about in the meantime, about what they're thinking in terms of scheduling that. But thank you, Council Member. All right, any other announcements? Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I apologize. It was a few minutes off trying to get from one zoom to the to the next. I apologize. And I just wanted to thank Council Member Calviaro for also enlightening or sharing those insights. It is important to note that we should be staying home and staying safe. Acknowledging the three Ws and waiting, washing hands and and keeping ourselves very informed about how things are going, wearing our masks and all the other things. I just wanted to note that I it's unfortunate that we have to keep continuing to have the conversation. But I think it's important that we do and acknowledging that my neighbors have been raising a flag and asking for a lot more help. Acknowledging that there's been at least five or six of these shootings in my neighborhood and folks are afraid. They're concerned. We're directly speaking with residents in the 900 East Main Street apartment complex where a number of them have occurred in the last two weeks. And the fear that people have with the bullets going into their homes and the concern that they have with their kids outside. I'm not sure how to address it. But I do know that the chief has been very supportive and making sure that folks know that they are there and they will be on top of doing the investigations and trying to get to the bottom of it. But they do need community support to make sure that the folks who are responsible are identified. I would also like to note that in the coming, I guess in the next couple of weeks or so, we have our next work session. I would love to be able to bring forward a resolution around Crown or the Crown Act. Just acknowledging that HB2, the band on passing ordinances or any legislation around discrimination has been lifted. And it would be nice to move forward with a ban on discrimination regarding natural hair. And I would love for anyone and everyone who's interested to reach out to let me know if they would like to support or like to offer any insights. But I will be developing a resolution to bring forward. And I wanted to make sure that I added that to the next agenda. Or act if that was okay to bring to the next work session needed. Thank you, Council Member. I really appreciate you raising that. It's not an issue I know about. But I'm happy to hear about it. Colleagues, are we good with that? I see some thumbs. Mr. Mayor, the crown stands for creating a respectful and open world for natural hair. Okay. We'll definitely have the conversation. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, colleagues. Any more announcements? Okay. Thank you very much. We'll now move to priority items by the City Manager. Madam Manager, welcome. Here. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and members of the Durham City Council. I do have one priority item. And I also ask that the City Council suspend the rules and vote on this item today at the work session. It is a supplemental item, agenda item number 24 is the City County Interlocal Agreement to receive Durham County financial contribution to the Durham Cares Small Business Grant Program. Thank you very much, Madam Manager. You have heard the manager's priority items. Can I hear a motion that we accept the item? So moved. Second. Moved by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, seconded by Council Member Freelon. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Shul. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member East. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes unanimously. And Madam Manager, we will suspend and vote. We'll take that up when we get to the item. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Attorney, we have Don O'Toole with us today, representing the City Attorney's Office. Are there any priority items today? There are no priority items from the City Attorney's Office. Thank you, Mr. Attorney. All right, and now we'll hear from the City Clerk. Madam Clerk, are there any priority items? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members. I do have two priority items. We do not need to vote, but I wanted to let you know that under PR number 14348, the Workers' Rights Commission, we have received a final version of the Workers' Bill of Rights, and that's been added to the agenda. And then there is PR number 14344, which is the balloting for the Safety and Wellness Task Force. That ballot was updated. There were a couple revisions that were required, and it has been emailed to Council. And I wanted to let you know those two items. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I think there was some confusion about that ballot, but when we get to that item at the end of the meeting, if we need to discuss it further, we will. So thank you very much. Okay, thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Now we'll move to our Administrative Consent Items. Under the City Clerk's Office, Item 1, Raleigh Durham Airport Authority, Mayor's Nominee for Reappointment. Item 2, Safety and Wellness Task Force Appointments. Item 3, under City Council's Office, Discussion of the Workers' Bill of Rights is written by the Darker from Workers' Rights Commission. I'm going to pull that item. Item 4, Interlocal Agreement with Go Triangle to Reimbursed City of Durham for the Technical Services Related to the Commuter Rail. Under Department of Water Management, Item 5, Department of Water Management, Mislike Facility Expansion Design Services, Stantec Architecture, Incorporated, Amendment Number 5. Item 6, Williams Water Treatment Plant Paving Construction Award to SA Hauling and Utilities Limited Liability Company, Building Business as Creative Concrete Construction. Can you pull that? Item 6. Item 7, Water Plant Residual and Waste Water Plant Biosolid Services Contract with Senagro Central LLC. I'm going to pull that item. Item 8, Under Finance Department Contract for Insurance Broker Services. Item 9, Under Fleet Management, Cooperative Group Purchase Contract, Five Automated Refuse Collection Vehicles. And Item 10, Cooperative Group Purchase Contract, Police Patrol Vehicles. Under General Services Department, Item 11, Contract of Clegg's Terminal Pest Control LLC for Pest Control Services. Item 12, Contract with Godwin Elevator Company, Inc. for Elevator Maintenance and Repair Services. Under the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Item 13, City of Durham Employment and Training 2018-2020, Grant Project Ordinance, Superceding Project Ordinance 15-613. Under the Police Department, Item 14, 2020 Blue Benevolence Grant Project Ordinance. Item 15, the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2020 National Sexual Assault Kid Initiative, SACI, Program Grant Project Ordinance. Mr. Mayor, I don't want to pull it. I just wanted to comment on how I'm so glad that we are getting more funding for this. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Item 16, Expansion of Fiverr Optic Network Agreement with Duke University, Construct the Durham Housing Authority Campus Network. I'm going to pull that item. Under Presentations, Department of Transportation, Item 17, Greater Triangle Commuter Rail GTCR Study Update. Item 18, Update on Durham County Transit Plan. Item 19, Under Public Hearing, City County Planning Department, Consolidated Annexation, Carrington Woods II. Item 20, Consolidated Annexation, 924 Old Oxford Road. Item 21, Consolidated Annexation, 551 Olive Branch Road. Item 22, Consolidated Annexation, 415 Andrew Avenue. Under Citizens Matters to be Heard at 1 o'clock, Item 23, Brandon Williams. Under Supplemental Items, Office of Economic and Workforce Development, City County, Item 24, City County Interlocal Agreement to Receive Durham County Financial Contribution to the Durham Care Small Business Grant Proving. This final item, our manager has asked us to suspend the rules and vote today. As you all know, the CARES Act funding must be out the door, December the 31st. The county has, like us, they have been trying to make sure they're expending all of their CARES Act funding for positive purposes. And in addition to the roughly same amount of money that we contributed to the small business program recently, they have also want to add another $250,000. So I'm going to now ask if there's a motion that we can suspend the rules and vote on this item. Moved by Council Member Freelon, seconded by Council Member Freeman. 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. I vote aye. Council Member Rees. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And now is there a motion that we authorize the City Manager to execute the Interlocal Agreement with Durham County? Moved by Council Member Middleton, seconded by Council Member Freelon. 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. I vote aye. Council Member Rees. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously. I want to say to Mr. Pettigrew and others from his department who are here today, we very much appreciate you all springing into action to get this money out the door to our businesses. I know that we've already gotten the first half out the door. And congratulations on that. And the fact that your department did it and we didn't contract it out yet to take on the additional burden is much appreciated, Mr. Pettigrew. All right. We'll move now to our pulled items. Madam Manager, the items I have pulled, I'm sorry, we're going to have the citizens matters, but let me first review what we've got pulled. Three, six, seven, and 16. Is that what you have, Madam Manager? That is what I have, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, I apologize. I was seeking recognition to have item 14 pulled. I think I made a bad loss. I'm sorry. My fault. No, I didn't hear that. Thank you. So we'll make that three, six, seven, 14, and 16. Let me just make sure I know which 14 is, the Blueman-Evans Grant Project. Okay, great. Yes, sir. Thank you. So we've got three, six, seven, 14, and 16. Thank you, House Member. Sorry, I missed you. Thank you, Madam Manager. All right. We'll now move to Citizens Matters. And we have one person who is signed up today. And that is Mr. Brandon Williams. Mr. Williams, are you available to be heard? I am. We're glad to have you, Mr. Williams. And you have three minutes. Thank you, Mayor Schull. Good afternoon, members of the City Council. Name is Brandon Williams, and I'm a resident of the Waltown neighborhood, speaking today on behalf of the Waltown Community Association. In December of 2018, a group of neighbors and I spoke before you to express our concerns about the sale of Northgate Mall to Northwood investors, specifically emphasizing how the redevelopment of the property would continue to displace people and undermine Black wealth by elevating the already-increasing property taxes and rents in our community. After that meeting, we launched an organizing effort outlined for you on the second page of the presentation I submitted. This is a multiracial, multi-generational, multi-class, all-volunteer effort rooted in generations of Black working-class families in Waltown when the face of structural racism have embodied a spirit of self-determination and resilience. Over the last two years, we've developed a vision based on the hopes, desires, and experiences of Waltown residents, centering the people who have been and will continue to be most impacted by gentrification in the geographic area surrounding Northgate Mall. Then we branched out to the six other neighborhoods that surround the mall to strengthen our efforts and build collective power. This collective power is reflected in the design of three alternative maps for the new Northgate that were created by the Northgate Mall Neighborhood Council, which includes representatives from Waltown, Northgate Park, Duke Park, Trinity Park, Trinity Heights, Watts Hospital, Hillendale, and Old West Durham. These maps reflect the goals laid out in Waltown's strategic vision and provide an alternative to the map shared by Northwood back in September of this year. Last month on November 14th, we held an outdoor community meeting to reveal those maps and launched a survey to gather input and help us validate and clarify our priorities in the redevelopment process. As you can see on the second to last page of the presentation, the overarching and consistent theme is connection to the community. Connection is created by fostering and inviting and welcoming place for all Durham residents. Specifically, four priorities have emerged and are the utmost importance in our efforts. Each of these priorities is supported by preliminary findings from our survey based on 311 responses from residents across the city. First is affordable housing, which means that the affordable units developed on the property be priced for people at or below the Waltown median income of $37,000, which means that they will need to be at 30 to 40% of the Durham Chapel Hill area median income of $90,000. We know that this is a tall order but is necessary for affordability to be meaningful for our neighbors. Second is affordable retail, which requires advocating for a grocery store, maybe a co-op providing ownership for local residents, and set asides for non-chain local businesses. Third is accessible community center design, which means advocating for a community park and green space that opens up a long-guess road connecting the Waltown park, the property, and there's also a strong desire for dedicated community space such as a library branch with the Waltown History Hub. Fourth is environmental sustainability, which means instilling measures to reduce stormwater runoff and excessive flooding on the property and surrounding area. Recently, we have begun to engage the Northwood team around how to implement these priorities in the development process. Our next meeting with them is in early January. These conversations are still early, and while we hope that we can find a way to meet our expectations, we are asking for the council's continued support in pursuing an equitable redevelopment process, one that centers folks most impacted by gentrification, and ensuring that the new Northgate is a place where all Durham residents can live, work, shop, eat, learn, and play. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Williams. You have been a great leader, and we're all very appreciative of your efforts and very supportive of your efforts, and I hope you'll continue to call on us as you all move forward, and just want to express my appreciation to you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We'll do. Council Member Reeks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to add my thanks to you, Brandon, for the amazing work that you've done. We actually haven't spoken in a while about this, and since we met at Northgate Mall a while ago, but I followed along the organizing efforts that you've been making with your neighbors, and it's just really astonishing to have come up with these alternative plans is just pretty amazing. I wanted to ask you about the substance of your interactions with the developers so far. What's that been like? Yeah. It's taken some time, but we've found recently a rhythm to get engaged. I would say we met probably early on in April of 2019, kind of soon after the purchase, and then it probably was another eight or so months before we engaged with them again when we launched our strategic vision this past February, and then we hadn't had a meeting since right after that time, February, March until this past November. So we weren't able to get some connection around our charrette, we had a design charrette where members of the City County Planning Department and Duke came, and other neighborhoods, we weren't able to get coordinated on schedules for that, so they did not attend that. And then we had our reveal for the community maps on the 14th as well, they weren't able to attend, but soon after that we were able to kind of work out a meeting, and we've been able to have two recently. So I've been encouraged by the fact that we've been able to get kind of on the same page in terms of meeting recently, and we have another meeting set for January. So I think it was a bit choppy at first, but we've seemed like we're in a better space in terms of getting an established rhythm that can have some consistency. So that's where we're at now. Brandon, I'm really glad that you guys are able to start having those conversations, and I hope that you'll keep giving us updates about how that process is going, because it'll be important for us to know the status of that relationship and their receptiveness to these really important ideas and really requirements that you and your neighbors have come forward with. One last question. You have said you were hoping that the council would be supportive. What would that look like to you? What could we do as individuals, as a city council, to support the vision that you and your neighbors have for Northgate? Yes, great question. I think one of the things that's emerged, I know for us as we begin to think about the affordability in terms of housing there, is the fact that making affordable units that can connect with at the AMI at the level that we need will likely require some creativity in terms of the funding and how that happens. Obviously the developer will bear the brunt of that, but just wondering, curious, any ideas folks may have to other kinds of resources we can tap into for that process would be helpful. And then I think the second is the clarity around the zoning. The leverage that we have as residents is that the zoning on the property only allows 50 feet of height currently. We know that the developer wants that height to be increased and would like a change to be made. And we've been grateful that the council has encouraged them to connect with community in the process and that we just firmly believe we don't want that height to be granted without meeting expectations around the priorities that we set forth. But we have also shared to them if the priorities can be met then we would be open to the height. So I think just in those two ways to continue to express that it's important for community voice to be heard and implemented, incorporated into the design as we move forward. And if you can help us in terms of trying to figure out some creativity around the affordable housing, it would be great. Great. Well, Brandon, I don't want to, I know we've got a long agenda ahead, but Brandon, if you wouldn't mind dropping the council an email with contact information for the folks you're working with at Northwood, I'd love to reach out to them and talk to them about how important it is to me that they continue to work with you and your neighbors about this. And on the overall housing front, you might want to try to set up some time to meet with the folks in our community development department who are intimately familiar with all of the strategies that can be deployed to develop affordable housing in a particular project. We're using a ton of them right now in Durham. And so I'd be happy to provide you with that information so you can make that work. But Brandon, most importantly, just thanks again for all the work that you and your neighbors are doing to really focus on how a particular area in our city can really benefit from redevelopment, but it has to be community-centered, community-led, and you have done all the heavy lifting for them to figure out what you and your neighbors want and what you think will help, which is a huge gift. So thank you. They should be saying thank you. So let's keep the conversation going, but again, thanks for being here. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Freeman. Thank you. And I appreciate Council Member Reese's comments that's insightful. I really appreciate Brandon and his neighbor's work, Brenda Williams and his neighbor's work on this site. I'm concerned, though, within COVID that the binary conversation around whether the focus on community priorities or just build at 50 feet might be sending the wrong message, acknowledging that there's such a financial kind of concern around whether or not they'll be able to build. I would love to have a more robust conversation of this, if we could bring this back as an item so that we are actually involved in that conversation, because I feel like there is a miss if we let this site get built without the priorities included at all, because they just build at 50 feet. Because, I mean, by right, they could just build and it will be in place. There's not much the community would have, say so on in that case. And I would much rather have a more robust conversation where there's actual options laid out for how much height or how much much willingness for flexibility around some of the priorities based on the cost might be in place. I know I've had some of the conversations with Northwood Raven, and they've been very open and engaging, acknowledging that they hired a local firm to do some of the community engagement work. And I know that Brandon Williams has held a few community meetings, and I've attended those, and I've felt and I've expressed this a number of times that, you know, it's good that we have the community charrettes, but when the developer, as in my case in my neighborhood, decides just not to build, it doesn't benefit us at all. Or when the developer decides that they're going to go ahead with their plan and not include any of your suggestions, that also doesn't benefit us. And I just want to note that this is not a push to make it more expensive on the developer, it's a push to be in partnership with the developer. And so I just wanted to make sure that message was sent and we weren't just leaving it as a very binary do with the community says or not, or else, because that doesn't feel right. So thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. All right, thank you. Mr. Williams, thank you for being with us. We appreciate it very much. Thank you for your time. All right, colleagues, we're now going to move to the poll items. Item three has a presentation with it. And so we're going to try to go ahead and do the other poll items first that I think we can dispense up quickly, so we can let our staff leave the meeting and get back to doing the work that they'd rather do. Okay, we will begin then with item six. Item six is Williams Water Treatment Plant Paving Contract. And I believe that was pulled by Council Member Freeman. Is that correct? Yes, thank you. Thank you. Go ahead, Council Member. I just have a clarified question, noting that I do believe that this is the the workforce statistics for the hauling company and not for the van hook trucking, but it wasn't clear. There wasn't a title at the top to make it to indicate that. I just wanted to get verification on it. No, that's the statistics for the company itself. It's a relatively small company. Okay, and that's on the SA hauling, not van hook. Correct. Okay. And is it, I mean, are you in the practice of gathering information from van hook trucking as well? We can certainly get that, provide that and put that prior to the Council meeting and get that on a memo. That was pretty much it. Thank you. Certainly. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Mr. Greeley. All right, we'll move on now to item seven. Item seven is an item that I pulled. This is the Water Plant Residuals and Waste Water Plant Vial Solids Contract. Mr. Greeley, at the South Door Water Recreation Facility, are we also building a city-owned dewatering plant there? Yes, good afternoon. I apologize for item six. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Members, Council, Don Greeley Water Management. Currently, we store our biosolids on the pad there for land application. The Residuals Management, we have at the Water Treatment Plants that we just completed our construction work on those facilities and we're still working on trying to get them working and optimize them since their new processes coming online. But we're asking for the contract extension basically with CineGrow. It's a one-year contract because we're just finishing up the existing contract. To be able us to work through bringing those new facilities that the water plants online continue to work with solid waste over their efforts in dealing, you know, working with the biosolids and the yard waste at the North Durham pad. And once we have that all worked out, which we believe we'll do in the next 12 months, then we would know exactly what we need to bid out on a long-term contract. Thank you. I think this plan is excellent. It makes a lot of sense to me to do this for another year and I get that and I appreciate it. I'm trying to understand that at the North Durham where, as I understand it, we're not planning to compost biosolids at the South Durham Water Reclamation Facility. And of course, unlike Durham, North Durham, it's not next to our solid waste facility. So what I'm trying to understand is how are the biosolids from the South Durham Recreation Facility disposed of and are we going to have a dewatering plant there also down in the southern part in the southern facility? They're currently already dewatered to create the biosolids and currently our biosolids at the South Durham are land applied and during the upcoming year we'll be doing an overall biosolids residuals master plan to look at long-term where we head with those whether we have kind of a comparable continue on what we have now or actually do a kind of a sludge drier facility that would create a class A fertilizer with our biosolids as opposed to land applying. So we'll be looking at in the next year or so. And that will include the South Durham biosolids as well as the North Durham? It will be, hopefully we'll have the successful program with Atlas. So we wouldn't have to use it for North Durham, but just for South Durham. And if we are unsuccessful with folding our residuals from the water plants into the Atlas program. Okay, great. Thank you, Mr. Greeley. Yes, sir. Councilmember Reese. Thank you. Hi, Don. How are you today? Yeah. So when we talk about biosolids, I guess especially at South Durham, is that when they're making the cake? Is that what that's called? Yes. Okay, friends, I've been on a tour of the South Water Reclamation Facility. I've seen them baking the cake. You don't want that cake. It's a bad cake. It was a hit with my then third grader. I went on a class trip with her because it was the most horrible smelling room I've ever entered into in my life. And she and all her friends agreed. We had a good laugh and coughing fit after we left. So that's great. This sounds like a fantastic idea. Don, I wanted to ask you about the slightly unusual procedural posture that this item brings to us. It comes just through the waiver of the finance policy. Can you talk a little bit about why that's necessary? Because I'll be honest with you. I don't remember us. I don't remember seeing another one of those in my time on the council. Probably did a bunch of them and I've just not noticed. But this time I noticed. Can you talk us through that a little bit? Certainly. We've had brought forward with some items, some rebuilding of some of our equipment by the initial vendor. The belt presses at North Durham and South Durham, we got the exception because those needed to be rebuilt by the manufacturing company themselves. But this is unique. We are finishing up a contract with CineGrow. They already have all of their facilities at the Brown Plant already mobilized. There's very few companies that do this. We've bid this out in prior years four different times. Only once did we have another company bid because it's a very specialized service. And that company, the second bidder in that was from an employee of CineGrow who recently tried to start his own company. So we've seen very little competition in here just because there's so few companies that are doing this because it's so specialized just for basically wastewater operations throughout the state. And the fact that they've already have a lot of their equipment mobilized, we would get some cost savings without having to go out. So we figured we'd save money. And just for one year, we thought it was appropriate to go this way as opposed to bidding. Thanks, Don. I'm sold. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. I think also, Mr. Greeley, you felt, as I remember the memo also, and I may have this wrong, that CineGrow would have such a big advantage already having their facility constructed there and that any other bidder would have to put in another million bucks or something. Am I right about that? Correct, because they've already mobilized their facilities. They would have a distinct advantage, price advantage over anybody else who would have to mobilize in their equipment. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Greeley. It's really nice to see you. Thanks for being with us. Hi, guys. Thank you. All right. We'll now move to item 14. And this was pulled by Council Member Middleton. And this is the 2020 Bloob and Evelyn's Grant Project. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Let's see who we have with us, Council Member. Do we have someone here from the Police Department who will be addressing this item? Yes. Keisha Preston. Okay, great. Ms. Preston, welcome. We're glad to see you. Thanks for being here. Yes. Council Member Middleton, go ahead. Thank you, Sir. Ms. Preston, good afternoon. Good to see you. I read the memo and did no issues with the program itself. But I have a couple of questions about how do we determine the funding levels? What is the methodology to say this year is 25, this year it's 50, this year it's 30? Could you explain that to me? Yes. We have based it on the amount of donations that we have received from the public. So this recent year, during our National Night Out, we got significantly more funding than we have in prior years. We got close to almost $30,000. So with that, we're trying to figure out the best methodology and what we are going to start going forward is bringing it every year. So every year we'll do a new ordinance for the money that we're going to bring in that year, hopefully. So then that way we don't have to bring it in multiple times during a year. So your ask is based upon the haul you took in up to a certain cutoff point. Is that, does that make sense? Yes. Right. Is it, is there something that precludes us from just whatever you take in? Can it just be a rolling kind of fund? And if the accountability structures are there, do you need to have to keep limiting yourself or a specifying amount? Or is there a way we can set something up that says whatever we take in, it is what it is. And as long as you're meeting accounting standards and money's being accounted for, or is there some ordinance or statute, I don't know about that requires us to do it this way. Well, we have to account for every year that we're getting it in. And so that's sort of like why we have decided after this particular one, we'll do it every budget year. And then that way it's just going to continue a continual role that way. I also see the manager here, Ms. Preston, she's coming in that she's like the cavalry sometimes shows up. She's doing a very, very good job. But, but anytime we have an ordinance, it is an estimate. And we just try not to bring too many ordinances. But even if someone is giving us money, or we have money, we still actually have to have the council approve a grant project ordinance in order to actually expand the funds. So it is an estimate. But we will not, if our donations are greater, at some point, those donations will be included in a project ordinance so that it can be expanded. Got you. And the line in the memo where it says as of October 2020, the department has received over $12,000 in excess of the approved 50 grand. So you're asking us for 25 grand for this year. So what happens to that 12,000? Does that mean only 13 from this year plus the 12 comes up to the 25? Where is that 12,000 now? So that 12,000 is currently sitting in the one that was for the 50,000. So it's actually right now received at 62,000. So we have to account for that 12,000 in order to expend it. So that's what's going to go into this 25 now. And we'll have the 13 left through the rest of the year to receive donations on. Cool. And last question, all of the initiatives that benefit from this, these donations are all noble and worthy initiatives. This is in addition to regular line item funding that these are any of these just solely funded by these charitable donations or these charitable donations augment what these initiatives get from the regular city coffers. So some of our programs do not get specific line items in their budgets. Like we have the outreach, the Hispanic outreach liaison, the budget for that person and that position is in our general funds, but outreach activities and other things that they do are not budgeted in there. So funding for that from this program go directly to assist that person doing that. We have a historic fund that is not funded by the general fund. So police preservation funds, that goes to specifically for that and that's not budgeted. The LGBTQ outreach, same thing. The person is funded, but the extra activities are not aligned on a budget. So this helps with their outreach. So certain programs do have some funding and then other ones are, we have funding for the person, but not some of the extra activities. Okay. All right. That's very helpful. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, councilmember. Thank you for those questions. I realized that they were very clarifying for me too. So thank you. Ms. Preston, thank you for being with us. Thank you. We're really glad to have you here today and we appreciate you very much. Thank you. All right. We'll now move to item 16. And this item I pulled also, this is the expansion of the fiber optic network agreement with Duke University. And I see that we have Mr. Kerry Good with us. Nice to see you. Nice to see you, mayor. My question is this, will all the eight communities identified be provided with a network for this amount of funding? You know, there's a list of the eight housing authority communities. I couldn't tell if the, well, you know, what will this amount of money do? Will it only wire McDougal Terrace or will it, will it, you know, all these eight communities, will this be enough to wire all of them? Yes. It will be enough with the exception of Liberty because Liberty is going to be tore down completely and redone the investment would not be a good investment in Liberty. Otherwise, we're planning to put the same type of service in every campus. Thank you. That's what I needed to know. Welcome. All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And good to see you. Good to see you too. Thank you. All right, colleagues, we've now gone through all the poll items with the exception of item three. I'm sorry, councilman. I'm not sure if you could see my hand. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'd just like to follow up. In addition to Liberty, I noticed that JJ Henderson was also not included. And I just want to make sure to or verify that that was also already done or in a plan to be done. The campuses we identified was those with students in school. So we do have last mile connectivity going to every campus. But the connectivity to the homes were prioritized to the campuses that have students in the public school system. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you so much, everybody. We'll now move to our last poll item, which is item three and understand that there's a presentation. I know that Mayor Pro Tem wants to make some remarks on this. And so do you want to lead us off? Happy to. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So this presentation is going to be from two members of our Workers' Rights Commission, Antonio Lester, who's the chair and Brian Powell, one of the members of the commission. They've been working for several months on putting together this Workers' Bill of Rights for us to take a look at. And it was one of the duties that we tasked the commission with when they were founded. It was requested by various members of the community that we create this commission and that this be one of their first tasks. So I'm really excited to bring our two board members to talk about their work and they've been working really hard on this for a while. And given that we don't have legislative authority to regulate a lot of the items that we know our Workers' Rights Commission is looking at and that we know that we would really like to see in our community, this is written as more of an aspirational document, what we believe are the rights of workers in our community. And so it would be, I think I checked in with Kim about what the Indiana, about what the actual motion on an agenda would be. Basically we would accept this as a resolution of the council, essentially. We are signing on to this broad vision of what working people in our community deserve, if that's what we decided to do moving forward. So I'm really, I really like it. I think it's a really excellent piece of work and happy to turn the presentation over to Antonia Lester and Brian Powell to tell us more. Thanks. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the City Council. Really quickly, I'm going to start this presentation off and then I will turn it over to my colleague to finish. If we could have the very first slide from the PowerPoint, please. Mr. Lester, we're seeing the first slide. Do you want the next one? I'm sorry, yes, the next slide. I apologize. Okay, no worries. There we go. Okay, mission, the Durham Workers' Rights Commission was established in 2019, tasked in part with crafting an aspirational Workers' Bill of Rights that might help raise working conditions by serving as a guidepost for all workers and employers in the city. This document completed and approved by the Commission in November 2020 contains the ideas and principles the Commission believes would benefit all workers and all those who want to work in the City of Durham and beyond. We also have a quote here from our famous humanitarian Ella Baker that says, people cannot be free until there's enough work in this land to give everyone a job. Next slide, please. Experience from everywhere, examples, I'm sorry, experience from Durham, examples from everywhere. To craft this document, the Commission looked at, looked to experiences of Durham workers as well as the Commission's own research curating informational worker protections and principles being implemented or debated in communities around the nation, including but not limited to proposed bills in the North Carolina General Assembly, HB 1140, SB 763, SB 575, HB 1085. In addition to the New York City's Workers' Bill of Rights, Seattle Washington Fair scheduling ordinances, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, New York Farm Workers' Bill of Rights, Washington Fair Chance Act, Proposed Federal Workplace Democracy Act, as well as proposed federal essential workers' bill of rights. Next slide, please. These are some of the bullet points contained that we're even going to a little bit detailed, so these are worker rights. All of these we're going to go through starting with right to a job. Next slide, please. Right to a job. Every person who wants to work deserves a job in fair wages. The City of Durham should attempt to ensure the availability of secure employment opportunities for all who want them. Next slide, please. Right to organize without retaliation. Workers have a right to join together in a range of activities related to work issues that matter to them, including whether they want to be represented by a union. Employers should not threaten, discriminate against, or otherwise act against workers for organizing or talking with coworkers about working conditions. Next slide, please. Democratic workplace. Company decision-making should be a collaborative and democratic process that prioritizes the well-being of the workforce. Workers have the right to direct, have a right to direct, to direct participation and elected representation in company decision-making. Next slide. Fair and democratic wages. Workers must be paid for every hour worked, including work before and or after scheduled shifts and time spent traveling during the workday. Every worker deserves to be paid a livable wage. Every worker must be paid in a timely fashion. Every worker must be paid over time at least one and a half times the regular rate of pay for hours above 40 hours in a single week. Workers have a right to collectively establish or negotiate wages for each position in the workplace. Next slide. Fair work week. Workers are entitled to a fair work schedule, including the following. A written good-faith estimate of the employees' expected duties and job description and expected work schedule prior to or upon employment. A work schedule and writing provided in a fair and timely manner prior to the first day of the work schedule. Compensation for work schedule changes. Meaningful input into the work schedule. Substantial time to rest between work shifts and from week to week. And the ability to exercise the above rights free from retaliation. I will now hand it over to my colleague Mr. Powell for the rest of the presentation. Thank you, Antonio. Let's take it through the rest of this. Workplace free from discrimination, paramount importance. Employers or job recruiters must not discriminate based on a worker or potential workers. And we've got a fairly comprehensive list we will leave here. Age, alienage or citizenship status, race, ethnicity or color, disability or perceived disability, sex, gender or gender identity, marital or partnership status, national origin, pregnancy, religion or creed, sexual orientation, arrest or conviction record, caregiver status, consumer credit history, unemployment status, status as a victim of domestic violence, stalking and sex offenses, retaliation for opposing discriminatory practices, genetics, familial status and military status. Next slide. Thank you. Another very important one, workplace free from sexual violence and harassment. Workers are entitled to a workplace free from sexual assault, harassment, coercion or any other form of sexual violence or intimidation. Workers must not be retaliated against for reporting sexual assault or harassment that they've experienced, witnessed or were made aware of by someone experiencing or witnessing set acts. This one I want to pause for a second and particularly emphasize safe and healthy workplace. Okay. Every workplace must be free of known health and safety hazards. Workers have the right to receive information and training about job hazards. Workers deemed essential during unusual and dangerous circumstances are entitled to hazard pay and the option to refuse shifts without fear of retaliation. This is a particularly important and relevant point during this pandemic and in the wake of recent comments from the outgoing labor commissioner, Barry, who recently told labor advocates that the pandemic is not a workplace safety issue. These are comments contrary to the experience of workers in many workplaces in North Carolina, including and disproportionately at meat processing facilities where workers are in extremely close and sometimes cramped positions, conditions that require to work in low temperatures. Based on the news and observers reporting on this issue, I just want to lift up that there have been 280 clusters at workplaces in North Carolina over 6,000 cases, at least 30 associated deaths and over 4,000 complaints from North Carolina workers regarding COVID-19 conditions at their workplaces through October, I believe. So I just want to lift that issue up as one that is of particular importance in this time. Moving to the next slide. Paid, safe and sick leave also relevant. Workers have a right to paid sick and safe leave. Sick leave can be used for care and treatment for the worker or to care for anyone in the worker, anyone the worker considers family. Safe leave can be used for the worker or anyone the worker considers family in order to seek help or take other safety measures for any acts or threat of domestic violence unwanted sexual contact, stalking or human trafficking. Employers must not retaliate against workers who request to use safe and sick leave. Retaliation being a recurring theme here and emphasizing that it is not okay for employers to retaliate against workers expressing some of these rights. Paid family leave. Workers have a right to paid family leave. That's mandatory. Fair notice of termination. Workers have a right to receive written notice of termination weeks in advance of the worker's final day. Fair administrative services. Workers have a right to be provided the following in a language or a method that the worker can understand. Adequate, documented job training, important documents and information related to employment, pay stubs, work manuals, tax forms, that kind of thing. And freelance workers have a right to a written contract if they would like one. Fair access to information about rights and remedy. Workers are entitled to be informed of their rights, federal, state and local in a language or method the worker can understand. Additionally, methods available for pursuing remedy for violations of a worker's rights should be clear, affordable, accessible and free from retaliation. Meaningful enforcement of laws protecting workers. Departments and agents of the government tasked with enforcing existing legal protections for workers must do so in a meaningful and equitable way. Workers should be given the opportunity, the platform and the powers necessary to advise, oversee or investigate any agency or other regulatory body whose failure to enforce the laws has threatened or harmed the safety and well-being of workers within its jurisdiction. And that's it I think for this slide. What can Durham City Council do that has been addressed by the Mayor Pro Tem and I appreciate that. I just want to on behalf of the commission thank this council once again and former council member Renetta Alston, now representative Renetta Alston for helping to for establishing this commission and prioritizing worker protections and needs. It's appreciated for sure and we hope that the City Council will agree with and about these principles. And I should say just to clarify again from our perspective what this is and what this is not, this is not a legal document. There are a lot of these principles that as Ms. Johnson referenced earlier are not you know because of preemption laws because of other laws that are already established not something that Durham City Council could take action on right now. It's a set of guidelines and principles that we think are something we shall be aspiring to. Thank you very much Mr. Luster and Mr. Powell that was a great presentation. Just before this meeting I was in a driving in a caravan of workers at McDonald's the fight for 15 organizing was was a was a drive-through caravan and I was glad to be there and the so many of the things that you all have highlighted today are relevant to the lives of those employees and so many others. So thank you so much. Colleagues before we get started on any comments and questions you may have I do want to say I think that I want to suggest in my we can accept these which means thank you very much you gave them to us we accept them or we can also endorse them and I want to suggest that that'd be our action. I think we need to take a more you know positive stance towards them and make it clear that we're not just receiving them but that we they also have our endorsement and so I hope that we'll be thinking about that as a way to move forward. All right colleagues questions or comments at this time council member Freeman. Thank you I essentially in the same vein I wanted to thank you all for presenting and doing this work to pull these these aspirations together. It would be really helpful to know if there was staff involved because in addition to the endorsement I would love to know how many of these kind of areas we are already doing as a employer ourselves so it would be nice to have some type of chart or something that says this is what city is doing already or this is something we're aspiring to or like that would be in addition in addition to an endorsement it's like and we are also doing these things. Thank you council member. Thank you. Other comments council member Caballero. Yeah I just want to thank the presenters today this is excellent all the work that the commission did and I also just wanted to really highlight our delegation of the general assembly looking at the slide that shares examples from other places seeing three of our delegation having put forward legislation at the state level is really fantastic and I just want to give a shout out we are we have the best delegation of the general assembly so I just wanted to acknowledge their hard work. Thank you very much council member. Other comments council member Middleton. Thank you so much Mr. Mayor and welcome Brian and Antonio for this great great presentation I see a lot of presentations in this chair but I was really looking forward to this one I do want to say I'm going to put them on the spot but I do want to shout out Antonio Luster we we share a connection he goes to my church and when he's not a superhero for workers rights he's also a heck of a base player so that that's his cover that's his Bruce Wayne cover by day and by night he's fighting for workers rights we spend a great deal of time in another context talking about human dignity and talking about ways to to secure that dignity and honor that dignity so I'm incredibly proud and grateful to see him in this context demonstrating that these values aren't just an academic pursuit for him I know that they are bonded to his belief system and to his worldview so I just want to thank you so much for for being consistent whatever context I see you and my brother and Brian you as well my brother for for this great work Mr. Mayor I totally echo your your sentiments about going beyond just receiving them but but whatever we can do however far we can go as a council with fraught waters and whether that's a resolution or endorsement whatever we can do I certainly support that wholeheartedly thank you again for this where I want to thank um also uh my colleagues that counselor uh Austin uh now representative Austin for the mayor pro tem in particular for for giving voice uh and really leaning in on this issue of this most important issue so thank you all for the incredible work thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member we will discuss later with Mr. Luster what he thinks of your preaching all right okay he gave you thumbs up great other questions and comments colleagues council member Reese thank you Mr. Mayor we'll uh we'll allow the conversation about uh pastor Middleton's singing to go unsaid let's leave that out of the mix all together um Mr. Mayor this uh today marks I think the one of the one of the moments on the council when you have to look back and realize that sometimes democracy works um you know the the the bill of rights that came in before us today um was the result of committed residents not elected officials workers came together and asked the city council please create this commission to set out a bill of rights an aspirational document for all workers and employers in the city fill the commission with people dedicated to giving workers a fair shake in this city and then let those those folks do the hard work which they have done of researching countless other workers bills of rights around the around the country um figuring out the right uh things to include and not include uh and then bring that back to the city council and that's that's what today is uh and it's it's amazing i'm emotional i'm sorry that representative alson isn't here uh but hopefully i will send her the link and maybe she can watch this part uh because um she did a ton of the heavy lifting while she was still with us um and will be and is and will continue to be one of our great champions in the general assembly as we as we endorse this resolution and then take this fight uh to our elected leaders in raleigh to make some of these ideas the law of the land in north carolina and so i just want to thank uh the members of the commission especially brian and antonio for coming today um it's not easy to uh speak before the city council especially in this fraught era of coven when we're all virtual and you got to get all the connections right and i'm just really grateful for you all for taking time to do it in the middle of a work day and for all the work that went into this it's um a little choked up it's a little inspirational mr mayor uh to see an idea that came to us uh from ordinary folks uh come through the often tortuous and mangling legislative process to get to this point today um and so i just want to thank everybody involved and i say this gives me a little bit more hope uh for who we are as a community so and obviously i agree we should endorse it say that okay thank you thank you council member and i see our manager madame manager um mr mayor uh what i would like to say on behalf of the administration obviously the city of durham is only one employer uh in durham but we can't be a leader and we do hear um the the information that has been presented to council today and want to already to measure our own organization uh against those um those values so thank you for your work thank you so much madame manager uh that's great and much appreciated the one um there was one concept in here that was new to me and that was safely and uh i really appreciated learning about that and i hope that's something that we can think about as well as as for the city any other comments all right i really want to thank you again mr lustre and mr pal for being with us i think the way that we should uh proceed um is to um colleagues i'm going to suggest that we at our monday night that we put this on our agenda for our monday night meeting coming up with a motion to endorse this uh workers bill of rights at that time uh and to uh in in line with what the manager said and to ask uh our city administration to review our policies in light of these in light of these principles would you all find that acceptable can i see some thumbs okay great madame mayor pro tem would you mind writing that motion and and sort of and getting with the clerk and uh making sure that she has that for in time for the next time for our monday night meeting on 21st sure yes happy to thank you mr mayor and thank you again um brian and antonio for coming really appreciate it and it's been great working with y'all over the last a few months and excited to keep working with you on the commission and continue to um help improve the lives of of working people in durham so thank you you and madame mayor pro tem thank you for your work on this and your your support for the group all right thank you all very much um and now we'll move on to we have two presentations both of them transportation related and the first of those is item 17 the commuter rail study update and i see uh sean egan with us mr egan welcome we're glad to have you thank you mr mayor madame mayor pro tem and members of the city council so i'd like to move right into the presentation we have with us j hikers senior transportation planner for go triangle to provide a presentation on the greater triangle commuter rail project so i'll hand it off to j thank you thank you good afternoon mayor and council j hikers senior transportation planner with go triangle um last time i'm here to provide an update on the feasibility study for the commuter rail um greater triangle commuter rail i believe the council last heard an update earlier this fall um since then work has gotten underway across a number of tasks um i'd like to highlight a few updates for this council next slide please um first thing i want to highlight is that the commuter rail is a part of a larger set of regional transit investments and that are envisioned across a number of plans um one of those plans that this council is very aware of and you'll hear more on from the transit plan team is the update to the Durham county transit plan a goal of this feasibility study is to provide more more refinement and more detail on the concept of a commuter rail that can then be evaluated as part of the transit plan update process and those things for ongoing concurrently and in coordination next slide this slide zooms in a little bit or this slide focuses on the commuter rail corridor um it starts and west Durham near duke and v.a. medical centers continues with proposed stations and downtown Durham east Durham and ellis road um and connects Durham residents to job centers such as research triangle park carry and northwest wake and raleigh and the rail line continues out to east gardener with the potential um for some service to be extended to clayton and johnson cammy a goal of this for primary outcome of this phase of study is developing a project concept and that project concept includes um includes the track infrastructure the rails the number of trains their schedule as well as defining the station locations so that's when we say project concept that's what we mean by that um and reaching and next slide please so that's the outcome of the study the primary goal and during this phase of study is to reach a regional consensus um among stakeholders including the city council on the contents of that project concept as well as the um as well as consensus on whether or not to move forward um with that project concept and to move it towards design as well as constructing it um to reach that goal of achieving consensus um there are three primary elements to this study the first is engaging the community there are three engagement sessions there are three engagement efforts um they'll be conducted as part of the study and i have an update on the first one um later in the slide deck the next one is working with the railroad and north carolina railroad as well as the operators to determine and reach agreement on the types of infrastructure and improvements that are required to support additional train traffic um also related to that is reaching agreement on the railroad with liability and dignity and other key aspects of reaching agreement with the railroads and then also this study will do some analysis about the challenges of the project as well as potential project benefits one of those challenges that this council is very familiar with is that of downtown Durham and i have an update on that as well next slide please in order to achieve this goal of reaching consensus we're working with municipalities across um along the line as well as the counties metropolitan planning organizations railroads and cdt um and other stakeholders and this slide is specific to our efforts of the city of Durham um in coordination with the transit plan update we are also providing quarterly updates to the city council on the commuter rail project that update also goes to the county commissioners as well as the metropolitan planning organization we are meeting monthly um or on a as needed basis i'm a city of Durham staff to discuss issues that are specific to Durham and we also have a monthly um municipal and institution stakeholder group that meets to be updated on the study and there are a number of organizations that are based in Durham that take part in that group and then finally there are also tasks specific meetings that also include the city as well as other stakeholders in Durham including the universities and the chamber of commerce next slide please as alluded to we're working on anal doing some engineering analysis for the challenges that exist to adding rail traffic to downtown Durham those include environmental screening and developing a menu of concepts that include track design station sighting um roadway and traffic adjustments as well as utilities and then as part of that as noted on the previous slide there's stakeholder and community engagement and this is work that is ongoing we've met with that technical stakeholder group that includes city staff a couple of times survey work has been completed um along this quarter and now engineering work is underway and we'll have more to share in the coming months with stakeholders the community um in the city um as those concepts receive that engineering analysis next slide and last thing i wanted to update the council on is our engagement effort we've completed our first round of public engagement we've received responses from more than 2,700 individuals it's my understanding that 600 of those response 600 of those individuals are from Durham based zip codes and this was also done in coordination with the first phase of engagement of the Durham transit plan so folks who took the commuter rail survey um were then directed to the transit plan to also provide an input into that and I believe vice versa um this was due to COVID this was primarily an online effort um we're well aware that online surveys especially in times of COVID um do not produce results um that are um that are representative of the community and particularly disadvantaged communities that exist along the corridor to do that and we've partnered or we've taken a few efforts um and we're very optimistic to receive more feedback about commuter rail as part of the Durham transit plan update some of the efforts that were taken specific to commuter rail including email campaigns which included targeted emails to residents across BIPOC communities in the study area there were also um in Durham and in coordination with the Durham transit plan update there were in-person events at and these were COVID appropriate with masks and folks who completed the survey got hand sanitizer but in-person events at Durham station the regional transit center as well as the village which is another high ridership destination in the Durham community we've also partnered um with community organizations in the region that are providing essential services a good example of that in Durham is Meals on Wheels of Durham where their volunteers were able to either conduct in-person or phone surveys and that were then entered into the online database and then also for groups that were for community groups that go triangle is connected with um that are meeting online we're able to attend and present at virtual community group meetings also not on this slide but something that I really I think is really important to mention is is that this effort is being coordinated with the Durham transit plan update and specifically the survey which you'll hear more about on the next slide um asks questions um that help will help us understand more about the commuter rail project and the public's um insight into that project and their opinions specifically um there are questions that related to um folks's travel needs whether they be regional or local um what types of destinations they would like to get to using transit and what types of destinations they go to now as well as even specific questions about the types of investment um in different transit technologies um that is um I don't want to steal their thunder but we're also we're excited to um receive some and receive insight from the engagement ambassador program um that can then be used and brought into this commuter rail engagement effort I do want to mention as well um that this survey was or this engagement effort was aimed at informing as well as gauging the public's um level of support um with the commuter rail or level of familiarity as well as their perceptions of the commuter rail project um because of that um the survey consisted of four open-ended questions which we were actively working to categorize and at our next update um our next quarterly update we'll provide more information um on the survey responses um something um council member recently mentioned yesterday at the MPO which I wanted to highlight is um a lot of times when you ask folks they don't understand what commuter rail is we really did try to um provide some information we have a long way to go with that um but also the second piece of that is we do hear a lot um and I suspect in the survey we hear a lot about other transit needs and transportation needs that people have and those will be passed along to the Durham Transit Plan as we categorize these responses right next slide with that I'm happy to take any um questions or comments from the council all right thank you very much Mr. Heikis we appreciate your being with us today and thank you for that presentation I'm going to ask now if there are any questions or comments by members of the council council member Freeman thank you I appreciate the presentation and all of the information I'm excited I was excited to hear about the engagement ambassador program I um I had the opportunity of working with GoTriangle long time ago to develop a some such a program um I just have one question regarding uh I guess the way funding is occurring with the NC DOT and just acknowledging that along this corridor it is a number of projects is that going to have any impact on how this rules out and has that been I guess factored into this conversation around funding so yes um to answer the question about NC DOT projects that may affect this project um we are keeping track of those and understanding their timelines um specifically there's um the some grade separation projects within Durham County that are moving forward on a different timeline um but for the project itself the funding assumption right now is that there would not be state funding um so this is 50% assumed right now is a 50% federal match and then 50% local match um that's something that we will continue to pursue state funds for um but right now um that assumption of the state match is not included okay and then just just acknowledging is there a chart because I didn't add I know in this report it's a very simple report is there a chart that is tracking which projects are connected to this I'm not aware of one off the top of my mind but that is something we can prepare and respond to the council if that's of interest and then just noting like it's it's helpful when having conversations with our division rep with DOT if I need to put more pressure on these specific projects moving ahead as priorities versus others um just just a note for myself I'm not sure if others are interested but I if there's a specific resource I'm fine being directed to it you don't have to create it but I think you raise a good point council member and that's something that if we don't have it might be very useful to have thank you that's all thank you council member council member Reese thank you mr mayor hi jay good to see you again it's been so long um jay gave a version of this presentation at the npo meeting yesterday and was glad to have him there then and glad to see you again today um mr mayor uh jay the um the slide about community engagement indicates that um in-person events were focused on that reached current transit riders um does that mean current go triangle transit riders or current go Durham transit riders or both both um the events were specifically at the regional transit center which is primarily go triangle and then also at Durham station as well as the village which are primarily um go Durham riders great that's great to hear um mr mayor did have a couple of comments if this is the appropriate time thank you mr mayor um some of my colleagues have heard this spiel before uh as recently as about a day and a half ago some of you haven't heard it for a while and some of you may never have heard it so um if you need to go do something else for a couple of minutes that's fine um mr mayor i believe that commuter rail can bring benefits to Durham uh and i think um that at the right price uh Durham should participate in the project and i look forward that's why i've supported uh the ongoing planning efforts uh and will continue to support efforts to get and get us up to a decision about whether or not to move forward with the project overall um in my role as a member of uh the MPO board um which frankly is the only way i have input because the city of Durham doesn't really uh get a vote on commuter rail uh the city council does it um but i would like to point out to my colleagues you know i recently uh provided each of my colleagues a very short book uh called um that talks about um the importance of local transit in improving the lives of the people who live in cities and um i hope that over time as we all read that book we will understand what i've come to believe um at some flavor of intensity depending on your own policy preferences colleagues which is that um public transportation in the city of Durham is critically important to the lives of our residents and making our public transportation better uh more bus shelters more frequent service um more efficient bus routes across town routes all the things that we can do um will uh improve the lives of the people of the city uh in a bunch of ways large and small um and in an era of limited dollars projects like commuter rail um by their nature uh compete with those kinds of local transit projects in terms of prioritization for funding especially through the Durham County Transit Plan and the funds that are collected through the through the transit tax increment uh every year in the sales tax um all of which is to say that as i said at the beginning i think commuter rail can really have real benefits for the city of Durham and that's why i've supported the planning efforts so far but i i think it only makes sense for us if the price is right for Durham um and that is a vigorous conversation that's been going on for a while and we'll continue to go on uh between uh Wake County and Durham County uh and i hope that each of us uh will be engaged in that process as those as those conversations unfold and that we will make it clear uh our perspective about what we think that fair price ought to look like um and because every dollar that goes to commuter rail is a dollar that we can't spend doing other things and um and i think there is a price where that balance works out uh and there is a price beyond which that doesn't make sense to me um i think the other thing that it's important to remember is that um our go Durham bus riders uh 80 percent of them are people of color 75 percent of them have incomes less than 25 000 a year and two-thirds of them are live in zero car households and for those folks go Durham is an absolute lifeline to everything they need to get around the city for work for recreation for shopping for all the things they need to do um and so as we go through this it'll be important to look at the communities that are served by our local bus service um and the communities and types of folks that will be served by perspective commuter rail project having said all that a very wise person uh within the last couple days reminded me that when the transit referendum passed in 2011 the primary thrust of that uh advocacy effort uh that the people of Durham overwhelmingly supported was not necessarily for the support of local bus service although that's certainly permissible use the big selling point was the possibility of funding large regional projects that would connect uh different parts of the triangle uh with with more robust uh regional transit options and so um so i think that's sort of on the other side of the question is we might decide as uh as individual uh public policy makers that we'd rather spend all the money on local bus service but the fact is you know local governments went to the the Durham county went to the voters and said these are the things we were going to do and large regional transit projects were on that list so i think it's a complicated balance i don't envy our friends uh at the county for having to engage in that conversation with wake county but i just want to make sure that all of us are are keenly aware that the conversation is happening right now um and the success of transit in Durham both local and regional will i think a large part depend on the outcome of those negotiations so i just wanted to make put out a plea to my colleagues to be engaged in that process to the extent we can to try to get as much information as you can about it and to make sure that Durham gets the best deal possible um but with that i will let other folks talk thanks mr mayor awesome speech okay um questions or comments council member middleton thank you mr mayor and thank you council reese i wanted to stay for every minute of the speech because like a great jazz performance it's different every time so i appreciate that and i want to associate myself with your comments but um and i i got my copy of better buses better cities and i've added it into rotation of the four or five of the things i'm trying to read simultaneously so thank you for that council reese um i in your community engagement the that you you not you particularly but but it it it makes a point of stating that by pot communities were reached out to um i'm curious as to what is the selling point what what are you what is being said to those communities that um it's supposed to be compelling about commuter rail i remember you know during the light rail initiative it was supposed to connect um people that had historically been excised out of an economic participation because of what happened with 147 uh a reconnecting and a reestablishing of of opportunity and carrying people to jobs job centers what are those so in community engagement when you engage these communities these by-product communities what do we say to them what's the selling point for commuter rail to them i think that's a excellent question um this first phase of study um is really focused on the feasibility and viability of the project um and the first phase of engagement in particular was more focused on informing what is a commuter rail what type of service does it provide um when would it when could it reasonably be expected to run um how is it different from other types of transit um and then they were asked a series of open-ended questions um and what what they thought of that um as we continue to work through this study um we are doing some analysis of the communities in areas where job access might be increased um people potential to connect in local bus to commuter rail service to better understand um those types of benefits um as well as things that may be an impact like additional noise or vibration um or additional um traffic impact because the gates are down more because there's more trains um so at this point in time we're not i wouldn't say we're trying to sell the project um or sell it to any one community in particular we're really trying to inform part of that um and part of the engagement is understanding what's important to people so that we can then respond and additional phases of engagement um one of the questions um i'm quite proud of our public engagement team for um putting worse to this is if you could tell um what do you want elected officials to know before they make a decision on this project so i'm hoping that we will get um we'll have some good feedback from that and understand um what is important um to communities um across the region not and i i i appreciate that uh uh deeply and um and i appreciate the the clarification at not necessarily trying to sell anything i guess my there some of us have been hurt before uh historically uh particularly when it comes to uh transportation projects so so i just want to channel some of that that angst um and i understand that we're not selling yet but the fact that we indicated that we were making a targeted effort to contact BIPOC communities to me has import there's a reason we didn't say we just tell it everybody makes is a reason why uh we brought up those communities um and and in addition to not uh or i should say beside not just trying to sell it to them i mean for those of us that are going to advocate for this kind of stuff we i think we have to be able to say it's going to do no harm either uh in terms of disrupting uh communities um you know land uh you know there's obviously people concerned about gentrification so so even if we're not at the selling point i guess i'm just looking for the the do no harm talk as well that that it will not make you worse off uh if we can't talk about what will make you better yet so i just hope that those kind of things will be kept uh in mind and the on ramp again for me is the fact that we BIPOC's in this in this presentation which suggests to me that there's you know this isn't just window dressing we're reaching out to these communities for specific reasons um historical and and otherwise um but i appreciate it i do have one other question the map where the star indicating the rdu connector is is that just like that red line between rdu and morrisville is that the future because i don't see this i don't see a star first i didn't at least on my map so the star which says future rdu connector is that that red line between morrisville and rdu that is and i apologize that's a type of graphical error in the process of fixing on that map that there should not be an asterisk there anymore oh okay but i think get at maybe what your question to the question of the connection between rdu is there would be a shuttle bus between the nearest station um and the airport very similar to baltimore washington airport boston airport depending on where you're going i'm going to know if it was across the country i've been frustrated at both of those locations thank you i appreciate it thank you mr mayor thank you very much council member other comments or questions at this time colleagues council member freeman thank you mr mayor i um appreciate um council member reese's commentary i i um it brings to mind and i'm making sure that i do mention from from um that standpoint it feels it feels overwhelming to think about how much it could cost um and in reference to if we don't move forward with um regional transportation planning in a way that's impactful acknowledging um all of the kind of climate climate changing issues and i just want to just circle back around and include the conversation needs to be held at um at the federal level as well acknowledging that uh you know our fast act funding almost expired um in a very political battle uh we have to come up with these bipartisan kind of convert or this bipartisan support that makes sure that we have federal funding because this could be a situation where it's 80 20 as opposed to 50 50 and that could help alleviate a lot of the pressure that we're feeling and making the decision here locally because we do know we need buses as well as the transit and so i i mean i think i i just want to make sure that i put in perspective that george is going to matter and just acknowledging that if we don't get it right uh you know we have a new uh leadership going into office uh god willing um but we've got to stay vigilant about how we make sure this shows up federally because the fight is not just here locally and so i know it breaks out into smaller issues with wake and you know an orange and who gets the funds and how the funds are used and if we don't if we don't avoid looking at ourselves and trying to take from ourselves and and kind of redirect to kind of unify and push on the federal level because we do have two senators who are sitting there and they need to respond they need to act on our behalf as a state and acknowledge that we need this regional transit and uh the difference makers are there and so i know our chair of the transportation committee is been on board with making the adjustments that are necessary so we're not doing these last minute resolutions but uh we need our our federal senators senator burr and senator tillis to step up so let's want to make sure that we didn't leave them out of that push thank you amen all right any other questions or comments um i i do have a couple of uh questions you mentioned the possibility of state funding uh for the crt for the commuter rail and we know that this so far the plan is not included that that would be a game changer um and so uh and of course the light rail you know even after being batted around and you know have been all been actually pretty much zeroed out uh by the end of the light rail process we did have an amount of funding for the light rail which would again be game changing for the commuter rail and so i'm wondering is the study um is the study analyzing or is there any analysis going on about the project's ability to get funding through the spot process i would say in this particular study um the answer is no um it is this project and variations of this project were submitted both by the dchc mpo as well as the capital area metropolitan planning organization in an attempt to um score this through the current round of spot prioritization that's ongoing we know that there's not a lot of money in spot for transit to begin with and we also know that there's not a lot of money for spot right now i think the other piece of it too um comes to some of the um policy work that campo and dchc mpo are jointly taking on um and trying to develop a strategy and an approach on some of these larger regional projects of asking for partnership and participation from the state when there is such a significant local match on a project um that those are those are primarily by the mpo's so that would be outside of the spot process that second thing that you said i believe it would have to be yeah uh and so um what is the what is the date that we are working towards or some range of dates to submit into the federal process where we would have to have the financial plan uh totally in place so the the goal at the end of this phase of study which is um 12 to 18 months from when it started earlier this summer um could extend as long as far as 24 months based on the memorandum of understanding um the goal was to have that cost share settled at the end of this study um so that time time frame would be end of 2021 beginning of 2022 first half of 2022 okay i'm i'm trying to think this through a little bit in terms of the the the relevant timing with the spot with the spot process i i understand exactly you know good point there's no money there now um but that could change as we come out of the out of this covid driven recession um okay um well i hope that that will be i know that you all will be thinking about that and i'm glad that you're getting it scored i didn't know that and that's good to hear um in the 50 federal share assumption is that still a reasonable assumption that is the assumption we're working off of um we are um is as part of this study both um one of the key pieces is assessing risks um whether they be engineering challenges um whether they be um cost challenges um and whether they be fta eligibility risks um and that's something that we are continuing to evaluate but right now we do believe that 50 percent is um what we would want to put into that cost share um at at the appropriate time um yeah i guess um right you know with the light rail we we we we worried that it was going to drop below the 50 uh but of course we've got a different administration there now and that was really a decision that was driven by by federal administrators rather than by congress and so i think that that's thinking that through a little bit that's probably a reasonable assumption and the um just to just to say that the the issues that were there with the light rail uh not the issue with duke so much but with urland road but the issues with indemnification the issue with the and and uh the issue with the how to get through downtown Durham in a way that is good for our city um still remain and i know you all are going to be working hard on those uh but i continue to to want to push for getting those resolved early um you know we can't be where we were with the light rail at the end of the process trying to solve these difficult problems so i'm going to say that every time um i'm saying it to you now i say to go triangle all the time so um just want to emphasize that all right any other questions or comments for mr hikes i'll have some more general comments about the commuter rail in our next uh in our next um in our next item but i really appreciate your being here sir thank you so much we really appreciate you and keep it going and uh we're looking forward to to your your updates as the study moves forward thank you so much mr egan do you have the next item to introduce yes i'd like to introduce erin cain who's the transportation planning manager for the durham chapel hill carboro metropolitan planning organization uh and erin has some team members uh for his presentation on the update to the durham county transit plan so go ahead erin thanks john thank you mr mayor madam pro tem uh members of the council i'll uh start off by introducing the team members that i have with me to make this presentation on an update to the durham county transit plan along with me we have broke uh answer from the durham city county planning department she'll be talking primarily about our outreach efforts i also have idealities from idealism who's been heading up our engagement ambassadors program she'll be talking about that um i'll be talking about the technical analysis but i also have two other people here in case you have specific questions mary kate marrucan from our consultant kim lee horn as well as provine sridharan from go triangle who uh is with go trying to finance and can answer finance questions if you have that with that i'd like to you to ask ask you to go ahead and put up the presentation please there we go thank you very much and uh with that i'll go ahead and turn it over to brook to talk about our outreach efforts oh thank you erin uh yeah i'm gonna now provide a brief update about our team's outreach efforts for this phase of engagement so this phase of outreach has specifically focused on confirming what we heard from community members during the listening and learning workshops online surveys and engagement ambassador sessions which occurred last fall and winter during this phase of engagement our team has sought community input through the promotion of an online survey virtual stakeholder meetings in-person tabling events at the Durham station the regional transit center along with the village and we have also been utilizing engagement ambassadors which ideal will touch on in just a few minutes next slide please so here is a very high level summary of our online survey results as of november 30th so when the survey information was first pulled um there were about 600 completed surveys respondents as you can see tended to be wealthier and wider community community residents for some quick highlights there were about 57 percent of residents saying that travel within Durham is the most important additionally frequency coverage and more direct service are most important for convenience while improving stops and adding sidewalk sidewalks and crosswalks are most important to improve access we extended the closing date for the survey until mid-december and are currently entering our in-person surveys that were completed during our in-person tabling events so we are expecting these final survey results to vary slightly from what you see here next slide please so additionally our team has also conducted numerous stakeholder interviews with various groups including the human relations commission the bicycle pedestrian advisory commission Durham chamber of commerce Durham tech and ccu duke along with others and during these meetings our team provided an update on the plan along with the comprehensive plan and asked some guiding discussion questions these questions were similar to those asked in the survey and notes from these discussions along with the online and in-person surveys will be analyzed and used in finalizing the plan's objectives and the transit plan scenarios so i'm going to turn it over to ideal now who's going to provide an update on our engagement ambassador program and next slide please hey everybody my name is ideal Ortiz and um we have recruited over 45 community residents who all come from a variety of underrepresented communities um some of them are listed here but of course we also reached out to people with disabilities and people who live in the northern part of our city as well since we know um or of the county i should say since we know those are areas that have a harder time being represented in survey data um as brook told you earlier the overall online survey um it's shared they shared some demographics about um who answered there but i did for those of you who weren't at the npo meeting earlier this week i did want to repeat um some preliminary statistics even though the community um residents who are part of our engagement ambassador effort are still actually collecting data and so this particular phase of data collection will continue on until december 18th um a little bit about the folks who are currently of the responses we have collected 70 percent of those who responded make less than $50,000 a year 73 percent of those folks have direct first person experience with riding go Durham or go triangle buses 78 percent of the survey responses are people of color and there may be more but some folks chose to not respond to that question and 62 percent of those who chose to respond to this demographic question are renters here in the city of Durham and so that just gives you a snapshot of the difference of what happens when we do engage local people who have direct access to networks of people who represent a part of Durham that often faces various historical and institutional barriers and so we just wanted to bring that to light to you we are compensating those ambassadors and we have impressed upon them during orientation uh the things that they need to know um and Mr. Mayor will appreciate this around the COVID-19 safety and so as we get word from our governor and of course from our mayor and our city and our public health officials we do during orientation mention that and so we created materials that would allow folks to be in connection with their community to get these survey responses in ways that are safe and that can be socially distanced so these are tools that are nimble and allow them to do things online we provide support for them and access to zoom training for facebook rooms training for google meet any resource that they feel comfortable using so that they can meet with folks virtually and get this information out to everybody without putting themselves or their network of contacts at risk um more so um in the orientation sessions people had really great questions and to uh the earlier question about what are we how do we sell people on this involvement well we know that the transit plan as well as the comprehensive plan is going to impact Durham and so we simply sell to them if this is a way for them to be at the table before the plan are baked and before the plans have been set and that we want a Durham vet response to the needs of everyone and not just the most privileged and they have been very excited to be a part of this effort with us next week we will be having a even though it'll be two days shy of the deadline for survey responses we will be having on December 16th an opportunity to celebrate all the hard work so we'll be hosting a virtual meeting with our um currently recruited engagement ambassadors to tell them thank you so much for all the hard work you've already done here's a snapshot of the analysis of the data just a quick sort of summary of what has collected and what has been said as a way to be transparent with the data that has already come in and um give them opportunity to tell us what about this process might need to shift what do they like about it as we know that we will have future iterations of this as well and we also want to make sure that if there are people in the community interested in being an engagement ambassador for future rounds that this isn't all that meeting next week will also be an opportunity for them to um learn more about being an engagement ambassador to see if it's right for them in the future in 2021 and that's all i've got and i'll turn it back over to brook or erin oh i actually can say more about this so the screening um we did not just pick random folks the questions on the recruitment form were specifically um meant to let us know whether these are folks who already have a network of people that they are in contact with so if you are the person in your neighborhood who everyone comes to because you've got the food boxes or you know the resources for people's children or you seem to always know what number you should call for the right city service um we felt like that made you a pretty reliable person and so the question specifically on the recruitment form was do you already have a network of people that you are in community with or convene that are a part of one of those identified communities that comes from a traditionally underrepresented background and so when people indicated yes to that we considered them as qualified and so um then we provided some orientation sessions online there was one orientation session provided completely in spanish and all of the materials um have been translated into spanish as well now i'll turn it over thank you ideal so i'll go through i'm going to go briefly through the technical analysis that is currently underway um and just be aware that as i'm going through these maps these are illustrative these are maps that that are in progress that we are working on but we just want to give you a sense as to the kind of things that we're looking at as we're moving forward with the analysis and getting ready for the scenarios that we're going to develop that i'll talk about in a little bit next slide please so one of the first things we're doing is looking at all of the planning that's been done already those of you who've either are or have been on the mpo board you're used to our acronyms like ctp mtp tip but we're looking at a range of planning in transportation that's already been done for the city in the county and a number of projects that have already been identified not just transit but bike ped projects multimodal projects rail projects anything that can be what we call transit supported even roadway projects where we might be say winding a road that can be used for a future brt or express bus service so we're looking at that entire universal projects and we're going to use that as part of our gaps analysis next slide in addition to creating that universal projects we're also coordinating with other plans that are going on many of you are probably aware that the orange county transit plan is also being updated at this time so we're working with them we're also working with weight county as they update their transit vision and extend it out for another three years so we want to make sure that we're coordinated with both of those counties since we do have important capital projects and operating projects that will cross the county lines in addition that you heard from jay on crt so we're coordinating there we did some joint public outreach with that and we'll be coordinating with them to make sure that we have all the up-to-date and most recent information on the crt study so we can incorporate it into our plan we're also doing a lot of work with the comprehensive plan uh we've been in coordination with the planning department for months now and the outreach and work that they are doing one of the more important well one of the important facets of the comprehensive plan as they look to update that has been transportation they've been hearing a lot about that and we want to make sure that all of the commentary they're hearing from the public on the comprehensive plan is also incorporated into our efforts next slide please so on the technical side one of the things we're looking at is transit propensity what is the likelihood that a certain area of our community is going to be more likely to use transit or not use transit so we're looking at things like residential density uh employment density and then we're also overlaying that with our environmental justice communities that were identified through the mpo's process and adopted earlier this summer so we're marrying that with things like identified affordable housing be it market rate or be it legally binding as well as high ridership stops and we'll use this as a gauge of demand and the gauge of areas that will likely need improved transit services in the future next slide please another thing we're looking at are the level of amenities that are bus stops that is something we have heard for quite a while now is a need to improve our bus stops working with go triangle we and go Durham they've been doing a fantastic job of getting a number of our bus stops improved with benches shelters lighting etc we know there's a lot more work to do and we want to make sure that improving our level of amenities such as I just mentioned but also making sure that they are ADA compliant is a major part of this plan next phase next slide please and so as I mentioned ADA compliance we want to make sure that our stops are accessible just putting a stop in where there is no sidewalk where it's not easy for people to get to where there's not a landing pad so it's easy to actually get on the bus once you're at the stop we want to make sure all of those things are also in place and that will also be a major part of this plan going forward next slide please so we'll take our transit propensity map look at where our current services are the additional data analysis that we're doing and put that all into a needs assessment where does it look like we need to be what areas of the community and what kinds of service are they going to need we'll marry that with our universe of projects maps what have we what projects have we already identified and that'll help us figure out what the gaps are that we need to fill in through this planning process next slide please so I want to talk a bit about finances and just to make sure that everybody's aware that as we're doing this plan this this plan will be fiscally constrained we are looking at what our future revenues are with the trend with the sales tax and the other fees that we have in place for revenues for the transit tax fund and we're making sure that any proposed improvements proposed projects are in line with our projected revenues so you can see this quick graph of how we expect to our projections for revenues in the future through 2040 which is about the life of this plan if you'll go to the next slide please and comparing that with our committed capital expenditures you can see for the first couple of years we have pretty much already identified how we're going to spend our funding in this year next year and quite a bit in fiscal year 23 this is only capital expenditures expenditures this is not operating expenditures which tend to be about one third take up about one third of our revenues every year oh please please go back to our list nope there we are thank you um but in outlying years FY 24 and beyond we do have some available capacity in our revenue projections to be able to create more new operating projects new capital projects and that's where we see the plan really be able to start take effect next slide please so finally on next steps we'll complete that needs and gaps and gaps analysis we're combining that with our outreach results we actually have our first scenario development meeting next thursday with staff we have three scenario developments set up between now and the first week of february and we look to be able to come out with public publicly with three scenarios for people to weigh in on in during the month of february next slide please so where we are right now we're wrapping up the existing conditions putting the final touches on that as i mentioned next week we'll be meeting to discuss scenarios we'll do that scenario transit planning through the winter come out in february with um for public comment on that and scenario evaluation we'll then take those comments back based on the three scenarios that are put out come up with a final scenario we'll be able to put in we think about may and then once uh we have public comment from that hopefully by early next fall late summer we're coming to you for your official comments and endorsement and with that i'd like to turn it over if there are any questions or comments thank you very much to all of you all for that presentation it was excellent and i'll now open it up to questions and comments by my colleagues tell some member freeman thank you i um just a brief comment of thanks i know um erin has worked hard on on this project for a while and i can only imagine in the midst of covid how difficult it's been i really appreciate the engagement work on this and uh the attention to accessibility acknowledging that these are the things we've been talking about for the last number of years and i can see that you know i guess the the kind of uh i don't say the equitable engagement planning has has been really um incorporated into this process and i just wanted to say thank you i also wanted to thank um miss ideal orteez who is my neighbor in my in the eastern community and uh a champion of engaging with people at any and every level in all communities and i so appreciate you pouring in on this um thank you and i want to give you a high five um this and i know that um i i usually transportation for me has been the kind of hard to access or hard to even understand um area and i think from just being a resident in the community the difficulty of trying to navigate it um helped to to kind of shape where i am now and how i work today because it was so hard to to kind of understand where all these acronyms were coming in and who was making decisions and how the decisions were made and so i just really wanted to thank the team and staff and all of the volunteers and those who are engaging with us on this and and helping to make sure that the people in community understand what's happening how it happens and who who is making the decisions so that we don't end up like we did with the um kind of backlash out of different projects moving forward without folks being engaged and so i just i'm just very thankful thank you much appreciate it yeah just and just to uh if i could just to make sure that it's acknowledged that we had a lot of assistance from neighborhood improvement services on our equitable engagement following their blueprint that they developed and also with the planning department uh without those two groups we really couldn't have moved forward with with the engagement process that we did and with ideal and everybody else who helped out so make sure that's known thank you very much mr kane and thank you council member council member freeland yes um i just wanted to echo council member freeman's sentiments and to thank staff and to thank you especially ideal for your presentation it was good to see you yes was that yesterday the mto meeting yeah and um i you know just talking about the levels of engagement down to the you know bilingual with Caribbean Spanish and you know i just really appreciate the the presence that you're bringing to our engagement strategies and um also for me too um i'm on the mto board with with charlie and and mayor schull told me this is going to be a big learning curve and it is it's a lot of acronyms it's a lot of information and it's been probably the heaviest lift for me to understand and seeing these presentations especially like this week we had a prep meeting monday we had another meeting tuesday we had mto yesterday and then today i feel like i'm slowly beginning to wrap my mind around this kind of gargantuan system and uh and it's you know your presentations and the staff and the work that child do is so helpful and helping bring me along so i've been quiet just kind of listening and i'm still listening still learning but i just wanted to thank y'all as well council member cabillero thank you i really appreciated this presentation we did get a version of it yesterday which is actually helpful to see it two days in a row to really think in uh and and understand what's happening i just want to really uplift the work that you know we're seeing in so many spaces that staff is doing i think it's you know it's informing our comp plan how pb is run um and and we are seeing the fruits of of really just hard work i'm eager to see what you know the next what the response will be to the scenarios um i know we will not get this again for a few months but i'm hopeful that some of you know we've heard we've learned some hard lessons with the light rail and i hope that seems like we're applying those lessons that we learned in this process um i know there's still a lot of really challenging components the funding uh some of the issues that council member re-spraud up during the commuter rail update um you know all of those i'm very present with all of those issues um but i'm also really really helpful um that we're going to get this right and we're going to do it better thank you so much council member any other council member middleton thank you mr mayor erin and ideal thank you it's good to see you both and happy holidays to both of you uh councilor freeline for whatever it's worth i still feel the same way after almost completing a whole term there it's just a lot goes into running a great city so uh right there with you bro um thank you for this this uh presentation um no city can be great until it crosses that threshold of accessibility by something other than a car every city on on the planet that wants to consider itself great has to cross that threshold gotta be able to negotiate it and unlock all of the great traders in the city without a car so so i really appreciate the work that you're doing um couple of questions the online um survey summary the respondents whether the the respondents have to self-identify that they have to click or worse was a mass kind of um uh things sent out uh for folk to respond to how did we get our online respondents so i i think the answer to your question is that they self-identified okay we we did not send different links to different groups uh we just uh we had tried looking at doing that in the beginning but then people would get it and forward it to others and forward it to others and by the time it it just didn't didn't work out real well um in in order to try to use separate links as as a separate identifier so for the most part it's self-identified okay so i'm a uh uh patron and i see a a a flyer or a poster and i see a website that i can visit and i go to it and then i can just click on the survey yep okay all right awesome um i want to ask a question about the the amenity score uh and and the bus stops i see it says each bus stop assigned an amenity score there are 798 stops considered poor um how how long have the amenity score has been been employed i would probably i'd need to i send that over to either mary kate or even if jay is still on here that particular scoring rubric i think is relatively new but jay you might be able to identify that a little bit better but i don't recall seeing it in pet i'm i'm thinking it is but but that doesn't mean anything so i just wanted to so if i if i could take that um council middleton um again my name is mary kate murukian and i'm with kimmy horn i'm a hi i'm a transit planner uh working on this um transit plan update so the amenity score that was strictly applied for the purposes of this analysis for the work on this we've been coordinating more closely with go triangle since that initial analysis was done to more closely align with an inventory that they completed looking at all the stops in durham the go durham stops have already been inventoried and that is the inventory that you see reflected on the screen on the go triangle stops are um that inventory is happening now so through that process go triangle staff um looked at all the amenities present at each stop so that includes bike lanes the type of sidewalk presence of connecting sidewalks to crosswalks the presence of crosswalks and then the type of crosswalk and then the amenities like bus stop lighting area lighting shelters benches that sort of thing so initially our analysis looked at just what's present looking at different types of amenities we've now shifted the analysis a bit to look more focus more on basic levels of pedestrian accessibility so looking at accessibility as it relates to sidewalks crosswalks um is that an unpaved strip with a sidewalk just kind of differentiating between the different levels of accessibility and then a separate analysis to address ADA accessibility because those two are different to say something is pedestrian accessible that could mean there is a sidewalk it is connected to a crosswalk um and there is a signalized crosswalk for pedestrians to use that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a paved ADA compliant pad for someone um in a wheelchair to use if they were getting to the bus stop or getting dropped off from the bus so we are looking at it a little differently now as Erin mentioned these images were put in a few weeks ago so we've had we've had some time to kind of refine the analysis a little bit but I don't want to imply that this is a scoring metric that GoTriangle uses currently for the purposes of this analysis that is how we were classifying the the bus stops just based on how many amenities they had but now we've shifted to look at general basic levels of pedestrian accessibility and then ADA accessibility if that's clear that is an extremely helpful distinction and helpful primer and thank you because the uh I mean the number I'm anecdotally we hear all the time just how bad some bus stops are and how dangerous they are and how dark they are from folks who use them and and 798 out of 945 that seems like a really high number and I just wanted to you know as as an if I were a non-policy maker uh you know this average revenue and listening to this report it my question would be is that 798 has that number gotten better 798 relative to what is that so I thought it was important to establish how long we've been using this score is that 798 down from 815 last year or has it gotten going up or um but that's an incredibly high number I guess the point we have we've got work to do obviously on this important um service for our people and uh I'm just grateful we're on it um but thank you that that's it for me you know Mr. Mayor thank you for that clarification sure no problem thank you Ms. Marookian and uh it's good to see you again uh even though you've you've let me just say you've moved over the dark side yes but we're glad to see you in your new capacity it's nice to be in the light for a little bit great Councilmember Middleton thank you very much other questions or comments at this time council members real quick Mr. Mayor sure of course great thing about going last is that everything's been said but not everybody's had a chance to say it um I just wanted to uh as I did yesterday when we saw this fantastic presentation um say how much I appreciate the broad collaboration that is getting us where we need to be on this plan um and um everybody involved has a part to play in that um and so the praise uh needs to be spread around a lot and for better or worse Councilmember Freeman already heaped praise on the person I heaped praise on yesterday was ideal or tease uh so I and I'm she's not my neighbor so I can't really I can't really say that but what I can say is that um that I'm really happy to have ideals passion and energy and her great ideas and way to motivate folks to engage with this process in the service of the Durham County Transit Plan so ideal thanks for all you're doing for this and for other all the other work that you're doing right now and let me just you know I don't I don't want to repeat much of what I said before about the commuter rail but I think the Durham County the Transit Plan provides us with an opportunity to decide as a community how we want to spend our limited transit dollars and so I look forward to seeing these scenarios come forward and seeing the public response to them and also looking at how we make the numbers work to reach all the the priorities that we have in our community and I think that's a thing we can do finally I just wanted to say uh to my colleagues council council members Middleton or Freelon um you may have heard this before but it's been my privilege to serve as a member of the city council for 1,829 days uh and on each of those days I am simultaneously confused um concerned that I'm way over my head uh and trying to learn something new every day so that I can actually be decent at this job so uh just understand it that part doesn't get any better um but uh but you'll let you continue to get better at the job as you go forward uh so anyway I think Mr. May that's all I'd say about that thank you council member it's certainly true in the transportation realm they're they're uh they're adding acronyms faster than we can learn them that I'm sure of um I do have a few words to say about this um the and I want to begin with the thanks I am so proud of the equitable engagement work and uh Ms Ortiz thank you for your part in this thank you to our MPO staff and our transportation staff for making this real and we've we're seeing this now all across the city and I'm I'm just want to express my gratitude uh to former city manager Tom Bonfield to our interim city manager Wanda Page for taking this ball and running with it I am just for our NIS staff or planning staff it's really great um I want to also uh shout out uh Sean Egan hey we got a we got a visitor how you doing say a few words to us how you doing great what you doing today what are you doing today oh homework homework yeah well she's just brought the tea a little bit too chill a little bit too he said thanks for the tea that's always the best interlude um I want to shout out uh Sean Egan you know I really think I'm gonna I'll just to put this gently I would say we really had to uh all right I won't put it gently we had to elbow our way into the county transit plan and um I think Sean has done a great job being a wonderful advocate for the city's interest and our residents interests and what we're seeing in the next few years in terms of the capital spending and so forth has really been influenced by Sean's work and our needs have been very well expressed and I'm really grateful to the MPO and to the county for also embracing the expansion of our bus service the transit cord transit emphasis corridors these are huge wins and um Mr. Egan I want to thank you for your leadership on that it's been great and I I want to thank Erin you all of the MPO and the folks in the county who aren't here today but for really embracing that and thank you so much um I will say um I just want to throw down a challenge for my colleagues because this is going to be something that you all are going to do and I'm not I'm I'm let's see I'm putting it gently I'm I think I'm two decades older than all of the rest of you any of the rest of you and all of these projects are incredibly long-term projects um the east end connector which is about to open went on the books more than 50 years ago how long have we been trying to get a regional rail system in the triangle at least 25 years that I know of we've gone down this road several times and it's going to take a lot it's going to just these are big long-term projects that take a lot of advanced planning and advanced effort and so what I want to the challenge that I want to give you all is this we can't we cannot choose between a great local bus service and great regional transit with these are both necessities for Durham if our residents don't have access to the great jobs around the triangle we're increasingly becoming a single metropolis if our residents don't have that that that access through a great system of regional transit we are not going to be able to be the city we want to be for all of our residents and if we don't have the local bus service that we need the same as true so I just really want you all to think about that and I know that we have a resource constraint plan here we should have a resource but what I'm here to challenge you to think about is this over the long term and over the next few years not much longer than that if we don't have the money that we need to do both of these things create a great regional trip be to do our share Durham share and creating a great regional transit system and to create the great local bus system that we need then we've got to figure out another revenue source I don't think we can just say yeah we're resource constrained and we're going to do one we got to do them both um council member Reese mentioned the fact you know talked about the what the what the referendum for this this transit money really hinged on it really hinged on providing regional transit bus service was an important element of it but it was definitely the second element of it and I think that that's important as we go forward we have to remember what the will of the voters was that's not to say things don't change in the nine years they do but I do think that that's got to be an important anchor as we think in the right kind of world this would not be an issue and council member Freeman already referred to this earlier if we had the kind of transportation funding split that we should have at the state level if we had this kind of support that we should have at the federal level this would not be an issue there's no way that local funding should be bearing the this level of burden for a system like this but it's where we are now and we have to deal with that just thinking a little bit about the history when that when their bond referendum first passed the idea was we were going to cooperate with Raleigh to build a commuter rail you all remember that Raleigh well let's just say putting it gently wasn't ready so we then found a willing partner in Chapel Hill in Orange County to go with a light rail 160 million dollars went down that light rail to an incredible amount of effort and 20 you know decade decade of planning and now we do have a willing partner in Raleigh with a commuter rail and I think that the big question and council member Reese referred to this earlier is what kind of cost share can we get that's going to be critically important and that's not a negotiation that's going to be a negotiation between the county commissioners that we don't have a direct roll in but I hope that we'll be putting as much of our muscle as we can behind what I would consider a fair cost split a cost share with with Wake County and we are very much in the role that that Orange County was with us during for the light rail which we are the let's just say Wake County has a lot more money and they there are many ways in which they this is the commuter rail is very much in service to a lot of their important needs and goals and so that ought to be reflected in the cost share and I've I've trusted our commissioners will be driving the fair bargain that we all know that we need um yeah just I'm looking at my my notes but I think that's all I just I really want to say to my colleagues this is a big long-term um big long-term goals here that you all who are of a different generation than I am have really got to take up and solve and um because it's going to take 20 years to be everything we want to be and you know at least 10 to be everything we want to be in this realm it's so starting the long-term projects doing the really difficult planning you know taking risks that we don't know when they're you know when exactly they'll bear fruit it's you know really going to be important work okay that was probably too much but there you go um better than a repetition of the uh of the um transit acronyms um colleagues any other questions or comments for any of our transportation folks just councilmember freeman thank you mr. mayor um I just wanted to really um echo your sentiments and acknowledging that this is a very huge long-term commitment to making sure that our community has the resources to to not have to just drive to work or to doctor's appointments or what have you and I just want to echo that that this is when I say like that move to an equitable engagement blueprint helps to solidify our unified support across the city and the county so that we're all on the same page and ways in which I know it probably felt painful in the first couple of months when I kept saying that but now that we're here you can probably see the difference and I know that the the conversations that you're talking about are being had and you know we'll continue to keep pressing I know that this this team is very transit friendly and uh I am I'm committed I just wanted to to just let you know that in this I am very committed to seeing us through to a very a much cleaner greener future with uh rail and buses at the same time and whether that's at the state or the federal level those funds will be coming through they are gonna have to they're gonna have to pony up because we cannot do it by ourselves and I know that this community will find revenue resources whether they're private uh corporate even uh we have to come up with a solar plant whatever it is we'll come up with it and we will make sure that it happens because I know we all have children in this and we're all making sure that our children have access to clean air and clean water and these things matter so I just wanted to I didn't want you to leave without a response I'm sure the rest of the council would say the same thing and I will I will leave it at that but um I thank you for your leadership on on making those points because it is a it's hard in the weeds we live in the weeds of like looking at plans and talking about you know all those acronyms that everyone doesn't follow but we're getting there and I'm confident I really I'm probably overconfident but I'm I'm in it for the long haul this mayor shul I know you are council member thank you very much for those comments I know that you are all right colleagues um I think we've done it for this item and I want to express my appreciation to Mr. Egan to Mr. Cain to Ms. Ortiz Ms. Marookian and I may have forgotten somebody Ms. Ganser thank you so much appreciate you all right colleagues we're we're down to the getting towards the end here and I'm going to first ask the city clerk to talk to us about items one and two good afternoon council uh item one is the Raleigh Durham airport authority the mayor's nominee for reappointment that is your your uh decision and you're a prerogative on that one Mr. Mayer yes right I just wanted to make a remind us that's on the agenda for next time thank you okay and number two is the safety and wellness task force appointment we have a a listing of appointments or no of nominations that you've made for appointment and um under the category of community organizing Shanice Hamilton has been nominated under public policy Jennifer Carroll justice involved Cynthia Smith and at large Isaac Villegas and Jesse and Huddleston all right um is that all the categories yes okay great all right thank you very much thank you madam clerk and thank you colleagues um okay uh now we'll move to settling the agenda and I think also manager page if you could give us an estimate on when we think we'll be hearing back on the um violence interrupters yes um mr mayor thank you I um uh we will be bringing uh to you at the January 7th work session all options and costs um regarding expanding balance interrupters uh thank you I have to say that we have been working on that every week uh we do have to coordinate that work with Durham County as well as their partners that they use in helping to structure that program as well as administer it certainly we had to become familiar with it ourselves so that we can ask the questions for you as well as bring along you know any others that that we feel it would be relevant during the discussion but we anticipate at that meeting for you to provide us with direction and we will provide you with options and funding um as well as you know to include funding options as well as geographic options on how to uh how we would recommend expanding balance interrupters in our community so that will be January 7th thank you very much manager page can you also uh are you ready to settle the agenda yes I am um with with one one question if I may um on on item three um from my um listening we were um we are thinking that the motion is going to be changed on that item to reflect the the discussion here but we have it currently placed on the consent agenda is that I think that's fine I don't think anyone would object to that being on consent with a new motion colleagues can I hear see some thumbs on that okay great thank you very much oh okay with that uh I am ready to set the agenda uh for the consent agenda this question sorry you're of course you can absolutely thank you sir um um manager page thank you so much good to see you um I wanted to ask your and I appreciate sorry appreciate the forecast we could not expect to hear it back um based upon that January date how maybe this is well Mr. Mayor this is manager how how realistic um do you think it will be that this uh any action we take on violence interruption if we choose to will not be part of the regular budgetary cycle but could be taken on um an emergency footing um yeah on emergency footing or or should the city just realistically expect us to be bundled into the regular budgeting process can you have any wisdom on that I can speak to that right now we there are sources that we can go to to provide one time funding um with the knowledge that any time one time funding involves recurring costs into a future budget that that becomes an automatic component of our base budget going forward so that is that is the answer there there are sources of one time funding including our fund balance including you know other savings that we may have during an operating year and certainly we do not pay for particularly in an interlocal agreement uh with Durham County we wouldn't we would not pay for all of that up front so it would be a prorated amount um based upon the execution of the interlocal agreement to the next um to the beginning of the next fiscal year so all of that would be part of the financial uh consideration in many of our interlocal agreements that we have with the county we pay one-twelfth of the amount uh each month and then we do a reconciliation at the end of the year so based upon the conditions of the agreement you know if if it's for for salaries and positions are vacant you know that is what constitutes our reconciliation to actual costs okay um thank you for that so much i really appreciate that thank you mr mayor thank you council member all right um madame manager let's um let's settle the agenda all right so for the consent agenda we have items one through sixteen and for the general business agenda public hearings we have items 19 through 22 thank you very much uh you've heard the manager's agenda can i hear a motion that we settle the agenda second moved by council member freelon seconded by council member freeman madame clerk please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi council member caballero hi council member freeman hi council member freelon hi council member middleton i vote i council member east hi thank you thank you madame clerk the eyes have it the motion passes unanimously colleagues before we adjourn i do want to remind us of our of our schedule coming up which is an unusual schedule we have our monday night meeting uh as usual uh 10 days from now but then the following day the 22nd of december we have a work session on tuesday uh in order to make sure that staff and everybody else is able to enjoy themselves for the holidays does member caballero are we going to get the work session agenda a little earlier so that we don't have this kind of turnaround we know usually those two days helps i will ask the manager if she thinks we'll be able to get some of that earlier i have not had that discussion with the with the preparers or staff but i can certainly follow up and provide an answer to the council on that madame manager even just one day would make a huge difference thank you so much okay well we'll get back to you on we'll be doing a lot of reading over that weekend i have to bake i don't want to read and we're going to be doing a lot of baking you're so can have the ipad there be mixing scrolling it's fine i've already made my hanukkah cookies i want you to know are we gonna get to eat those hanukkah cookies this year i said are we gonna get to eat those hanukkah cookies this year i should have at least held what up that you could be jealous tonight's the first night right tonight's the first night happy hanukkah happy hanukkah thank you bye everybody have a great weekend thank you for an excellent meeting i thought it was a really good meeting and i appreciate you and uh we'll see you soon bye