 30 seconds. Good afternoon. I want to call this work session, the Durham City Council to order at 1 o'clock on Thursday, May the 6th, 2021. I certainly want to welcome everyone here today, my colleagues, our staff and all those who are listening and streaming this and listening in whatever form you are. We're really glad to have you with us here today. I am at City Hall, and this is my first time at City Hall for a work session, and so I'm glad to be here and look forward to being able to be with all of you all here after our break when we get back together. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl, Mayor Proton-Johnson, Councilmember Caballero, Councilmember Freelon, Councilmember Freeman, Councilmember Middleton, Councilmember Maurice, thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Colleagues, we're now going to have announcements, and I'm just going to say that I see that Deputy City Manager Keith Chadwell is here with us today. Keith, we had a moment of silence for Jocelyn on Monday night, but I want to say again how we all fill your laws acutely and are in your corner and support you and love you, and we are just all thinking of you, Keith, and I just want to start the meeting with that. Thank you so very much, Mr. Mayor. Greatly appreciated. All right, Keith, thank you. And of you all, thank you. All right, colleagues, any announcements today? Councilmember Freeman? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to really just take a moment and wish all of the mothers a happy Mother's Day for this weekend, just acknowledging each of us have one, and also noting some of us still have them to hold on to, and so I'm excited that I'll get to hold my mom this weekend, and I hope that I'll be lifting up all those who have lost their moms. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Any further announcements? All right, we'll now move to priority items. Madam Manager, any priority items today? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of Durham City Council. I do have a few priority items and just a point of personal privilege. I apologize in advance for the lengthy agenda. It does happen this time of year, regardless of our strong efforts to avoid it. So I wanted to say that first, but we are here to do the people's business and we beg for your patience. Certainly, I do have a few priority items and I will go through them briefly. It's about five of them. They all relate to agenda items that are on your printed agenda. Agenda item number 18, the First Amendment to Contract with Mid-Atlantic Associates Inc. for professional services related to implementation of the 2018 United States Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Assessment Grant. Attachment number five was added. Agenda item number 20, Contract ST 314, Pavement Condition Survey 2021. Attachments number five through seven were added. Agenda item number 26, 2020-2021, Downtown Durham Municipal Service District Annual Report. We have a 15-minute presentation, but we're going to attempt to shorten that, but it will be made. The item does appear out of numerical order because it was moved from presentations to a departmental item after the publication of your agenda. Agenda item number 31, fiscal year 2022, Stormwater Rates. A presentation will be made. And then finally, agenda item number 32, Vaccine Equity Proposal. You will find that as a supplemental item that has been added to your agenda and that will complete my request for consideration of priority items. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Manager. Colleagues, you have heard the manager's priority items. Can I have a motion for their acceptance? So moved. Second. Second. Moved by Council Member Freelon, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuhl? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson? Aye. Council Member Caballero? Aye. Council Member Freelon? Aye. Council Member Freeman? Aye. Council Member Middleton? I vote aye. Thank you. And Council Member Reese? Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Madam Attorney, good afternoon. And do you have any priority items for us today? Good afternoon, Mayor Schuhl, Madam Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, members of the City Council. The City Attorney's Office does not have any priority items today. Thank you very much, Madam Attorney. Madam Clerk, do you have any priority items today? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and City Council Members. The City Clerk's Office has no priority items either. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Colleagues, we'll now move to our administrative consent items. And since I'm at City Hall, my stuff's a little bit moved around from where it usually is, and I'm working on it here. So let me read the administrative consent items. First item, City Clerk's Office approval of City Council Minutes. Item two, Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission appointments. Item three, Durham City County Appearance Commission appointment. Item four, Durham City County Environmental Affairs Board reappointment. Under departmental items, City County Planning Department, item five, 2020 Durham City County Appearance Commission annual report. Item six, 2020 Durham Open Space and Trails annual report. Item seven, Temporary Outdoor Seating Ordinance Extension. And I'm going to pull that item. Item eight, Electric Service Agreement for the North Durham Water Reclamation Facility. Item nine, Sanitary Sewer Inspection and Cleaning Services Award to Hydro Structures Professional Association. Item 10, Under the Finance Department bid report. General Services Department, item 11, Construction Contract within Clon Construction Inc. for the Durham Convention Center Repair Project. Item 12, Purchase Contract with Store Office Environments Inc. for the Durham Convention Center Repair Project. Item 13, Contract Amendment with CMTA Inc. for the Durham Performing Arts Center DPAC HVAC Project. Item 14, Design Build Services Contract with Dewberry Design Builders for the Durham Bills Athletical Park. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull that item. Alrighty, item 14. Item 15, Land Donation Agreement for Replacement of Fire Station 19. I don't want to pull this item. I would like a little information prior to next Monday that could just come by email. I want to congratulate our staff and I want to thank Fidelity for this donation, which is saving us about 1.6 million in projected land costs. So my appreciation to Fidelity and I hope you'll convey that. But the map of the projected service area wasn't clear to me who's covering fire service for those areas previously covered by Station 19, which will now not be covered by Station 19 and that would be from Attachment 5. So if we could get a, if we could get a just some information from our fire department about how that coverage will work, that would be great. Under Human Resources Department Item 16, Contract for Live Well City of Durham WebMD1 Platform. Under Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Item 17, Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Agreement to Fund Economic Development Programs and Surfaces Operated by Downtown Durham, Inc., Using City of Durham Funds. Item 18, First Amendment to Contract with Mid-Atlantic Associates, Inc. for Professional Services Related to Implementation of the 2018 United States and Brown Protection Agency Ground Fields Assessment Grant. Colleagues, I had asked for information from the administration about that to find out what those projects actually had been over the last few years and that attachment has been added and it's really very informative about the ground fields project, a lot that I didn't know and I think it's worth looking at. Item 26-2021-2020-2021 Downtown Durham Municipal Service District Annual Report and we're going to have a brief report on Item 26. Item 19, Under Public Works, 2019 Sewer Repairs Program City Contract Number 16249, Amendment Number 1. Under Contract ST314 Pavement Condition Survey 2021, I see that Scott Gordon has signed up for this item. Mr. Gordon, are you here to speak or just to answer questions if there are any? And if you could put that information in the chat, that would be great. Okay, thank you, Mr. Gordon. Item 21, Resolution to Support the Upper News River Basin, Association UNRBA FY 2022 Budget. Item 2, Street and Infrastructure Acceptances and Deletions. Under Presentations, Budget Management Services Department, Item 23. Fiscal Year 2021-22, Proposed Budget and Fiscal Year 2022 Capital Improvement Plan, that will be a presentation provided at the City Council meeting. There is someone here who is like to speak on that item and so I will allow that. That would be Miss Stella Adams, so we will pull 23 just for the purpose of hearing Miss Adams. Item 24, Durham Transit Plan Update is a presentation as well. Item 25, General Services Department Update on Disposition and Redevelopment of the Property Located at 505 West Chapel Hill Street. That is also a presentation. Item 26 appears in the Department of Item section above. Under the Police Department, Item 27, the First Quarter Annual, First Quarter Chrom Report. Under Public Hearing, City County Planning Department. Item 28, Consolidated and Annexation Item, Olive Branch West 2. Item 29, Zoning Map Change, Selvy Avenue Homes. Item 30, Office of Economic and Workforce Development Contract with Downtown Durham, Ink to Operate Downtown Durham Municipal Service District. Under Public Works Department, Item 31, FY 2020, Stormwater Rates and on this item we're also having a presentation that we'll hear today. And under the City Council's Office, Item 32, Vaccination Equity Proposal. We also had a resident who signed up to speak and that is Cheryl Dance Saba. And we will begin after I check in with the manager about the agenda, we'll begin with Cheryl Dance Saba. Madam Manager, the items that I have pulled are 7 and 14. The items that we have for presentations are Item 26. We'll have a speaker on Item 23. We have Item 24, 25, 27, 31, and 32 for presentations and discussion. And that's what I have, Ms. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Manager. All right, colleagues. We're going to now hear from Cheryl Dance Saba. Is Mr. I'm sure I'm not sure about, is Cheryl Dance Saba available to be heard? I'm Cheryl Dance Saba. Yes, welcome. We're glad to have you and you have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council Members. I'm here as a resident and a property owner. I live at 910 Holloway Street and I recently bought this house. I'm sure that all of you are aware of it. The home was originally mustard yellow and it is located next to the Longmallow Park. Ongoingly, we have been put in a valid effort to rehab the home and we have been successful in that. Now I am calling on to the local Council Members and organizations to clean up the neighborhood that surrounds me. I am currently plagued with rats, human species, urine, and other unwanted bodily fluids, along with trash, debris, mattresses, homeless people living behind my property daily. I call the non-emergency number and have them removed. They are back as soon as the officers leave. I have been in touch with neighborhood improvement, Parks and Rec. They have reached out and said that they would clean their property, but this is the ongoing problem. This is at the corner of Austin and Holloway where the street is being widened and the state bought the corner two lots of Eaver and Austin. Privately owned lots are still vacant on the corner of Holloway and Austin. Then there is a home after those two lots and my home. Next to that is the park, which is the back entrance, which the bus stops right in front of the park, but nevertheless they cut through the park, cross my property, cross park's property to go into the park. They come behind my property, which is park home, and they live back there in those woods. They're cooking, they're living, and they're there constantly. As a taxpayer, I am appalled that I have to pay taxes while they come and live freely. And then I receive warning letters to remove trash and other debris from my property from neighborhood improvement when there is nothing being done to prevent them from coming. So I'm asking where do I go? Who can help me? The properties that are owned by the city and the state and neighborhood improvement has come out and they said that they have contacted the owners and they have issued citations. They have 10 days to clean it up. They've cleaned it before. I've been here six years. They've built homes back there. Thank you for being here. We definitely understand your concern and really appreciate the situation that you're in. I'm going to ask you if you could be, I'm going to ask the city manager to have someone be in touch with you. And what would be good is if you could just put, how would you feel about putting your phone number just to, you know, you could email me your phone number if that would be private. And I will make your phone number available to the city manager. And I'm sure she will have someone from our staff be in touch with you. Would you like to do that? Okay. Can I have your email address? Because the audio is very bad. I'm going to put my email in the chat. Okay. Okay. Will you be able to read that? Yes. I'm going to do that right now. And you can email me, remind me what you are writing about. And I will get the city manager to make sure that you have someone reach out to you that can try to support you and help you. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Dan Saba. All right, colleagues. Now we have two items that were pulled. The first is item seven. Mr. Mayor, before you move on, I just wanted to make sure that Ms. Dan Saba knows that I'm around the corner from her and I've been hearing the same complaint from a few other residents in that area. I'd like to make sure that they're also connected with the city manager. Thank you, councilmember. And I think if you could connect them, that would be great. Thank you. All right. We'll now move to item seven. This item is temporary outdoor seating ordinance extension. Do we have a staff member here who is prepared to answer that? Mr. Dobrensky, good to see you. I definitely support this item. I would really like by October when this period is over. I would really like our staff and DDI to come back to us with a report on what has worked, what hasn't worked, and what should be made permanent about outdoor dining. I'm supporting this extension enthusiastically because I believe that our business is still needed. And I believe that there are a lot of things that we're learning that can make downtown even more vibrant and more fun and better for our businesses. And so I hope we can learn from that and hear from you all what those lessons are. I do also want to say I don't support the permanent use of green spaces such as Black Wall Street for private businesses. That we're doing that on an emergency basis, I get it. But I am concerned with the relative paucity of green space that we have downtown with public green space that we maintain that. We're doing this on an emergency basis, but I don't think it should be permanent. And I hope that we'll hear back from you all again again after this period ends. That would be a problem. We've already been having internal meetings about what this will look like moving forward in terms of permanent I figured you had. All right, thank you so much. Anything else, colleagues? All right, then we'll move to item four. I'm sorry, Councilmember Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think the Mayor Pro Tem had a comment or a question after me. So I just wanted to say I appreciate your remarks, Mr. Mayor. I agree with what you said. I also just wanted to say that in my mind this is a much better use of the public space on our streets than parking cars. It adds to the vibrancy of our downtown spaces, especially in a universe where structured parking is plentiful downtown. That is a great trade to make. The other thing I would ask is that I think the longer it takes to move from an emergency program to a permanent program, the more uncertainty exists for our downtown businesses. I want to try to remove that to the extent possible. Though I know that you guys are working as quickly as you can. I just wanted to kind of underline the fact that to the extent that we can move quickly to some sort of more permanent plan, I think it'll be better for everyone. So thanks a lot for this great work and this it's worked it's worked really, really well for the businesses that have taken advantage. But I definitely support the Mayor's comments and look forward to seeing that coming before us as soon as I can. Thanks everybody. Mayor Proceo. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to agree with you and also with Council Member Rees. I support extending this program. I think it's been a real advantage to have more outdoor dining in downtown. I share the Mayor's concerns though about general public access to open space in downtown and want to just continue to keep that in mind as we move forward with any changes to our existing outdoor dining program that we might be considering. The use of parking spaces seems much more in line with kind of how we might distribute public space for private use as parking spaces are parking spaces are a whole lot less useful than a public park, for example, for folks in general. So I feel much more comfortable with, you know, things like dedicating some of that, some of the parking spaces to permanent use rather than some of the like more public open green space permanently to private use. And also was wondering if y'all could get some information from the restaurants who have been taking advantage of the program about interactions that they're having with other people in the downtown corridor and thinking particularly about panhandling interactions and generally have, you know, concerns that while we're creating these sort of little private OACs or other people who take, you know, who live and exist in our downtown core who are who are going to have less space to exist in because of because of this. And so if someone is, you know, in the middle of an outdoor dining area, panhandling, you know, how are restaurants handling that? It's legal. Are they, you know, are they string people away or not? You know, how how are those interactions working out? Are people who aren't dining at a restaurant who has set up tables in a green space? Are they also able to be there? So I'm kind of wondering about how that how those interactions are going as the program has developed so that if there are any issues we can fix them as we move forward. Thanks. Thank you very much Madam Mayor Patam. All right, colleagues, any further comments? Okay, thank you Mr. Dabrowski and we'll now move to item 14. And this item was pulled by Council Member Freeman. Thank you Ms. Meyer. I just wanted to know if anyone was here from Dewberry Design Builder. No they are not. Because I just had a concern around their workforce statistics. It looked like they didn't have any folks that were black or brown. It'd be great to get some feedback around just how their hiring practices work. Just making sure that they're incorporating, you know, good diversity practices before Monday night. According to the workforce statistics, they have six female African-American females. And professional. I think that Council Member Freeman's point is still Ms. Smith, why don't you introduce yourself? Good afternoon everyone. Good afternoon Mayor Schultz City Council Members. I'm Lisa Smith, General Services Department. Good to see you. I think Council Member Freeman's point is still very valid. I had written down they have 176 employees and I saw six African-American and seven Hispanic. And so I think that if you could get information from them, as she has requested prior to the Council meeting on Monday night, regarding their hiring practices, what kind of diversity outreach they do. And are they, you know, where are they recruiting from? These kinds of things that we're very interested in. And Council Member Freeman may have something else to answer and I add to that and also see the managers here. Yeah, I think I appreciate that. I missed the break off because it breaks off the female from the top. So I didn't catch that. But yes, I did. I appreciate that. Thank you. You're welcome. Madam Manager. Yes, Mr. Mayor, I was only going to add that certainly we will bring that information. We'll be prepared to present it between this meeting and the next meeting. But just to link back to that is also part of the work that we're working on to bring that information for every agenda item. As you all have heard in previous, you know, presentations. So we look forward to when that work is ready to come through. Thank you, Madam Manager. And thank you, Ms. Smith. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Smith. You're welcome. All right, colleagues, we're now on to our presentations. And we're going to begin with item 26. And item 26 is I'm sorry, I got to go back up here. This item is 2021 Downtown Durham Municipal Service District Annual Report. And I know we've received this annual report and Ms. Thompson told me that she just had a few brief remarks to make. We've already got this. But Ms. Thompson, I'll turn this over to you. And we're glad to have you. Thank you. Thank you, City Council, Mayor, City Council, City Manager, Paige. I'm very happy to be here with you this morning. I guess this afternoon, I'll be very quick because you have a really packed agenda. You do have the report from us or annual report through the end of March. I'm happy to answer any questions and try to any questions that you have, I'll be happy to answer. But I did want to make a very quick two-minute, some two-minute remarks. Sorry, I'm a little nervous today for some reason. I'm not like this because it's because it's Zoom. Anyway, you have our report and presentation. And I want to thank you for working with us and helping us to build a very vibrant downtown and supporting us, DDI, as we in turn support our residents and our small businesses on the bed with initiatives like outdoor dining, which you just approved. So thank you for extending that. And we are working with City staff on what a permanent outdoor dining plan could look like. So we look forward to having those conversations. And it is encouraging to know that you all are supportive of such a program. It's been a really tough year and especially for our small businesses throughout the downtown area. So I wanted to take a moment and spend my time before you to urge you to work with us on creating some strategies that ensure the long-term survival and success of these homegrown Durham businesses. You know, downtown is known for the very eclectic mix of businesses we have and that so many of them are locally owned, local to Durham, but then some local to the region. We're seeing a lot of growth in the residential sector of downtown, including some great strides in affordable housing with more on the horizon. And certainly there's more we can do. This is a good thing without the increase in downtown residents, many of our small businesses would not have made it through this past year. Those residents, because they were living downtown, could walk out of their residents and patronize our small businesses, our restaurants and our retailers. And that kept them afloat over the last 12 months. But we do need to have a balance. We have only about 500,000 square feet of office in the pipeline. That is not enough to ensure that downtown remains an employment center that attracts companies with good paying jobs for Durham residents. And our small businesses need these workers, these weekday customers that come from a downtown filled with office workers. We've been missing that the last 12 months. And it's important that we have that, not only for those jobs that they bring to our residents, but what they do to our small, small locally owned businesses. Unless you want to see downtown become a sea of stick built apartments and condos, which are easy to build without, with little council approval or input, we need to have a plan for smart development that partners with our commercial developers to reach our mutual goals. Affordable housing is critical to our diversity and equity goals. But just as important is access to good paying jobs and property ownership. If we do nothing to create these jobs, if we don't plan for our future success in our downtown, we will fail our community. Development is going to happen in downtown. We will remain vibrant. Whether it's smart development that benefits our community, it's really up to us. So I use this time to say that I look forward and DDI and our board, we all look forward to partnering with you on strategies that ensure that downtown and Durham as a whole continue to grow and succeed. And with that, I open up the floor to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you very much, Ms. Thompson. And I think we all hear you and appreciate you and look forward to DDI helping lead in that direction in that planning. Colleagues, questions or comments for Ms. Thompson? Councilmember Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, colleagues and everyone watching. Nicole is good to see you. Thank you for being here. One of the great pleasures serving in the council has been to be the council's liaison to the DDI board. And I've watched some really not only amazing business people, but lovers of Durham really work really hard to make the downtown area special and accessible. So I'm going to commend you, Nicole, on the work that you and your team continue to do as brand ambassadors for our city. I want to use something and give you an opportunity, Nicole, to speak to something that I think really important that the Mayor Pro Tem brought up earlier regarding the navigability and accessibility of the space by all of the players that use downtown. I remember a discussion about a discussion that predates even COVID when many of the merchants downtown were talking about the panhandling issue. So this is an issue that we've been talking about. And I remember a discussion in the board where I made it very clear that I thought that the values of our city, we didn't want panhandling to be a law enforcement issue. And we were discussing creative ways, maybe integrating some type of social service component or strategies and looking at other business improvement districts, bids around the country on strategies that they had to deal with the panhandling issue without it morphing into a law enforcement issue. And it predates COVID. So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to just assure folks that that's something that's been on our radar and something we've been discussing in ways that comport with our values and still make downtown a welcoming community. It's not an easy issue and merchants have certainly raised concerns about it, but I wanted if you just wanted to speak to a little bit of that concern that the Mayor Pro Tem brought up. Yes, thank you for that opportunity. Certainly, and unfortunately, we have seen a little bit of an increase in our homeless population in downtown. We are working very closely with the City's Task Force for those individuals who we have identified and who will accept help. We do have some individuals in downtown known to our business community who refuse help. And those are the individuals that we struggle with. Their panhandling verges on aggressiveness. Their behavior is threatening to customers. Thankfully, that is certainly the minority. Never, to my knowledge, has a restaurant that is using parking spaces as an outdoor dining, asked anyone to leave. Certainly when individuals come up and we saw this during the streetery, people, some will give money. Some will very politely say they don't have any to give. But they were never excluded in the streetery footprint and they are not excluded in the sidewalk and parking dining areas. Regarding the sitting and chairs, we loaned quite a bit of that furniture. We purchased that furniture and then loaned it to the businesses so that that was not an expense that they had to pick up during these trying times. And as a condition of that, we asked that the chairs be brought in. So the sitting isn't really a problem because we just didn't want the chairs to walk away. So we've asked that the restaurants actually put them inside their space unless they're open. But to your point, the spaces that we have outdoors, in no way, when we're using them for the businesses, does anyone try to exclude the use from anybody else? Awesome. And can I just ask you to make us a partner? This isn't something that DDI should deal with in the silo. If there are ways or strategies at the city, we can be helpful. That comport and reflect our values and our heart as a city to deal with that and support our merchants. I hope that you'll, you know, you don't have to wait till now. Just anytime something, there's a way we can be helpful that you would let us know. And I think Yes. And again, we have worked very closely with a couple of individuals who did receive help from the city's homeless task force. They've been great to work with. We now communicate when we need to for situations in downtown. And on those very rare occasions where we have a hand handling that has become a aggression or a threatening situation, we have had to work a little bit with the police department. But again, that is very rare in typical cases, the communities work well together. But we are working very closely with those resources that both the city and the county have in place to provide services when and if they're needed to our homeless population. Well, thank you so much for that. And congratulations on the great work you guys are doing on their extraordinary circumstances. We'll get through this. Thank you. And love having you on our board. I love hanging out with you guys. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Thompson. I appreciate the report and the information. I greatly appreciate the care you're taking and covering the downtown hand handling and the homelessness situation. I just wanted to just go back a little bit. I know in the past, we've had conversations about, you know, making sure that downtown was an open and inclusive space for black and brown businesses. And I just wanted to check in and see how they were doing, acknowledging that I know we've been losing a lot of businesses. Did you have any information or specific numbers around how businesses are doing in the downtown quarter? We lost from retail and I might get the numbers slightly wrong. 16, 17 retail restaurant businesses over the course of the last year. We have lost a few minority-owned businesses, but I think as a whole, downtown Durham has done much better than a lot of our other cities in downtown. We still are working quite hard to help all of our businesses in downtown, finding creative ways to make sure that they are able to stay open, trying to take things off of their plate, being an advocate for them so that they can focus on their businesses. And I will say that for minority-owned and women-owned businesses, we go an extra step and really reach out and communicate with them and try to understand concerns that they may have. Certainly, we're not perfect. Certainly, we are all trying to figure out how to work in this new environment and this new environment being one that is slowly opening up sometimes faster than we were anticipating, but we are trying our best to make sure that the businesses that people love when they were here before March 2020 are still here and are still able to grow when they come back. Yeah, I think specifically as long as Dames and BU and a few other shops are still open, I'm good. But just noting, if there are any ideas, concepts, thoughts that you have, I'm hoping that you're sharing them with Councilor Mildred saying he's sharing with us, but I would love to hear more insights on what could be, what else could be done to make sure that we're supporting our local businesses. I am working on some things that aren't quite ready to bring to City Council, but I hope to in the, probably not before the budget season is over, but I am working on a few things and the DVR team to be very specific about how we continue to support our small businesses. Yeah, thank you. Just acknowledging, I know that there's a little bit of commercial gentrification occurring and I'm a little concerned about some of our really smaller local businesses that have been here before Google and others. Thank you. I will say in my conversations with Google, they are very interested in how they can continue and they can work with our small businesses. They have asked specifically wanting to know, I should say they have asked specifically and we are in conversations with how they might be able to support our small restaurants and retail shops. So my hope is, given that those initial conversations that we can grow that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Ms. Thompson, I'm recollecting, I've seen a recent report of yours of the number of, I don't remember who was minority under African American owned businesses downtown, but I think that might have even been in some of the material that we got this time. I'm a little, not quite sure where I saw it, but can you speak to that? Yes, and I don't have the numbers in front of me. We provide a listing of minority businesses in the downtown area with our quarterly reports. I can put that in the chat when I can go offline and let you know how many minority businesses we have in the downtown area off the top of my head. I cannot. I don't want to quote a long number. It is growing, but I can let you know that number in the young chat and if you give me about five minutes after I get off. All right. That would be great. I'm actually looking for it myself here and I may be able to find it, but I don't seem to be finding it. So I think if you would let us know that that'd be great. And I appreciate the report that you gave us. There's a lot of detail. I really thought that the survey information was also very interesting. And finally, I just want to thank you for your leadership. They're a really tough time. I've been able to thank you in other contexts, but I just really have appreciated you. It has not been easy and you've done a great job helping us navigate the situation. So thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate the support that the city has has given us and given our small business community. Certainly the different initiatives that we've worked on jointly and collaborated on as well as the programs that you all have done from parking to the loan and grant program have been a big boost not just to downtown, but to all of our small businesses. So thank you to you and the city council and Wanda Page and her team. It's been a challenging time, but it's been, I think we've all learned to lean on each other and we're one big family. And at some point we'll be one big happy family as we continue to come out of this. So I look forward to continuing these conversations. Thank you very much, Ms. Thompson. Thank you. All right, colleagues. Now we're going to move to our next item, which is item 23. This item will actually be presented at the council meeting, but we do have a speaker who wanted to speak on this item, Stella Adams. And Madam Clerk, could you make Stella Adams available to be heard? Ms. Adams, can you be heard? Mr. Mayor, I don't see Ms. Adams in the- Don't either. I was just looking. All right, well, then we'll move on. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right, colleagues, our next item. We now get into 24, 25, 27, 31, and 32. We've done pretty well so far. And now we get into the big mean items. And I don't remember a work session a long time that had this level of reading demands. They all do, but this one was pretty crushing. And not a lot of pictures, Mr. Mayor. It was sort of like some of my assignments that I used to give Mayor Pro Tem Johnson when she was in my class. All right, the first one is the Durham Transit Plan update. And we will look forward to seeing Ms. Beckman is here. And I see Mr. Cain is here. And we are glad to have you all. Thank you so much for being here. And I see Mr. Egan is also with us. So looks like we got the whole team. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I guess we'll just go ahead and start. I think I need to share my screen. Let me make sure I get this right. Ms. Beckman, why don't you introduce yourself and Mr. Cain? I know most of us all know you, but maybe not your new role perhaps. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. No, thanks for having me here. It's good to be back to the City Council. Ellen Beckman, I now work for Durham County Transportation Manager. Here today with Erin Cain presenting on the Durham Transit Plan update. So let me, you can see my slides, right? This presentation will include a little bit of background. The results from our phase one outreach, how we're going to use that in our next phase of outreach, what we're calling our scenarios, which really are conceptual representations of how we could spend the money and what our next steps are. So first background. Many of you know this, but for the benefit of everyone, the Durham Transit Plan is the plan that guides the use of the countywide taxes and fees for public transportation improvements. It generates about $35 million annually. This was first adopted in 2011 with a successful sales tax referendum. And Durham County was first in the triangle to adopt that plan. Later, Orange County joined the next year and then Wake County in 2016. It's a 20-year plan, but it can be amended, and it is updated every four to five years in coordination with the DCHCMPO long-range plan. State law requires that it is adopted by the Durham County Commissioners, the Go Triangle Board, and the DCHCMPO Board. So the city council is represented on both, you know, the Go Triangle and the NPO boards. And, you know, the 2011 plan included the Light Rail Project, the Durham Orange Light Rail Project, as well as the Durham Wake Commuter Rail Project. We were focused on the Light Rail Project for many years. And as everyone knows, it was discontinued in 2019. That is why we're here today, updating the plan. This really is the first wholesale re-evaluation of our transit needs since 2011. It's considering both local needs and regional needs, replacing the connection to Orange County that the Light Rail provided and also looking at connections to Wake County, including the Commuter Rail Project again. In-year materials is also the FY22 work program, and I want to describe that really briefly. The work program is the annual budget. We have an existing interlocal agreement that puts forth a lot of the administrative processes that we follow in the implementation of the plan. This agreement, you know, was adopted in 2013 and was very much oriented towards the delivery of the Light Rail Project by Go Triangle. A lot of the approval steps and the budget development was kind of deferred to Go Triangle. So this, the annual work plan is developed by a three-party staff working group from the county, the NPO and Go Triangle. But the the work plan is only approved by the Go Triangle board. So those materials are included for informational purposes in today's materials. So, you know, I just want to emphasize that the transit plan is a high-level planning document. A lot of decisions are made in that annual budget approval. And, you know, there's a lot of steps. Like, this is, these projects, a lot of these projects are big, they're long-term, they take many years to develop. There's a lot of decision-making that occurs along the way. We are looking to update that interlocal agreement. So it is an opportunity to change some of the administrative processes that we follow. So stay tuned for that. We'll be developing that new interlocal agreement with the transit plan. All right, so we, this is where we are in the project timeline. We're about halfway. We started this in coordination with the COMP plan and did some initial outreach with the listening and learning sessions. But what we did in the fall and winter was working on our goals and objectives, identification. We did outreach associated with that that I'll cover today. We also did a existing conditions report looking at the current conditions for transit in Durham County. We used both of those, both of those tasks to inform the development of our transit scenarios. Transit scenarios are kind of representative concepts of how we could invest the funding. Erin's going to talk about that later in this presentation. I do want to emphasize that they are very much deliberately contrasting scenarios used, developed so that we could seek public feedback on the options we have for spending the transit tax money. None of the scenarios are likely to be what we adopt in the end. You know, they all have positives and negatives and we'll be putting that out for public comment later this month, hopefully. And then using that information as well as a whole lot of number crunching and looking at schedules and dollars to figure out what our final recommended plan will be. We hope to bring that final recommended plan later this year. And again, it would be adopted by the three boards, the County Commissioners, the Go Triangle Board and the MPO Board. All right, outreach. So for phase one, we did this last fall. Of course, we had to make a lot of adjustments for the pandemic. We did a lot of different outreach methods, a website, online survey, stakeholder meetings and some in-person outreach at major bus stops, for example. And we also did an engagement ambassadors program. So I know you all are familiar with online surveys and what usually happens when you do an online survey. We get a lot of responses. They're very effective at getting a lot of responses. However, the demographics of the respondents typically skew higher income and more white than the Durham population as a whole. And that was similar to what we found in our online survey. About 50% said that they were current public transit users. We did stakeholder meetings. Here are some of the groups that we met with, but we did meet with more than this. If you have a question about any specific group, we can answer that. But this was the opportunity to have more in-depth conversations with specific stakeholders about their interests related to transit. And then we also did the engagement ambassadors program. So this was done in the model of the city's equitable engagement blueprint. It was a direct engagement with underrepresented communities. We compensated the ambassadors and we tried to get half of the comments from the ambassadors. We didn't quite meet that this round, but we're hopeful that next round we'll get more responses. The demographics of the engagement ambassador responses did help reach lower income populations, more black populations, more Hispanic populations, and more public transit users. About 70% were current public transit users. All right. So you guys are getting the summary of a presentation on the outreach results. If you're on the MPO board, I know you got more details on this. There was a lot of universal themes across all those different methods of outreach. More 15-minute service, so higher frequency routes, improved bus stops, improved access to bus stops, better sidewalks, crosstown service. So not every bus needs to go down to Durham Station to transfer between routes. Transit access to jobs. Most of our transit users are using transit to access jobs or education. Also the commuter rail project. So I understand that next month or next work session, I believe, you're likely going to get a more detailed presentation from the GoTriangle staff on the commuter rail project. They are doing a parallel study at the same time that we were doing the transit plan study, looking at a lot of the details associated with the commuter rail. They've also done a lot of public outreach themselves on this that you'll hear next time. But the commuter rail was raised as something that a lot of Durham residents were interested in all of our outreach methods as well. So like I said, the ambassador sessions were more representative of our transit riders. So we did want to look closely at areas where they differed from the responses as a whole. A few areas that were emphasized with the engagement ambassadors are paratransit service. So the Go Durham access service that provides kind of door-to-door service for city and county residents. Street maintenance, road quality. I know you hear about that a lot, and we heard about it in this survey as well, that street maintenance is a concern. And then expanding on sidewalk access, you know, specifically access related to wheelchair and stroller access at the stops and onto buses was a high priority. And then lastly, service running later at night. So you know, if you don't work a nine to five job, the span of the service, the days of the service are more important. So that that was something we heard more from those engagement ambassador sessions was the importance of service that was more oriented towards people who don't have maybe traditional nine to five jobs. All right, this brings me to scenarios, which Erin is going to take it from here. Thank you, Ellen. Thank you, Mr. Ryan. Council. Go ahead and look to the next slide, please. Okay, so Ellen talked to you about the some of the outreach methods that we did and some of the highlighted responses that we got from the participants in our outreach back in the fall. And she also mentioned that we have the three scenarios and we specifically wanted to make sure that these scenarios are contrasting so that people can understand that we can't afford to do everything. But we do need to make some priorities and make some choices going forward. That being said, we did realize that there are some things that we want to make sure are in all three scenarios and some things that we heard loud and clear from all of our outreach that we want to make sure get addressed in our final preferred scenario. So the first one is more frequent service, have more 30 minute service. A lot of times we have time to the day where we're dropping, especially go Durham service awesome and sometimes go triangle down to hourly service that makes it much more difficult for our transit riders to be able to depend on it and count on it and be there when they need it. So we want to make sure that we have more 30 minute service throughout the day. We want to improve bus stops. This is something we heard loud and clear that we really need to improve our bus stops and the access to our bus stops. So our goal is over the next few years to get improvements to every bus stop throughout the go Durham and go triangle services. That doesn't necessarily mean a full fledged shelter and all the amenities that it can handle, but at least appropriate improvements for the ridership where they were getting at each of those stops. And that they also be ADA accessible, which would mean a landing pad as well as a sidewalk at least to the nearest corner with appropriate curb cuts. And then finally service later at night. Not everybody works a nine to five job. We want to make sure that people can depend on the service and they can be there when they need it so they can get to and from work. Bus service doesn't help you a whole lot if you can get to work, but you can't get home or vice versa. So in addition to that, with the other ones that you see with the dots here, these are ones where we're varying them from scenario to serenary. And I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail on future slides. But you know, how many routes we're going to have, how much sidewalk access we're going to be able to build, whether or not we're going to be in the putting commuter rail, we can't afford to do all of these. So we need to make some choices. We need to do some prioritizations. And I just lost the slides. We're able to bring that back up, Ellen. Ellen zoom failed. So let me see what I can do here. I happen to have a version open. Can you all see that? Yes. Okay, great. There we go. So continuing on. Nice recovery. I'm trying. I'm trying. So committed projects. In addition to the projects that we're looking to identify through the transit plan process, as you're all aware, we've been collecting the tax since 2013. We've been implementing improvements for both go Durham and go triangle. And we're going to continue those improvements. So I want to make it clear that none of the we're not proposing to change any of the improvements that we have already initiated. And so you can see here, the list of routes that have already been improved it with the table showing you whether we've gone to 30 minutes service at night, 30 minutes service during the day, simply additional service, new routes and so forth, all of those will stay. And all of those are projected. We've done the financial work to make sure that we can continue those services going forward. In addition, we have committed projects through our capital administrative budgets. So as you can see here, it bolded all the bus stops, ADA upgrades, sidewalk connection, lighting, potentially shelters and other improvements that we need may need to make. Underneath that, you'll see the Holloway and Fayetteville Street corridor improvements. Oh, Ellen's back. Yay. As well as improvements at the Village Transit Center and South Point Transit Center. So all of these are still projected to be in the future in the transit plan. We're not talking about removing any of these or doing any less work on those. So with those committed projects that we plan to move forward, that takes up about 50% of the available transit tax funds that were transit tax revenues that we're projecting to get over the next 20 years. So we really only have about half the money available to program through the transit plan. Something else to keep in mind with our scenarios is that they are fiscally feasible. We can afford each of these. We certainly can't afford all of them, which is why we're trying to use these conceptual scenarios as to show trade-offs. And this is not a reflection on these projects being better than others. All are just like at Lake Wogelgaum. All of our projects are good projects. All of them are above average. But we can't afford them all. We need to be realistic about that. Something else is as we go through these concepts, these potential scenarios that we'd before, we're not going to be asking people to just select A, B or C. We're going to be asking people to say, what do you like best about A? What do you like best about C? What do you like best about C? Which are your highest priorities? And we'll do our best to put those together into a combined, preferred scenario that we'll be able to move forward. So I'm going to just give you a very brief idea of what each scenario is. We're just calling them A, B and C. Scenario A just focuses primarily on bus operations, both local and regional. So we're increasing frequency, 30-minute increases, some routes increasing to 15 minutes. We are, we're extending hours until 12.30 in the morning on many routes. We are doing some capital expenditures. So we're having to buy new buses in order to run more routes and increase frequency. The bus stop improvements are there. We have some other improvements like our bus priority corridors. And here we have more of them. So we have one on say Rocksboro Street heading north, north of I-85. We have Fayetteville Street, Chapel Hill Street, Holloway Street, Main Street and so forth. So we have some capital improvements to help the current service, but the bulk of the money is being spent on improving operations and running more operations. This scenario also has the highest level of sidewalk access of any of the three. Another advantage to scenario A is that we're able to implement most of them in the first five years of the plan. And then the next 15 years would simply be continuations of those improvements that we've implemented in the in the first five years. One of the downsides to scenario A is this is going to be mostly local funding since we're talking about operations and not a lot of capital and not major capital improvements. That is much more difficult to get state and federal funding for. So we're not going to be able to leverage as much outside funding in this scenario. We're also not able to do as much street improvement and as much on the physical infrastructure, which means that our buses are running in mixed traffic with others. So we're running them more often, running them for longer hours. We're adding some new routes, but they are going to be in traffic with the other cars. Scenario B rather than focusing as much on the operations is focusing more on bus infrastructure. So here we're able to put together what we call bus rapid transit, which could mean dedicated lanes for some of the routes, allowing them to basically bypass a lot of existing traffic, make them run more efficiently, allow them to be bigger buses. We can get specialty buses that stop at dedicated stops that are specialized for these types of buses and move regionally more quickly. Downsides to that are that we have to wait longer for implementation. It's going to take longer to construct these projects. And so we're looking at more of a 10-year implementation rather than a five-year implementation. We also have a more of a medium level of sidewalk access and paratransit service improvements and fewer service improvements than scenario A. We do still have some service improvements. We're just not able to afford as many if we're putting in our BRT lines to connect to Chapel Hill and Orange County as well as to connect to the Wake County system in RTP. And then finally scenario C, it has the inclusion of commuter rail. This is a regularly running service from West Durham near Duke through downtown by NCCU in East Durham and then going to RTP and on to Wake County and potentially Johnston County. Right now, if we were to go with commuter rail, we're looking at an implementation in about eight to nine years. Again, because of the cost of commuter rail, we can't do as much paratransit service. We can't do as much sidewalk access, but it does provide a more regular and more efficient and better service to say Wake County and beyond for the jobs and access to those opportunities. So after just getting a briefing on the three scenarios, let me just talk quickly about next steps. Potential release, this shows May 17th. If you saw Ellen's updated slides, you'd see that that would say late May. We do want to do some additional internal review of our outreach material. So we're looking more at later this month for release of that, but we will be doing the same four methods as we did in the last phase. We will do our engagement ambassadors. We have that already ramped up and ready to go. So we think that's going to be more successful in this phase. The last one, we will continue our stakeholder interviews. We will continue our online survey as well as in-person tabling events. And now that we're seeing COVID numbers go down, we feel a little more comfortable. We will be able to do more of that and get more outreach that way. We're looking to conclude probably more like late June, probably around the end of June to conclude that outreach, and that's going to be focused on identifying priorities so that we can create a final preferred scenario. So like I said, mid-May to late June, probably more like late May to late June. We'll look at construction of the preferred scenario in July and bring back an update to you hopefully in August, but no later than September. And then once we have that, and you've all seen it, we'll start our phase three outreach on the final scenario. And with that, Ellen and I will be happy to take any questions that you have. Thank you, Mr. Kane. And thank you, Ms. Beckman. That was a great presentation. We have two people who signed up to speak on this. So before the council gets its chance to ask questions and make comments, I'm going to ask if we can hear from the people who signed up to speak. First is Ms. Stella Adams, who I understand is now with us. And Madam Clerk, could you make Ms. Adams available to be heard? Hello. Can you all hear me? Yes. Ms. Adams, welcome. And you have three minutes. Thank you, sir. At a previous presentation that I saw on scenario three, you all talked about that the commuter rail would take up 90% of the funding in that scenario, and it would be 10 years before you could get to paratransit and sidewalk improvements. Has that changed? That's a question. Also, in the long-term NPO plan that you shared with the city council, you are not showing any effort to meet the needs or the requests of the Braggtown community. We were told at the last city council meeting that the Braggtown community's concerns about sidewalk improvements, shelters, and would be addressed through the comprehensive plan and this long-term transit plan. I didn't see that added anywhere in anything that you presented to the council today. And the Braggtown community is not going to wait 10 years, and it is not going to wait 20 years for a new NPO to be passed to have their neighborhood prioritized. I want, again, I want transparency about what these scenarios are going to do and how you plan it doesn't make sense to me that we have scenario A, B, and C, and that that's not asking people to make a choice. So how do you do that without making a choice that prefers one scenario over another? And how are the voices of the ridership going to be weighted against folks who are not active participants in the process? And federal funds depend on current ridership. So you're going to build this on the back of folks? How are you addressing those things? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Adams. We appreciate you being here and also signed up to speak is Ms. Vanessa Evans. Ms. Evans, we're glad to have you. Madam Clark, can you make Ms. Evans available to be heard? Ms. Evans, can you be heard? Good evening, everyone. Thank you for letting me speak for a brief moment. I just want to say that with Braggtown not being in the annual budget for the next year, five, 10, 15 years, it's unfeasible. Taxes have gone up 100 to 300 percent in not just this community, but every black community in Durham. We're talking about bringing in a rail system that is a new item that we've had things that need to have been fixed years ago, centuries ago, for sidewalks in these different communities that have been asking for for years. We have been robbed, hoodling, however you want to say it, bamboozled, and we're really tired of not being on the chart to better receive funding from the city of Durham. The city of Durham and the county of Durham have stolen from us for years, and it is time for y'all to give back to the communities they have given for years on top of years. We should not have to keep waiting for something. I can't help y'all fix this infrastructure the way you did, but it should have been fixed years ago before you bring new things and new items to the chart to be done. I hope to see transit sometime with the railway, but I feel buses within the system where we already have things that need to be fixed. We need to fix what's already broken first before you add new things to the system. So I feel that the railway system is something that can wait. You have bus areas that need to be fixed. I mean the further you go out, we have people walking three to five miles just to get to a store. We have people walking on goat paths where there are no sidewalks, people crossing ditches to get to buses, and it don't make sense that black communities have always been underserved for so long. When will we get back what we have put into the system of Durham? This isn't something that's happened overnight. This is something that's happened years ago. So I feel that you need to look at what has already been done and what needs to be fixed first before we add new things to the agenda of Durham's infrastructure. The infrastructure of what is already damaged needs to be fixed first. You've got roads that people are riding on. My car right now, this will be my third time having to get my alignment on my car because of the roads and the structures that are not in place. You have sidewalks that are going nowhere from new developments that are not being connected to areas where they should be connected. I'm just I'm just frustrated that we have been in every meeting that I can think of and we I feel like we're not being really truly heard. You know lip service is one thing but to truly put your the mouth where the work really needs to be means you need to work in the communities that have been underserved for so many years. I respect Durham but I feel I'm being disrespected by Durham because they're not working in the areas that they need to work in. Thank you, Ms. Evans. We're glad to hear from you today. Thank you. All right colleagues questions or comments for Mr. Kane and Ms. Beckman, Council Member Reese, then Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, then Councilman Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before Council comments, we got an email from John Talmich from like Durham who tried to log in but didn't get the right zoom link. I'm going to read in his remarks and then I'll defer my colleagues who have other questions and comments. That's all right with you real quick. There's no doubt that an excellent this is again this is from John Talmich from like Durham. There is no doubt that an excellent transit system that works well for current users and is attractive to everyone in our community has to be has to have safe walking access to every bus stop. The city must work with its partners at the county, the MPO and go triangle to prioritize the funding and completion of the complete network of safe access to transit as soon as possible. The final transit plan will demonstrate how the transit tax funding, the equitable green infrastructure funding and the various federal funding sources will be used together to make sure that everyone can safely access the transit system we're building. I think this is particularly important to raise as this item is separate from the CIP presentation that will be presented at the council meeting. These fine decisions need to work in concert and we want to understand how staff and you are thinking about the big picture of completing the sidewalk and bicycle networks providing access to transit. So that was from John Talmich from bike Durham. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you council member. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Mr. Mayor and thanks y'all for the presentation. I was really pleased looking through the work plan how many things were listed as already implemented. It's clear that there's a lot of work that's already been going on with expanding our transit system and I'm that's really great to see. I think in general the things that worry me are access to like transit getting transit access into communities that currently don't have any access at all and we're seeing more and more with new development projects that are coming in particularly around like in North Durham and in East Durham annexations from the county that one of the big concerns that people have out there is traffic and their right to be concerned because there's no other option for people than to drive their cars. I think we're going to see a lot more development as we move forward in these in these outlying areas and we're trying to get development out there to be as dense as we think is environmentally sustainable but based on you know the the information that we've gotten around like the Sheryls basin for example that that area just can't support a very high level of residential density but we're still going to end up with a lot of people living out there and so I think and I think from an environmental perspective we need to think about how we get transit to these areas even when they're not super densely populated when we when we know that they're growing and we know that they're going to be a lot of people living in those kinds of communities and then also to existing communities where there isn't any transit access. I know generally you know transit goes where where there are like higher densities of people but I think that if we if we're serious about figuring out ways to get people off the roads all over our community out of their cars and onto and onto buses that we need to figure out how to get transit into areas that we might not consider traditionally like the places where we would where we would go and I'm not sure you know exactly how we make that work maybe it's parking rides you know maybe it's it's hubs where people can can bike or you know drive their car to a spot and then they can get on a bus and go anywhere that they need I'm sure there are other communities that have you know these lower density places that have strategies to figure it out but I'm increasingly worried that traffic concerns keep getting brought up as a reason to not build housing and we we need to be building housing and we need the transit to go along with the housing in order to make the the new housing developments that we're seeing as sustainable as we possibly can um so that's just kind of a it's a big picture concern that I have broadly I think you know in in terms of which way we're going in the transit plan it would lean towards more you know in town investment rather than investment in in commuter rail though I do think commuter rail is important and it's going to provide access to lots of jobs and you know would be would be of great benefit to a lot of our residents I'm really concerned about you know they're they're being transit that anyone in the in the community be everyone being able to access transit in some way and I think that'll go a long way to alleviating some of the issues that we have around around how we how we build new new neighborhoods and and you know folks concerns about about increasing traffic if there if there is another option then you know we can continue to invest in that and make that more robust thanks thank you very much I'm Mr. Cain and Ms. Speckman would you all like to comment on that I mean I can provide a comment so in the in the work program and also in the scenarios maps you've probably noticed that there's a this on-demand service proposed the city of Durham is going to be initiating that this coming year for sections of north and eastern Durham city and county to address that issue because we have a lot of areas that really aren't dense and can't support a fixed route service but a fixed route like a regular bus route it it would be where you take I mean there's different ways to do it but in essentially you take an uber or it could be like a go Durham access van might take you that last bit of your trip to your destination that's beyond the fixed route system so it's a way to couldn't to provide service to a broader area and some of those areas that aren't as dense and can't support a fixed route bus system bus route very efficiently um of course it's costly like you're you're spot on in this in the concern that some areas are very difficult to serve with transit either because of density or because of the road network a connected road network is also very important to be able to provide transit and route buses efficiently so um that's how we're addressing it right now um in the transit plan and in the work program we're going to be trying out that pilot project next year we'll see how it goes and see if we can scale it in the future yeah I did see that thank you for um for bringing that up I think the and I don't know how to solve this problem but the problem with the on-demand is that you're not actually getting you're not getting cars off the road you're just instead of someone driving their personal car they're you know they're they're having a car sent for them which solves one problem but doesn't solve the other problem so I'm I'm wondering like you know do some communities use vans or something like that for you know or like a a short bus for areas where they can't you know where it doesn't make sense to run a long bus um these are these are questions that we don't have to answer right now but just things that I think um are concerning for like the long-term growth around the edges of the community um the other thing I noticed that I wanted to ask about on on the scenarios maps um there there was a little area kind of in in the area that we've been seeing a lot of development requests like in the county between like between 70 and 98 in this rural space and there was a little like route out there but I couldn't read the number on it or figure out um what it was and was wondering what that is so like on the scenario a sorry um there's like a there's some purple lines and then there's a green line heading east and then there's kind of this little like circular dude this is not helpful I think I think I know which one you're you're looking at here okay trying to zoom in so that I can make sure that I'm reading that number correctly um I think it's how away yeah I believe that's the three it's the three I know it's a three it's I believe the three b okay the idea is to to increase the frequency of the three b increase the frequency of the three b okay so that's down how away yeah it's on how away street and then goes north into that and is this county does this green mean that it's in the county no the the green means it is one of the zones for the microtransit that uh Ellen was describing got it okay um cool yeah I mean I I understand it's hard to serve low density areas with transit I also think we need to figure out how to do it um because there are areas of the community that are going to develop at a lower density and we are not going to be able to get the we're not going to be able to get the housing that we need if we um if traffic becomes a barrier to people um being willing to build out there and being willing to live out there thanks y'all thank you very much Madam Mayor Pro Tem council member Freeman thank you mr mayor I I want to thank you Ellen Beckman and Aaron Kane I know that you guys have put a lot of work into this and I know over the years we've had lots of conversations around transit and transportation and I I really I really appreciate how you're trying to incorporate the equitable engagement concept into this work but I just want to highlight that because there there's been such a lack of that engagement um the sensitivity to the folks who are in those communities that have been underserved has to be higher and just acknowledging so the the comments we're hearing from miss Evans and miss Adams are specific to the fact that their communities have been underserved and they are speaking to now seeing what the served communities have been receiving and so I say that to say that so for the communities that have been involved in the processes before you know this is the norm and this is how it works and for folks who have not been engaged in the process it's kind of just the disrespect that they feel is real and so I just want to honor that and make sure that you understand how how your role plays into that because you're on the front line of it and um as folks who are not of color it kind of layers in a little bit of an extra um bit of disrespect so just noting that I I just also wanted to note that there's there's also a context here that I've been trying to raise in our ongoing planning and zoning cases understanding that um from farmland to high density townhomes and from you know forests to high density townhomes uh those two lame roads are not changing anytime soon and we do not have the funds to do that whether they're a state road or not or county road or city road the dollars aren't there we can't even can't afford to repay our current roads or to keep up with the plan that we have now to pay our current repaid our current roads and so when I keep saying to our to my council colleagues that um the high density development we're encouraging in these areas as we annex so much of the county um comes with a price tag and that price tag is real and can and tension with the communities who have historically been left out of this work and so if we jump ahead and only do the communities that that we want to bring online we we continue to disrespect now the folks that we're now engaging in the process who've been underserved and watching how we're going to ignore their needs and so I just want to be clear that that's not acceptable and so just uh the few the few neighborhoods that have come to our to our recent meetings I mean specifically I'm thinking about Merrick Moore and um and Bragg town and uh there will likely be others who who acknowledge that they're being underserved there has to be a process that underlines their needs in a way that raises up um for our cip or for council to to make an adjustment and I don't know what that process would look like um but I do know that something needs to be put in place and then secondly I do want to note that the that I that the part about the the pilot programs I know the first and last mile um pilots that have gone on have been really helpful uh for folks who've who've been trying to get to work to and from work and I know that that model is not sustainable for more than you know a couple hundred people and so just noting that I don't think we'll have enough uber drivers or lift drivers um to make it scale up to cover I think what uh Mayor Pro Tem Johnson was talking about and so I am I am going to continue to keep pressing on the fact that we need to really stop letting the developers develop our city and actually figure out a way to make sure that we're turning on areas that should be turned on um for transportation uh the commuter rail is a great concept I think it's it's a phenomenal deal we as a city have not gotten to that point yet and so I mean if we would have invested a little bit more in bus rapid transit or in and busing period throughout the time we were working on light rail I think we'd be in a different position but because it was neglected uh now's the time to put the money into the busing and the transportation that 90 there's a number that that um Director Egan mentions when he's when he's talking about who's who's dependent on the bus service and those 90 percent are dependent they're not waiting to stop using their vehicles they don't have a vehicle to use and so that priority has to be there and so in your scenarios if you're not highlighting those specific in every single one those specific areas of understanding around equity I feel like we're going to we're going to have a huge miss and so I appreciate the comments that council member Reese could add from Mr. Tomage acknowledging that we as a overall I mean there's a kind of green you know clean energy aspect to this that we want to get to but while we're doing that there's folks who cannot get to work or are losing opportunities to get to work um or losing their jobs because they're getting to work late and that is where uh we need to put a lot more effort right now so thank you thank you council member other comments or questions colleagues council member Middleton thank you Mr. Marin thank you colleagues and Director Beckman is good to see you and Mr. Kane good to see you as well thank you so much for the the presentation um so what what I want to say is in so far as this presentation represents a pivot and us kind of rethinking things because of the the demise of the light rail project I'm I'm tempted to to think about what the animating proposition of the light rail project was or at least one of the selling points of it and that was the focus on the the descendant if you will in the heirs of haytai one of the things that we got all in our feelings about of the light rail project is that it it literally represented a physical reconnection of what 147 severed that that crossed literally crossing over 147 and connecting the descendant of haytai back to the economic vibrancy of this city in this region uh yeah it was going to Chapel Hill and other places but in so far as it it was supposed to help um the most disadvantaged folks in our city I'm still carrying that forward as I consider our transit plan moving forward so scenario a holds a great deal of of um weight for me and I know that that in in the final analysis it's probably going to be a hybrid we're going to probably take a little bit from each scenario and focus on different aspects but um scenario a is what's kind of informing where I am now um I want to thank a counselor for for gifting us a better buses better cities it's a great I'm kind of reading multiple things at the same time but it but it's a good good read so thank you uh counselor Reese for gifting us his book uh and I want to recommend it as he's already committed to us um one of the things that's interesting when we talk about expanding our transit options um and that we've got to talk about and I think counsel Freeman's kind of touched on this is there are people who are not riding our buses because they're stigmatized um and and the the choice of not getting in your car or leaving your car at home and getting on transit is is is a choice that many of us on this conference make but they're focused as counsel Freeman said who don't have cars so I think that first and foremost has got to be our focus and I think the any any city that's going to consider itself a great metropolis has to cross the threshold where it can be navigated and negotiated without a car uh whether you have one or not um I also want to you know bring to this space that there are folk in our city who could use the bus now it's not a very extensive system and make requires some creativity who don't use it because it's stigmatized because it's black and poor people that ride it um because it doesn't stop enough spaces so even if we build transit out of the areas where we're building a density I think one of the things we have to be um vigilant about is that are they going to be those type of routes that bypass uh poor black and brown areas and we've seen this played out in urban centers all over the country there are some places that don't want bus stops in their community um I can recall a specific incident about a major business in Durham who had concerns about the bus coming to them because they didn't want certain people to be able to leave their neighborhood and get to certain places so so so there are people who want to live in enclaves where they don't have transit or if they do have transit it's of the commuter ilk or the specialized ilk that bypasses uh areas uh that are considered undesirable and I I want to own that and I think we have to be um very just just just approach this uh sober uh in a sober way that the folk that are it's going to be easier to build it first and then they will come rather than than force folk to leave their car at home and get on transit that subpar doesn't have enough connection um we've got to make an investment uh in our in our buses uh better buses make better cities and make an investment in our buses uh that that will will will draw folk uh because I think folk have already demonstrated they're not going to get out of their cars and get on buses that don't run regularly regularly don't run around across the clock uh around the clock and don't connect the major hubs in the city um in a in a in a um a comprehensive way so I am I'm very concerned and interested in making sure that most of the stuff in scenario a is what we we focus on um the cip discussion is coming up a lot of what miss evans uh um um and miss adam spoke of you know we're going to get a chance to put our money where our mouth is quite literally when we look at the cip one of the things we talked about when we talked about the green infrastructure bond and increasing the cip tax allotment is putting us in the making sure we bring an equity lens to cip so I would just say to miss adam and miss evans stay tuned um we're you know we we have the wherewithal even as this transit plan is being developed to do some things about sidewalks now and and bus shelters now and and ditches in the city now and that it's going to they're going to be hard tough uh discussions and and you know decisions to make but that that's why we're here so I just want to put all that in this space about transit that there are some folk who want to be watching very carefully because you know uh we've been hurt before a lot of us in the community um this whole transit plan is haunted and animated by the light rail uh so all of the baggage all of the hopes that we pinned to the light rail project are still alive in many of these communities and I think our focus has got to be uh folk who don't have the choice of leaving their car at home and jumping on the bus um and many of them are not going to do it no matter what we say because they think it's just black and poor people riding it they don't run long enough they're not safe they don't go to enough places we've got to build up the system uh and make a major investment in it that makes the city uh negotiable without a car and a system that's inviting uh to folk at the beginning rather than hope that folk through charity or through some noblesse of leech will ride a system that they feel a subpar and wait for us to catch up with their with their goodwill um so I look forward to the cip discussion uh relative to all of this as we move forward but thank you mr mayor and uh thank you colleagues thank you council member other comments or questions at this point colleagues council member rice thank you mr mayor I want to thank my colleagues for their outstanding comments so far um I'm not going to take up too much time because a lot of the good things have already been said which is awesome um but I did want to address specifically the comments from Ms Adams and Ms Evans about what what y'all don't see uh in these scenarios uh for the future of the Durham county transit plan um this plan is developed by the folks who are going to pass it eventually um that does not include the city of Durham uh if you want to know where uh your input is into this process that's what we're doing right now we are telling the folks who are developing this plan what we think of these scenarios what we like about them what we don't what's missing so the fact that you're here and telling us what you want is fantastic we all already done told us what you want this is our opportunity to tell these folks uh from go triangle and from the from Durham county what y'all want and what we expect to see so to the extent that you were disappointed by what you saw in these scenarios please understand that this is the moment like this is how it's designed to work whether that's a good idea or not it's another question but this is how it's designed to work this is when we get to tell uh miss Beckman and mr kane uh this is what we think that's why council member milton said you know scenario a is awesome it does it makes a lot of the investments we need uh and oh by the way we still got some work to do in cip to put our money where our mouth is in terms of investments in these communities that have been disinvested in for generations so uh understand totally understand your frustration but understand also that uh that this is our really first bite is about at the apple as a council on this particular plan um the other thing i will say to miss Beckman is i really really am mr kane i really appreciate the clarification since i saw this presentation last time about what the scenarios are and what they're not and uh that that is very very helpful i i'm i'm again i'm not particularly enamored of the idea that we present these as scenarios and then talk about them as just kind of priority buckets and tell force us to make difficult choices i think that's important but i think the scenario language is problematic which is why you have to add in some of this stuff about oh we're not choosing between them this really just a prioritization exercise which is fine and mr kane i also want to say um it's actually not true to say we we can't afford all of it the issue is over what time frame do we make all of these investments and at what cost to the people of dirt right like i think um at some price every member of the city council could agree to invest in the commuter rail project but i also think every member of the city council would probably have a somewhat different price to of what the people of Durham ought to be willing to pay uh in order to get the benefits of commuter rail for dirt um and some of us think it's more valuable than others that's why there's seven people here we're going to figure out what we think together um for better or worse our input into that process is very limited and that's the other thing i wanted to make sure that our friends uh who are here listening to us talk about the derm creole transit plan understand the derm city council is not going to get to vote on whether or not we approve or reject the derm county transit plan that stinks um and i hope that as we begin or are in the ongoing process of negotiating these operating agreements between the various jurisdictions that we talk about that there is no single entity more invested in how the derm county transit plan works than the city of derm uh because we run the only local transit program in derm county so uh but that's a whole other subject what we do get though is the mayor of the city of derm steve shul sits on the go triangle board and as a member they go a triangle board he will get to vote on the derm county transit plan my colleague pierce freeland and i both serve on the board of the of our local a metropolitan planning organization as members of that board we will get to vote on the derm county transit plan the rest of y'all don't get a vote and that stinks as i said uh but uh we'll certainly talk to everybody i'll certainly talk to everybody and figure out what y'all think when it ultimately comes for a vote now all of that is a boring process important to get get around especially because because our local processes are so fragmented it robs folks who just want to see changes made to benefit their neighborhoods it robs them of a full accountability right who are the who are these folks supposed to go and tell we want x y z they're coming to us we're on the city council but we don't write this plan we're not going to approve this plan uh some of us will get a vote in the various boards that we are also appointed to but that's why it's important for the city of derm to have a formal role in this process and i hope we can get there because it lets us be accountable for these for these funding decisions in a way that that we're really not technically accountable for right now and that stinks not only for us uh but also for the folks that we represent here in the city so that's that's that's one issue the other issue is um as between scenarios a b and c as i said uh in a previous meeting if you presented me with a menu of scenario a b and c i would say yes that all sounds great let's do that i'll order the menu let's do it uh and you will tell me i'm sorry uh you don't have enough money to pay for that during the time you've got then let's talk about more time and let's talk about all the resources that we can put together it's just like john talmadge from bike derm said we have to figure out how all of these funding sources can work together to meet the needs of the people of derm but as between expanding local bus service um brt service between derm and chapel hill and commuter rail service that connects white county and other counties to derm let me just say a couple of things that everybody in this call has heard me say acknowledge him but i want to make sure that folks understand the vast majority of people who use go-durham buses in this city are people of color they have incomes below 25 000 and they have zero cars right these are the people for whom investment in transit is an investment in their livelihood and their ability to get around the city and their ability to do all the things that folks like us who have cars take for granted every dollar that we invest in go-durham bus service is an incredible engine of racial and socioeconomic equity because it helps folks achieve the things that they want to achieve in their life without that they can't do a lot of this stuff that's why this is so important compare those demographics to the folks who use our go-triangle regional system um you will see that the folks who use go-durham are for more racially diverse they have much less money and they don't have as many cars at home we don't have all that data for the proposed commuter rail project but what we do know is that based on estimates only 20 of the folks who will eventually use a commuter rail project only 20 of them come from zero car households so all of which is to say that as an organization the city of Durham that is focused on putting racial equity at the forefront of every decision we make um we have to we have to as councilmember middleton said we have to focus on our local transit needs and I really appreciate that all three scenarios have some of the very critical infrastructure and service improvements in them but as we go forward I hope that we can continue to focus on the needs of the folks who use the system now and it's also true as councilmember middleton said again it's awesome going after him as he said you know there are folks in Durham now who could use the bus who aren't who see it as somehow stigmatized as slightly less convenient um trying to talk about how great it is to use bus service is one of the reasons why once or twice a week I take the bus instead of driving my car around so that I can talk about it in the community I can talk about it on social media and help folks understand that it is a viable option but the fact is our decisions need to be geared to the folks who use it but also who desperately rely on it as the only way they can get the various places they need to get to go in Durham so I hope that that message gets through loud and clear uh to the folks at the county and go triangle who are working really really hard on this plan the last thing I'll say is that the that the um on board surveys that you guys did and the engagement ambassador work is fantastic these these folks have told you what they want to see from a Durham County transit plan I hope you will listen and to the extent that we can be of service to you and helping figure out as between these options how they ought to be prioritized I hope you will continue to come and talk to us about that I know that our staff has lots of great ideas um this is this is what the Durham County transit plan ought to be about transit for the people of Durham County um and while we have lots of other needs commuter rail uh BRT these are all important projects uh but the focus ought to be on the transit needs of our local folks here in Durham and I hope that will be the focus of the Durham County transit plan going forward that's probably more than enough for me Mr. Mayor thank you thank you councilmember councilmember cabiano thank you um I want to associate myself with all the wonderful comments my colleagues have already shared and wonderful questions you know this came to us with the MPO I do not get a vote unless one of my colleagues does not make that meeting either uh councilmember Freelon or councilmember Reese um but I said it there and I'm going to say it again I want it all I don't know how we get it all um every every single scenario has really important things we we need to solve the issue around our local transit which we know the folks who use local transit desperately need it and we have to have regional transit because that's the only way we're going to have a different future when I think about climate change I don't know how we get there I don't know how much it's going to cost it's why we have wonderful staff that are going to help us figure this out um I don't I don't know how we have a different future without both uh that's it we need if you get on I-40 after four o'clock any day of the week other than when the world came to a standstill you can't get anywhere we know we know it's a regional issue we know that the population is going to only increase not just in Durham but in every single surrounding county so I I can't separate the the the desperate need for both regional and local transit there's no way around it so by when we I understand we probably we need to prioritize the local component I can't disengage completely from what we need regionally um I know you all are going to do a fantastic job with outreach the way you didn't phase one I look forward to seeing what our residents say I know we have to think about all of the components and all of the buckets of money that we have access to and uh thank you for the presentation today thank you council member all right colleagues any further comments if not I'm going to call on Ms Constance Wright uh Madam clerk could you make Ms Wright available to be heard Ms Wright welcome we're glad to have you and you have three minutes okay I'm I'm kind of glad I'm coming at the end of all these wonderful comments I'm just praying that council member Milton um you know I kind of pick on you a lot because you always say you know things that we really want to hear that you you know you're in our corner that you know we can move money around we can do all these different things and get what we need out here in Bragg town you know um council council lady Freeman is always in our corner I feel you know and um councilman Reese you know what you said that sounded good too but what we're praying is that it's not just lip service we need those things out here scenario a I was looking at it and I hope I didn't miss it but um the bus service that you all had the routes you didn't even have route nine on there and route nine comes straight through the deeply underserved community part of Bragg town you know um that's where we don't have the sidewalks that's where we don't have the you know good bus stops or anything but that was not even mentioned and what my fear is I keep hearing you know there's new development coming in new development and basically to me it sounds like the focus on is on the new development and all the um transportation and the infrastructure needs that needs to go into the new development areas you know gentrified areas I still call it say devil street corridor you know and then you go on out towards Duke those places already have good infrastructure you know or that it's being worked on but when it comes to Bragg town and Merrick Moore you know we hope that's our prayer and we're going to hold you to it we're going to keep wearing you until we get what we need out here but um we just hope that you all are not giving us lip service I feel like a lot of times what happens in a lot of black people feel like this too you come you get our opinion you get what we we say we want then you get funds for what you know we say we want and take the funds and use it in a whole different area and that's how it is feeling now you know especially um yeah that's how it's feeling so I appreciate y'all's comments I just hope and pray that you all will you know hold true to wanting to help us out um you know want to look out for our underserved communities and that's all I have to say thank you very much miss right we're glad you're with us today councilmember Freeman thank you mr mayor I think um I just wanted to take a moment to thank miss evans and miss right I know they've been really active in the engaged term project and putting a lot of time and and it's on the basis of their neighborhood needs that they raised these issues it's not for themselves I know um I just wanted to just highlight I know councilmember Reese noted we can afford it I think there's a difference in the way that I explain affords based versus what he explains as a forward because it's just noting raising taxes for folks who are at the edge of their affordability does not mean afford for folks who live in communities that have historically been underserved and so just noting that very specific point I'm mindful that that these all of these things need to be done but the things that don't get done are usually in miss evans or miss um miss um in miss rights neighborhood and it's overwhelming I'm I'm sick and tired of having the conversations with these folks in the community about why they don't have bus stops I've been working on this for over 10 years I've been in the community on the side of my neighborhood and and working with folks from the neighborhood aspect to try and do these things and I remember when um when Mark Aronson first introduced me to the way that it all worked and it was then that I knew that it was not the system was not built to make sure that the folks who needed the service would receive the or get the most input it was built so that the people who who moved the money around would have all the input and so when when councilmember um Reese explains that he has a vote and councilmember Freelon has a vote neither one of them are dependent on those bus services in that same way that's not how the system is set up to to do so that's a choice that he rides the bus it's a choice um that he can make this and there's so many people who don't have that choice I just I just consistently want to note that this is yes this is not a derm a city of derm vote but it is definitely a city of derm issue and it's not just limited to transportation and so I just I really think that affordability is is the issue and we've got to figure out how to make sure that the folks who at the at the margins are covered thank you councilmember councilmember race thank you mr mayor um I uh so if I if I if I say that I want to raise taxes to support some of these things you'll be sure to I'll be sure to let you know because you'll hear the words come out of my mouth when I said that we could that we could afford all these scenarios over some period of time what I meant to say and I appreciate councilmember freeman for letting me clarify I don't mean raising taxes on folks we're already collecting the tax in the county transit tax that brings in plenty of money every year without increasing taxes one cent all of the things we need to do for all of these communities that have been disinvested in for generations the question is will we choose to do that or will we choose to make investments in other places on other projects that benefit other types of people and that's why I'm suggesting we do less of that and more of investing these funds which which we are already collecting the county is already collecting to spend on the needs that we have in these communities the other thing I'll say is councilmember freeman is exactly right I choose to take the bus I don't need to take the bus that is true for every single member of the derm city council that's just the way it is there are lots of reasons for that part of it is we don't pay council members enough to live on this wage as many of us know who have to have more than one job um it's also the fact that but but it's also the fact that running for office is really hard and so folks who rely on public transportation who have to take it find it hard to run for public office I'd love to change that but this is where we are right now um and so but I appreciate councilmember freeman pointing out that I don't need to take the bus she's exactly right I choose to uh because I think it's important for us as a city to try to get more people uh writing public transportation thank you for the opportunity for those clarifications Mr. Mayor Mayor Pro-Chem thank you Mr. Mayor um I just wanted to comment on the the taxes question because as I will quote Mayor Steve Shull that the two things that people want most in Durham and probably everywhere are more services and lower taxes and those things aren't compatible so I think we I don't think that we need to raise taxes right now to deal with our existing transit needs but I do think that we need to make sure people understand that all of the services that are provided by the city and the county and the state and every other governmental institution are provided by taxing people and creating a source of public dollars so and that that is where all of our money comes from and we unfortunately in North Carolina are in this really difficult place with state preemption where we can't pass a progressive property tax or local progressive income tax or any other form of collecting revenue that doesn't come disproportionately from um the people who can at least afford to pay it in gentrifying communities right now that is our only source of funding um so I just want to keep in mind we're in a really it's it's a rock in a hard place we know we need to we know we need tax and we know we need taxation and public funding to to do these programs at the same time the forms of taxation that we have access to are not progressive um so we're always going to have to balance those things but I but I want to continuously emphasize that we can't do anything without tax money um and all of the services that we provide for all the communities that most need them in Durham are paid for by taxing everyone including those communities and there's just no way around that um I hope that if any of our if any of our um state representatives are listening I think we really need more progressive ways to to collect tax revenue in North Carolina um being able to pass a progressive property tax or progressive local income tax would be a game changer for Durham and for communities all over the state um but for now we're stuck with property tax and we're just gonna have to figure out how we provide all the services that we need to provide with that source of revenue thank you Mr. Mayor thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem Kelsman Freeman thank you and I appreciate Mayor Pro Tem pointing out the the limitations statewide and and I think yeah also federally the I I do want to make sure I clarify I wasn't trying to say that there was anything wrong with choosing I do want to make sure that thank Councilmember Reese for being one of the very few in our community uh well one of the very few on the council who do choose to ride the bus I know when we had the bullshit connector that was my ride um it's gone away uh but I do know I did want to note that the taxes that we're talking about that we that are existing currently are about 37 million dollars and that number is still really low and so I just want to be clear like it is really good to have the transit tax in place but it is still not enough and unfortunately for the city of our size and the projects that all need to be done yeah this is where we are so I just want to add that piece just to give the number itself thank you thank you very much Councilmember any further comments I want to thank my colleagues I want to thank the folks that were here today to make comments and if there are further questions that those folks would like to let us know we're happy to hear them send us an email or better yet if send Mr. Cain and Ms. Beckman an email to get your answers to the questions that you might have Mr. Cain Ms. Beckman thank you so much for being here I am I am I just want to say you know we we've talked a lot about the fact that the city doesn't have a direct role on the on these decisions but I have been impressed in the last few years last couple of years and props to you all and to Shawn Egan particularly that the city's bus needs have been funded by the transit plan at a much larger degree than previously and part of this is because we do have the we don't have the light rail sitting out there at this moment but we it also means that our county commissioners have been willing to adopt that that you all have been able to willing to recommend it the work group the working group and I'm pleased that Shawn is now on the working group and the city has that more formalized role I think that the the transit emphasis corridors are critically important for just the people that we're talking about and so wanted to appreciate that and those increased expenditures on our bus system all right colleagues thank you very much and Mr. Cain Ms. Beckman thank you for being with us and we'll see you another time colleagues it's 304 we're going to now take a five minute break I will see everyone back at 309 and please remember to mute yourself as we're away for this next five minutes we'll see it 309 all right colleagues it is now 309 and we will move on in our agenda and we will move on now to item 25 see here item 25 is the update on the disposition of redevelopment of the property located at 505 West Chapel Hill Street and I see Ms. Poston is here welcome and we look forward to your presentation thank you very much good afternoon mayor mayor pro term and members of city council my name is Stacy Poston and I'm with the general services department and I'm the project manager for the disposition and redevelopment of 505 West Chapel Hill Street this project has evolved over the more than three years a city has been engaged in imagining what could be for this transformational piece of real estate that we own in our downtown urban core we started in 2017 by presenting to city council the findings from our public engagement sessions additional presentations followed in 2018 as we in collaboration with council to synthesize the community priorities that became the five goals that were embedded in the RFP that was issued in 2019 two years ago then June of 2020 city council approved the rezoning and restrictive covenants for the 505 West Chapel Hill Street site and most importantly the restrictive covenants that were placed on the property for the delivery of the affordable housing survive regardless of who the property owner is and their perpetual then in October of 2020 the Durham city council voted to approve six related motions supporting the proposed disposition of 505 West Chapel Hill Street to the Fallon Company and their associated team members including wind development subsequent to that approval in October we entered into a master development agreement and a purchase and sale agreement and the Fallon Company began performing due diligence over many months that resulted ultimately in them determining that they could not advance on the previously council approved development program and instead in April of 2021 last month they sent the city a notice of termination while at the same time providing council and the city with an alternate development proposal for us to consider so today cow vangle from hRNA who is our consulting partner on this project will present an update on the project status and the alternate proposal that was received by the city as well as possible various next steps and i do want to mention on the possible next steps is you know staff really doesn't have fully informed plans for these options we're not here today necessarily making a recommendation we're really here today to inform council on where we are at with the project and to receive guidance and direction on which path council would like us to pursue various other staff members from the city attorney's office and other departments are here as well to respond to inquiries and with that i will turn it over to kyle vangle to present with a prayer that the technology works as we intended it to thank you stacey and good afternoon mayor and members of council as stacey mentioned i will walk through this presentation presenting you know the new information that has been received on this over the past couple of months um first on this slide i just want to lay out some of the key program components and sort of where they stood in the original master development agreement program that was agreed to last fall and then some of these proposed alternatives uh that stacey noted have been received from the fallon company this uh this year um first in terms of the use of the militant small building this was originally contemplated to be office and retail both of the proposed alternatives that have been put forth now contemplate that this will be a residential and retail building so that the use of the building has changed furthermore uh originally in the master development agreement this was proposed to be a conventional uh renovation that would not be taking advantage of historic tax credits now the program proposes that both of these alternatives would be taking advantage of historic tax credits the original master development agreement program had a minimum office program size of 300 000 square feet as a commitment that has been reduced to 250 000 square feet and that accounts for the militant small building now being a primarily residential building in these revised alternatives in terms of the number of affordable housing units delivered the master development agreement program included 80 units of housing that would be permanently affordable at 60 percent am i both of these proposed alternatives maintain that affordable housing commitment in proposed alternative a that would be the only uh permanently affordable housing on the site in proposed alternative b the developer is proposing a an additional 11 units which would be affordable at 80 percent am i initial um you know sort of plan is for those to be rental units for five years and then uh potentially sold as condos that can be permanently affordable um you know after that five-year period expires and that is the key difference between alternatives a and b there are some other uh key differences uh in between these and the master development agreement in terms of the financials so the original purchase price proposed in the mda was 9.25 million both of these alternatives reduced that to seven million dollars due to the city additionally there the original agreement did not propose to take advantage of the local historic landmark designation for the Milton small building um that is now now the developer development team is proposing to take advantage of that which would provide a 50 percent tax um deferral for as long as that uh Milton small building is maintained as a historic structure um another thing that is different is in the master development agreement the city had negotiated to retain a portion of the brownfield's tax exclusion that would have been um provided to the developer for the new mixed mixed income residential building um the city had negotiated to retain that whereas in both of these alternatives the development team is proposing that the development team capture the full brownfield's tax exclusion finally uh in addition to the the other changes just noting that for those additional 11 units of affordable housing uh in proposed alternative B the development team requests subsidy in the form of a loan which would be partially paid back by future sales of condos but that would amount to about 1.1 million dollars or about a hundred thousand dollars per unit that is kept affordable so these are some of the key changes between the mda program and then those proposed alternatives in terms of uh the reason uh for for these changes the the fallon company has um communicated the the following information um you know regarding why it's making these proposed changes uh to the program first the due diligence period um that that stacy mentioned had taken place revealed that the Milton small building was in a more distressed condition than the development team hadn't anticipated they indicate that the cost of the commercial renovation that they are now proposing is 35 percent higher than what was assumed in their original rfp assumption requiring them to think about an alternative use to preserve the building um they have now proposed a residential alternative use which would be led by wind development which has more experience um you know sort of doing projects involving historic tax credits um but and they have found that it is not feasible to pursue that without additional financial concessions and subsidy based upon their evaluation of market rents and the estimated renovation costs um the development team also noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has created significant uncertainty in the real estate market particularly for office and retail sectors which you know are of course the the the primary uses contemplated in the Milton small building under the initial mda in terms of what this all means financially to the city this is a summary slide and the next slide will break it down a little bit more but hRNA has estimated that the net present value of the payments the city would receive from the disposition of 505 west chapel hill street over a 10-year period including the proceeds from the land sale as well as future tax revenues we had estimated that at 11.1 million under the original master development agreement program we estimate the value of proposed alternative a would be about 8.1 million and proposed alternative be about 7.3 million so in total the value of the proceeds to the city decreasing by 3 to 3.8 million dollars um if we look at the reason for that decrease this is breaking down each of these in terms of the net present value um we're looking at the purchase price the property tax revenues as well as that exclusion payment just noting here that the majority of that decrease of 3 to 3.8 million does owe to the decrease in the purchase price though the exclusion the removal of the exclusion payment for the brownfield program that was um you know part of the original master development agreement program is meaningful as is uh you know a reduction in the amount of property taxes that are received under alternatives a and b and finally alternative b is also noting that additional city subsidy of about 800 000 in net present value terms we thought it would be helpful just to review the five primary goals that the city council had enunciated at the start of the rfq and rfp process for 505 west chapel hill street these included the these five considerations first providing 80 units of onset affordable available at 60 percent am i in perpetuity two was generate significant revenue to the city from the sale of the land and the future tax revenues three was delivering a mixed use project with a significant component of office space with a preference for at least 150 000 square feet of space four was preserving the existing police headquarters building and five was delivering signature design and an activated street level experience to support downtown's identity and vibrancy i think it was the feeling that the original master development agreement program had accomplished was going to accomplish these five goals if we compare these alternatives against these goals our assessment is that um three are you know sort of no change for alternative a um sorry two have have not really changed whereas three of these five goals um you know have have sort of been lessened in some way so in terms of the affordable housing it is still providing the 80 units on site affordable at 60 percent am i in perpetuity and the Milton small building is still being preserved although because this is using historic tax credits some of the design changes that were contemplated in the developer's original submissions including removing a portion of the ground floor and bringing the building closer to the street would not accord with the use of historic tax credits but three of the other considerations so in terms of total revenue as i as i noted before in this scenario the total revenue received by the city is estimated to decrease by three million dollars the office square footage commitment is reduced by 50 000 from 300 000 to 250 000 and finally because of the historic tax credits the design can no longer open up to west chapel hill street or bring the building closer to the street for alternative b which is the alternative which includes the 11th additional units of affordable housing um that is actually an increase in the total number of affordable housing units included in the program although they would be available at that 80 percent am i as opposed to 60 percent am i um although and the tradeoff to that is you know 800 000 in less total revenue to the city um those are the material differences between the two alternatives um you know the other notes regarding the amount of office square footage the preservation of the building in the streetscape still apply to alternative b as well um we wanted to you know as as the final slide just know some of the proposed potential pass forward for the city to consider each of which is going to have their own tradeoffs and opportunity costs um one of which is to recommence negotiations with the fallen company with with the intention of negotiating over the proposed alternative scenarios and finding a new agreement meeting the city's needs um a second alternative is to subdivide the site and to attempt to proceed with a residential project um you know perhaps on the the western portion of the site where the where the mda had contemplated a residential building going while retaining ownership of the rest of the site for disposition in the future perhaps when market conditions coming out of the pandemic are more certain um a third alternative is to restart the solicitation process for the full site in its entirety as as sort of one one parcel for disposition so again these are three alternatives that we we want to highlight as potential pass forward um and that concludes the presentation portion of of this and i i believe we're happy to answer questions now at this time thank you thank you you very much uh mr vangle uh before we get to questions there are a few people that have signed up who would like to speak on the side of and i'm gonna i'll allow them to do so now uh they are tom iller um kathleen turner and then um also uh i'm not sure if uh mr bun cannon and mr win who are both here would like to speak at this time or if they're here uh mainly to answer questions but they're of course willing uh very very uh invited to speak as well let me start though with mr miller uh madam and i also see uh elizabeth packer is here for item 25 i just see her name on the list miss packer are you signed up to would you like to speak on item 25 would you let me know that in the chat yes no need to speak thank you mr mayor all right thank you you okay so i'm going to start with mr miller uh mr miller welcome i'm glad to have you and you have three minutes thank you mr mayor and thank you members of the council um i have to say that i've been impressed all along uh with the work your staff has done on uh this uh property with it has a lot of moving parts uh and i've like i said i've really really been impressed i speak to today as president of preservation Durham Durham's uh nonprofit historic preservation organization we've been in business for about 50 years um we learned about this last week and uh have been scrambling to catch up uh about where we are today uh if you will recall uh in 2019 we backed the Fallon proposal and so we're disappointed to find ourselves where we are today uh after having discussed this with our board of directors uh we want to to reinforce the idea that your original five goals for the redevelopment of this property are the correct goals no matter what you decide to do moving forward um uh and uh and so it's it's kind of hard to say um we're not uh right now sufficiently informed to recommend one of these proposals over another one but i would like to say that with regard to uh proposals a and b which if i understand them correctly a is a new Fallon proposal and b is a proposal that might be a wind company standalone proposal um and as it relates to the Milton small building you might call it the home security building or even the police headquarters i have lived uh through all of its iterations that i'm just a little bit older than that building um we like the idea moving forward that the original ground floor of the building is is to be retained i will note that when the building was brand new the ground floor contained a public restaurant i'm probably the only person on the call that ate there on a regular basis um and we believe that uh even if the building is put to residential use which i believe is a something worthy of consideration um that the ground floor the the floor that engages with the street should be put uh to retail uses i think in this location that's apt to be a restaurant uh but and i think it would be a beautiful location for a restaurant the building is a remarkable building i'm not going to uh say you wanted other than to say that Milton small uh was one of North Carolina's most important architects and i believe that this building is his most significant um uh uh non-residential building he was a student of me's vanderer so and so we're lucky in Durham to have a building like this on this corner uh which is so important uh if you were a kid when i was a kid this corner was a historic corner it had uh residential buildings relating to the old Durham uh in the 1960s uh conscious decisions were made uh on this corner and on the other corner where the North Carolina mutual building stands to create a new entry corner for a new city of Durham and so the retention of these buildings together as an ensemble is extremely important to the culture of our city especially to its changing nature um and we'd like to see them stay um so we're interested in the idea of the Milton small building being used for some residential uh especially if it had more affordable units in it preservation Durham is really pleased when affordable housing and historic preservation can come together uh we commented to you when it came before you that the disposition of the Harriet Tubman YWCA building uh our executive director April Johnson in that case uh said it was better than a win-win it was a double blessing and we see the same thing uh applying here uh being able to combine historic preservation in a project that has a considerable affordable housing um uh component is very important uh one thing i'm concerned about uh subdividing the property one of your goals is is to have an integrated mixed use sort of plan and if you subdivide the property it's harder to organize that it's not impossible but it's harder to organize that and i think a close look has to be taken at any proposal that would do that i'm disappointed in any project in my opinion that reduces the city's um financial take on the thing this is an exceptionally valuable piece of property and the city has big asks of a developer not just the historic preservation component but the affordable housing component but still this is a valuable piece of property and that value uh should be properly leveraged by the city your staff has done an excellent work and has kept an eye on that all the way through nobody anticipated the covid problem and i think that we could see a shift in the way office functions but i will note that in your original five goals the office component was to be at least 150 000 square feet and while the original Fallon proposal which no longer on the table was 350 000 square feet of office both alternatives a and b are 250 000 square feet so it's all to the good on the original goals as they were expressed so i urge you to choose wisely going forward i know that you will you're uh lucky to be supported by a staff that uh is looking at this closely and understands what's going on um and it we applaud you and want to be part of this moving forward uh uh we would prefer prefer our role to be cheering sections so thank you mr. mayor thank you members of the council uh i'm sure there's going to be more discussion on it and and when you come together to talk about this project preservation Durham will be there thank you very much thank you mr. Miller i see that miss Adams also would like to speak on this item so what we'll do is we'll go to miss cathlie turner miss turner you also have three minutes and then we'll hear from miss Adams thank you mayor shul and council i appreciate this opportunity also to follow tom miller because he said so aptly uncovered many of the areas that i was going to make remarks on however i can piggyback onto that that preservation north carolina has had a very keen interest in the preservation of the milton small designed building it is among the very few left in the state of his outstanding collection of designs and and as tom mentioned i mean it really there's no question as to the significance of this structure and the fact that it that the that the council uh uh included it in the priorities was certainly something that we applauded and continue to support and and like tom said you know we just we've we've just become familiar with this situation and we appreciate the challenge this presents to the city although i like to think that this presents a real opportunity when development has represented that it is ready to roll on the the affordable residential and other residential portions of this project and uh in reviewing some of the information they provided i have to say i was a bit nervous about uh fallon's project in uh not preserving the lobby area of the milton small building with the toronto floor and removing the the dark glass film over that it would open it up and there's plenty of space for public art and and becoming part of that streetscape without wrapping the building for example but further i also wanted to mention that you know if if the council was willing to uh consider subdividing out that portion that's ready to go now preservation north carolina would like to um suggest to the city that you look at the state statue 168266 that allows for the disposition of surplus historic property through a negotiated sale through a preservation or conservation nonprofit and both preservation north carolina and preservation durham are able to do that that provides for protective covenants to be placed on the building and a rehabilitation agreement to ensure that the project moves forward and is part of the overall scheme that i think can probably like tom said still happen even if you know this part of the project proceeds now while the city considers what happens next with uh the rest of the four acres which is a considerable site and i also don't see necessarily um a huge challenge uh in the city recovering perhaps what seems as an initial uh difference in the potential acquisition price of the four acres seeing as a building in the 300 block of west main street just recently sold for 1.1 million dollars and that's a 0.047 acre site zero lot line two story commercial building um seems to me that uh this four acre site minus the milton small designed building in the affordable housing section you all could still probably make it work um that and and i'll close with this in in my conversations with wind development they've already hired an award-winning architect who has deep experience in preservation project and historic tax credit projects and doing a tax credit project is what makes the milton small building work and it and it would combine beautifully with the additional development pieces in your overall parcel redevelopment so i thank you for that consideration and would love to work with the city on this solution especially where it concerns the milton small building and using negotiated sale without portion of the property thank you miss turner now we're here for miss dala adams miss adams welcome and you also have three minutes thank you very much first of all i want to miss adams we're not able to hear you i can just barely hear your voice can you hear me now yes um first of all i just want to say to city council that there's no urgency to this matter we waited from 19 um 2019 to the president to let us know that they are um reneging on the deal so it should take the city the city council should weigh carefully the options available to it and should challenge um that covid in any way has diminished the value of the property located on that corner i'm not gonna fight old battles it is um but i'm going to say to you that with google coming downtown the commitment of other um entities to the downtown area there's no lack of opportunity for office space i want you to remember that the nine million dollars was a two million dollar reduction from the other offer on the table at the time of this event the other um the other um bitter on this property over the 11 million and the recommendation from staff was nine million in the hand is worth 11 million in the bush but now we're being asked to reduce that down to seven million to absorb in one scenario to loan them a million dollars that does not seem rational um the priority too which is to maximize the revenue for the city and and so while uh while i might be convinced that the um when alternate proposal one of them might be worthy of it there's no rush there's nothing magical about making a decision within the next month there should be opportunity for community groups and organizations to understand what is available should be an opportunity for other developers to put forward proposals um if we subdivide i can assure you there will be multiple people a real price that would want build that up use that space to build office space when we know who's coming downtown and who's committed to downtown for the growth of google is not going to be in the park it's going to be in downtown the marketing firm and the is hot right now and so that office space that that parcel is hot right now there was no covid reduction in that popularity we need clarity we need to run figures we need to do a market assessment there is no rush this council do anything but tell the city staff to get the step in on looking at what the market is bearing looking at what other alternatives are out there looking to see is there a market for other developers who might be willing to take this on but there is no rational reason under the sun this council should consider these two um alternatives reduce revenue and reduce and um the space and and only me to the three criteria originally set out we're in no hurry thank you miss adams hurry to do that thank you thank you very much all right uh mr van cannon uh are you uh would you like to speak at this point you also would have three minutes yes mr mayor thank you can you hear me yes we can thank you so good afternoon mr mayor and members of council my name is zack van cannon and i'm the managing director of the triangle for the fallen company and i live in this region i first want to be sure to echo the sentiments and thank city staff for their collaboration and hard work during this process together i can say with conviction that the entire team has remained committed and transparent to finding solutions that keep the project on track our proposed solution today is in response to the unforeseen challenges that include three main issues and that when combined together have created a perfect storm first despite its much worse than expected condition and higher renovation costs the commitment to retain the existing building limited other potential site-wide design solutions to overcome the second issue the historically high increases in construction costs which along with the existing buildings poor condition stressed the financial viability of the original offer this was further worsened by third a global pandemic that dramatically affected the outlook for office space adding even more uncertainty to the financial value of the master plan given that the original design was intentionally office driven to enable Durham's continued economic growth i would now like to invite mike fowland the president of the fallen company to also say a few words mike thanks Zach mayor council thank you for the time i wanted to just speak to reinforce the market during markets a great market we want to be doing projects in the market and we've been working with wind and staff over the last year and a half now to problem solve for a whole host of issues but primarily driven by the existing building and we think that the solution to put residential in the existing building that takes advantage of certain tax incentives and tax credits is a viable path forward one that we appreciate the consideration on and and we're hopeful that we can have a discussion about that thank you thank you mr. von cannon and mr. Fallon mr. wind would you also like to speak at this time mayor i thank you i i'll take your council on this as i'm certainly available to answer any questions that may come up i i have things to say but uh if i'm able to say them in response to questions that might be a more useful amount of time all right thank you mr. sat thank you mr. wind colleagues um you have heard the presentation and the speakers and i'll now ask if there are questions or comments by members of the council we'll start with council member melton thank you mr. mayor let me thank everyone uh mr. wind uh mr. Fallon at all um for being here and talking to us on on really what is a an incredibly important decision for us as a city this is as i've said before perhaps the last opportunity for us as a city to brand our city this is the last great gateway approach to downtown that we as a government as the representative of the people in the city can have an opportunity to brand the city so this is an incredibly important decision so we we should approach it with all sobriety um mr. vangle thank you so much for the presentation i want to start um with the potential pathways forward uh the city can consider and first thing i want to do is i want to honor the incredible amount of work the staff has put into this our staff has done a yo man yo person's job on on on uh bringing us options and i want to honor the staff's work so much that i want to i'm i'm this is part question and part recommendation as to why there isn't a fourth potential pathway the staff brought us after crunching and processing all of the elements that we wanted this project to reflect the staff brought us to developers brought us two decisions uh two two um options to the to choose between fallon and acreage um and according to the staff they were both excellent recommendations um barring any legal prohibition in other words if there's a an expiration date on rfp processes um i don't see why a fourth path forward could be to uh uh couldn't be to ask acreage if they can still do the project um and again barring any legal prohibition we had two recommendations why isn't the second recommendation a viable path forward for us as a city so you can i'll leave that question rhetorical right now but if anyone wants to respond when i'm going to finish my comment as to why that isn't part of our path forward um i'm really grateful that that um represented us from the fallon company here but i have to be very honest the the reasons for backing out of the master development agreement and the the market fluctuations and hiccups that have occurred part of the excitement and mystique around fallon when when it was presented to us was that there and i'm paraphrasing their pockets were so deep and their their connections were so um enduring and impressive that they would be insulated from these very type of things that we're talking about that the the incredible level of expertise and success that they had had um the gravitas of their portfolio and their ability to bring clients and and corporate clients to Durham were precisely the type of things that would put us at ease because things in the market do happen and and that was part of the the selling point uh of fallon their ability to kind of ride the wave and be insulated from these things um i'm not an architect but but i i don't understand what was found out about the building later on in the due diligence period that would not have been evident to particularly folk who have um access to experts in these matters that wouldn't have been evident about the building earlier on in the due diligence process so to say that the building was in worse shape anybody's ever rode that elevator in the building when the police department was in there knows how bad a shape that building was in uh that the building was actually in worse shape than they thought or or whatever the process was of making the assessment again again i'm not an architect but i just find that um curious to me um that that the level of expertise that was brought to bear that was trumpeted would be brought to bear with this outfit did not find some of these things out sooner um so i i'm not really if we decide to restart the solicitation process i'm more than happy to have fallon enter into that pool once again but i'm not really comfortable at this point um having fallon really suggest or dictate terms to us for negotiation at this point anymore um everything that we were supposed to be confident about seems to not have happened and that's with all due respect to the incredible success they've had to all of their their their deals around the country but this is Durham this is what i'm concerned about this is such an important project to us so i think that the city ought to be in the the biggest chair at the table and dictating what we want i'm not interested in negotiating as peers at this point um over this piece of property for me and i think for the council and for this city a two million dollar reduction in the sales price should be doa that's a non-starter uh for me uh if i recall during the original um iteration i think we were offered two million dollars more by acreage in the first place so i add that two million to the two million reduction being proposed that's four million dollars and i think given it's already been in tone how important and how valuable this land is that's a non-starter for me um so i'm i'm not interested in the reduction in the price and i'm not interested in negotiating um with a company that walked away from the master development agreement uh for whatever reason i'm sure from their point of view the reasons were valid but um it's our land it we're the client and i think that um we should have the the superior position in terms of negotiating um in terms of subdividing the site colleagues i think that we we raised some expectations in the city that this would be a a master stroke that that at one time we would be delivering this mixed use project um commercial retail commercial space retail space and um the housing at the same time um while it might be viable to subdivide um i think that it's important that the the energy and excitement that was was created about this being an opportunity to brand Durham and one great master stroke i think we should should keep up with that i also think from a quality of life point of view that if we build housing there first and folk get used to a routine and a living there and children are coming in and out of the building to then go back later on and start this massive construction project behind this housing side of a tower when folk are already living there when we could do it all at once which was the plan for both proposals acreage and fowl and to get it all at once and brand that corner i think would be uh just a more uh desirable outcome um at least for me um finally if we restart the solicitation process and again i i i'd need some clarity as to what prevents us from going with our second choice um one to honor all of the work the due diligence that the staff has already done we've already RFP this project and so for me i would need an explanation that hinges on some type of legal prohibition why we cannot just choose the other uh proposal that was presented to us um and if we can if then i would you know support restarting the solicitation process and allowing Fallon to reenter that pool from that point of view but in terms of having them dictate or suggest to us at this point um alternatives after they've terminated the master development agreement and after i think the level of expectation we had with this outfit and particularly in terms of being able to weather any hiccup or storm and that was greatly heralded and trumpeted at the beginning of this project tantrum negotiation under those circumstances for me is a non-starter and certainly two million dollars less is a non-starter for me i think we should go with our second or at least take a look at our second uh choice that the staff brought to us that went through the same scrutiny as the Fallon plan and the staff said these are two excellent choices if one doesn't work we should look at the other one and if we legally can't do that then we should go to a solicitation process rather than have Fallon recommend or dictate to us what the plan could look like or should look like uh moving forward um thank you mr mayor thank you colleagues thank you very much councilmember other colleagues councilmember freeland thank you mr mayor um i was listening uh closely when the preservation Durham folks are speaking and you know i'm curious to learn more i wasn't on council when these priority when the five priorities were set i'm curious to learn more about you know melt and small and and why this building is so important but when we talked about this earlier i got a sense from staff that um you know there seemed to be a question lingering about what if we didn't keep the building is that something we still want to keep as a priority and i would be curious to see some options as we go back to the drawing board so to speak that uh include uh you know that include removing that priority item just to see and to weigh that against the other options and i mean i i you know speaking of architects uh you know i was i'm the son of one and one of my dad's interestingly enough one of his first design projects was designing the fire escape on the back of this building so uh you know i definitely understand and appreciate um the idea of historic preservation um but you know as as we go back to the drawing board i i'm really curious to see what what a proposal what else is possible if we if our hands weren't tied by the uh insistence that that building uh remained to start with the blank canvas so to speak not to say that we wouldn't choose to preserve the building but but actually to be able to weigh alternate proposals and presentations now that we have the opportunity to do so that didn't include preserving the building and to weigh that against the other options um so that's just a that's just the thing i wanted to put out there i don't know how my colleagues feel about it um and i certainly can anticipate how preservation Durham will feel about that but uh i just wanted to uh wanted to put that out there um regarding the other question uh that you asked on the last slide about what options um i like councilmember Middleton's idea of option four where we go back and and engage Ackridge especially with what he and Stella said about the the price differential $4 million seems like a big gap and i'd be curious to hear Ackridge's assessment of the uh situation now you know post COVID if if they were are still interested and if so what they could bring to the table that's really intriguing to me uh an option three two around uh going back to the drawing board with an RFP process i know that can be expensive and cumbersome but i think it's worth it because this site is so important for all the reasons that um councilmember Middleton Cardi kind of already outlined i mean i wouldn't be against hearing what Fallon has to say either but you know kind of like uh Ackridge seems like a wise place to look for alternatives if we're going to give Fallon the opportunity you know at least consider to give them the opportunity to come back to the drawing board i would be curious to hear from Ackridge as well but you know my question would be like is that a de facto mini uh RFP process or like how would that work would it be unfair to other folks should we just scrap everything and start from scratch or just go to Ackridge or Ackridge and Fallon those are some i'm not sure what best practices or previous um uh what our MO has been previously in situations like these but i think that uh yeah the city deserves an opportunity to treat this like a blank slate and go back to the drawing board uh you know for me personally i would like that i would like that re-envisioning that re-imagining process to include what to me seems like a big deal which is what what would be possible if we didn't uh preserve the old police station and you know i'm not as old as tom so i was not around when it was a restaurant but i was around while it was a police station and that's how i associated it and so i don't have the same emotional tie-in with the the design of the building and i yeah i just would be curious to see what that's about so thank you mr mayor thank you councilmember colleagues other comments at this time or questions councilmember freeman thank you um mr mayor i i appreciate my colleagues commentary i i really um i hadn't thought about the fourth option so i appreciate councilmember middleton making sure that we do um keep that center i think feels like a backup offer as opposed to starting a very expensive process not just on the side of of um on how much time staff is poured into it um just just noting that akridge has already been at the table and they have the wherewithal to kind of give us a number or to let us know yes and i think that's a great option i also i just want to note that i would be careful with um placing historic preservation in a late in the last context um just know in reverse it works the same for like the i want to say the the the designation of the historic site for what is that in fedville the the market square would have you just note in like just just just being careful with the context of historic market and i would also just want to hear from when if the historic tax credit would be a benefit in actually creating the affordable housing um acknowledging that you know willard street came online and if you could add additional 80 units at this site in the next year or two or whatever i don't think there's a rush but i think for folks who feel the pressure of not having the housing there is a rush and i think that the subdivision aspect of noting that the affordable housing is disappearing from our community is is also a factor in this and i know that the i was i i really wanted to ask the question about uh what the legal requirements are around you know like if we were to like parse it out and do like a you know acreage when kind of mix because that was initially what i was interested in i i think i would love to hear from staff around that i i know that um i know that a is just not like not even on my radar at all i'm not interested at all um i think b is a good option and i like c i like d that councilmember middleton just added with the backup offer so those i think and i think is in that order kind of like somewhere where we're going like either checking with with acreage and then if if acreage is on board if they can work with when or not because i know that they have a plan already for um that location and and creating housing at this very opportune time where housing is disappearing and then if not then going back to the drawing board and starting over with the new process thank you thank you councilmember other comments this time colleagues or questions may i would like to i do want to hear from win around the tax credits if that was really hard okay we can do that now what's your question again councilmember um just trying to check in on what their plan was around setting up the affordable housing in that location noting an affordable i know the tax credits historic tax credits and affordable housing um i know is that the lh i see lh li hc um probably whatever whatever their plan was what would it all included and if the if the historic tax credits went away was it still feasible okay i think mr win could answer that sure um thank you so a couple things i wanted to add to that question so we we have been looking at the melton small building over the last few months and so we we have brought our own architects and our own contractors and our own expertise to to look into that and i just want to add something win has um developed no fewer than 30 adaptive reuse of historic structures across the country into mixed income housing so we really understand these buildings and what we came out with is that the cost of renovating the melton small building is about a third higher than it would be to construct on a green field a new construction project so the the hard cost the construction costs are about a third higher to renovate it now what comes along with that are about a similar number about 35 joint federal and state historic tax credits that then offset that increase and actually more than offset that increase bringing the cost down to about five or ten percent lower than new construction and that's why these state and federal historic credits exist to do just that to incentivize people to save important buildings so the reason i'm starting with that counselor is that to the extent that the melton small building is going to be a city priority to maintain i'm just i'm predicting that nobody's going to be able to do it without federal and state historic credits it's third i believe it's as much as a third higher you know in terms of versus new construction so given that what we've done is we've created a plan that would create a home ownership conversion opportunity for mixed income housing and that is somewhat incompatible with um with federal and state historic credits because those programs require and one single owner whoever developed it to own it for at least five years and it can't transfer ownership during that five-year credit period so that's why the plan here is to rent it out as mixed income housing for five years and then once that's uh done once that's over we can then sell those units to affordable housing homeowners first time homeowners as well as market rate homeowners and so our plan had 20 of the units which in this case is 11 units going to folks middle income earners between 80 90 percent of area median income so that's how we're to answer your question that's how we're sort of making compatible the historic credits with mixed income affordable housing um by the way historic credits are not incompatible with low income credits we could if the council wished convert the entire building to 100 percent affordable housing with historic but in that case there there'd certainly be millions of dollars of need from the local uh city of Durham to do that because each affordable unit uh does have a gap thank you I think uh when I was talking affordable I was thinking rental and you just brought in I think just clarifying that the housing you could actually create a affordable housing like own home ownership opportunity um and I was just going to council member I think just to your question though Mr. Wynn uh I think that council member Freeman was also also asking about the other affordable housing that would be on the property under this scenario is that true council member you also want to know about that definitely yeah so Mr. Wynn why don't you adjust because the my understanding is that in the Milton Milton small building you're talking about 11 units of potential home ownership at 80 percent of AMI or more with a city subsidy of about a million dollars and then you're also talking about 80 units of affordable housing in the new construction that would be the rental housing that the council member Freeman is talking about so do you want to discuss that absolutely mayor yes um so whether or not the Milton small building is converted into housing the the the proposal that we have been working on for a couple of years now to create 80 units of affordability new construction housing on I'd call it the the left hand part of the site that's still very much in play and we are ready to proceed on doing that so that would be 280 units of new construction 80 of which would be low income housing at 60 percent AMI and those that is not changed by whatever we do at Milton small and also I just wanted to point out we are absolutely ready to you know we actually were sort of working under the assumption that we would be making the formal financing applications to the state agency for tax credits um low income credits on those units like any any month now you know any day now so that that is still a possible for us but of course it's at the whim and in the in the desires of the council thank you mr win mr or what is the deadline for the submission of the four percent uh tax credits so this is a um luckily what we're uh utilizing our four percent tax credits which are the rolling basis um rolling application mayor so we could anytime really between now and the end of the year we can make an application thank you thank you uh also for our staff uh and I'm not sure who the right person to answer this is it might be the attorney it may be someone from general services councilmember milton to ask about any legal prohibition if we were to look at the um when we have to go back to a full RFP process or could we ask the kind of second runner up uh to re-engage uh and make a proposal and I've seen this Kukaro, Ms. Poston and Ms. Raeberg have all jumped on we've got an armada and so I'll leave it to you all to settle with the answer overwhelming force. Hi Mr. Mayor I just uh Kim Raeberg city attorney I just wanted to let you all know that Krista Kukaro is the in-house council who is providing legal services on this project so I'm going to let her speak to those legal questions that you all have raised. Ms. Kukaro. Thank you Mr. Mayor good afternoon council um in terms of proceeding with Akridge um that is within the scope of the initial RFP there are no legal barriers as Mr. Councilmember Middleton put it in terms of proceeding I there are policy considerations I think to to sort of take into account but in terms of the scope of the initial RFP that is an acceptable route. Thank you council. Thank you very much Ms. Poston do you want to add anything? Sure Mr. Mayor thank you so I think um what I would just add here is that I think today we were really trying to get a sense of sort of what questions and preferences there were from council so that we might be able to understand the various paths and pair those with the various legalities you know for instance um Preservation North Carolina has suggested a pathway that includes sort of a historical component that we might enter to an agreement I think the city attorney's office has been looking at the various paths but also if we can sort of were to consider the policy side of it I think you know considering whether we felt like um you know having been fully engaged with the current team that you know the relation that that that the RFP itself may be stale at this point from a perspective of it has been several years um you know there are things happening in our market in terms of you know new entrants to the to the to the market whether they be technology firms or life sciences firms and whether you know new opportunities moving forward such that council member Freelon suggested about whether you know we had an inclusion of a building or not you know all could be wrapped in um to our to our thinking and whether you know residential was important to us around the affordable housing component but equally important was the opportunity to create um commercial property on that site you know having seen a lot of naturally occurring you know market rate residential occurring as well so just sort of a consideration about you know having been in the city for a number of years haven't really seen a scenario where we went back to a number two sort of at this duration having really had no contact but happy to you know to do so at the discretion of council if that's the council's desire thank you miss poston let me uh give you some of my questions uh and just I'll just try to summarize my thoughts um my first thought is disappointment uh which I've expressed to the developers and this is uh something we had all very much looked forward to uh we really have felt and that we have had a great uh development team we're our staff has just done fantastic work on this we council did not have a good process ourselves uh council member freeline is lucky he wasn't on the council I would say that that was not our finest hour and uh whatever process that we go through at this point I would want to be uh depoliticized I we've really had a RFP process that I can think of where we allowed it to get as politicized as it did and I think that we we made a mistake um but nevertheless we thought we had a good outcome because we did have good proposals and um and so it's a very disappointing uh to be where we are now I'm not going to not going to speculate about you know why I had to come to this but I'll just I think I will just summarize now what I think my my questions are um and my my kind of perspective uh I'll offer that um I am interested in uh the I think that the five things that we laid out are still good I am still supportive of those things the 80 units of affordable housing the significant price that we wanted the square that you know that the square footage that we wanted office on here not just residential and we heard today from Nicole Thompson about the need for work workers downtown not just housing we're getting a ton of apartments downtown on our own it's not it's not that we don't want any here but it's not all we want here that we I do believe that the Milton small building is worth preserving although I appreciate council member freelance comments and uh this the activation of the streetscape and making it friendly making it a place where people would be welcome and I think that the salary that the staff did on that is very good and I think you know so we've still got the 80 units we still have 250,000 square feet of office space in this proposal which is still significant and we've got the uh we still have the preservation of the building we but the the amount of revenue we're taking as we all know is significantly less significantly less than we had uh than the original deal and the activation of the streets streetscape I do think is a real problem so some of my problem my questions are for our staff that I'd like to have answered are what is your and not today but these are things that I would like to hear from staff what is your estimate of what we could get for these buildings I'm sorry for this land in another deal what kind of you know what is the per I believe that the you know that the per acre price in Durham hadn't gone down in the last two years it's gone up pandemic be that be darned and I think that the yeah I think that that's still very valuable and I'm interested in what does it mean when it's say the streetscape is less activated I know that we're not getting the first floor with the the kind of see-through welcoming uh uh design that had been originally proposed for the building small building but to what extent is it being is it less inviting and I want to understand that and I also want to understand what is the green space what will the green space be like in the new design we were down to I think around 25 000 square feet of that green space in the center portion there my recollection is right and I just want to know what that's going to look like what that plan is what would that be I'll just say I'm not and I'm not at this you know just personally now at a place where I want to reject this this offer I I view it with a lot of skepticism and doubt but that's highly conditioned by my disappointment and what I want to do is try to put that aside and figure out what the best thing for Durham is but I'm very open to the idea that we would go back and and and and do another RFP I think that that is you know potentially very feasible yeah I'm less interested in just going back to acreage I think that if we do this we like we give Fallon you know we know what Fallon's proposal is we would give other people an opportunity and we also know that that the local partner that acreage had involved is no longer viable which I think is also significant so those are my thoughts I I don't I'm not you know personally ready to reject this right away I do think that it's still possible we might want to do it but I would want to understand from staff what you think we might see in the alternative and Mr. Van Gogh of course that would include your advice you know what is the market telling us now about this land we know that that there's all the new interest downtown in in and biotech you know the play the labs that are coming downtown and those those kinds of buildings is that an alternative here so those are my thoughts and I'll now ask other colleagues that haven't had a chance to speak yet if anyone else would like to pitch in Councilor Macabre Gatto and then we'll go to the city manager thank you I appreciate everyone's comments I think that and this is I just want to speak to the historic nature of the building when we initially you know undertook this process which has been long and arduous and yes I'm very disappointed I was not that interested in in the building because personally it's not architecture I'm not a modernist I don't appreciate means Vandero as much as maybe I should even though my husband went to IIT and that is also where Milton Small went but it is true that we have done a huge disservice in Durham about keeping our old buildings we have torn a lot of things down we have not done the preservation that we need to and so my opinion on that has changed over time my number one priority is obviously the affordable housing units which I think is sounds like it's everyone's priority still but I very much would be interested in keeping the building that that's really as far as the other components of it I am very hesitant about Fallon right now I'm curious to know what are the other options I will be leaning on staff to help us and guide us through this process if that recommendation is that yes acreage is a good is a good and you know player we should go back to them I'm open to that I'm pretty open to revisiting just a new package because of my you know just feeling of distrust to the to the Fallon group thank you council member madam manager good afternoon again mayor and council members I would just like to say to our staff as well thank you for all of the work that you put into this project over multiple years as well as over the last three you know three to four months while this part of the process has been going on we thought it very important to have a public discussion about where we stand right now you know I did hear a couple of things and I just wanted the clarity you know express the reason you know that what you see is what you see is because our purpose today was just to present a status we did not seek additional options from from anyone else because we wanted to hear from council so that we can talk we can target our work and our research and our responses to questions properly what I am here to say is I did not hear consensus from a council so what I would like to know in in in this space in this time is somewhat of a timeline or an expectation around the next time the council engages with us in a setting like this about that property that we own at 505 West Chapel Hill Street Madam Manager thank you can I ask a question and I don't know if this is for for you I'll ask it to you and the staff and then the Fallon Fallon group or Mr. Wynn might want to comment what is the timeline that we need to hit in other words they have off they have an offer on the table if we're going to say no to that offer or yes to that offer what is the timeline on that I'm sure for them that's important as well so Ms. Poston did you all have that discussion with with the Fallon group I'm sorry Mary could you clarify that question for me one more time the Fallon group has got an offer on the table and I'm sure that that's not an eternal offer I'm sure that there's some time limitation on that and maybe you or the Fallon group could get back to you know could let us know now so we can help the manager want to know what is our timing so I think to know that one of the things we need to know is what is the Fallon group's timing and what is that timing so Mary I think we might want to let them speak to that I did not myself notice that there was a termination timeline in the supplemental offer A and B that we received I don't ask them that Mr. Von Cannon do you want to comment on that sure Mr. Mayor look we we hope to continue the dialogue with staff and make ourselves available to answer any questions so for us our our first priority was putting forth a solution to the set of problems and maybe after today's conversation we'll kind of take our direction from council as to how best engage we stand ready to you know figure this thing out whenever y'all are okay thank you Mr. Von Cannon that's helpful so I'll I'll take a stab at this colleagues and you all can let me know how how my stab is Madam Manager I would hope that we could bring this back in a month except we will be here in a month will we yeah I guess we will be here in a month yeah okay so perhaps we could talk about this again in a month if staff could give us that advice and I think that would include some one-on-ones or small groups from council as you usually do between these between this these meetings and that council members might also want to you know ask other questions you know you've heard council member Middleton's question about Akridge you've heard the questions about about the affordable housing and I think you know you've heard the other remarks and opinions does that sound like a reasonable timeframe Madam Manager the timeframe Mr. Mayor sounds reasonable but the the direction is still not very clear for us we can we can answer all questions that have been asked but we you know here's what I've heard I'll tell you what I've heard I've heard councilman Freeman councilmember Middleton councilmember Freelon and councilmember Caballero I would say leaning towards or in maybe in a couple cases pretty certain that they want to reopen the process or not have found be the developer I may I may have put words in your mouths and if I have I would appreciate it if you would let me know but that was there those were the leanings that I heard I personally am I'm interested in I'm not there yet and I'll ask councilman recent and and Johnson and members of Johnson if they had anything they would like to add thank you Mr. Mayor I think I am with the majority of my colleagues and thinking that it's a good idea to go back to the drawing board on this and I want to really appreciate all the staff work that has gone into the project so far and that's really my you know my primary feeling of hesitancy is having our staff do all of this all over again because I know it was a huge lift the first time and I don't anticipate it being any easier the second time but I'm not satisfied with Fallon's offer and I don't feel comfortable moving forward with it without you know first seeing if there's another development team that could get us closer to what we really want so definitely not excited about the proposal that's before us and I don't feel confident in saying that you know I know that we could do better but I think it's worth a shot so that's why Matt thank you thank you councillor barish thank you Mr. Mayor I want to thank all my colleagues for gifting me with the benefit of your thoughts before I disgrace myself with mine I just want to say how grateful I am to staff for all the hard work over a number of years to get us to what we thought was a great position only defined on some unanticipated issues got in the way between us and a great result let me also just say how much I appreciate everyone from Fallon and when when they found out they couldn't do the thing they said they could do they were clear about it and have proposed a couple of different options forward not everybody in their situation would have done that and I really respect and appreciate that having said all that I think I'm probably aligned with most of the rest of you I'm not prepared today to take up the the Fallon kind of two counter proposals I certainly have my preferences between the two of them but I think ultimately I'm convinced by hearing the remarks and thoughts my colleagues that that we should take a look and see what the market looks like now I agree that it's in our best interest and probably our obligation as good stewards of public resources to figure out what that looks like today as opposed to what it looked like when we started this journey and so the last thing I want to say about it is I said this before to staff directly and I'll say it in this public setting I hope that no one on our staff feels any sense of loss or failure as a result of where we are today our staff did a fantastic job shepherding us through this process the first time getting us to what we all thought was a great result some of the unanticipated things that have happened since then that's not that is not staff's fault and so I just want to say I still have complete confidence and faith in the team that that is managing this process to get us to another great result in the months to come but I I agree with all of my colleagues that so far that I've heard that I'm not prepared to say yes to either the fallen counter proposals I think we need to find out what possibilities exist in the market today and explore those what that looks like I think remains to be seen but I look forward to working with staff one-on-one in small groups between over the next month to try to figure that out. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you Councilmember Reese, Madam Manager. I think that the majority of the council I'd say a solid majority of the council is ready to go back to the market and look at other potential bidders in a new RFP process I know we would invite the Fallon and Wynn team to bid again and but we know a lot of what they would you know they have an advantage at this point because they've they've seen this property you know it inside and out and we would invite them to be a part of that bidding but it seems clear to me that my position which is I'd like to do a little more due diligence is definitely not the majority position of the council and so I think what what you're hearing from the council is that we would like to go back to the market and with a new RFP process. Mr. Mayor I was I'm off to you. We hear you and you know we certainly you know will will follow that advice and certainly um you know we'll be bringing to you additional information based upon what the direction we just received. Thank you very much Madam Manager. Thank you to the folks from Fallon and Wynn. I know this is disappointing for you all as well. We appreciate your proposals and we hope that you will participate in what comes next and we certainly welcome you back into Durham. For this or other projects we also just say colleagues um I was serious when I said before that this was not what the process that we we politicized last time a process should not be politicized and I really want us to make sure we don't do it again. We want to take the professional advice of our staff and we want to hear from them the way we you know their recommendations. I thought we we didn't handle it well last time and I'm just hoping we'll do better. Councilmember Middleton. Thank you Mr. Mayor and I want to associate myself with your comments about being disappointed in this in the outcome of this project. I know there's a great deal excitement surrounding it. I do want to say Mr. Mayor that I feel accountable to a group of people in the city who I'm not sure. I think Council Freelon would have actually enjoyed the process. I thought we had a robust discussion. I'm not really sure what the politicization of the process was or that what we're referring to. I think the preserve the historic preservation people focused on the building and I think that's one of our values. I don't think that was politics. Folk like Durham, Cannes and other folks and coalition for affordable housing and transit focused on affordable housing. That's one of our values in the city. I don't think that was a politicization and there were black folk who focused on black wealth and I think that's a value. I don't think that was politicization. I mean this property is a stone's throw away from one of the iconic representations of black wealth and aspirations in this country and there were a group of folk who were as concerned as to keeping the building people in the affordable housing people that black ownership was a large part of this initiative. I'm not really sure what the politicization was or what we did or what element of the city or what group forwarded politicization. What I saw was different constituents with their own different values and folk I assert themselves and I look at them no differently than any other group. There are a whole lot of things we do as a council where I think it gets put through the the prism of ideology and politics and that we govern ourselves based upon a predetermined political position or ideology that we don't call out or critique. We just kind of go with it and take votes and where the votes land we say what's next. So I share your your disappointment the process. I don't I'm not really sure what was politicized about this process or what was unique about this process and any other thing whether we're talking about trees or police in this city and we take votes where we have a whole bunch of considerations coming to the debate. So I know that there are people that would want me to say that that this was a robust process and all of the usual suspects showed up and all of the values that make up the mosaic and tapestry that a Durham were championed and and and inserted into the conversation and I thought it was a good robust conversation and I think black wealth is just as important as a building and affordable housing. So I just want to say that thank you Mr. Mayor. Yeah all those things are important those are all very legitimate and those are those are super important considerations for all of us and no interest group or advocacy group that wanted to support any of those things was out of line and doing so that was important. To me the problem was that we you know our our uh once our staff makes a recommendation to us and we often have multiple bidders uh we it's our custom and it's not just our custom it's I think the the the what gets us the best results is to look at that top proposal that they're recommending and voting it up or down on the merits and deciding if we want that contract. But instead I think we went around the staff process to because because we were politically pressured to do so to kind of have a contest between the we actually had four good proposals and those final two we we engaged in some what I consider politicization of a process that should have been more staff driven. It's not that those interests were important they were and I think that it was good that they were expressed but that's my feeling about what was politicized and I yeah okay uh I think we're going to manager her her direction and uh appreciated colleagues we're now going to move to item 27. Mr. Mayor I had a quick question before we're not sorry to interrupt. Go ahead go ahead. I know we've got a marathon yet still today. My question was about will we get a chance to to weigh in on that RFP process there will be a there is a next step where we will be re-engaged before an RFP is reignited. Okay got it. I think my expectation would be it's it for something of this importance that the we'll both have some individual staff conversations and then they'll bring back to us another another you know look at what our priorities would be for this property that kind of thing so there'll be a whole process yeah okay manager you you agree yes sir all right thanks mr. mayor thank you madam thank you yeah it's going to be a process um okay now we'll move to item 27 which is the first 2021 first quarter crime report chief no madam manager and miss mr. mayor I would like to just if possible take another point of personal privilege sure to to in in this meeting uh just congratulate chief cj davis on her latest appointment her her coming chief of the city of Memphis Tennessee this is her this will be her last quarterly report to to this council for this time and I wanted to acknowledge her her five years of service here to this organization as well as the community we would do it numerous other times but I did want to say it as she prepares to make her her final quarterly report to the to this city council so congratulations chief and I wish you I wish you well thank you very much and you know this is really bitter sweet for me and I did prepare just a moment of remarks I just wanted to share at this time you know over the the past five years I've I've been honored to serve in in this really critical role and truly it's been a privilege to have served under the leadership of first mayor bill bell and now you may are sure and likewise I've been fortunate as well to work with some of the most incredible leaders like recently retired city manager tom bonfield and now under the accomplished leadership of city manager wonder page and the rest of the senior leadership team the professionals that work for the city of Durham are unprecedented so I'm grateful to each of you you and our serving council members all of you and to those who came before you for having faith in me to lead in this capacity this experience has been rewarding and certainly the apex of my career I also hope that I've I've met your expectations in advance in the Durham police department specifically in the manner in which we engage you know the wonderful citizens of this city I have been so honored to serve working alongside the men and women of the Durham police department has been nothing less than an incredible experience despite the many challenges we face together they continue to serve every day and continue to meet the unprecedented demands thrust upon us from COVID-19 to upticks and crime you know now and then and national unrest so I'm proud to say that our officers have been agile and responsive to the changes put before them and to the national outcry for improved police and community relations so Durham police officers and all of our employees rise to the occasion every day and I know they will continue to serve honorably long after my departure and again I am grateful to have spent this time with you and know that Durham will forever be a place that I'll call home so thank you all so much thank you chief let's we you know we we're just going to miss you terribly I'll be real um you're going to hear that a lot but uh you know I I never really believe anybody's indispensable I know we'll get another good chief I know that but I also know what a fabulous job you've done in so many ways and we'll have we'll have some more other opportunities and we've already had some opportunities but we'll have other opportunities to praise you celebrate you and say goodbye um I did send a a mud pie to the Memphis but uh we're we're we're going to miss you we're going to miss your incredible leadership and well thank you thank you so very much we all feel the same way thank you thank you so I guess I'll begin um uh on my first slide here I just want to say that of course this quarter's report covers our department's five performance measures part one violent crime part one property crime clearance rates response times the priority one calls and staffing levels I'll also discuss some of 2021's first quarter highlights as well okay next slide um part one violent crime I'll start here there were seven homicides in the first quarter of 2021 which is the same number as the first quarter of 2020 one case involved domestic violence in addition there were two fatal shootings during the first quarter of 2021 which have been classified as self-defense in other words justified homicides um three 2021 homicide cases and three cases from 2020 were cleared in the first quarter reported sexual assaults rose by 11 percent in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020 some of these were belated in reporting it should also be noted that approximately one third of the cases reported in the first quarter occurred in prior years uh investigators believe more cases from prior years have been reported due to the continued publicity that we're putting on the department's sexual assault kit initiative and the cold case sexual assault unit the work that they're doing along with the AG's office reported robberies dropped significantly um about 29 percent during the first quarter 2021 had the fewest robberies reported in the first quarter since 2012 three quarters of the reported robberies were from persons in one quarter were commercial robberies more than half of the commercial robberies uh 52 percent involved convenience stores several robberies were purse from persons involved Hispanic victims however the department excuse me the department took proactive measures as usual and used media outlets and social media to provide information uh for for these um robberies to the public in English and in Spanish officers also conducted neighborhood canvases in the in the areas where these robberies occurred going door to door in some of the most heavily impacted areas uh distributing prevention um information to residents living in those areas aggravated assaults were up slightly by two percent during the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020 uh important to know um is that 30 percent of the aggravated assault incidents were domestic physical altercations as opposed to shootings next slide the number of shooting incidents during the first quarter dropped by four percent and the number of shooting victims dropped by two percent compared to the first quarter in 2020 multi victim firearm incidents accounted for 32 percent of all aggravated assaults during the first quarter this is an improvement over 2020 when 48 percent of all aggravated assaults were multi victim firearm incidents we had three weeks in a row late the late part of the quarter in which we had no reported multi victim firearm incidents in september 2020 of course you all remember that we formed our violent crime task force to focus on all shootings within the city in addition to gunshot wounds the task force investigates vandalisms with firearms shooting into occupied vehicles and dwellings with no injuries uh these investigators work closely with our intelligence and gang units criminal investigations organized crime divisions as well as patrol officers to share information identify suspects and trans the task force handled 96 cases during the first quarter of 2021 we have seen improved internal communication as a result of centralizing our shooting investigations we continue to work closely with our federal partners to affect arrest and uh prosecute some of the most violent actors utilizing federal prosecutors especially in the areas of weapons charges one example of a federal uh partnership and prosecution is a recent case in which marie's wily junior was convicted on federal charges of attempting to interfere with commerce by robbery and conspiracy in connection with the 2018 ambush murder of restaurant owner hung saying in his driveway on colton crossing drive wily is one of five men arrested on federal charges in this case in the first one to go to trial next slide so all part one property crimes dropped by double digit percentages during the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020 burglaries were down approximately 20 in the first quarter we had 394 burglaries reported which was the fewest reported in any first quarter during the past 16 years fewer than half of the break-ins 44 were to residences residential burglaries were down by 39 percent during the first quarter which is probably due to the fact that more people were at home during the pandemic commercial burglaries were up by 28 percent the top three commercial locations were of burglaries were specialty stores restaurants and convenience stores larceny's which comprised more than half 63 percent of all reported part one crime were down by 16 percent 43 percent of all reported larceny's were from motor vehicles or involved auto parts and accessories approximately 32 percent of all larceny's involved shoplifting during the first quarter a new trend we have received numerous reports of thefts of construction materials from construction sites this trend has also been prevalent in surrounding jurisdictions as well we also continue to see thefts of catalytic converters particularly from Toyota Priuses which seems to be a favorite vehicle for stealing catalytic converters and of course as you have heard me say over the last five years that Honda Accords were the most stolen vehicle model which continues this longtime trend at least 49 percent of our vehicles which is right about that same percentage on this quarter had keys left in the vehicle and or the engine was running more than 80 percent of the stolen vehicles that have been recorded have been recovered next slide so part one clearance rates part one clearance rates of all of our part one crimes we compare to other departments clearance rates that are comparable to the size of the Durham Police Department our 2021 first quarter clearance rates were higher than the 2020 DPD clearance rates in all categories with the exception of rate our 2021 first quarter clearance rates with the exception of aggravated assaults were higher than all categories in the 2019 FBI clearance rate averages which are the most recent ones that we have available right now the 2020 clearance rate FBI clearance rate so we'll probably be in within the next couple of months the aggravated assault clearance rate is affected by the number of multi victim firearm cases since these cases are often difficult to clear next slide okay make sure i'm going to the right slide okay priority one calls for service there were 1784 priority one calls for service during the first quarter of 2021 our average response time was 5.95 minutes a few seconds less than our target of 5.8 minutes the first quarter average response time differed by less than 10 seconds from our target response time we answered 53.776 percent of priority one calls for service in less than five minutes excuse me during the first quarter of 2021 about 3.5 percent less than our desired 57 percent 57 percent is our target next slide so our staffing levels it's been uh last year was a tough year for recruiting our sworn staffing was at 88 percent at the end of march 2021 it is currently at 87 percent which is the lowest it has been in the past five years last year yielded low recruitment numbers because of covid lack of recruitment fairs and other activities that that typically yield new applicants attrition this year through the end of april 24 officers have separated nine retirements five recruits and and 10 for and 10 have separated for other reasons our non-sworn staffing was at 90 percent at the end of march 2021 it remains the same now our next BLAT academy is scheduled to start in august covid which kept us from attending uh those live events in several national events that we we typically attend involving uh law enforcement a lot of those events were cancelled last year but our recruiters attended numerous virtual recruiting events despite the challenges during the past year and started to attend a limited number of in-person recruiting events in march where social distancing distancing was exercised and various protocols in place we continue strategically employ a campaign to recruit a diverse group of officers that that represent our community and these efforts include a digital campaign in north carolina and south carolina and other nearby states recruiting information prominently displayed on our city web page a virtual recruiting open house presentation has been posted on youtube billboards publicizing dpd recruiting went up in rocky mount kinstin and hickory places that we could afford to put up billboards but also hope to yield some applicants and other hbc use in colleges in the area next slide wanted to share a little bit about mr. meaner diversion this time um these are recent statistics from the criminal justice resource center for the adult mr. meaner diversion program since it began in october 2015 through march 2020 the program originally was designed for persons ages 16 to 21 until february 2019 when dpd did an expansion to include up to age 26 and older adults at the officer discretion up to 26 is by policy and the older adults um at any age is the officer's discretion in the event they run across someone who's 60 or 65 it doesn't matter and it's an incident where they can send that individual through the mr. meaner diversion program and they are actually taking advantage of that as well there have been 368 participants enrolled to date with a hundred percent completion rate of our mr. meaner diversion program that's 368 people who didn't go to jail only 16 participants reoffended within one year of completion so over five years for there have only been 16 people who reoffended the program is working really well and and and in a manner in which it was intended program demographics 58 percent african-american 25 percent caucasian 15 percent hispanic and 2 percent pacific islander referral sources for this calendar year 100 percent of referrals have come from the from the Durham police department which i'm even though you know all departments are included in and and have access to the program but um this calendar year 100 percent has been from our officers the program also provides referrals to wrap around services including education services employment assistance mental health mentoring substance use evaluations treatment and housing uh during covid 19 uh excuse me during covid 19 community resources for food financial resources and other needs have been provided to all mr. meaner diversion program participants free of charge resources and programming are also available in english and spanish next slide this is um a chart that sort of um displays uh use of force for the last five years or so and um okay use of force investigations for the last five years as you can see um we have had a steady decline last year 2019 and 2020 was about the same with use of force cases we also are posting um use of force um incidents statistics related to these cases on our website and also um any disciplinary uh reports disciplinary actions dispositions of disciplinary actions as well next slide u visas the Durham police department received 28 u visa requests during the first quarter of 2021 68 percent 19 out of 28 of the u visa requests were approved we currently do not have a backlog of u visa requests and are processing any requests that come into our office next slide okay during the first quarter uh the community services division police athletically pow launched a youth mentoring venturing program in the mcdougal terrorist community the program office academic recreation and social activities to middle and high school students activities are conveniently provided on site every third wednesday of the month they began with a goal to meet once a month online through zoom to just talk about how things were going and this progressed uh to also um doing one fun activity with those kids a month even though we have a uh a covid restrictions we were able to identify outdoor activities that we could participate in with these kids in february the group went on a hike to okon okonichi mountain in hillsborough along with pal explorers and marched the group took a bicycle ride on the american tobacco trail members of the dpd's community engagement unit and neighborhood improvement services also attend there's been a lot of partnership between nis and the Durham police department which has been um just a benefit and a and a force multiplier as they have been very interested in the overall um you know um health and well-being of our young people as well the bikes the youth row for this event were donated to them at the event through the work of the community engagement unit they also received bike helmets in april the participants went on a fishing trip the venturing program has now expanded to cornwallis and oxford man manner housing communities and includes up to 14 young people in each one of those public housing areas parents who registered their children expressed great appreciation for the program and added that more positive youth engagement opportunities opportunities are needed in those areas next slide our police athletic league um pal program has adapted its activities also to um provide opportunities for for youth during the pandemic the spring 2021 police athletic league baseball camp was held on march 24th officer serving as coaches helped with um develop field techniques for baseball and softball as well as stances to fill um balls from infield or outfield the pet the pal basketball league met weekly during the fourth fourth quarter and students participated in drills for ball handling and other techniques in the late uh 2020 last year pal started a new e-sports league which is a virtual mentoring and gaming community to allow officers and youth to stay connected they continue to meet during the first quarter of 2020 and participants played um uh many different electronic type competitive um games virtually these games are strategy games that help teach teamwork and communication and then last but not least our pal golf program is beginning again during the second quarter and then um closing out here our officers from the community services vision participated in several neighborhood cleanups this is an activity that has been sort of ramped up um during the first quarter they participated in cleanups which is very obvious and visible in the docking street in umstead street area um mayor stopped by and we're glad to have the mayor stopped by to help at the at that particular event and in march the community engagement unit officers helped with the cleanup event at burton park and ta gravey center with over 25 volunteers from that community these events are attended by the community engagement unit the islamic circle of north america keep Durham beautiful and many other community partners and that concludes my report thank you very much for your attention thank you very much chief um how often are they going to make you do this in Memphis they don't know they do quarterly reports there i don't think they do them quarterly but at least i've had good practice here that's for sure yes you have colleagues questions and comments from the chief council member race you're muted jolly yes okay can everybody hear me now yes great put the headphones away chief davis i just wanted to i've got a couple of questions about the report before i get into that i just wanted to say how great flying into your service for your service to our city over the last five years i am it's hard to remember um serving on the city council when you haven't been our police chief there were some months in there that that was true chief uh but chief smith was the interim until you started but it is it's really amazing to think about how you have changed the way that our community perceives the work of the police department here in Durham and i think that is chiefly due to your personal brand of leadership both in terms of really working so hard as you and i have talked about many many times both here and in one-on-one changing the culture of policing within the department but also the fact that you are omnipresent in the community and i think that's made a huge difference and uh and i know our city manager has a really really high bar to clear um to try to bring in someone that's going to work as hard as you have be in as many places as you have and really confront uh the issues uh the real cultural issues in policing that that are present in every police department across america including here in Durham so i just wanted to say um all that aside it's been incredible an incredible opportunity to work with you sort of on a personal level um i have found you to be uh not only willing to talk about really difficult issues but also incredibly responsive to me personally when i've reached out to you with problems and concerns that folks have raised with me in the community things that have come up you have always uh been willing to to talk to me uh immediately directly anytime day or night um and i'm one of those folks that uh that has reached out to you day or night on things uh so i just wanted to say um how grateful i am to you for the not only for the work that you've done the job that you've put in but also the way that you've done it and the really open and accessible way that you've approached uh our relationship so thank you for that i'm gonna miss you a ton uh that your your new employers don't know exactly how good they're they've got it but i wish you could look in god's speed as you continue uh to ascend um we will miss you uh so having said all that um i wanted to say first of all i normally get into the details uh in the back of the report about some of the amazing work that your officers have done in our community i'm going to skip that this time only because it's five oh six um and we are running a little bit late on time i did want to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about uh the increase in crimes of domestic violence in Durham you and i have talked about this uh the last several um yes kitty rescue is what i was going to talk about thank you councilmember freeman sadly my time is limited um the uh the we've talked in previous quarterly reports where you've come before us about domestic violence this is um but what we're seeing now um especially for the first three months is pretty concerning i will say that um that over half of the increase is due to increase in crimes of larceny so it's not necessarily um violent crime although that has definitely increased as well i wanted to give you an opportunity to say just a few words about how the department is responding to this change um so that would be great well i will say that many of the domestic violence calls that we're responding to now the trend and you may have even noticed in some of the watch reports that they're more violent um than they have been in the past and uh just for me to report that uh most of the aggravated assaults you know a good portion of the aggravated assaults with domestic violence related where people were actually you know in in fights and weapons were involved in them as well but our officers are well trained in the lethality assessment uh protocols and when they respond to these calls whether they are violent or not they make the referrals to individuals at that residence so that they can get the kind of help that they need or the support that they need um the da's office is also um they have an individual that that works really closely with our team on identifying individuals or or people who would be victims of domestic violence instead of just responding to a call having some type of follow-up with those individuals to really sort of vet through and see whether or not that individual needs some assistance um you know even with housing sometimes people are caught in living situations and stuck in a in a situation that could potentially have a rear a reoccurring incident because they don't have anywhere else to go so um we are trying to triage um those incidents and also be proactive and preventive in a way to give people the support and the referral that they need um in the event that we we respond and we and it looks like this could be a situation that could escalate to something something else but during covid especially last year we saw an increase in domestic violence and we and we're still seeing an increase in domestic violence cases well thank you for that chief i know that the lethality assessment tool is going to be critical component of our response going forward um and also making sure that we successfully integrate the response to those types of events both on the scene and then afterwards through the family justice center i want to thank you in your department for your contributions to that sort of the increasing level of coordination and i think we're going to see continued improvement uh in that area um the only the one other thing i wanted to ask and i'll limit myself to this because i know other folks are going to want to say nice things about you and then ask you questions the the clearance rates um look really good i wonder if you have any idea about what the kind of the national trend has been recently because i know we're going to as you said we're going to get those new national statistics soon i'm just trying to get a sense of how we're going to match up to that um as those statistics do get updated well um to the credit of our investigators um we we typically are higher you know from from one year to the next higher than fbi's um clearance rates and um every department doesn't have that kind of success and i don't know if it's if it's that our our protocols and the manner in which we investigate we you know it's a such thing as having really good investigators that um really know how to feel the onion back too but um we have had great success since i've been here and um having higher clearance rates than the fbi's national averages so hopefully they'll stay that way to have 85 um clearance rate right now um is good especially for um homicides but also it has a lot to do too with the fact that some of these were acquaintances which makes it easier to identify and clear a case when when it's a domestic violence or if there there's an acquaintance that has um has had some type of altercation great thank you chief davis uh good luck and godspeed to you take care thank you appreciate you thank you councilmember other council members with questions for chief davis anybody else councilmember middleton thank you mr mayor good afternoon chief i'm going to reverse the order i'm going to ask some questions first uh i have a brief comment uh good to see you um i wanted to ask a question about the staffing levels and and and you also to make some kind of a prognosis as you're as you're on your way out the door at dpd um there's a tendency to look at the staffing levels as kind of it's almost become kind of a rorschach test so depending upon where you sit you look at numbers and see one thing and another group will look at them and see another thing one group will look at them and see oh we don't have it staff that's opportunity it means everything's going all right others will look at the number and say oh my god we need to staff those numbers because the city's growing so i could you just give us the proper way to to interpret our staffing numbers right now should we be at ease or should we be concerned as the city and could you give us kind of where you think what position we're in in terms of recruitment moving forward uh this kid is a prognosis of how we're going to be doing as a city given the effort you you try to do with recruitment are we going to be in good shape you think or you know i'm going to be honest with you i haven't panicked about staffing numbers i know uh we're at a place that we haven't been in you know during my tenure and we're in this place because we had a year like we did last year um i did some evaluating of the numbers and we don't have a mass exodus in the Durham police department right now we had uh 57 people to separate from the department in 2018 we had 58 to separate from the department in 2019 and we had 60 to separate from the department in 2020 not very much difference as it relates to attrition the problem is is that anytime the recruitment effort stops or there's there's this this lull in recruitment is going to show up in the overall in your net gains if you don't hire anything in 2021 and you know you're going to lose 55 to 60 people every year then you're going to show up with 60 or 70 vacancies easily recruiting is picking up now because businesses are opening up job fairs are starting back up and we realize that to catch up to dig out of a you know we're not really in the kind of hole that's impossible to dig out of it just requires some more aggressive recruiting for probably the next six months or so so that they can get in a larger number of applications for every 100 applications you typically can get 10 recruits in uniform graduated um you know through that process so in order for us to fill these vacancies we need at least you know 600 or so applications and they are they're bringing applications in now it'll be next year before we actually see um some positive result from that because we've got to get folks through the academy and out on the street but they're trying to start classes larger classes uh instead of starting classes with you know 25 or 30 people and you know you're going to lose 10 or even 15 they're trying to start classes at larger groups 40 to 50 um folks this class in august probably won't be a 40 class but the class after that is reasonable that they can bring in 40 to 50 people in a classroom in in the very next class after the august class thank you for that that that's that's really helpful because i and i think it's important for the city to hear you say that there's nothing to panic about right i think we should be you know just tell the truth about the numbers obviously if there's a lag but i think it's important to put that in context we're going to be all right look one of the question about how to how to interpret the numbers did when when when you were or asked for more officers or or trying you know look at staffing does population girls even factor into that as well or all your metrics internal to the department what's the calculus on how you come up with that number that asked yeah well there's some there's some national models that you know that are out there but um you have to pay attention to the population and the demand and calls for service i know we're doing a lot of evaluating calls for service and whatnot but there always needs to be an evaluation of population and demand that's what we did a beat realignment um you know some time ago even when when the geographical landscape changes then we need to evaluate you know do we need to divide this this beat in half and put another officer over there because the one officer is handling too many calls or just the opposite do we have a person that's not having any hardly any calls um to handle and he has a larger geographical footprint uh but we we pay attention to the calls for service and the population and the demand so uh regular evaluations are important and no it's not a pie in the sky number we already have come to the conclusion just by you know evaluating our calls for service that the Durham Police Department needs about 62 officers working every shift about 62 officers working every shift right now we average somewhere around 45 to 50 working every shift and then we augment that with supplemental with other officers that are working over time so um that's that's pretty much how you know we operate every day with supplemental staff any um any wisdom for us as as you're going out the door uh on on or you want to write me prescriptions for us or give them some seriously so it's a helpful yeah that's what we need to be looking at and watching for as you're on the way out the door well as we talk about officer wellness and you know officer health and wellness we want to make sure that those officers that are responding to calls aren't overworked and and and not working too much over time um you know we pay attention in-house too the number of hours our officers are working over time as well but no police department should should operate on overtime i've said that before but that's just the norm for us right now and um you know fortunately we have officers that are willing to work on their off days and of course there's extra money for them but to some degree it can be um you know um a situation that we shouldn't get accustomed to um it's sort of like uh burning the candle from both ends you want officers to be you know um in the best physical health and mental and emotional um health as they can possibly be when they respond to different types of calls i mean this is some very demanding work and i just think that um everyone should continue to work with the administration our city manager has been very um you know serious about helping to you know discuss how we feel vacancies how we evaluate officer wellness as a matter of fact we'll be on a call with sass tomorrow about a project that we're working on and it is about evaluating the 360 officer you know you know the days off the overtime the personal issues the sick time the pandemic all of the above so my words of wisdom is to um always evaluate pay attention to the data because the data will will you know speak for itself i'll find a question chief a reporter texting me a question could you ask the chief how they've been so successful at solving homicides this year compared to last year you want to take swing at that i think actually i i really do believe that um we had a little bit of a trend i'm not saying our investigators aren't good but anytime you have the trend where homicides are individuals that are quaint with each other or related to each other sometimes it's not as difficult to solve a homicide we have some very good homicide investigators and um you know they they know how to follow the leads and um and identify individual individuals responsible we've had some very complicated homicide cases recently too and they've been very successful in tracking down those individuals whether it's through evidence vehicle evidence tags witnesses assisting us by giving us information we are doing better with getting intelligence from our community members as well so um we just you know hope that that these guys and gals continue to keep up the good work thank you finally chief uh you know in my intellectual journey one time i um flirted with black nationalism because i thought that nothing in america was redeemable uh be it capitalism be it the government be it the police be it baseball that it was all part of this kind of overarching superstructure and that you couldn't artificially just kind of excise one piece of it and say that part's not redeemable but the rest of it is for me it was all part of the same structure and what has helped me is realizing that leadership can make a difference uh whether it's a da whether it's a mayor whether it's a president whether it's a police chief and and i just want to thank you for the difference that you've made uh with your leadership to the culture of the Durham police department can't speak to other police departments i'm a Durham elected official i know that you've made a difference for the Durham police department um and we owe you a debt of gratitude i pray that your success uh will embarrass your expectations and that your family will thrive and that the divine will carry you to Memphis i've already told my friends uh in Memphis if you treat her wrong we'll take her back but god bless you thank you for your service in the city uh go get them thank you appreciate you all thank you so much thank you council member anyone else colleagues questions uh council member caballero yeah i just wanted i don't have any questions i just wanted to say um we will miss you you have done a fantastic job for the city of Durham uh i know that um specifically for the latino community we i have seen a lot of care and attention and so uh a lot of gratitude for that and um good luck thank you thank you council member appreciate that anyone else colleagues council member freeman and then council member freelot thank you thank you i think i just want to follow up and just add my appreciation as well noting i think this process or this being on council with you as a chief has been a great learning experience i think like i started with very little understanding on the police force and i think i have a better understanding in a way that that appreciates the detail and the the departments and how they operate together um and ways in which i i don't think i've ever even thought about prior to being on council and i attributed that to your care and making sure that that i understood along with my colleagues you know exactly what what was going into the day today i um i feel a i feel a sense of of burden in that we couldn't figure out how to make sure that the officers weren't working based on overtime um to cover those shifts but i get it i understand it and we'll continue to figure it out um i do want to appreciate your note that uh you'll leave Durham but you can't leave me anytime i have a question i i hope that you'll take my call absolutely absolutely the pleasure has been mine councilmember thank you thank you uh thank you freelon thank you mr mary yes uh chief davis i just wanted to extend my gratitude um you've been professional arm and visionary and i've had a wonderful experience working with you and wish you well thank you thank you very much you remember the first time i met you you came to my office yeah raising cane about something i said who is who is this kid yes yes yes no even then you you you i just love the way that you uh approach um you know leadership in the way that you handled that situation with care um that's all that i've ever felt in your presence so i you know met this is so lucky and i'm so jealous come visit me cool thank you any further comments colleagues chief thank you so much thank you i can't believe it's the last one of these reports i know uh and uh i think everybody said it all we're going to miss you tremendously you've done a fantastic job i'll just uh end with one memory uh right after you got here there was the shootings down in the lgbtq nightclub down in florida and i went out to the demonstration out on maybe foster straighter and there you were with your team and i thought yeah she gets Durham and you did get Durham and uh it's been a real gift so thank you well thank you i've learned and i've grown um because of Durham so thank you all so much and this isn't um goodbye it's really just so long so i look forward to continuing this relationship take care everybody thank you chief thank you colleagues we have two more items i'm sorry to tell you that two more presentations uh hopefully that won't be too long uh the first one is the stormwater the storm i'm not going to pause again if y'all need to do it i just did turn your camera off and eat half a bag or go ahead and do it okay we'll just keep going uh i see mr webeke here good to see you and we'll have the uh we'll have the stormwater uh fees presentation all righty hopefully you're seeing that now yes we are good evening mayor shul and mayor pro tem johnson and council i'm paul weep you with public works this is the stormwater fun and rapes presentation there we go the stormwater fund is an enterprise fund that's funded primarily through uh fees our stormwater fee um our annual budget operationally is 11.6 million dollars for f5 22 and 104 fte's uh we fund stormwater management stormwater maintenance and street cleaning we have various capital projects that we address that you can see there and all activities are requirements of our national pollution discharge elimination system permit our npds permit our key issues are we are requesting a rate increase for f y 22 our rate model which was helped which was prepared by public works and finance staff proposes increases through f y 25 uh that support our capital spend and to meet our nutrient reduction goals for the various falls lake initiatives and our t mbl load reductions we did request a rate increase and received it in f y 21 um as you'll see on a future slide our capital projects are peaking in f y 22 and 23 and there's much uh infrastructure that there is to replace the jordan lake and falls lake rules will be readopted through a process of rewriting the rules from f y 23 f y 22 through uh 23 for jordan and falls lake from uh beginning in january of 2024 we're continuing our relationship with the uh upper nature basin association with our reanalysis of the falls lake rules this is primarily from the rate model showing the rate increases the the main thing to point out is is you'll notice that our total surplus goes from 20 and a half million dollars down to a low of 1.1 million dollars in 2025 and that is with the proposed rate increases we've projected from f y 22 through f y 25 this is uh the next slide is our c i projected c i p spend and you'll notice on the bottom line that shows our total c i p spend for the various fiscal years and our current fiscal year we're projecting to spend nearly 10 million dollars and that ramps up uh just over 14 million dollars in 2022 and uh just over 16 million in 2023 that's primarily due to the construction of the south elementary stormwater restoration project uh in 2022 and 23 we are also funding uh stormwater fleet uh there are a large number of stormwater street sweepers that will be replaced in f y 22 as well as we've got a typical funding for our infrastructure in a right of way it's about three million dollars per year and we're also picking up supplemental funding for the operations center funding gap from f y 23 through f y 27 the rate increase proposed for f y 22 will impact customers similarly as it did in f y 21 with a 25 cent monthly increase or three dollar per year increase for tier one customers 51 cents per month for tier two customers or an annual increase of six dollars and 12 cents tier three a dollar three cents per month or an annual increase of 12 dollars and 36 cents our non residential or commercial customers will see a rate increase of 0.51 or 51 cents per 2400 square feet of impervious surface that translates to six dollars and 12 cents per year for 20 for every 2400 square feet of impervious cover this is our a snapshot of our accounts just to give you an idea of where the breakdown on and where the funding comes from uh we have approximately 74 000 residential accounts 6400 approximately 6400 accounts are non-residential and you'll notice that of the non-residential accounts of 6400 that produces 67 percent of our revenue or roughly 13.2 million dollars our residential customers contribute about six point four million dollars our proposed rates as they compare to our pure cities the bar in red is our drum's rate compared to our pure cities and it compares very favorably in the lower end of the scale our tier two rate a slightly above the middle of the pack but still compares quite favorably to our pure cities as does our commercial and multifamily rate that's proposed this is a history of our rates back to f y 20 typically we have a series of rate increases and that levels off for a period of time and we've we've entered at starting in f y 21 of a proposed series of rate increases to get our program to a level to assist us in meeting the requirements of our permit this is just a brief graph to show you our plan for meeting the falls lake stage one reduction as well as complying with the interim alternative implementation approach the urn rba is uh moving forward with our south urlby wetland will contribute a large portion of that our innovative technologies the albert turf scrubber will also uh quite likely exceed that percentage as well as we have existing projects and conventional retrofits as well as green infrastructure and just to give you an update on our south urlby stormwater restoration site sole removal and radiation will begin this summer with the bid occurring as well as construction following the calendar year of the wetland and calendar year 2022 we found disposal sites through miss lake and the closed landfill for cover to dispose of the material from our excavation about 50 000 cubic yards the algae turf scrubber or algae flowway project the site selection process is completed we found a suitable site for 10 million gallon per day plant multiple sites we completed one property appraisal we're going to complete a couple others and in general services will continue our negotiations for those properties or to a selection process will will figure out a good property to bring to you for our recommendation and that concludes my presentation i'm here to entertain any questions you may have thank you very much mr wiki colleagues i want to remind everyone that we are going to have a public hearing on this item on our next at our next meeting and we'll be voting on it then um but this is our chance to discuss it we won't be hearing again from we won't be hearing again for mr wiki that evening uh except perhaps for a sentence or two uh but uh so this is our chance for any discussion or comment that you might have any questions or comments colleagues i have just a few um one is uh it's great to see the south urlby creek project moving along as it is uh that's fantastic i'm excited about it um and i'm i i'm also the the the algal scrubber how do you say it he said algal algae yeah all right i stumble over it myself okay i'll call it the algae scrubber there we go when we first initiated that technology i i i was very skeptical um but it's really proven itself and it's it's really interesting to see us making such a i don't know any reasons to be skeptical except that i'm skeptical of uh you know kind of technological solutions to lots of things it's really an agricultural solution right yes exactly i remember that and it's really interesting now that that we're really doing it on a much large we're planning to do on a much larger scale and uh i just want to congratulate the department for the innovation and um it it's yeah it's it's i think it's really good the um the rate chart um you know especially in terms with the uh the the lowest rate where we are i think that it looks good and we know that we're going to have to raise rates because we've got big big commitments to meet to keep our water clean uh and um you know keep falls like and jordan like clean and i think that you've done some really good planning for that um and i think that's all i think those are my comments i'm very supportive and appreciate uh appreciate the presentation anyone else madame manager mr mayor i just want to thank mr wipke for his presentation today as city manager i i still sit with my face toward the camera because we do so many things and they range from here to here and all of it is very important and it excites me even during this late hour so i just wanted to add that thank you very much madame manager mr wipke thank you and uh we appreciate your being with us today have a good evening all right thank you we have i'm sorry council member freeman has has a question or comment i was just going to say thank you as well i just wanted to also just note that i think we'll have very favorable state rules in place um based on the success of our last election so thank you thank you yeah excellent point thank you thank you mr wipke we appreciate you have a wonderful evening you too all right colleagues we're now moving to the last item on our agenda and that is item 32 i believe this is an item that i have advanced to the council you'll remember a couple of weeks ago i let you all know this will be coming to this work session and this is a proposal for vaccine equity i have been meeting with the community-based organizations that have been working to working on vaccine equity working on providing vaccines to black and brown communities here in Durham and we know what the current situation is the the figures that i have in the memo and i haven't got them for another probably a week old down are that white people in Durham uh have had vaccines when when i did the memo at about 44 percent had at least one black people about 30 percent and latinx residents about 29 percent so we don't have vaccine equity or nearly vaccine equity and we also know that vaccine equity is is key to herd immunity we're not going to get to herd immunity unless we have vaccine equity as well so i met with the community-based organizations and i've listed all of them in the proposal that i've met with a couple of times uh councilmember cubieto and mayor pro tem johnson were also there they have been meeting uh over time with the african-american covid group and latinx and so there was a very strong consensus i should also add then i met after that i met uh individually and then with a group of the vaccine providers our public health department director uh the the folks from duke lincoln community health center phil hairewood and then also with uh kurt ribisol who you all know manages the gilling school program that we are funding through them for the back on the bull health ambassadors um i've probably forgotten some people but that's that's essentially it and and i had um good really good discussions there was a lot of unanimity around the need for community health workers uh you can read the details in the memo but basically um that was the one thing that everyone agreed was going to be crucial to reach vaccine equity uh and that what our strategy so so we've now we've now crossed the threshold where there are more vaccinations and there are people that want them wheels has 15 vaccinations 1500 vaccinations available a day but very very much you know 200 300 people might be showing up a day to get them so what was a big efficient system is no longer and uh we need to be going to the people to take them the vaccines and to that includes having the the um the community health workers to go out and and and and uh teach people uh and some in some cases it's people that just need transportation or knowing about it and being able to get to some place in near their neighborhood or even just a ride through the wheel site uh elderly people who are homebound people who just don't have the knowledge and then there are people who are the vaccine hesitant and those are both very large groups and so the vaccine hesitancy uh that's where I think community health workers also come in which is to help uh build trust because there are people from the they are people from the community this will have to go hand in glove with putting the vaccines also uh in the community as well uh they're the vaccinators can't all be at a couple of big sites and they're going to need to be what seem to be less efficient but actually going to everyone agrees turned out to be more efficient ways to do this which is more pop-ups more clinics at churches our city manager is going to be volunteering uh at a at a vaccine clinic at her church in the next few days uh and so we really need to be going to the people with the vaccines so I have uh worked with uh the folks I've gotten two groups to kind of vet the cost of this one is uh uh coedematicus which is the has the state contract for providing community health workers and the other is uh the folks who employ the community health workers that we fund the back on the bill health ambassadors and they have the budget that I proposed which I'll pull up on my own computer here uh is a budget that uh they feel is a budget that will work for five months uh and that's kind of the time period that people think we really need to get the job done and um let me just pull that up so I've proposed that the city and the county split this I've sent it to the county commissioners they they discussed at their last meeting uh they're having their staff look at it and uh and um yeah so I'm proposing that we fund half of this proposal uh that it would which is uh 650,000 dollars up to 650,000 dollars which would put 45 to 50 community health workers paid it 20 dollars per hour plus taxes and benefits of 20 percent supplies mileage support staff and an 8 percent fee for indirect costs and administration and I'm proposing that uh could America's be the be the administrator of this and that they do the coordination of it as I say they are they are now funding they're now coordinating and administering the funding for 218 community health workers across North Carolina including 35 and so that's the gist of it and I'm happy to take any questions and hope that we can discuss it tonight and take it up at our at our our meeting our council meeting 10 days from now I should find out I should say one other thing I guess I've discussed this uh on several occasions uh with manager Paige she has been well apprised and uh they can talk to us about the funding source that she has in mind for this uh where we to pass it so questions and comments council member Reese thank you Mr. Mayor I want to thank you for bringing this proposal forward I also want to thank my colleagues who've been involved in the really the the lots the the incredible massive meeting and work uh to get us to where we are today um you know the the proposal you put together is really comprehensive you make the case very well I guess the only question I have really is about your conversations with uh the county health director and sort of the county health department's position on this particular work uh the last thing I would want to do is get us at cross purposes with our public health department so if you could talk a little bit about um how the substance of those conversations and where they see this program fitting into their public health mission so um I had a really good one-on-one discussion with rye Jenkins followed by um a group discussion where he was present along with Katie Galworth from Duke Phil Harewood from Lincoln Kurt Rebisall from uh Gillings um and there may have been one or two other people that I can't remember um and uh the public health director is very supportive he also believes that community health workers are critical to uh vaccine equity um as you know a lot of what public health does is community health workers they have a whole bunch of them themselves and um what we'll be doing is kind of a force multiplier to use a word that the chief used earlier today uh is is additional additional community health workers um so yeah I feel you know he definitely expressed his support I'm not saying he's expressed his support for this exact proposal he expressed his support for more community health workers and the and the need for them great um is this proposal could if the but so let's say we get to our next money night meeting this is on our agenda it passes uh but uh if the county commission takes a little bit of a longer route to approval can we go ahead and get started with the with the process of beginning to get some more of these health workers into the community embedded in these organizations who are doing the work on the ground I don't think it would be necessary for them to have passed something before this would get going um our staff would need to make a you know have a contract uh developed I mean there would be that kind of work that would need to happen uh but if we you know if if for some I believe the county will support this the county commissioners if they don't however and we only could fund 20 to 25 community health workers it would still be a big benefit yeah just just to be clear I don't have any information about whether or not they're going to want to do that it's just that every time we have this kind of account this proposed partnership I want to make sure that whatever happens that we can continue we can do the work that we think is important so I think we can I appreciate that it's in the support the measure thank you thank you questions comments councilmember freeman thank you mr mayor I appreciate you pouring in over this vaccine equity issue and I can appreciate the proposal I I just want to raise a couple questions around the organization that would be in place you said it's core america I didn't I didn't notice it in uh in the memo c-u-r-a-m-e-r uh c-a-s sure americas sure americas yeah and just noting I think in and many of the vaccine in the vaccine conversations of the latin latin 19 group and the african-american covid task force hold on one second I was just going to ask um or just bring forward some of the commentary I know that folks have raised a question about the organizations that have come up or spring up out of covid and just noting that you're stating this is a five-month pilot this could be an opportunity to actually invest in an organization here locally um 650 000 dollars 450 you know community health workers I think it's an opportunity to build the infrastructure in place for organizations that are here locally and I do have some concerns around um how that comes across because I know folks have raised raised that question a number of times in both the latin 19 and the covid african-american task force that there seems to be an overwhelming um push towards these new organizations that come online that aren't local and then they want to use the resource which is the people who are here local to do the work and so it feels disjointed and inequitable in a sense and I just want to make sure that I bring that to light thank you so the organization all the organizations that would be funded through this um are organizations that are local and that we know we're talking about el centro uh war for life peach uh I have the list in the um I have the list here el centro uh project access lasamia try war for life care student u peach and slice 325 so those are all local organizations and that those those would be the organizations where the where the um where the community health workers would be placed how much of the dollars would be placed with them as well as administering but community health workers also cost so the um the total cost the the amount that uh the administrator has proposed to keep is 8 percent and so 92 percent of the dollars would go to the community health the community-based organizations the other eight other eight percent would be for you know to administer this and um to coordinate I think you I think you hear what I'm saying around so if the eight percent goes to cure america or the two percent goes or eight percent goes to cure america what percent actually goes to the organizations that are putting the people to work 92 relationships to put those people to work 92 percent and of that 92 percent how much do they get to keep administratively for their organizations um are you expecting that 92 percent to fully go out the door 20 dollars because I think the number so no uh the the um I could do some quick math on that but um this includes payment for the organizations which would include them to have supplies mileage and support staff as well uh as the wages I think I'll just note to add a little bit of administrative support you know paperwork all of that as well and then that would be if it's a little increase I think that'd be worth it I could send you some math on that great thank you making myself a note okay um other customer cavietto yeah I just wanted to say that I'm in full support of the proposal and plan on voting for it at our next meeting the proposal in front of us is just essentially adding capacity and extending what is currently already being done um um so crud americas has been the um one of the providers under the state contract for many months now uh the nine identified cbo's are the same nine that have uh community you know community health ambassadors right now so I think it's just a very efficient and effective way to do um vaccine equity um and it's really really crucial because we don't actually have the time to do the I think that there's been a lot of conversations on I'm in line 19 with councilmember freeman been there since march of last year um and it has been a conversation around you know the the usefulness of health uh workers in many cases around public health but I just want to remind folks that our goal here is to get two shots in arms for the next several months the city usually doesn't delve into public health and that that has to be our our number one mission with this work and this money uh we know the variants are are here it's only going to get worse we know our communities of color suffered the most from COVID I know the latino community last summer had really really high COVID numbers and we have to prevent a different summer this summer with the variants that are are wreaking havoc in other places already thank you councilmember councilmember milton thank you mr mayor let me first thank you uh for using your bully pulpit and your influence to crafts and direct action on this very important issue I as I've expressed for I'm deeply concerned that the country is getting ready to open back up um increased infection rates were enough to keep the country closed but disparity in vaccine rates is not enough to keep the country closed and we know who suffers the most the disparity so I want to thank you colleagues that have worked on you worked with you on this to bring this to us I look forward to supporting it just a couple of nuts and bolts questions will the um it's a five month gig hard stop or are we going to look at that after five months and possibly it's a great question that I don't know the answer to okay I think that I what I have heard from the health people is that the next five to six months is the crucial period um and so that's why that's why the proposal is for five months and five months is cheaper than six months you know so and I know that once we you know we can see how it goes and if we need another month or two you know if it looks like that I think we could make that decision um so yeah that's that's what I think cool I'm not the best master but I wouldn't argue with that I would take that at face value um do you do you foresee foresee these folks being totally new hires or perhaps folding in some folks that are already doing ambassador work and just who may have the opportunity may have ceased on one you know platform and we're bringing them in or you foresee these being totally new folk you're muted breath and you're muted Steve yeah sorry yeah I think there are two groups there are groups that have had community health workers who no longer have you know they're still out there trained but they're not doing the work now because they're the grant is run out or something like that and then there will be a need for new people I think it'll be both um there you know that we've had there were a few organizations on our calls who had a few community health workers but aren't going to be doing it again for you know a couple different reasons but I think there are people out there who have training who could fit easily into this and then there'll be need to be some new people I should also add that during tech they had three folks uh you know engaged on one of the calls and they're they've one of the issues is along with the community health workers how do you get the vaccinators in the field um and because it's one thing to yeah so but so one of the things that that's happened which I think is good is that Durham Tech has um they have come forward and and made a you know a big list of all the folks that they're graduating or about to graduate who are their students who are already trained in vaccination they're they're you know they could be people in the uh what do you call them uh yeah anyway in in various these medical fields uh that uh that they're training people in and they're already working now uh since then with Lincoln Duke and um and public health to try to provide them some more workforce workforce with vaccinator workforce is a big issue um thanks for that and finally I think it's my final uh query the um I'm excited that they're getting uh 20 bucks an hour and benefits I'm I guess my question is if it if it's only going to be a five months gig how long would their benefits still serve them after that five months and they're are they going to be on a county's benefit plan or the cities or how how would that who's package are they going to be on they won't be on ours or the counties because they'll be working for these community-based organizations uh and so they won't vary um and so there was a lot of feeling among the community-based organizations that what they really want is um people to be in their organization you know there's a lot of feeling that they know how to do this they do it in different ways you know war for life has a mobile unit has mobile units um you know some of them have you know pop-ups I mean it's there's a wide variety of ways of doing this and they all really wanted people to work in their own individual organizations to sort of let a thousand flowers blossom as a way to to reach into communities and so that would include the way this is is administered they're they're the organizations would receive a certain amount of money for their benefits uh the 20 on top of their salary uh and then that organization would have to figure out how to provide them and that would be part of what cure americas would do they they would you know they would coordinate and work with the organizations to make sure those benefits are being provided thanks so much mayor that's all I had look forward to supporting thank you other questions or comments councilmember freeland and then mayor pro tem johnson thank you mr mayor um yes just want to echo the sentiments of my colleagues and say that I deeply appreciate the work that you've poured into this and um I think it's needed and and I'm looking forward to supporting it um my question is really about kind of the model here I really like um I've been having conversations as I mentioned in previous weeks with folks about um you know stopping violence in Durham and you know the idea of finding you know a dozen or so uh local organizations funding work that they're already doing addressing uh a a dire issue that's impacting the community these are all things that kind of sparked my curiosity around what's possible um and so maybe this is a conversation offline that I need to have city manager page um particularly how how I'm curious about how the budget ended things work so is this something that's being proposed for next year's budget are we going to look for something left over kind of at the end of this year's budget I don't think I understand yet uh how budget proposals work you know I get the urgency I get that I'm also like part of my brain is like didn't we submit budget requests several months ago okay this is an exception like the hope schools how does how do other emergencies get met in this way and uh you know yeah all the time I'm looking forward to supporting it but uh yeah I want to understand better how yeah how emergency things get funded and and yeah so maybe we could hear from uh either manager page or uh if uh miss johnson is on I know she was on it and I know she's been working on this but uh well I'll ask the further the city manager and see if there's someone that she either she or someone else would like to discuss the how you're planning to fund this so certainly uh there was a COVID fund that was set up it was a total of five million dollars and it you know certainly had a specific purpose and that purpose was for COVID you know COVID responses and and those kinds of things ultimately if the city council authorizes a contract or votes for a contract um and we have that you know have funding available you know when that contract comes back to the council for approval it will show what what the funding source is so when mayor shul talked to me about this proposal that he was bringing to the to the city council for potential approval that is when I let him know the balances that were left in that COVID fund um so that would represent you know where we would where we would fund such a proposal so so what you're you know what you speak about is you know often it is not is there dollars someplace available for something it is whether or not it gets approved by city council and sent to the administration to execute thank you is that is that responsive yeah that is that is I'm all I think I have more questions but rather than make everyone continue to suffer from this five-hour meeting I think I'll just ask you at our check-in at our monthly check-in for more details but thank you for that that's great you did answer part of my question yeah I think that you know I have been doing this as um I feel like this is the this is the thing that could put the nail in the pandemic you know that we have the COVID fund and that we ought to be using it for this that's that that was really the way I have conceived of it and um but I think you know you also raise a great point about the model and its applicability to other things is for sure other comments and questions colleagues council member I'm sorry mayor part of Johnson and then council member free thank you mr. mayor um my I was going to ask the how do we pay for a question um so excited to hear about that plan um but I also just wanted to thank you for bringing us this proposal and for all the meetings that went into putting it together and also thank all the community partners who um have been doing this work over the last year and are you have pivoted their work from you know getting people getting people masks and getting people the right information and encouraging people to stay home wholesale over to getting everybody that we can possibly um the vaccine and I think folks have the people who we met with it was just really great to hear about all the work that they've already been doing and doing an incredible job to get the vaccine out to um to everyone in our community and I agree um with pierce that this is that this this model um is really is really important to continue to sorry was that pierce I think so yeah to like be funding local organizations that already have boots on the ground people in place who know um how to do work in their communities and not try to reinvent the wheel uh or do it ourselves so I am excited to support the proposal um and also wanted to just encourage our you know county colleagues to come in on this with us I think we have had a really good um last few projects putting together we've had a good experience in the last few rounds of um bringing the county in on joint work with the race equity commission that's coming on board and the safety and wellness task force and I think the collaboration especially since you know COVID is is a public health issue but it's also an everything issue I think it makes sense for the city to be engaged um in this work but definitely need to continue to build those strong partnerships with folks at the county and they have to be you know they're they're they're the public health agency they need to be at the table and ideally in the lead um on this work and I don't want us to be you know stepping on any toes but I think it's important for everyone to for us all to come together to move this work forward and um I hope that we can get something here back from them um as soon as possible about their contributions so that we can get these folks out in the community thanks Councilmember Freeman and then Councilmember Caballero thank you I appreciate um everyone's comments and I do want to note that I am very supportive of the proposal I do want to note the dispelling out of how to incorporate those folks on the ground is important and just noting even with this um public health-facing part of it the workforce aspect of it has to be at the backside of it and so I'm glad Durham Tech is engaged and all the graduates will be involved I know there are a lot of them in our community who have been looking for work and out of work um since March of last year and so uh I I can appreciate 420 jobs is what I heard and so it's not just this a county issue it's actually a city issue because we do do a lot of workforce development and so um I think it's important to note that thank you Councilmember Caballero I just had a real quick question on on timeline we'll vote for this at the next meeting when do our county commissioners meet so just to understand how quickly it could get passed you know I I'm concerned about the timeline I'm not sure okay I know that they're they've sent it to their public health department you know staff to to vet but we can check with that I've checked with uh commissioner howerton you know had some email exchanges about it and I'll keep I'll keep in touch any more questions or comments colleagues if not we'll move to what's next which is just noting to correct my I'm 45 250 not 450 45 250 I knew that I got it I think we all did it's a late at night here as uh councilmember frail I just mentioned wishful thinking okay so now uh we'll ask our clerk if she can uh tell to us about the appointments good evening everybody I'll make this quick because I know it's late here's the report on the council board committees and commission nominations I'll begin with the agenda items with consensus this Durham city county appearance commission appointment Jerry Ulysses Garrier has been nominated next the city county environmental affairs board reappointment council nominated asa l during betton for the reappointment to fill the vacancy representing energy and then for the Durham bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee appointments you've nominated denise adam here to fill the vacancy representing transportation planning and policy however for the vacancy representing university students university facilities there was not agreement Idris foxworth received three votes en c lock two votes charles hill and steven v odum one vote each and if you wanted the breakdown I could give you who voted for whom Steve I'm sorry I know I did not vote for foxworth but I will vote for foxworth I voted for a lot and I'll be happy to change my vote for foxworth okay then um that's the end of my report thank you thank you madam clerk madam manager are we ready to settle the agenda this the mayor we are we have for consent items 1 through 22 item number 26 and item number 32 we have gba item number 23 and gba public hearings item number 28 items number 28 through 31 can you say again I'm sorry okay for consent we have items 1 through 22 item number 26 and item number 32 gba item number 23 and gba public hearings item number 28 through 31 all right thank you colleagues you have heard the city manager's recommendation for settling the agenda and I'll accept a motion in that regard I'll move second moved by councilmember freeland seconded by councilmember Reese madam clerk will you please call the roll mere shul I mere promotion johnson hi councilmember caballero hi and some member freeland hi and some member freeman hi and some member middleton I vote I thank you and councilmember Reese I thank you thank you madam clerk thank you madam manager well colleagues we did quite a day's work I will blame the city manager for bringing us this big agenda we did it and councilmember freeman thank you mr mayor before we adjourn I just wanted to bring forward that I would like to bring opportunity to expand the dust I think bylaws to include an equity seat and I would like to introduce that to us in a couple weeks I'll bring a proposal forward and then I just wanted to give everyone a heads up beforehand all right can we get some not head nods no I see a head no I see see some yes I know that they were they were the conversation that the meeting was specific to it would be easier if we did the bylaws versus the versus them just making the request and it taken another year yeah my understanding is that they want to redo their all of their bylaws okay maybe councilmember Caballero and councilmember freeman you all could talk to the DOS folks and give us some guidance that'd be good thank you all right colleagues it is now 6 14 p.m. we've been at this for a long time I think we did a pretty good day's work many thanks to you all for for all of it and see you soon councilmember freeman I have a six o'clock meeting that I'm late for now so I'm not going to be at northeast central Durham assuming that's even happening now I actually will find another time I let them know off camera letting them know that we were still in work session so try to find another time that works for the four of us this little thing will not attend either I gotta go on my next one now so y'all enjoy bye now bye y'all