 of order. I want to thank my colleagues for making time to have this special meeting today during what is usually our vacation period. There are no vacations during COVID-19, it turns out, but I'm glad to see everyone. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuhl. Here. Mayor Pro Temchison. Here. Councilmember Caballero. Here. Councilmember Freeman. Present. Councilmember Middleton. Here. Councilmember Reese. Here. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And now we'll move to announcements by the council. I have one announcement colleagues, one announcement that I'd like to make. You may have read or seen a television report about a case filed on behalf of Attorney Scott Jr. against the Durham Police Department. I consulted today with the city manager and the city attorney. And our attorney had previously initiated an action that she and I discussed today, and I'm appreciative of that, to ask for, to go to a superior court judge, to ask for the release of body camera footage that would be relevant to that, so that it would be released not only to us, but to members of the public. And so this action has been initiated. I think the attorney is going to ask that this be expedited. But we all know that our courts are in a COVID-19 mode. And with, once they are meeting again, they are going to have lots of things to do. But the attorney has assured me that she's going to ask that this be expedited. And I have also offered to be in touch with Chief Judge Hudson or whoever our city attorney recommends to see if we can't get this expedited so that we and the public will be able to view this footage. So I just wanted to let you on with that. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, of course. And now I ask if there are any other announcements. I know Council Member Freeman has an announcement. Yes, I had an announcement. I just wanted to take some time at the towards the end of the meeting to talk about I know I shared with Council that I was interested in figuring out how to do a public arts project around Black Lives Matter. And so I just want to make sure we can take some time to discuss it. And that would be pretty helpful acknowledging that we've seen a uptick in violence in the community. And in spite of the COVID pandemic, I feel like we need to take some action that would be helpful. So I'll follow the Mayor's lead on when and how we can proceed with the conversation, but just a brief conversation to figure it out. In short, my thoughts were, you know, there's, you know, try to keep small multiple sites and make sure that there's social distancing. But I would love to get more feedback from you guys on how that could look. Thank you Council Member and appreciate you're being in touch with me before the meeting. We'll have a discussion today at the end of our meeting. Thank you. Thank you so much. And usually as you know, I try to run out of these meetings and usually miss an agenda item or two. So don't be afraid to grab it back. All right. Other announcements by Council Members? You're on mute. Steve. Sorry. Seeing none, we'll move into priority items by the City Manager. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Members, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Durham City Council, the City Manager's Office does not have any priority items this evening. Thank you, Madam Manager. I will now turn to our City Attorney for priority items. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of City Council. The City Attorney's Office does not have any priority items today. Thank you, Madam Attorney. And now for the City Clerk. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and City Council Members. The City Clerk's Office has no priority items. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And now we'll move to our general business agenda, which begins with public hearings. And the first is on Item 44, Consolidated Annexation, South Mineral Springs and Pleasant. I see Ms. Sonjak is here. Welcome to Sonjak. Thank you. Welcome. Nice to see you all. Good afternoon. I'm Jeannie Sonjak with the Planning Department. I would first like to state for the record that all planning department hearing items have been advertised and noticed in accordance with the state and local law and affidavit of all notices on file with the Planning Department. Requests for utility extension agreement, voluntary annexation and zoning map change has been received from Jared Edens of Edens Lands for five parcels of land generally located south of Holder Road east of South Mineral Springs, a road and Pleasant totaling 52.82 acres. The annexation petition is for a contiguous expansion of the corporate city limits. And the case is BDG 1900011. In addition, the applicant proposes to change the zoning designation of the site from rural residential and rural suburban 20 to PD to plan residential development 4.001 with a development plan committing to a maximum of 191 single family detached units. If approved, the annexation petition and associated applications would become effective on September 30, 2020. Key commitments included restricting the single family detached units as the permitted building type, limiting the number of units to 191 and dedicating additional right of way for a piece of future bicycle lane. The applicant has offered two additional proffers which staff has reviewed and found to be acceptable. These include payments to the school in the amount of 22,000 and a payment of 28,650 to the Durham Affordable Housing Fund. The city and county operational departments have not found any significant negative impact. The budget and management service department determined that the proposed annexation will become revenue positive immediately following the annexation. Additional information can be found in the staff report. The Durham Planning Commission at their December 10, 2019 meeting recommended approval of the proposed zoning and proposed zoning by a vote of 10 to 2. Staff determines that these requests are consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances. Three motions are required for this application. The first is to adopt an ordinance annexing the property and entering into utility extension agreement. The second will be for the consistency statement. And then the third is for the zoning ordinance. Staff is available for any questions that you have. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Soniak. College, you have heard the report from staff on the declare this public hearing open. Before that, I turn this over to questions from our comments with colleagues. I have seen in the chat, I appreciate our deputy clerk, Ashley Wyatt, for responding to people in the chat that some people are concerned about not having previously signed up for items or not being exactly sure how to make yourself heard. And you will see that Ms. Wyatt has appreciate her saying, raise your virtual hand if you would like to speak on an item. I have a list of people who signed up. If your name is not on that list, but you would like to speak on an item, of course, you will certainly be able to do so. And so make sure that you raise your hand. If you're not seen, please enter that in the chat and we'll try to follow along with that. Make sure everyone is heard. All right. This public hearing is open on item 44, Consolidated Annexation for South Mineral Springs and Pleasant. And I'm first going to ask if there are any questions or comments from the staff by members of the Council. All right, seeing none, I'm going to, there are two people that are signed up to speak on this item. And those people are Jared Edens and Casey Buchanan both listed as proponents. And I'm going to ask now, there's anyone else that would like to speak on this item. If you could please make yourself known by raising your virtual hand or mentioning that in the chat, that would be great. And while we're doing that, I'm going to go ahead and call on Mr. Edens. Mr. Edens, are you present? Yes, sir. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Edens, I'm going to give you five minutes. If you need more than that, if it turns out you end up needing more than that, we'll talk about that. Okay. Very good. I appreciate it. I won't be near that long, hopefully. But I appreciate everyone's time this afternoon and these additional meetings help get us caught up. It's helping us a great deal. So thank you for that. As Jamie mentioned, we got the project here, we're proposing 191 single family homes near South Mineral and Pleasant Drive. Land use plan costs for four to eight homes in that area. We are consistent with that plan. This project is somewhat unique in that we have a couple of fairly major public improvements tied to the project and most single family projects to this size. Don't end up doing this much offsite work, but we're installing a traffic signal at Mineral and Holder. That takes the intersection that's currently operating at level service F, which I've lived there for 12, 13 years. I can attest to that, but it'll be up to level service C when we're done, which will be a noticeable improvement. We're also upgrading about 2200 feet of sewer main downstream of our property, upsizing an eight inch line to a 12, which will just increase capacity in that basin. So I think that's some good public benefit there. And as Jamie mentioned, we had two additional proffers. I'll just break down those numbers. The $22,000 school payment was based on 44 students at $500 a student, the 28 650 affordable housing payment was based on $150 a unit times 191 units. That's a rate that we've used probably five or six times now. I'll be glad to answer any questions you have. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Edens. Casey Buchanan, are you present? Casey Buchanan. Mr. Edens, do you know Casey Buchanan who's also listed as a proponent? I know, sir, I don't. Okay. All right. And I don't see Casey Buchanan listed and I don't hear from Casey Buchanan is not raised, his or her hand, their hand. And so we'll move on. Is there anyone else who would like to be heard on this item? I don't 44. All right. If not, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, there is a raised hand, Jeff Mazeth. Okay, I have that person list for item 45, Madam Clerk. Okay, he just raised his hand. Okay, Jeff Mazeth. Alrighty. Mr. Mazeth, would you like to be heard on this item? If so, please make yourself none. Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. And just to confirm this is case number Z as in Zulu 190019. And I apologize because the numbers that were stated were different, but the the naming that's been discussed. What is the area that you're in concern with Ellis Road or Mineral Springs? Mineral Springs and Pleasant. Yeah, that's this case. Okay. Yeah, so this is my question is related to this. So I live in a in a joining community here. And with the rezoning, I'd like to understand how the disruption to the current community is going to be affected. Obviously, this is going to be a short term problem. But for more of a longer term view for Durham as a whole, you know, there's been a lot of changes in the communities where a lot of these single family homes are priced outside of, you know, lower family houses and things that normal renters can afford. And I want to understand the the ways that we're going to address this with this new housing, and not just price this to people that are coming from potentially out of state, and not, you know, handling the community at hand right now in a positive manner. Thank you, Mr. Mazev. I appreciate your questions. And maybe I'll try to put a couple of those questions to the developer by asking first, Mr. Edens, can you talk about the the price point for these for these units? Yes. And my standard answer is always, you know, market conditions, of course, because we know how quickly these things can change. But I mean, we work on a wide range of price points at our firm. And I would not consider this one to be on the higher on the higher end of that spectrum. I consider this more of an entry level market. As that would be my anticipation would be that in that range. Can you give us a range of estimates? I won't hold you to an exact number. But could you give us when you say entry level, tell us what your what kind of numbers you're thinking about? Yeah, and unfortunately, in the current market, that would be, you know, 275 to 325 ballpark for a single family home, depending on the upgrades and in which lot lot premiums and whatnot. And could you address the Mr. Mazev's concerns about disruption? He lives in a nearby neighborhood. Could you talk about what you all will do? And I think he meant he said a short term problem he meant during the construction period. Can you talk a little bit about what you all will be doing in terms of how you plan to protect the nearby neighborhoods from any disruption that might occur? Yeah, sure. And I appreciate the opportunity to speak to it. I mean, the way I see it, the zoning actually may provide some protection to the neighborhoods. I mean, the only the main concern I heard at our neighborhood meeting was interconnectivity and potential interconnectivity of our project to the neighborhoods to the south. And most of our attendees, you know, did not really want that connection because it added traffic that it would add through their neighborhoods. As it turns out, the connection was really not viable financially for any type of project there because of the basin. So this zoning sort of locks that in eliminates that stream crossing and I think does provide permanent protection for the neighborhood. And as well that the traffic signal F to C that will be noticeable for the people in that area when you're waiting at Holder and south mineral. And I also think that he was referring to disruption during construction, at least that was part of the way I heard his question. Could you comment on that? Sure. Yeah, it'll be unavoidable to have some construction traffic coming from the south because, you know, we will have I think we have 20 or so lots that will be on the southern part of the property. So, you know, that's going to occur. But we've always been willing to talk with our property owners about times of the day that we're willing to work and days and coordinating rock, you know, if there is rock blasting, which there's not a lot of rock on this site, but things like that. You know, we have no problem during construction have an open communication just to make sure there are no issues. I'm going to suggest Mr. Mazev that you you can this is the person who he was speaking is Jared Edens and he's listed in the chat under attendees as Eden's land, Eden's land. And if you will just hit him up here in this chat and the two of you all are Mr. Edens, why don't you look for Jeff Mazev, M-H-Z-E-V and the two of you all could talk individually so that you could help deal with any of the concerns that he has. Would you do that Mr. Edens? Yeah, that'd be great. And I can involve the builders, development manager, and I will be on the same page. Thank you. Mr. Mazev, do you have any other questions or concerns you would like raised? No, I do not. Mr. Mayor, thank you very much for your time and then the council's time. Thank you. And you and Mr. Edens, please connect and so you can talk about the your concerns during the construction period. Okay. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item? All right. If there's no one else that would like to be heard on this item, I'm going to declare this public hearing closed and the matter is back before the council. Any comments or questions from the members of council or if not, all it would accept a motion. We would need three, we'd need four motions here. The first will be to adopt the ordinance annexing south, middle, sprees, and pleasant. Second, the utility extension agreement, consistency statement and the ordinance amendment will be up. Council member Wicks. Mr. Mayor, afternoon colleagues and members of the public. It's great to be with you virtually yet again on a Wednesday afternoon. I have a question from Mr. Edens. Can you tell me if anything about your proposal has changed from the time this was before the planning commission? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Rees. I'm trying to think I don't want to miss Legion and miss any commitment that was made. I can't think of any changes other than those two proffers made today for the payments. But, you know, staff, I mean, I'm not missing something, but I don't think we have. So it's still the case that and if I've got my case is confused, I don't know you'll correct me. Is it still the case that there's no developer for this particular project? I'm not aware of of any set in stone situation as far as developer builder whatnot for this site. So I'm not exactly sure. You're not sure. I mean, most sites most sites have a developer. Yeah, I'm working for the builder. Yes, sir. OK, so who's the builder in this case? We believe it's going to be in our homes. OK, so but there's no. Is there a is there a development plan for this project? Yes, I mean, we had one submitted with the application. OK, that's what you're referring to. OK, but so there's a. So this is one of those where there's a. Hold on, maybe I'm looking at the wrong case here. I know that for Ellis Road, there is not a developer. Yeah, I appreciate your patience there for me. Hold on. But we don't have any detail about what the about what the project will look like. I've looked at the development plan and again, I hope I'm in the right part of the thing here. Yeah, the summary of development plan is pretty. Brief. Right. Summary. Summary of development plan. I'm trying to. Is there is is there a certain page? I want to make sure I'm looking at the right thing. We have an attachment in our agenda at item. A 14, it's attachment 8D. I'm sorry, I don't want to make you wait while I'm scratching for. I mean, that's OK, I made you wait. That's not a problem. I do know that I'm sorry, I do know that the level of details is consistent with the typical single family project for us. I do know that it's consistent with that. I just didn't see a map showing the the lots and where they would be and how it would be configured. Yeah, I mean, the way the rules, I believe, are maybe staff can help, but anything shown like that during the hearing as part of the application sort of becomes a committed element. And the designs change so much from today. Well, the designs change so much from today to permit to do so much more engineering to actually vet your design. So it'd be really hard for me to ever to ever do that for a zoning case. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Sure. Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members, council and council member Reese, to your question, attachment eight B as in boy, is the is the reduction of the development reduction, meaning just fit to your screen size, the eight half by 14 of the. So I think that's the development agreement developed the plan you're looking for. Thank you. Your efforts. Visually, it's just a summary of the text. Thank you. That's this is what I yeah, I couldn't find this and I was reviewing the agenda. I apologize. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. I don't have any questions right now. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, council member. Other questions or comments for the developer or for staff? I have. Sorry, I was going to go ahead and say I apologize. My internet has been a little shaky. But I had questions regarding the. So I want to be clear. I understand that this is creating some flexibility, acknowledging that the site is not as. As you know, is well suited for this type of density as a piece of property that doesn't have any water running through it. And so I just wanted to be sure that I'm clear that this this piece of property is adding one hundred and ninety one single family units into an area about four acres. I'm sorry, not four. I had it ahead of my notes. Looking at it. But they the the my key question is around how we move forward because I acknowledge that this is on a two lane road on mineral springs and the folks that live out there aren't as engaged in our process of zoning and planning and, you know, city council meetings. And so I know that there weren't going to be I knew there weren't going to be a lot of people who would raise the issue, but I do have concerns about how existing flooding has been happening in that area and how that's going to be mitigated in the long term, not specific to this property, but just acknowledging that when we approve these properties with this high of a density that it has the potential to create greater issues considering that we haven't mitigated the flooding in other areas. And so I appreciate the proffer of the the eight inch sewer pipes being increased to 12 and that would be a great deal of help. But I'm not sure if that's enough help based on my understanding of the context of mineral springs and that section of the of the city or the county at this point that we're trying to bring into the city. So I was hoping to get some some more clarity on how much engagement actually happened with the residents that are there. What type of I guess history that we have or in this part from more sewer and stormwater and sewer context, how water has been flowing through that area and if that eight inch to 12 inches going to be enough. Mr. would you like to comment or remember the plan? Sure, thank you. I speak to the as far as the neighborhood engagement and things like that. Now, I have done several projects in this area. I found normally I found a fairly engaged community. Normally it is due to the traffic issue. I think we had about 15 to 20 attendees at a neighborhood meeting and really the only negative I remembered was that potential connection to the south. So I feel like then the feedback we did receive, we were able to address. And then as far as floodplain goes, Durham's ordinance when compared to other ordinances actually has quite a bit of teeth in it in regards to stormwater and 100 year floodplain. So this site has known known floodplain running through it. So we'll be required to analyze that as part of our development site plan. And if it's found that we will have negative impacts to that 100 year floodplain from our development, because the floodplain is located on our property, we are required to mitigate that. So for this site, I just feel very good that it was in that positive all the way around. Just to just to follow up, I'm not sure. Is this a clear cut site or is it like your views of the natural landscape or like how are you how are you navigating with that huge stream in the middle? All of that area will be will be untouched, basically. You know, I mean, the generally the best way to protect the floodplain would be to not try to cross it because inevitably you backwater up more with any kind of culvert crossing that you have. So we'll have that protection. And I think mainly what I'm bringing bringing to the attention of my council colleagues is that this case is similar to a few others that we've been seeing and that they're I mean, the lack of where you can build and then adding density on top of where you where you can build is is going to be problematic in the long run. And I'm hopeful that we can with a plan to address some of the existing property owner flooding and mitigation, mitigating some of that issue in our conversations as we go forward, because I feel like it's going to be more and more of these cases where we're we're adding a high density level in a space that's probably better suited for a lower density. Thank you, Mr. Young, and I also see that Mr. Irwin is here with us from stormwater. And I thought he might want to make some comments. Well, Mr. Young, go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor and to Councilman Freeman's comment. I all I wanted to do really was introduce Michael Irwin, who's with our stormwater staff. We certainly acknowledge and recognize and appreciate the reality that Commissioner or the Councilmember Freeman is bringing up, which is that we do have preexisting flooding in certain parts of our community. And so Mr. Irwin has graciously agreed to be available today to talk a little bit about any such conditions this site. So I'll just turn it over to Mr. Irwin. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmembers. My name is Michael Irwin. I'm a civil engineer with a stormwater development review department. This site, if it's approved for rezoning, you're going to have to comply with all of our various stormwater ordinances. The most stringent of one is that they cannot increase the 100 year flood plain elevation against any habitable structure. And we enforce that quite stringently as Eden's lands is aware of. So basically, we hold everyone to that. And if they do any sort of additions that alter the peak flow, increase the peak flow, then they have to mitigate that through onsite peak flow detention. We reserve the right to include 100 year peak flow detention in that. And does Councilmembers have any other questions on that subject? Yes. Is there is there a way to track the, I guess, the context of of that area and the number of developments and who like for the newer developments, it's easier, but for the older developments, I've been having this conversation over the last few years about figuring out the mitigation so that the people who are already there. So I'm concerned mainly around, I think it's recon is a recon place. Is that the right thing? I'm looking at my GIS map now, ma'am, and that is correct. And just noting that, I mean, it's a very rural area. And when you're going from rural to almost urban development, I don't know that there's a way that the stormwater I don't know that the the tools that you have in place right now are are going to be enough to kind of move us away from having these these flooding issues for residents that are already there. And so I just wanted to highlight that and noting that that I'm looking at Commissioner Baker's comments and acknowledging that this is this is a much larger issue beyond this project, which is why I appreciate that the Council, my I feel like my Council supports projects like this very well. And my apprehension is always around what it looks like in the long run and how we're going to mitigate. And so I'm just trying to figure out if I want to be supportive, but I don't feel comfortable with projects like this. So thank you, Council Member. Thank you, I appreciate that. OK, thank you, Mr. Irwin. Any other questions or concerns that council members would like to have addressed? Pretty comments, all right. And if not, then I'll ask for a motion on this item. Mr. Mayor, yes, there's have we heard from Mary Gilliam? Someone put a question in the in the Q&A feature. But I don't know if they have put it in the chat or raised their hand. Sorry, thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, I appreciate your spotting that. I'm a homeowner at the corner of Mineral Springs and Holder. I would like to know if there will be any road expansion. And so I'll ask either a member of the staff or Mr. Edens to respond to that. I'll repeat it. I'm a homeowner at the corner of Mineral Springs and Holder. I would like to know if there'll be any road expansion. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor, Jared Edens. Yeah, there will be at every entrance, we'll have a left turn lane, you know, which is standard. We're also going to be widening South Mineral Road all the way from Holder to Grimes Avenue. We're going to be adding a third lane for that entire distance. And as mentioned earlier, the traffic signal improvement at Holder and South Mineral as well. Thank you, Mr. Edens. And I see Miss Gilliam is now is able to make herself heard. Miss Gilliam, do you have any other questions? No, I don't want to do it. All right. Thank you so much for being here and for your question. And thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, for spotting that question. All right. Are there any more questions or comments by members of the council? OK, if Council member Reese. Yes, Mr. Mayor, before we start making motions, I thought I would talk a little bit about this item, if this is the right time. Sure. Awesome. I want to thank the applicant for a very clear and direct presentation of the merits of the case. I do know that this is one of those cases we're seeing a lot more of these days that are in areas that are relatively inaccessible to transit. That a mix of housing type that impact a very similar area because of the new stream that runs through this property and such that the expense of going through the process of trying to build a bridge over the stream is so high that they're not even going to bother to do that. So they're really going to have to cut off part of the development on that one side. We've seen a lot of developments like this recently. This one is slightly different in my mind because it is the the density of this particular project. Somewhat to differ somewhat with my colleague Councilman Freeman. This is very similar to what's already in this area. It's my understanding there's a development just south of here that has a similar gets into it. These are single family homes. And so I think this has there are this is slightly different than some of the other projects we've seen. It's also not nearly as as large as some of the other projects that we've looked at in a similar vein in recent weeks. And I think the other differentiating factor is around the road improvements we haven't seen a developer come forward with this larger commitment. Yes, as some of you know, my my concern about projects like this isn't just the fact that they are completely car dependent because they're not anywhere near our current system of public transportation. But because often they are on roads that the city doesn't have the ability to improve if the if the traffic increases. And so the level of service becomes a real concern. The developer has stepped up and made some commitments on on road improvements that will that address some of those concerns. And I appreciate that. And all of which is to say that that this is a very close case for me. And honestly, I'm not sure how I intend to vote just yet. But I promise myself a long time ago that I would try to make some remarks any time we have a case like this. And that's what I think. Thank you, Mr. May. I appreciate your patience. Thank you, Council Member. There was another person that. Has raised their hand, but then put it down. And that person is Azaria Lunsford, Ms. Lunsford, if you would like to make yourself heard, you can certainly do so. The clerk has made you available to speak if you want to unmute yourself. If you have any comments or questions. All right, I don't think Ms. Lunsford, I think she took her hand down earlier and I think that we're OK. All right, thank you. Mayor, there was a question in the chat about notification. Maybe staff could talk to us a little bit about kind of what notification practices they they made with this particular proposal. All right. Could the member of the staff talk about the notification? Sure. So the several things occurred. The property was posted in accordance with our UDO. There was also advertisement in the newspaper and property owners within 600 feet of the site boundary were also sent out letters indicating the public hearing and the and the proposal. Thank you, Ms. Sun Yang. Mr. Mayor, can I ask staff one more question? Sure, of course. The notes about the public hearing at the Planning Commission indicate that two individuals spoke against the proposal. Can staff give us a sense of what those what concerns were raised by those residents? Yes, let me just go back through. There should be in the staff report listed, which would be attachment eight. I'm just pulling it up on my computer, so bear with me for a second. I think the general the general concerns were how the development fits in with the character of the area and the neighborhood that exists currently. That's my recollection of the concerns that were raised. Thank you, Ms. Sonny, Mr. Mayor, it looks like. Susan Dunlap is is trying to speak on this. Can you hear me? I'm actually waiting to speak to item 46. Thank you, Steve, you're muted. Ms. Dunlap, thank you. We will get you in and appreciate everybody dealing with this technology the best that you can, but we'll we'll get you in for item 46. OK. All right. Any more comments or questions? I have one comment. My comment is. I really just want to. Say that the way we're going to get transit is to have density is to have development. That's what's going to drive us to have the demand for transit in these areas. So I think that I think that that is. An important thing to think about with these developments. We've talked a lot about this lately, but I just want to emphasize again my belief that. We're we're the thing that creates density, honestly, is crowded streets. I mean, that creates transit is crowded streets. I hate to say that, but it is a it is a hard truth. And so I think that we have to make sure that we're that the developments that we support are transit friendly that we're that they're that they're developments that are able to support transit in the future. And I think that this development is not perfect in that regard, but is reasonably good. OK, that's my comment. Any other comments? Councilmember Freeman. Yes, thank you. And I think to your point, I can appreciate that we're driving towards more density. But I think that what what makes me most uncomfortable is who has to wait until we get to that point in the midst of their homes seeing the flooding happening around them. And so, yes, and how do we make sure that we're mitigating that? So I know what I don't want to see is a class action lawsuit, you know, based on the fact that there are so many people and who have lower incomes and often are of color that end up with these types of developments happening right around the corner from them and increasing the amount of, you know, people in their area. So the traffic is back that like this this is a continuous conversation. And I feel like we're not getting to it unless there are people that are not of color involved in the conversation. And so consistently, I see these types of cases move forward approved. But the other ones, you know, it's like there's a whole lot more work to make sure that the plans are in place beforehand. And what I'm trying to figure out is how we're going to track that after that. After this case moves forward, how are we tracking to make sure that the flooding in that area is not increasing and making sure that that there's no drop off because the people in that neighborhood aren't as engaged in the way that other folks in other neighborhoods are. And so that's that's what I consistently keep bringing up. It's the same thing with the case from the last meeting. And it's the same thing with the case from this meeting. So even though it's in a different area, similarly, there's these huge wetlands or there's a huge water source that can create that type of a problem for residents that is expensive and not covered by insurance often. And so just noting that that creates a problem for folks who are of lower means. Thank you. Thank you. I see a comment, a question from Mr. Joseph over over rocker. Are there any sort of plans to display the desire changes for the traffic light and third lane between Holder and Grimes? I'll ask staff that question. Are there plans to display the desire changes for the traffic light in the third lane between Holder and Grimes? Yes, this is Bill Judge with Department of Transportation. At this time, the African has not submitted detailed construction drawings for those. They are illustratively shown on the development plan. The three lane widening along mineral springs and then just noted about the traffic signal. Thank you. So, Mr. over rocker, once a site plan is submitted for this, then the more exact plans for that will be there. But this is a committed element and will have to be constructed. And then I see another question from Ed Flagler. I live on Hickory nut drive. How will the construction affect that area? Mr. Edens, can you comment on that Hickory nut drive? Are you familiar with that drive? Yeah, that's what I'm sorry. That's what I'm looking for now and take your time, Mr. Mayor. I believe that's the Ellis Road case. Hickory nut drive. Yes, you're right. I see it. I see Ms. Schwetler said the same thing. Thank you, Mr. Flagler will get to you later. That's not this case. All right. Colleagues, any more comments? Not all except the motion. The first motion that we would need would be to adopt an ordinance annexing South Mineral Strings and Pleasant. So moved. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved by Council Member Middleton, seconded by the Mayor Pro Tem, that we adopt the motion and ordinance annexing South Mineral Springs and Pleasant. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member East. No. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes four to two. And now we'll move to motion number two to authorize the city manager entered to a utility extension agreement. Move to authorize the city manager. Second. Moved by Council Member Milton, seconded by the Mayor Pro Tem. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. No. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member East. No. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes four to two. Now we'll move to motion number three to adopt a consistency statement. Move to adopt consistency statement. Second. Moved by Council Member Middleton, seconded by the Mayor Pro Tem. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. No. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reese. No. Thank you, the motion passes four to two. And the final motion will be to adopt an ordinance to amend the UDO. Move to amend the UDO. Second. Moved by Council Member Middleton, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reese. No. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes four to two. Thank you very much, Mr. Edens. And we'll look forward to you all doing some good work out there and being in touch with the neighbors. Yes, sir. Thank you, everyone. All right. Thank you, colleagues. We'll move on to Consolidated Annexation, 1432 Ellis Road, Item 45. And we'll hear first the report from staff. Good evening, Jamie Sanyak again with the Planning Department. Request for utility extension agreement, voluntary annexation, future land use map amendment and zoning map change have been received from Tim Cybers of Horvath Associates for five parcels of land, generally located at 1431 Ellis Road, totaling 43.65 acres. The annexation petition is for a contiguous expansion of the corporate city limits. In addition, the applicant proposes to change the zoning designation of the site from rural residential and residential suburban to plan development, plan residential development 5.706 with a development plan committing to a maximum of 200 townhouse units. The applicant also proposes to change the future land use designation of the site from low density residential to low medium density residential. And there's no change to the recreation open space designation. If approved to the annexation petition and associated applications would become effective on September 30th, 2020. In addition to the commitments outlined in the staff report and identified on the development plan, the applicant proposes to add the following commitments that have been vetted by staff. I'll read these into the record for you. A minimum of 21% preserved tree coverage area shall be provided. A minimum of 20% open space shall be provided. And then there's a table breaking down this open space summary with the percentages required open space is 16% and they're committing to 20%. There's a required recreation open space of 16% and they're committing to that as well. In addition to promote a variation in home appearance, no home can be constructed with a front exterior elevation or front facade or color palette that is identical to the home on either side. All units shall include a front facing gable architectural feature. Transparent windows and or decorative hardware shall be included on all garage doors. A minimum 13 foot wide natural buffer shall be located along the project boundary adjacent to parcels 16 through 26 and 29 as illustrated on sheet D 100. A six foot fence shall be located along the project boundary adjacent to parcels 17 through 26 as illustrated on sheet D 100. No tree larger than six inches shall be removed for the construction of the fence. A six foot fence shall be located along the project boundary adjacent to parcels four and five as illustrated on sheet D 100. A water main and sanitary sewer main shall be extended to the project boundary at access point. Prior to the issuance of a certificate of occupancy provide a one time $1,000 contribution to the Durham public schools. Prior to the issuance of a certificate of occupancy provide a $20,000 contribution to the city of Durham dedicated housing funds. A minimum of 40% of the units shall be limited to single car bays or less. A minimum of two of the following shall be provided at the time of site plan. Dog parks, totlots, disc golf and Pelé fields. The average block length shall not exceed 600 feet and block length shall be measured by the distance of the intersection to intersection or block boundary measured along the centerline of the street. Additional graphic commitment, all project boundary buffers currently illustrated on the development on the sheet D 100 will be doubled to a point for opacity and 20 foot buffer, I'm sorry, 20 foot width. That summarizes the proffers that have been offered by the applicant which staff has reviewed and found to be acceptable. Key commitments on the plan include restricting the townhouses as the permitted building type, limiting the number of units to 200, dedicating additional right of way for future bicycle lane, installing traffic calming devices at site access points four and five, dedicating a 30 foot wide greenway easement for future trail construction parallel to NC 147. The city and county operational departments have not found any negative, significant negative service impacts and the budget and management service departments determined that the proposed annexation would become revenue positive immediately following annexation. The Durham Planning Commission at their March 10th, 2020 meeting recommended, did not recommend approval of the proposed for the vote of 12 to zero. Staff determines however that these requests are consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances. Four motions are required for this application. The first is to adopt an ordinance annexing the property and entering into a utility extension agreement. Please note for the record that the motion for the utility extension agreement should be corrected. The utility extension agreement is with Paul T. Holmes company and not with the property owner. The second motion is to adopt a resolution amending the future land use map. The third would be to adopt the consistency statement and the fourth is for the zoning ordinance. Staff is available for any questions that you may have. Thank you, Ms. Soniak. Ms. Soniak, is that attachment that, I mean, are those new properties, do we have them? No, sir. You do not have them, they were offered in between the planning commission and city council. So they're not on an attachment that we have now? Correct. Okay, can you send them to us? Sure. Can you just email them to us now? Mm-hmm, yes. Thank you very much. I will. You have heard the report from staff. Thank you, Ms. Soniak. You've heard the report from staff and I'm going to first ask if there are any questions for staff by members of the council. Questions from Ms. Soniak? I have some questions, Ms. Soniak, but I'm gonna wait until I get that attachment because I think they do answer some of my questions. All right, then we will now hear from the members of the public who are here to speak on this item. I have a list that has been provided to me by the clerk of people who previously signed up. And they include Tim Cybers, Jamie Davis, Jamie Schwedler and Laura Goode as proponents, Spencer Byers, Jeff Mazev and Mary Cooper as opponents. So this is for item 45 and I'm gonna ask if there are other people who would like to be heard on this item, if they could please put their names in the chat, that would be great. So we have opponents and proponents for this item and I'm gonna start with Mr. Cybers. Mr. Cybers, I will give the proponents 10 minutes. Do you think that that will do it for you? I believe so, yes, sir. I'll just be available for questions. Jamie Schwedler will be making the presentation. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Ms. Schwedler, I'm gonna ask you the same question I asked Mr. Cybers. Will 10 minutes be enough for the proponents at this time? Good afternoon, Mr. Mary, yes, it will. All right, thank you. And are you, is our Mr. Davis or Jamie Davis and Laura Good, are they associated with your presentation? Yes, sir. Ms. Good is in my office and Jamie Davis is with Pulty Homes, who's the developer for this site. So they will be available for questions just as Mr. Cybers will be. Okay. All right, thank you, Ms. Schwedler and you may proceed. Thank you very much. Thank you. We do have a PowerPoint that we submitted. So I'd like that to be pulled up now, please. Thank you. Thank you. This case is for the consolidated items that you see here on your screen. If we can go to the next slide. The request involves 43 acres along two sides of Elvis Road, shown in the hatched area of your screen just to the west of 147. This area has become a transition zone between existing residential to the north and west and more denser, newer residential to the south as you approach RTP and some of the newer developments in that area. Next slide, please. The request provides a transition and an infill to what's become an area that's quickly changing and closes an existing donut hole and to complete development in this area, not only with respect to the donut hole of the annexation, but is one of the last remaining parcels that has not been developed along this road. And what we're doing is developing in a manner that's consistent with the density that you see along that Ellis Road area. Next slide, please. The density in this area ranges from R10 to the north and RS10 to the north and RR down to the 5.7 density that we have, as well as the 6.02 density further to our south and 7.43 density to further to the south in these. So you can see how that transition is moving from northwest to southeast. Next slide, please. This case was filed in December of 2018. We held two neighborhood meetings prior to appearing at the Planning Commission this February. They were actively attended by existing neighbors to the north and south who have not been opposed as much as really asking questions about impacts. And we've continued that dialogue with a meeting as recent as last Thursday. The main concerns are showing your screen that we were not creating cut-through traffic and a problem for Winsford at the park who was concerned about our residents kind of coming through their neighborhood. So we've agreed to install traffic calming at the border of our project. There was also some additional buffering requested and we stepped up to 10 foot buffers before the Planning Commission. And then since added the commitment that Ms. Sunyak discussed, we doubled those project boundary buffers to 20 feet and doubling the opacity as well as provided some additional buffering along the rate of drive properties. And that commitment, as Ms. Sunyak noted, was placed between the time that we went to Planning Commission and before council. And what we've done there is increased the boundary buffer to 20 feet between the rate of drive properties and our property. No project boundary buffer was required in that area but we've also not only offered it but increased it. And then we've also offered a fence in that area and preservation of trees six inches or more in caliber to respond directly to comments that you see in your packet and from neighbors that more preservation of existing trees be made. If you can go to the next slide please. This illustrates the key commitments that were before Planning Commission. It's up to 200 town home units. It's actually up to 199. That's a correction that was made by staff today. We're also committing to installing the traffic calming devices, exclusive northbound and southbound left turn lanes on Ellis Road at our site entrance and additional five foot of asphalt for bike lanes on either side of Ellis Road, additional right of way along Ellis Road to provide the full 50 foot corridor from the original center line. And we're also dedicating a 30 foot greenway easement for future trail instruction on the east side of Ellis Road. Next slide please. This illustrates the Ellis Road improvements that we're offering on the left side of the screen is existing two lane Ellis Road. The right side shows the middle turn lanes, the additional bike lanes in blue and the additional right of way that we're committing to to provide that full corridor consistent with the city's plans. Next slide please. These text commitments were also before the Planning Commission and Ms. Sunyak read them out in terms of the contribution to Durham Public Schools and the Affordable Housing Fund. We also listened to some concerns about variety in the housing product and we've made a commitment of 40% of the units shall be limited to single car base or less. And that allows us to have both a single car and a double car product. We're also offering additional commitments in terms of the programming of the open space and the average block length. Now the reason we couldn't commit to the additional details at the time that the Planning Commission heard this case is that at that point, we were representing the buyer. We didn't, I mean, excuse me, the homeowner, we did not have a buyer lined up. And so we heard the additional request for high quality design and commitments that would allow us to elevate the design in this area. But without a buyer lined up, it was difficult to be able to make those commitments without restricting a potential buyer. However, since that Planning Commission vote and at that time, we weren't authorized to take the 60-day delay. Since that Planning Commission vote, Polti Homes has signed onto this case. We raised the Planning Commission's concerns with them and they were able to make additional commitments and those are the commitments that you heard Ms. Sungnack refer to earlier. And they relate directly to the concerns that we heard at Planning Commission. Desire for more certainty in the product, high quality nature in the product and variety as well as more tree preservation. If you have the next slide, please. The next slide shows the development plan. The areas in green show the open space or riparian buffers and I'll list out what those additional conditions are. The stream crossings are limited to only one vehicular stream crossing in orange. The rest are either utilities in purple or green, which is just a pedestrian crossing. So the majority of the eastern portion of the site will be open space or riparian buffer. And we're limiting our environmental impact on the stream crossing. The two red boxes at the bottom of your screen show the traffic calming locations and at the left side of the screen shows the connection to Hickory Nut Drive. That will be installed with a fence in that location. And we're also extending utilities to the end of Hickory Nut Drive should an extension or connection be possible. We'd be able to allow those folks to hook into the extension of utilities that we provide. Next slide. These summarize the new profits that are environmental based. A minimum of 21% preserved tree coverage area provided that started out as an above the UDO requirement and then the UDO requirement was changed to 20 and so we increased it again to 21. The minimum 20% open space provided is above the minimum of 16%. A minimum 13 foot wide natural buffer located along the crown project boundary adjacent to Rated Drive is in direct response to comments we heard about preserving significant tree growth in that area and that it'd be natural. And that there'd be some separation between the Rated Drive folks backyards and our project boundary. And so we've also offered a six foot fence but in installing that fence no tree larger than six inches shall be removed for the construction of the fence. So that area will not only have the 13 foot natural buffer, it will have a fence, it will have preservation of existing large growth trees and it will be a total of the 20 foot project boundary with that we're committing to for the entire property. Next slide please. The new proffers also include the extension of utilities and that these three new architectural commitments that we're able to offer in direct response to the comments in your packet from the planning commission. Variation in home appearance, new units shall have a front facing the able architectural feature and transparent windows or decorative card well shall be included on all garage doors. That was in direct response to the comments we heard about trying to avoid monotony and trying to provide interest as you look down the street and avoid just the same facade. Next slide please. Stormwater and drainage and we know those are always a concern. So we've provided this topography map showing how the drainage works interior to the site. So none of our topography causes us to drain offsite all into stormwater control devices that will be maintained through a restrictive covenants for this property owners association. And then the only area that does have a stream buffer along the edge, also is adjacent to the Windsford at the park where they have their existing stream buffer. Next slide please. For these reasons and with these additional commitments are the future land use map amendment satisfies your criteria and it's consistent with the points raised in the staff report, the intent goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan compatible with that transition of density and use that I described from Northwest to Southeast and these additional commitments will not create a substantial adverse impact to the adjacent residents. Next slide please. It also meets the intent of the UDO and that the staff has found it's consistent with the comprehensive plan and with these additional commitments we believe it would put the concerns of the planning commission in consistency with those plans as well. Next slide please. The annexation is contiguous to the jurisdiction limits and as Ms. Suneck noted will be revenue positive fallen in the annexation. And finally the side that this request is in some consistent with the comprehensive plan relates to the concern raised and we'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Ms. Schwedler. I think Madam Clerk, did you just make the, did you just let me know they're 10 minutes? Yes, sir. Thank you. Ms. Schwedler, I'll give you additional time if you want to make a few more comments. It's okay. We can give you and the opponents time of the time. Do you have any more comments you'd like to make? Just briefly note that we understand the concerns with additional density. We believe we're doing that in a manner that's consistent with the existing development pattern in this area and filling in continuing that pattern. I know that with respect to the relationship between transit and density is an important metric for Durham and we're providing that additional right away so that we will facilitate future expansions if that ridership gets to a level where the transit is extended. There is a transit service within a mile of the site. Thank you, Ms. Schwedler. All right, we have now heard from the proponents. Let me just ask, is there anyone else who is here who's a proponent of this project that would like to be heard at this time? If so, if you would make yourself known in the chat or by raising your virtual hand. All right, I don't believe that we have and so now we're gonna move to people who have registered as opponents and I see there are three people that have signed up on this item, Spencer Byers, Jeff Mazev and Mary Cooper and I believe as well that there's at least one person with a question in the chat whose name is Brad Brogue. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right and Mr. Brogue will get to your question in a little bit. But first I'm gonna ask, is there anyone else that I have not mentioned who is also would like to speak to this item? And then we'll get to those speakers and we'll make sure that if there's anyone else if you would make yourself known in the chat that would be great. And I see a question from Will Milligan which Will will get to as well. Mr. Mayor, Camille Hamlet would like to speak. Camille Hamlet, all right. Yes. Okay, what I'm gonna do is this, I'm gonna give each of the people, I'm not sure if Ms. Hamlet or Mr. Brogue are considering themselves opponents or proponents under this high tech format. It's a little harder for all those things but let me do this. I'm gonna ask each of the people who first signed up as opponents, I'm gonna ask them to speak in order and I'm gonna give them each three minutes and I'm gonna begin with Spencer Byers. Mr. Byers, are you here and can you make yourself heard? Spencer Byers. Is he, have you unmuted him, Madam Clerk? I do not see him in the attendee list. I see. All right, I agree, I don't either. All right, then we'll move on to Jeff Mazev. I know Mr. Mazev was here earlier and I expect still is. Is Mr. Mazev here? And Mr. Mayor, there's a question from Will Milligan as well? Yeah, I got him. I mentioned that earlier and I'll get to that. We're gonna do this in order. Mr. Mazev, are you still with us? I don't believe Mr. Mazev is with us. I think he maybe was here for the previous time. All right, and then we'll move to Mary Cooper. Yes, sir, I'm here. Thank you, Ms. Cooper, welcome. And you have three minutes. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, council members, my name is Mary Cooper. I'm in the property at 1422 Ellis Road with my husband and my daughter lives there. She's lived there for five years now and I must say that the look of that neighborhood has changed considerably since the property was purchased. With these large mega developments of single family homes, the traffic is worse, which of course is to be expected. The storm water drain off is worse. The environmental stress is worse. Ellis Road is a well-traveled road and now getting out onto that road, left or right, takes some time. You're talking about adding 199 units to that area and I can't imagine what that's gonna be like. This is a neighborhood, a single family homes on single plots of land that's part of the history of Durham and it seems to me that you're changing that by squishing them out with these mega developments. I hate to see that happen. My daughter would like to buy this property from us and live there, but the outcome of this may indeed just determine what she does. My career before I retired was in public health and I worry about the number of people, the environmental impact, the air quality, the cars, the sewage, the storm water drain off, all of those things, not just from this development, but there's one behind. There's a number down Ellis Road. It obviously is the new way of development in Durham and I'm as a property owner and very opposed to it and I appreciate you letting me have a say here at this public hearing. Ms. Cooper, thank you. You raised a number of issues and once we have heard from the other speakers, we will ask questions about those issues and make sure that your concerns are addressed. Thank you. And thank you for being here. The next person that I'm gonna call on is Brad Brogue and Mr. Brogue. Sorry if I'm not pronouncing your name correctly. Welcome and you also have three minutes. Thank you, Mayor and thank you council members. I'm not opposed to development even though I live on Rated Drive. I do appreciate that the developers have had multiple town meetings and they have listened to our feedback and they have made improvements that they have. One point I would like to clarify is that currently the public transportation in this area isn't all that great. So while there are bus stops about a mile away, it's a mile away on a single lane road with for the most part no shoulder and no sidewalks. So I wouldn't exactly call Ellis a walkable street by any means. And especially when you're heading north towards downtown Durham, you need to turn left onto Riddle Road, which that first section of Riddle Road has even less of a shoulder and less of a sidewalk and it's not uncommon to see people walking on it to get to the bus stop. So with this being the third or fourth fairly large development within this area in the last couple of years, I'm curious what the city intends on doing to make sure that people have safe access to public transportation in this area. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Brogue. And again, we'll also ask someone to address your comments in a moment. Thank you very much for being here. And now we'll ask Camille Hamlet. Is Camille Hamlet available? And Ms. Hamlet, I believe you're up and can you unmute yourself? Hi, yes, I believe I'm muted. Yes, and you have three minutes, welcome. Thank you very much. And I also don't really take a position on this. I just wanted to raise a couple of issues. We own 132 Sherman Court at Winsford at the park and our daughter lives there. I wanted to raise the issue of additional parking spots since there will be so many single car garages and therefore the driveways are very narrow and we already have this problem at Winsford and they have less, I believe it's less than 40% as single driveways. And there is overflow parking at Winsford and I just wanna make sure that there's going to be enough at this in this new development. And again, we have not seen what the development could look like, so that's why I'm just raising the issue because I have not seen anything yet. The second thing I wanted to raise is that we already have an issue on Torpoint and Zante Current with speeding up and down. And unfortunately that would be residents or people visiting residents or other lots of food service people right now, but it's always been an issue, not just during COVID. So we've already been talking about asking to have studies done, whether that means putting in extra stop signs or whatever, but this is an issue that's only going to get worse since we will have a cut through at both the ends of Zante and Torpoint. So that is also just what I wanted to raise. And again, I mentioned in my chat, I can take this up with Transportation Board. I live right around the corner and I've already spoken with Transportation Board about some speeding in the neighborhood I currently live in. So I am quite friendly with Transportation Board right now. And very wonderful. Good. Ms. Hamlet, thank you for those comments. We'll also ask that they be addressed. Normally if we were in these public hearings, I would try to get these addressed kind of one at a time, but because of the technology and getting people on and off, I'm going to try to kind of group down and we'll see how that goes. But I appreciate your comments. Thank you for being here and we'll have them addressed today. And I believe Will Milligan, Mr. Milligan, I see that you have a question, but I also see that you're here. And if you would like to go ahead and speak, I'd like to have you and you have three minutes and you need to unmute yourself. Yeah. Great, thank you. I'd like to echo some of the other comments regarding the Ellis Road and my question was more related to the improvements on Ellis Road being one lane each way and the turn lane. And I saw that slide and the bike lane, which would be in addition, that would be welcomed with this new development. So curious how far is that just a small little stretch of Ellis Road being proposed with this development and how far north and south on Ellis Road the improvements are proposed for. Thank you very much, Mr. Milligan. And we'll have those questions addressed in a moment. I'm now going to ask if there's anyone else that would like to be heard on this item. I don't see anyone else for item 45. Mr. Mayor. Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Flagler would like to speak to item 45. Oh, great. Can you make Mr. Flagler available to be heard? Okay. Mr. Flagler, are you with us? Yes, I am. Great, welcome. We're glad to have you and you have three minutes. Okay, great. My first question, I guess my questions are more of what are the plans for Hickory Nut Drive because coming down at Cook Road you turn into Hickory Nut Drive and it goes into a dead end. And it ends right there at the dead end and there's a big power supply that's stored right there. And I know they're building behind it and I know, I think there's a barrier so I just kind of wanted to clarify a little more about what's going on behind that property because it was something that we kind of had a barrier but now the barrier is about to disappear so it's just kind of wanted to get a little more information about what's going on there. Just to make sure I understand, Mr. Flagler, your concern is what will happen on Hickory Nut Drive itself. Yes. Okay, great. I've made a note of that and we'll get that addressed in a moment. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on item 45? All right, thank you all. I'm gonna now take some of these questions and address them to staff and we'll, if I miss any, we'll be happy to hear from the folks that asked them if I did. I'm gonna begin with several that had to do with transit walkability. Mr. Milligan asked about the improvements, how far down the traffic improvements would go on Ellis North and South on Ellis. Mr. Brogue asked about any planned improvements along Ellis Road in terms of walkability. So why don't we start with those related questions? And I'll ask, I think Mr. Judge is here. Maybe he can help us with some of those. Yes, Bill Judge, transportation. The internally improvements are just limited to the proposed intersection at this development. So it would be basically for the length of the turn lane, which is typically around 100 feet of full length storage plus the tapers on either end. So that would be in terms of the exhibit that the applicant illustrated with the turn lane. That would be the full length widening, but then they are also committing to do the five foot of additional asphalt for the full frontage of the site. So it's a great lane. Thank you, Mr. Judge. And Mr. Judge, you may not know this and we may need to get back to Mr. Brogue, but he mentioned that we know this to be true that Ellis Road is not very walkable. There's no, do you know if they're on the bike walk plan or where they might be? I do not know where it ranked in the bike walk. I'm sure it was evaluated given the growth in density at least at the time. There were probably higher priorities within the city. This is a very common problem that we have in many, many locations with these old state NCDOT maintained roads. Very expensive to widen as you know. Yes, Mr. Brogue, we have a bike walks plan that has been developed by our staff. And if you will email one of us, we will try to find out where Ellis Road might be on that plan. We, as you know, we spend a lot of money on sidewalks. We're in the middle of a $25 million sidewalk expenditure plan and it's not nearly doing the job that we need to do to make our streets walkable. And so I want to sympathize with you. But if you let us know, we can see if and where Ellis Road is on that plan. Unfortunately, we have a lot of roads like the one you described. Yep, understood, thank you. And I appreciate it. Please don't hesitate to just send us an email and we'll try to find that out. I wish it was otherwise. Yeah. There's also the, I'll just speak to the transit question. Also that Mr. Brogue asked, we are spending constantly more money on transit. We're spending about $1.8 million in transit more than last year of city tax money just to keep our current transit system at its current level. There are some improvements being made and we're fortunate that the transit fund, the sales tax transit fund that voters voted for in 2011 is going to be accessed this year through a vote of the county commission working with our staff to create transit emphasis corridors. Unfortunately, one of them is not Ellis Road, but for example, Holloway Street, Faddle Street, there are these other transit emphasis quarters where we're really going to be trying to improve the ability to move transit through there and also be increasing the frequency. So there's a lot of work being done on transit, but just as we are not where we'd like to be on sidewalks, we've got a long way to go on transit as well. We have about 20,000 boardings every day on our transit system and we have a lot of work still to do to improve it as we wish we could. I'll also just add colleagues that our transit service is now going back to full service and I wanna appreciate our transportation department here in this era of COVID-19 making that happen and I'm not sure if it's happened already or very soon and our ridership I understand is back up to about 60%. Much higher than our neighboring communities, which is good, but a lot of work has been done by our staff. I wanna also, Mr. Flagler asked the question about hickory nut drive. And if I could hear from either staff or the applicant about hickory nut drive and whether or not and what effects this will have on hickory nut drive. Mr. Mayor, I may ask Tim Cybers to speak. He's a little more familiar with some of the research and history. There is an issue with connecting it normally. Our desire would be to make a street connection there, but there are some obstacles that are likely to prevent that. I remember there was an attachment that showed an illustration of a problem there. So Mr. Cybers, do you wanna speak on that? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. Thank you, Bill Judge. So at the end of hickory nut drive, there's an existing pump station that serves the residents, the residential properties on hickory nut drive. It serves about a dozen properties. Our intent would be to make that connection and remove that pump station. However, that is located in a spike strip. There is a small sliver of land that is between the right-of-way and our project limits. Pulty Helms has been working with their attorneys to try to determine who still owns that land. It's that piece of land is about the size of a parking space and a half, if you will. And currently they're up to about six or seven owners on that little tiny piece of land. So we're working through that, which is why we've provided the text commitment that if that connection cannot be made, we'll be extending utilities to that point. So that pump station can come offline and be extended in the future. Thank you, Mr. Syvers. Let me ask Mr. Flagler. Mr. Flagler, did that address your concerns? Was that what you were asking about? Yes. Is there gonna be a, I guess there's a 10 foot or a 13 foot barrier that's gonna be there of trees as well? I'll ask either staff or the applicant to address themselves to that. So along the residents of Hickory Nut Drive, the one slide that was presented earlier did show a fence. So the residents that abut our property directly, directly adjacent to our property will have that six foot fence, as well as the 20 foot buffer that was mentioned earlier as a text and graphic commit. Thank you, Mr. Syvers. And thank you, Mr. Flagler. Do you have any other questions, Mr. Flagler? No, I don't. Thank you. Thank you very much. There were questions also from Ms. Hamlet. I see one of them was addressed in the chat by Mr. Judge about contacting Cecilia Cardin with the Durham Department of Transportation about speeding concerns. And Ms. Hamlet, sounds like you may have already done that. But I think that's important to do. As you may or may not know, our department, our transportation department makes judgments about the necessity of various kinds of physical barriers, potential physical barriers to speeding, measures that against the need for transit or emergency vehicles to get through. And this is a work that they do based on data. And so I urge you to do that, which would be great. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I will do that. All right. And Ms. Hamlet, you also asked about parking spots and I wanna ask the applicant to address themselves to that question, either Ms. Schwedler or Mr. Syvers. I think, go ahead. Sorry about that. That kind of speaking at the same time there. This is Tim Syvers. Yes, so the parking spaces will for the single fam or I'm sorry, the townhomes for the single garages will have the garage and the parking driveway, which will allow two spaces for that unit. We do know that a lot of residents don't necessarily use that garage for parking, which is I believe the concern of the neighbor. So we'll also have some visitor parking throughout the development. Thank you very much. And thank you for the question Ms. Hamlet. I also wanna say that Mr. Brogue, if you look at the chat and see the person as a contact with the Durham Department of Transportation for more information about where Alice Rudd ranked on the bike walk plan. And thank you for Mr. Judge for providing that. All right. And then we had concerns raised from Ms. Cooper about the changing character of the area, traffic concerns and the traffic concerns being adding a lot of traffic onto Alice Rudd and environments. And so I would like to know if the applicant would like to address themselves to that. Yes, we would, this is Jamie Schwether. You know, we respect the question and I know it's a common theme that we're seeing. I think I'd like to address it specifically to this project and then kind of the larger area that Ms. Cooper mentioned. So what we're offering has been reviewed by transportation is consistent with the impacts of this particular development. And so we're offering to improve the section of turn lane by our site access because that's where most of the staging and kind of waiting in the middle of Ellis Road would occur as people are trying to navigate into the site to the West or the East. It'll have the added benefit of when a person is doing that today and trying to turn into their single family home driveway. There is no stopping area or staging area. So people would back up on Ellis Road and this provides a way for that through traffic to come through. We're also, I think this addresses Mr. Farrington's point as well is that there has been some development in this area over time and it sounds like there are some challenges with accessing transit or walking and what we're doing with this is we're doing our part on the portion of Ellis Road that we impact. So we are providing the improvements along the boundaries of our site and we're following in the footsteps of what the other developments have done along that area and that corridor too, which is what your UDO encourages and requires that we do sidewalk adjacent to our site, the Atwater Project does sidewalk adjacent to their site and so on so that as the development occurs in this area, we're each doing our part to improve the infrastructure. And while I appreciate how that has changed the nature of this area over time, what it does is on a macro scale, it allows the developer to not only take the burden off of the immediate area, but it allows them to make improvements that the city would otherwise have to make. So if the developer doesn't do these improvements, eventually this would become a capital improvement project or the bond that you mentioned. And so as each development comes through and does the part that it is required due to offset its traffic mitigations, we can help ease that traffic concern in this area and so that's what our commitments are designed to do. Thank you, Ms. Schwedler. Ms. Cooper, I appreciated your comments as well. I'm gonna address them a little while as well because I know that you had some other general comments. All right, colleagues, I think that I have tried to get all of the, or most of the ones that I know, the questions that we heard address and I hope that I have. And now I'm gonna ask, is there anyone else that has not been heard who would like to be heard on the side? This is a public hearing item. Is there anyone else who has not been heard who would like to be heard? Okay. Now I'm gonna ask if there are any questions or comments by members of the council for staff or the of the applicant. Let me, let me, I'm gonna start with one. I would just wanna say to Mr. Severs and Ms. Schwedler, two very respected members of our development community who come before us a lot and who I have a lot of confidence in and you all do a really good job. But I do wanna express my disappointment in this, the way this process is played out. You all have come to us and you've made a lot of really good proffers but it's really not ideal for that to happen at this stage. It's so much better to have that happen at the planning commission. I understand where, you know, you go to the planning commission and you've got a few things that you need to bring to us because you heard from the planning commission or from residents who are at the planning commission and you add one or two proffers. But to have the 12 nothing about the planning commission then to come to us with what I think are a series of excellent proffers that attempt to meet those objections and I think largely do meet those objections. I have one or two I'm still concerned about but I'll talk about in a minute but I just wanna say that that's not ideal and it's something that it's far less than ideal and it puts us in a difficult position I think because we have to make this decision, absent the advice of the planning commission which you all chose not to accept a, you didn't wanna delay there. You wanted to come directly to us. You got a 12 nothing vote against you and now you've come to us with all these proffers. So I just, I appreciate any comments that you might have on that but I just wanna just say that this is really not the best way. This is not the process we want. Mr. Mayor, thank you. This is Jamie Schwaither. Thank you for this comments and we recognize that this is not the ideal path for cases in general. This case has been challenging because this landowner has been trying to sell, cannot maintain the property. All the family members have moved on and filed this case back in late 2018. And it was not a developer, the landowners of a family and struggled with what conditions could be added that wouldn't prevent them from being able to sell the property. And that's a challenge of course for people who are not developers by nature. And so we worked hard to try to offer commitments earlier in the process and we weren't successful in adding them early enough. And when Polti was able to step into the picture relatively recently and able to have that more certainty we were able to make those commitments. So we recognize that this is a difficult position that we don't intend to put you all in again and it wasn't by design but it was the nature of this property owner trying to make reasonable use of their property and positioning it for sale which they've been able to do now. So I appreciate you noting that the comments, our intent was to satisfy the comments that we heard and to follow the instruction and the authority that we had at the time. And we apologize if that's put you in a very difficult position. Thank you for those comments, Ms. Schweidler. All right, colleagues, questions and comments for the applicant or staff. Council Member Rees. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Ms. Schweidler, did you have an opportunity to get any feedback from the planning commissioners on the significantly revised proposal that's before us today? Council Member Rees, we did send these commitments back to the planning commission. We did not receive, I did not receive any feedback. I'll check, I'm checking with the team to see if they have but going into the meeting today, none of us had received any feedback from them. And that was, we sent them to the planning commission after the staff had had chance to review them as well. And if it would make the council feel more comfortable having the official input from planning commission we're willing to do that. I don't want to suggest that that would be as a matter of course, because I think this case just is a, it's just taken a different path, quite frankly. But if that is a major stumbling block to feeling comfortable moving forward, we'd be happy to try to get more meaningful feedback from the planning commission and demonstrate how we've hopefully met their objectives with these new commitments. I appreciate that. I guess I just want to go a couple of steps further than the mayor did in his remarks about this to say that for a resident who lives near this proposed rezoning and annexation, understanding the choice before the city council today is incredibly difficult. Typically that's one of the reasons we have a planning commission process is to work out these kinds of details such that when the project arrives on our agenda residents can pull up that agenda, look at the attachments, read what's being proposed and determine whether or not it's in their best interest to come forward and talk to us about their perspective on it. That's especially true, as I said, for folks who live near this particular case. It would have been impossible for a neighbor, one of the neighbors of this proposed project, to know the different proposed commitments that have been made on this project since the planning commission. And so we face the burden now of trying to anticipate what those concerns are would be. And putting myself in the shoes of someone who lives around the corner from this location, given that the planning commission recommended denial unanimously, given that nothing that the additional committed elements that you've made us aware of today were not apparently attached to the agenda and had to be emailed to us during this presentation. I don't see how this process is a meaningful, like this public hearing is a meaningful exercise and obtaining real public comment on this project. I appreciate the folks who were opposed with them, even though they got a zero, 12-mile planning commission logged in today and tell us again how they don't like it. But that is troubling to me, just from a transparency public engagement perspective, that is difficult. And that puts aside the fact that we now are in the same position we were in last week, trying to make sense of a significant and substantial number of new commitments in the face of the planning commission's rejection of the project. And it, already last week, we had a member of the community complaining that this council approved a project that was rejected unanimously at the planning commission. And of course, if we approved, this council approved a very different project than was rejected unanimously at the planning commission. But trying to help people understand that is very, very difficult under these situations. Mr. Redler, I understand you were acting at the behest of your client, the owner, at the planning commission when you were offered a delay by Commissioner Miller and you were directed to reject that delay and move to a vote right then. And you got a vote right then. But let's also remember that while the owner is certainly trying to, as you said, position the property for sale, they could have sold it at any time before the planning commission, before initiating this process. Obviously the reason for going through this process is to increase the underlying value of the asset before sale. And so I appreciate that the owners may have been in a difficult situation. They are individuals, but they made choices about how to proceed in this process. And so all of that is to say I'm very impressed by the nature of the committed elements that you're coming forward with today. I think it does address to a great extent many of the specific concern raised by the planning commissioners, especially Commissioner Miller, but also many other, every other planning commissioner had oxygen concerns. But I guess the process question is one that I'm struggling with right now, because like I said, if I lived around the corner from this unless I was tuned into this meeting, I wouldn't have known about some of these elements and that's trouble. So that's what I wanted to say about that. I'll come back again with some conversation about the merits if we get there. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. If I could just respond to that quickly because I do wanna make it very, very clear. We had three neighborhood meetings. We had one of those meetings last week where we shared all of these conditions with the neighbors. It was very well attended by Winsford at the park and Rada Drive. Many of the same people came to all three meetings. Many of those people came to the planning commission and raised the exact same questions that the planning commission that they raised here tonight. You heard about traffic calming. That's been brought up in each of the meetings and we explained what the city's process is for traffic calming and then we added the traffic calming measures to our plan. So I wanna be very, very clear that we have been completely above board and noticing the meetings. The meetings have been well attended. We've received real feedback and real questions and there's been plenty of opportunity for that. So this is not a situation where the public has been shut out of that process. I fully understand the concern with the changes since the planning commission and that now it is a known buyer case that has the ability to add more certainty that it just wasn't available at planning commission. I am more than happy if Mr. Young or Ms. Stennyak wants to direct us on the procedure. We're more than happy to table that case and take it back to planning commission for a formal review and another public hearing if that would make the council more comfortable and we have no issue with that. Ms. Shredler, I wanted to apologize. I had not put the math together that that third community neighborhood meeting happened this last week. And that is certainly helpful and I apologize if I gave the impression that it didn't happen. I hadn't put the dates together. I apologize. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. I'm gonna call on Council Member Caballero. She's had her hand up for a while and then I'm going to discuss this a little bit with our planning staff. Go ahead, Council Member. Thank you. I just wanted to come in. I said this last week because it is a similar predicament at least last week. Last week we have a builder in front of us. Last week that was not even what we had and we were put, same thing, I think it was a unanimous vote on the Hebron development and I voted yes for that one. I plan on voting yes for this one. And I think I tried to raise this last week and I think I fumbled quite a bit. This is our process. If we want a different process, it's our job to make it a different process. If we want to put in rules about, okay, if there's a unanimous vote at planning commission that cannot proceed, it cannot go back to planning then that's our job to do that. I don't necessarily like what we have in front of us. I hear everyone's concerns. I think it does put Council in the predicament but then I think that we have to change the rules because I think the developers up to a point are following the rules. Maybe we don't like the way that they have weaved themselves through the process or created potentially it's a loophole but then it's our job to tighten it or it's our planning staff's job to tighten it. And so I just want to say that very loudly and clearly. Additionally, we have to create a process for development and planning. We all say we need affordable housing and we need a process as streamlined as possible because at the end result of all development is that the consumer price on these goods goes up the more owner is the processes. So if we are committed to doing affordable housing if we're committed to actually allowing density and saying the thing that we've all said we are interested in doing again the processes that we create as a city have to make it easier for developers to get through. That does not mean we should not we should have lax environmental regulation that does not mean we should have lax community involvement but I am concerned I am married to an architect I see what it costs on the other side when our processes aren't fluid and streamlined and so I also want to acknowledge that. Thank you very much Council Member. Mr. Young, you heard, we'll go back to Council a minute but you heard Ms. Schwedler's statement. Do you want to have any comments on that or Ms. Sonia? Sure, thank you Mr. Mayor, members of Council. As you're I think well aware the Planning Commission has the authority to delay or defer a case up to 90 days from its first hearing and the intent of that authority being granted to them was that they would exercise their discretion on cases they feel like they need to see again to schedule it at a later date. In this instance and it has been historical practice in my 12 years with the department that if the applicant asks for a vote the Planning Commission has honored that request and voted right there and then. My opinion is that there is current, there's sufficient authority for the Planning Commission if they feel like they need to see a case again to just go ahead and continue it. The only alternative would be and some jurisdictions do this would be to require two hearings by the Planning Commission to the second hearing to see if the concerns have been addressed. I would, I certainly share the concerns that Council Member Caballero just articulated very well that it's 90% of the cases the applicant is willing to let the Planning Commission have a second or third review of an item if it's necessary. So I hope that's and certainly in this case if you all wish for it to return to them we can ask them to hear it again, no question. But so I hope I've shared some ideas on this issue going forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, Council Members are the comments. Council Member Freeman and then Council Member Middleton. Thank you Mayor Schull. I appreciate the comments and staff feedback. I honestly had an initial question around the utility connection first and then I also just wanted to follow up on the comments that there were three I just wanted to get clarity. There were three attendees and I'm assuming Ms. Swindler was talking about a different event where there was complete or a great engagement of residents I guess in the community attending an event or a public meeting because I don't think that three is a good number. And then also just noting that this issue I just want to correct Council Member Caballero that was not that Hebron Road was not a unanimous vote. I actually voted no. And just to be clear this is not just about developers this is by actual residents that live in the neighborhoods and the costs to them as the residents there as their taxes increases because the transportation aspect has not been addressed or the flooding aspect has not been addressed. And so I appreciate Council Member Reese being very clear and stating like when we go through this process the changes are I mean we can all manage them in our minds and here and see what they are. But the problem is that the public still needs to be able to weigh in. And so if they're not on this call at three o'clock in the afternoon or on the Zoom call at three o'clock in the afternoon to make a comment we don't hear from them and that's counted as public engagement or public hearing and it doesn't seem fair. And so as I mentioned in the previous in that Hebron Road case I felt like because it was a predominantly black and brown community the engagement wasn't as organized and you didn't see what you saw in an olive branch case. And so we acknowledge when folks come with a presentation in there as residents they come with presentations like they are architects and then we acknowledge the changes and essentially vote with the residents when they're organized and we don't when they're not. And so consistently I voted no acknowledging that there needs to be more work done and making sure that the people are involved in the conversation that we're addressing their issues around transportation and actual flooding issues, flooding mitigation because they're consistently the issues that are rising and as you push for more density in areas that are not infrastructurally ready the problems are gonna raise they're gonna raise taxes for the folks around it because the cost is gonna be there for us to have to increase the number of projects that are in the community in the CIP. And so I don't know that this conversation around whether it's just making sure that the process is clear just for developers is the extent of it. It's also clear for the people that live in that community that will have to pay the taxes for however long they own the property. There's so many dynamics in this conversation I would appreciate a pause whether it's just a week or what have you just to get some feedback because I think it is important for people to be able to see especially when it's around the corner from your house what the impact will be in to ask the questions because I do not feel like a three o'clock in the afternoon even a five o'clock in the afternoon council meeting is a sufficient in the context of how we're having them right now. And so I just wanna be sure that I state that and just noting that I would like to get a followup on the utility connection that was not mentioned at all. Well, why don't we ask why don't you ask that question now, council member we'll get that and then I'll get to council meeting. What's your question around the utilities? So I know that in a conversation with, I believe with I'm gonna say the wrong group because I went to the different case with the developer there was a conversation around having looking at the utilities as a utilities connection for the community ahead as a benefit to those folks who live in the community already and I noted that there were some limitations around the corner edge of the property and so I just wanted to make sure that those both were addressed because I didn't hear it. I think that that was something you've already addressed but do you wanna address that again Ms. Schwedler and Mr. Severs? Sure, could you repeat the second point that you made councilman Freeman? Let's make it sure that you do actually voice the context of the conversation around that corner edge of the property on the south side. Yes, well, thank you for those comments and I do wanna be clear and I'm sorry if I misspoke. We had three separate neighborhood meetings. Each meeting was attended by at least a dozen people and each of those meetings were most of the same dozen people that were all notified under the UDOS requirements and all live in the immediate area. Most of them were from Windsford at the park and from Raida Drive, some from the apartment community to the east and some from Hickory Nut Drive. And so there was a lot of community engagement in the fact that these utility questions have come up. We've tried to explain that there's some uncertainty there because of the spite strip and unless we get control of that strip, we won't make that vehicular connection to Hickory Nut Drive but we are making sure to extend the utilities to that area so that if that extension is made that we would be able to take that pump station offline. It only serves those, I think 12 lots or so on Hickory Nut Drive and that those folks could connect to our utility extensions that we would be providing on our site. And so it's another example of kind of doing your part in developing the land and extending the utilities, extending the road infrastructure, connecting to existing communities so that they can take part in the upgrades that you're paying for on the developer's own dime, on the builder's own dime and allowing those existing residents to simply hook in. And so it does take a pressure off of the city resources and off existing taxpayers to an extent because you're adding additional facilities and adding new customers so that that burden is shared equally but we did have a lot of comments from the neighbors that echo a lot of what you've heard today. And I think even those who signed up in opposition were very consistent throughout this process. They signed up in opposition, but they told you I'm not adamantly against this project. I just have several questions. And so I don't think that many of those are due to the fact of kind of holding anything back. We've shown the development plan at each time. It's just there's some uncertainties inherent in the development process as to whether the road connection will be made but we've provided two alternatives of whether it is made, will extend and if it's not made that fence and the boundary buffers will be installed. So either way we've tried to mitigate their concerns and taken care of that. I would note that nobody has raised stormwater issues at the community meetings is that it's existing. It's not an existing problem that we're aware of but the slide we showed showed you that all of our stormwater because of the topography drains onto our site. It doesn't drain off to others except for that one little area to the bottom at Winsford at the park and that area is an existing stream buffer. So we can't alter that. That has to stay a protected buffer and it drains onto a stream buffer at Winsford on the park. So they can't alter it either. That is part of their common property. And so because they're a townhome development as well both developments will have restrictive covenants and we'll have to follow the city's rules on stormwater. The city has requirements that the stormwater would be inspected annually and those inspection reports be turned over to the city and all of that will have to be followed throughout. So I don't think it's an issue on this particular site. I do recognize that existing developments throughout the city might have that issue but I don't think that that is one that's impacting either existing or new residents with this particular development. Thank you, Ms. Schwedler. Councilmember Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon to colleagues and to all who are watching. I wanna, first I wanna thank the mayor for mentioning something about the reputation that Tim and Ms. Schwedler enjoy in front of us. When I was a kid, my dad used to say, all you have boy is your name. I didn't really understand what he meant during that time but he was talking about your reputation. Money comes and goes, belonging has come and go but your credibility is all that you really have. So and Tim and Ms. Schwedler enjoyed quite a bit of it with this front of this council and the city and the work they've been doing. So I'm gonna thank you, Mr. Mayor and I wanna associate myself with those comments. Also wanna thank Councilor Reese really in an uncanny kind of way just really in a comprehensive way this captured my concerns. Some of my concerns regarding process, not talk to merit to the minute but just a process. And full disclosure, Tim, when you were doing your due diligence and we met, I said to you, you probably need to be prepared. You need to be prepared today to talk about the things that happened subsequent to the planning commission vote and all of the profits and be prepared to defend and make a case for them. And alas, here we are precisely because of the process of concerns and I wanna associate myself with Councilor Reese's comments. One, it's not the council's job. It's not our job to make a deal more lucrative for a private citizen or a resident and selling their property either before the fact or during or after the fact. That's not our job. Folk are free to make whatever decisions they wanna make and roll the dice and take their chances and however it turns out, it turns out but it's not our job to affirm that. Granting these type of changes and votes are in many ways a privilege to someone who's asking and to an applicant. So that's not our job and I wanna associate myself with those comments. Also, I'm really struck by Councilor Reese's observations about the ability for folk to participate in the process which is something that is absolutely a hallmark of my concerns for people. Developers, great people, they tend to be wealthy. They have the ability to hire advocates and lawyers. And oftentimes really the only final line or arbiter or advocate I should say that our residents and citizens have in matters is this council, they look to us to put ourself in their position and to be that voice, that person of influence, that person of power. Oftentimes when they're dealing with folk who have the resources to hire advocates. So I really am struck by the exercise in putting myself in the position of a person who lives around the corner from this development who just with today have to engage without the benefit of seeing attached materials. With that said, again, I go back to my original point that you enjoy, the applicant enjoys incredible reputation. You got a good record with us which is what makes this not troubling, but it's a challenge. So I wanna associate myself with concerns about process. The proffers subsequent to the Planning Commission, Planning Commission, I find impressive and they do arrest well with me. And I think that they do or would address the concerns of the Planning Commission but they should have been presented at the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission should have had an opportunity to weigh those, I think. And they didn't, well, I didn't seem to have a builder at the time, but they didn't because the applicant, the owner made a choice to press the issue of a vote then rather than take the opportunity to work on the proffers, the plan. I'm also struck by Commissioner Miller's comments regarding the size of this particular track and the lack of diversity in the housing on it. And that is a choice that we can make in terms of granting these types of development choices. So I still have to say that on the merits of the proffers since the Planning Commission, this would be a project that I would vote for moving forward but I am deeply struck by Councilor Reese's observations about process and if there were a way to get it back before the Planning Commission and have another look as they offered to begin with, I certainly would have a problem with that as well. But I look forward to further discussions perhaps even to some of the substantive matters of the actual development plan but I did wanna go on record with my concerns about that and I thank Councilor Reese, thank Councilor Caballero as well for her observations. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much. All right. I'm gonna say to the applicant, you've heard from all this, I guess, except for the Mayor Pro Tem, she hasn't tipped her hand. Maybe we haven't all tipped our hands exactly but I think that we could certainly vote on this tonight. We could certainly, if you would like this to the applicant to go back to the Planning Commission, I can ask Mr. Young or Ms. Sunyak about the way to make that happen, so can we hear from you all about your thoughts? Did you wanna motion back to the Planning Commission? All right, let's first hear from the applicant about their preference and then we'll hear from staff and then we'll see what we need to do. This is Jamie Schweder. Thank you all for your comments and I appreciate you recognizing Tim and I in them. It does mean a significant amount of a deal to both of us. I would say that if the process, if you feel that voting for, you can't support the project due to the process, we will absolutely ask to go back to the Planning Commission and show them the new proffers. Those proffers were shared with staff and I'm not sure why they weren't attached but we did cover them last week as best we could with Council and certainly with Planning Commission by email and then all of the neighbors. So I just wanna make sure that that is clear because I think I know I speak for Tim when I say our integrity is very important to us and we have not deliberately tried to hide anything from those neighbors. No one is questioning your integrity. Let me just be real clear about that. Thank you. That's not an issue. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We will absolutely, if there's a path to go back to the Planning Commission and receive a formal vote, we will absolutely agree to that or volunteer for that at the Council's pleasure. Let me just tell you, I think that Council Member Caballero raised a really important point and I normally, and I am very much in that camp and I normally vote along those lines. The reason that I think of this as exceptional is the very large number of very significant proppers that were never reviewed by the Planning Commission. I understand if a couple of them, if you make a couple of changes or three changes and come to us, but I know I said that before but I just wanna double down on that because I agree that we want to make this process easy but in this case for me, I'll just say that because of the number and the significance of these proppers, it's troubling as some of my colleagues have said. So I think that there's a majority of the Council and I'll just say I think this, it would prefer that this go back to the Planning Commission. I'm gonna ask Mr. Young or Ms. Sonnyak if they could comment on the best way to. Yeah, good evening. Again, Mr. Mayor and Members Council, Pat Young with the Planning Department. So since the Planning Commission has taken final action on this item, there would need to I think be, and I heard Ms. Schwedler allude to this, a request by the applicant to return to Planning Commission. And we could, I think with just that affirmative request, we could ask for it to be referred back to the administration essentially at this point. If the applicant chooses that, we cannot at this moment promise a Planning Commission date because of the COVID pandemic. We have gotten quite backed up on those. We will certainly make every effort to get it on as early a meeting as possible. Ms. Sonnyak may be able to comment on that. But if the applicant voluntarily agrees to have it go back to them, I would then ask that it be referred back to the administration. And we'll take it to the Planning Commission and then bring it forward after that hearing per normal procedure. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Sonnyak, do you want to comment on the potential scheduling? If such a thing were to occur? Sure. Well, right now we're scheduling items up until the August Planning Commission date that agenda is being set right now. So can't guarantee that they would be heard until September. That probably would be more likely. And to comment with respect to the proffers, the series of proffers, a number of them were presented and chaired at the Planning Commission. And so the Planning Commission did hear a good variety of the proffers at that time. The more recent ones that we have reviewed and found to be acceptable, those are the ones that I think are in question in terms of the Planning Commission and the public not having a full picture. Despite what I understand as the applicant, including the members of the community and getting the input from them on creating the proffers or creating the language. But I think those are the proffers that are in question. Agreed. Thank you, Ms. Sonnyak. All right, colleagues, I just wanna make sure that I'm reading the sense of the council correctly. I don't wanna get ahead of where we are. And so maybe I will take a straw poll here. But could folks let me know if their preference would be to send this back to the Planning Commission before it comes back to us or would you rather vote tonight? And so I'll ask for those that would prefer to go back to the Planning Commission. Can I see a nodding of the heads or a raising of the hand? Okay, I think it's unanimous. All right, Ms. Schwedler, Mr. Cybers, we would ask you all to ask the Planning Commission to hear this again and coordinate with Ms. Sonnyak to make that happen. And I appreciate my colleagues' comments and I appreciate you all's support on this. Thank you. Mr. Mayer. Mr. Cybers. Did you want a motion to go back to the administration? Well, let's ask Mr. Young what he prefers, or Ms. Sonnyak. And I'm sorry, I would just like to jump in. We can't commit tonight to a specific hearing date as I'm getting messages right now from staff that September may be full already. So that may be, you know, I may have been optimistic in terms of when they can get back, but we will work with the applicant to get them on a schedule if that's the course that they're gonna take. Thank you, Ms. Sonnyak, for that clarification. Mr. Young, what would be your preference? Do we need a motion or would you just rather the applicant go ahead and how would you proceed? How should we proceed? Yeah, Mr. Mayer, like I said earlier, there's really no clear procedure to get this back before the Planning Commission. The only, so no motion by council, I think is necessary or appropriate. I think what would be required here is that the applicant voluntarily asked to have that go back to Planning Commission for an additional hearing by Planning Commission. Then I would ask to have it referred back to the administration, which I don't believe I'd have to defer to Ms. Raver, it requires a vote by you all, just acknowledgement and that we would then get it scheduled as soon as possible for Planning Commission. All right, so Ms. Schwedler or Mr. Syvers, would you all like this to go back to Planning Commission? Yes, we would. All right, Mr. Young, would you like this referred back to the administration? Yes, based on the applicant's representation, we'll ask that that be referred back to the administration. We'll get it scheduled as soon as possible and it'll come back to you after hearing about the Planning Commission. All right, so referred back to the administration. Thank you. Thank you, colleagues, thank you to the applicant. Thanks for the folks to be here. Let me just mention Ms. Cooper, who I hope is still attending because she did have one thing that I wanted to address. And she raised a very important concern, which is just the changing character of our community, the changing connector, her community, especially Eleanor's Road and Ms. Cooper. Thank you for those comments. And those are ones that we hear a lot. The difficulty that we face is that we have so many people moving here. And like you and me, they want a place to live. And Durham is, we don't have enough places for people to live. And with people pouring in here, the only way for us to accommodate that need and to keep housing prices even as affordable as they can be, is to have developments that we approve. And this means that oftentimes they are, they're in the rural area, they're areas that were formerly rural, they're in old family homesteads. And this is a difficult reality that we face. And so just want to say that I'm very appreciative of your concern. And I'm sure that you also recognize that we have to house people. And it often creates these difficult conflicts with existing, with, for example, your own family home. So I did want to recognize that. I wanted to let you know my thinking and I think the council's thinking, yes, on these issues. And just mention that and appreciate your comment. All right, I'm gonna declare this public hearing finally closed and I'm now going to ask council, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, if she would preside over our next item, which is item 46. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So our next item is item 46, committed element modification for 1900 Hillendale. And I'll first ask for our staff report. We got some technical issues. There we go. Yeah, now Ms. Sunyak is scheduled to do the report. And I don't know, I can text her, but I don't know what. No, she's here now. Oh, great. Yeah, we got her. I'm sorry about that. So I'm gonna be presenting the case on 1900 Hillendale. Is that the item that you're... Yep, that did. I'm sorry, I caught out just while you were talking. So I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. Yeah, no worries, 46, 1900 Hillendale. Great, thanks so much. Thank you. Good evening, I'm Jamie Sunyak again with the planning department. The applicant, Katie Hamilton from Stewart has submitted an application to remove a text commitment from a legacy case. That case was Z1900049, which was approved on August 20th, 2018. The development plan at that time changed the zoning to allow up to 15 townhouse units. The request today is to remove the commitment which would require one single car with garage per unit. According to the site plan, which is D19000379, that is currently under review, the UDO requires a minimum of 28 parking stalls and the applicant is proposing 48 parking stalls. So there's no other changes to the plan that has been previously approved, but per section 3512A11 of the unified development ordinance, a change in the architectural design or architectural guidelines, unless explicitly indicated as conceptual or illustrative are considered a significant deviation and require the entire plan to be resubmitted for a zoning map change. The Durham Planning Commission at their March 10th, 2020 meeting unanimously recommended approval of the proposed and staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other approvals, other adopted ordinances and plans. Two motions are required for this application. The first is to adopt a consistency statement and the second is for the zoning ordinance. I will be available for any questions that you have. Thank you, Ms. Sanyak. So this is a public hearing item. So I will open our public hearing and first ask if there are any questions for members of the council for our staff. All right, seeing no questions, I'll move to attendee comments. There are three people who are raising their hands. I'm sorry, four, no, three, one of them's duplicated. Three people raising their hands. So let's first go to Katie Hamilton. Can we make Katie Hamilton available? Ms. Hamilton's been unmuted. Thank you. Hi, Katie Hamilton with Stuart here. I just wanted to really quickly speak to why we thought this change was necessary. Primarily we found that the one car garage restriction was extremely limiting, especially on a site of this size. When we're trying to do infill development, one of the big things that we were looking at doing was using the parking lot for stormwater treatment, using either permeable paving or another form of underground detention or stormwater reuse. Currently in the last submitted site plan, we were looking at permeable paving and that needed to be in a common area. So that was a big driver behind the need to not use these single car garages. And we feel like in this specific area where it is a transition from commercial to single family residential, a parking lot is not out of the norm being as the site to the south and to the west both have surface parking lots. And with that, if there's any questions for me, open. Thank you. I forgot to designate a time. Everyone who signed up is a proponent of this item. So I'm gonna say five minutes for proponents. And then if y'all need more time, we can add on. Our next speaker is Tim Condor. Can we make Tim Condor available, please? Thank you. Am I unmuted? Yep, we got you. Great. Greetings to Mr. Mayor and the council. I'm Reverend Dr. Timothy Condor, the founding pastor of the Mayus Way Church and co-chair of Durham CAN strategy team. Speaking to the matter of Hillendale, motion one asks that we adopt the consistency statement. But over the last year, CAN has become deeply concerned about gross inconsistencies regarding the city's oversight of housing matters. On September 19th, 2019, I witnessed along with many of the residents of Hoover Road, DHA CEO Anthony Scott share his profound embarrassment with the physical state of the Hoover Road neighborhood and the shaming shell game process residents were encountering when seeking urgent repairs. Mr. Scott promised a completion of repairs within 60 days. Now almost 10 months later, we were shocked to hear in a recent public meeting with Mr. Scott that he was unaware of the state of these repairs. Can the city truly execute a consistency statement? In closing, I'll refer to my pastoral calling and the theology that motivates my work. That theology rests on the assertion that all humans are made in the image of God and hence proclaims the dignity of every soul without prejudice of race, class, gender orientation or sexual orientation. The residents of DHA are more than our neighbors, their family, as we theologians like to say, they're united to us in soul, divine origin and hope of goodness. Would not any of us literally leave this meeting immediately to relocate or materially support any family member who lived in those conditions when we do not share the same urgency for our brothers and sisters in DHA? Do we not passively invalidate that theology and violate the better angels of our own souls? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cunder. Our next speaker is Ruth Petrea. Can we make Ms. Petrea available? Ms. Petrea's been unmuted. Diana, there are two Ruth Petrea's. Can you make sure we unmute both of them? One of them is still muted. They both have been unmuted. Thank you. This is Susan Dunlap. Ms. Petrea may have signed up for me, so I'm welcome. I'm happy to speak now. Okay, you can go ahead. My name is Reverend Susan Dunlap, and I wish to speak in favor of the motion. It is the objective of city council to have the unified development ordinance promote, among other things, the health, safety and general welfare of the community. The city staff confirms that the requirements to provide for the health, safety and general welfare of my neighbors in Durham are met by this proposal. I speak to you today in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets who made disruptive public statements on behalf of the poor and marginalized. I ask you to consider the urgency of ensuring the health, safety and general welfare for people living in our public housing units, just as we are doing for new housing developments. The 2019 inspection report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development gave McDougal Terrace a score of 31.06 out of 100. A passing score is at least 60. I have visited Hoover Road Apartments, seen the lack of repairs, bullet holes and children playing on hard packed dirt where grass should be. We know this is not new information for you all. We know that and we know that many of our Durham Housing Authority units are neither safe, healthy nor conducive to the welfare of people living in them. A close member of my family lives in a cluster of housing units whose management ensures repairs, cleanliness and security. If his home ever approached the condition of what I have seen in DHA properties, I can guarantee you, I would be storming the gates of management all day, every day until he had livable housing. Why should my outrage for my neighbors in public housing be any less? I urge you all to work with the Durham Housing Authority to remedy what is nothing less than a housing quality emergency. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dunlop. This is a public hearing item and anyone who would like to speak is welcome to speak, but I believe the last two speakers may have intended to speak on item 54, bylaws for the Affordable Housing Implementation Committee. If there are other folks with their hand raised who wish to speak on the Affordable Housing Implementation Committee, that's item 54. If you could lower your hand for now and raise it again when we get to that item, it would just help us keep everything organized. There are two people with their hands raised right now, Alicia Stokes and Jim Anthony. Are y'all wanting to speak on the committed element modification for 1900 Hillendale? If you could let us know in the chat, that would be great. Yes, ma'am, this is Alicia Stokes. I'm speaking on 1900 Hillendale. Okay, thank you. You can go right ahead. Yeah, just quick question. So it sounds like at its core that they're just looking to change the number of parking spaces and that they're trying to double the number of parking spaces. And it sounds like that they're gonna take out the garages and just add the additional parking. Is that at its core what we're talking about here? Yeah, that's my understanding. If a staff has a different understanding, please jump in and correct us. But yes, that's my understanding of the request. Okay, that was my only clarification. Thank you. Thank you. Jim Anthony also has their hand raised. If Jim Anthony is wishing to speak on 1900 Hillendale, can we make him available? He's been unmuted. Thank you very much. I am the developer of the project at 1900 and we're excited about getting this project out of the ground. Eliminating the garages enables us to create more living space in the units as well as providing the parking on the ground around the units. When we originally requested the rezoning and made the commitments, committed elements list with the neighbors, we didn't realize that we were essentially requiring ourselves to put garages in when we just thought that that was kind of an optional thing. So we're back for this one simple change and excited about getting some housing up there in that market that needs it. Thank you. Thank you. There are no more hands raised among our attendees. Is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item? All right, seeing no additional speakers, I'm going to close our public hearing and bring the matter back before the council. Are there any council members who'd like to speak on the item? All right, seeing none. Council member Freeman, go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted to just put a pin in the conversation around some of the comments that were shared on the Durham Housing Authority and just noting that the way we track out of this, I understand that they're trying to make an adjustment so that they can create more living space, but how are we creating a follow-up for all of the, I guess the text commitments that are made in this way and I just want to make sure that we're noting that the potential to have these changes on the cases that we're looking at today are the same. And so just noting, where the neighbors and the developer were able to make an agreement, I know this was a long and hard process and lots of conversations, a lot of work went in, a lot of time, and these shifts, making sure that there's a way to track back to the neighborhood and making sure there's a way to track back on how this moves forward is important. And that was all. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. So I would accept a motion to adopt a consistency statement for this item. So, ma'am. Second. Madam Clerk, will you call the roll please? Mayor Pro Tem. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member Burice. Aye. Is Mayor Schuyl still here or did he? He's here. Okay, and Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. And I would accept a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the UDO. Move to adopt the ordinance. Second. Second. Madam Clerk, could you call the roll please? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member East. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Both motions pass unanimously and thank you, everyone. We're now going to move on to item number. Madam Mayor Pro Tem, could I interrupt? We'll correct second, please. Yep. Apologize. I want to first thank you. Thank the Council. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Thank the Council for indulging my tardiness to the meeting this afternoon. And if this has already been covered, forgive me, but I wanted to acknowledge that this is our planning director, Pat Young's last meeting with us and his last week with the city. And certainly wanted to express my appreciation for his tremendous leadership over the last, I think it's three years as the director of the city county planning department, but much longer than that and working in the department. But also his tremendous support and participation on many, many of our organization-wide initiatives. Pat has been a leader, not just of the planning department, but in so many aspects throughout the city government. And I want to express that appreciation to you, Pat, and also extend you my best wishes on your new transition to the city of Oaks. But good luck and congratulations and I appreciate all you've done for me and the city staff. Thank you. Thank you so much, Manager Bonfield and thank you members of council for this recognition. It's definitely bittersweet and a bit emotional. It's been the greatest incredible honor, privilege, and joy to serve this beautiful community for almost half my career. It was 12 years, three as director and then eight and a half as assistant. Before that, I have enjoyed and appreciated working with our residents, my peers in the city and county, and with this administration. What I'm about to say here is equally true for the administration as it is for you all as council. I have been 25 years in the field. I've worked a few places in planning and development as we're seeing tonight. It's very frequent that we have to bring you all difficult but necessary and beneficial policies and programs and in many communities that leads to blaming and scapegoating of staff. And we have never, I have never experienced that with you all either Manager Bonfield or with the council and it's a testament to your character and your leadership that you allow staff to provide you with our professional opinion recommendations and make wise judgments. So I wanna really appreciate you and thank you for that and thank you for the recognition, Tom. And I'm not going far, I plan on staying in touch and we'll be seeing each other again. I made Sarah Young promise me as soon as it's safe to do so, we'll have a big party somewhere in Durham. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. We appreciate so much all of your work and your service to the city and we're gonna miss you and we're all gonna feel sad. Our loss is Raleigh's gain. But we're happy for you and yeah, we might have to go fight some Raleigh council members at some point, some point soon. They keep stealing on a few. All right, thank you Tom for bringing that up. Thank you. I observed that. All right, so we're gonna move on to item number 54, bylaws for the Affordable Housing Implementation Committee. Mayor Scholl, did you wanna give us a little intro? Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro-Tillman. Thank you for helping preside today. Colleagues, these bylaws codify what we had previously approved. It's one exception that I wanted to mention to you. We had approved 15 member group but our community development staff thought it was important to add a member of the community advisory, the Citizens Advisory Council to the group because they overlap in many ways and they thought it would be important to have that liaison connection. So the bylaws in front of you add that person. And so instead of a 15 member group, it's a 16 member group. I wanna thank Reginald, Karen, and also Christa, Sophia and Kim from the city attorney's office for all their work on it. There are two things that I wanna raise. One is what I would consider to be approving here, which is section, I didn't read these till this morning and so I'm sorry, I would have normally raised this in the city attorney last night or yesterday. Section 3-2-D, it says four members when it should be five since we've added the CAC member. And then the second is just the question that I wanna ask which is right now under terms of service which is section three, number five, it says a member of the affordable housing implementation committee shall serve a three-year term running from July 1 through July 30 and may serve a maximum of two consecutive terms. Since we're not gonna be able to get this going for a while, we're gonna have to take some time to make the appointments. I wondered if it should say under terms instead a member of the affordable housing implementation committee shall serve a three-year term beginning at their date of appointment that may serve a maximum of two consecutive terms. So I would suggest that we make those two changes and would ask that we approve the bylaws so we can go ahead and get this moving. Again, wanna thank the city attorney's office and community development. And if you wanna motion, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, I'm happy to make one or whatever your pleasure. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. There are a couple of people who are signed up to speak. So let's do that and then we'll hear your motion. So our first speaker is Drew Dahl. Can we make Drew Dahl available please? Miss, Mr. Dahl's been unmuted. Thank you. I think that they may still have to unmute themself. I still see a mute symbol on there by their name. Here we go. There we go. Thank you for your time. Appreciate the opportunity to speak. My name is Drew Dahl, a member of the Durham CAN Strategy Team, the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. Can we trust you all? Can we trust you to fairly enforce city ordinances? Can we trust you to ensure that the bylaws established for the Affordable Housing Implementation Committee are actually adhered to? The best predictor of future behavior is how you have behaved in the past. So let's review, oh, I don't know, maybe DHA's record since this committee will work directly with them. The public housing assessment system rating for DHA was substandard in 2018. This city is failing its most vulnerable residents. Wallet Hub may find Durham to be a best run city, but that is only true for a fluent Durham. The Durham are the people who stock our grocery shelves, prepare our restaurant meals and do our dry cleaning has to be among one of the worst run. Nothing in these bylaws as presented addresses how we can trust DHA to appropriately spend affordable housing funds when there are critical systemic failures currently within DHA. On September 19th, 2019, Hoover Road residents held a public accountability meeting. At that meeting, Mr. Scott provided a plan for dealing with outstanding maintenance issues. He expected the repairs would be completed within 60 days. At a meeting with Mr. Scott on June 15th of this month, nine months after that public hearing, Durham can asked if that commitment had been met. He responded with, I don't know, and promised to provide an answer within two weeks. Mr. Scott has failed to fulfill that promise. What mechanisms will exist within these bylaws to ensure that DHA meets any commitments it makes? Finally, this committee is comprised of 16 members, only three of which must be DHA residents and only four of whom must either live in DHA or other affordable housing. You have constructed a committee with the ability to ride roughshod over the needs of those who utilize affordable housing while maintaining the appearance of fairness. This is shameful. I am a proponent of affordable housing, but I'm also a proponent of the city and DHA living up to the commitments they make. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kedi Thelomac. Can we make them available? Ms. Kedi's been unmuted. Thank you. I think they may still have to unmute themselves as well. Oh, yeah. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Yep, thank you. We got you. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor Pro Temp and City Council members. My name is Kedi Thelomac. I'm a resident of Durham, an educator in Durham Public Schools and a member of the Durham TAN strategy team. I'm also a member of Abundant Hope Christian Church. Today I come as a supporter of the Affordable Housing Commission, but I am concerned. I am very concerned that as we speak about consistency and I listened in on your diligence in addressing all the agencies to ensure that you would, before you would cast your vote regarding property, extension, annexation and things like that, you were very diligent about. But right now, DHA housing is failing and we need you to be diligent about that as well. Especially areas like Hoover Road and McDougal Paris. Words like ignored, forgotten, devalued and consistently delayed are what we see. How can we trust the council with these properties when they are ignoring important issues in DHA? Mr. Mayor, City Council, how long will we wait until action is done? As long as you keep ignoring, forgetting, devaluing and delaying, we will keep coming and we will keep coming and we will keep coming. Thank you. Thank you. Our last speaker is Ruth Petrea who I believe before was Susan Dunlap but might be Ruth Petrea this time. Can you hear me? Hi, my name is Ruth Petri. I'm with Durham Can and a member of Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church. I'm a proponent when the city stands for residents in Durham Housing Authority. Your concern is about adopting a consistency statement. How can we talk about consistency in Durham when we've not kept our promises to Durham Housing Residents? One third of McDougal residents will have to move again so their apartment electrical wiring for stones can be completed. These residents have returned to the same dilapidated situations they left in January. I've seen with my eyes the conditions our neighbors live in. At Hoover Road, I've seen the following and most is still there a year after I first saw it. The mold, the rain coming inside from a bad roof, the rotten wood been to blow a bathtub, the faulty appliances, carbon monoxide leaks, keys that don't work in mailboxes, the stairs with no working railing, screen doors with no working screen, faulty outlets that catch on fire and bullet holes in the siding of apartments. And by the way, security poles still with missing cameras were installed two days after a white neighbor of Hoover Road complained of gunshots. From a request dating back to the fall, we were told on June 15th by Mr. Scott to wait another two weeks and he would respond to a repair update. We have not heard from him still. The thing is now that I've seen these things, I cannot unsee them. And I will not unsee them. What will you do, Mr. Mayor and city council members? The longer you ignore us, the latter the volume of us will be. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of city council. Thank you. That concludes our speakers to this item. I see in the chat that council member Freeman would like to ask a question. Thank you. I wasn't sure if there were going to be questions or not, but I just wanted to get some clarity. I know that there were some goals outlined in the context of the conversation last year before the bond passed around setting goals around MWBE or businesses or what have you of color and local businesses, but I didn't see anything that kind of codified that into the bylaws. And so I was hoping that it was either a miss or there was somewhere else that it was located. And I just wanted to be clear before I make the next request. Well, sure. We don't have either housing goals or MWBE goals in the bylaws. The bylaws of this organization are not setting goals. They are setting up this committee, but it does say what the committee is going to do. Let me just pull these up because it does say that they will get the exact language. So I don't get this wrong. I know that in section two, under article two, duties and responsibilities are outlined. And then in section two for, hold on, for actual activities, it lists that they'll be coming back to council. I just wanna make sure that there's gonna be a report that actually details the MWBE or local businesses that have been involved in the work so that there is some tracking happening. There'll be two kinds of tracking. There will be the report, the every six months report, but there will also be continual tracking that will be publicly available. And that will be, there's gonna be a website developed. And so each project will be individually detailed on the website. So there'll be two kinds of tracking. There'll be the kinds of tracking you can do on a kind of a constant basis. And then there will be the report. I'm having a little bit of a hard time getting this up on my... And that would be also in addition to... So if you look at article two, two E provide briefing accounts every six months regarding the committee's activities and the formal housing plan. And then of course, it says in... It talks, I'm sorry, I can't find the place, but it talks about them being responsible for monitoring the MWBE and... And then that was exactly the point is that it doesn't know what they're monitoring for. So I just wanna be clear, you can monitor for zero across the board and report it every six months and be just fine. And I wanna make sure that that's not what's happening. Well, I mean, no, that won't be what's happening. I mean, none of us want that to be what's happening. Well, the website is helpful. And then I would just say that in addition to an individual project, that there has to be some way that it collectively shows across the board as well. Say that one more time. So in addition to the individual projects being detailed on the website, it would be nice to see like a collective percentage across the board. So whenever... Of course. Yes. Absolutely. In addition, that I wasn't aware of. Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that's written into here is that they will be responsible for the implementation of that part of the bond promise as well as the housing promise. So that's why that's in here as well. Thank you. I see in the chat that Azaria Lunsford would like to speak as well. Can we make them available? I can't. Okay, there they are. Hello. Hi, we can hear you. Hi. My name is Azaria Lunsford and I am a resident of Crescent World. I just want to say somehow I need for... Well, we need you guys to push for Durham Housing to employ maintenance men that actually are going to do what they're supposed to do by the book. I recently just had a situation where my water heater went out and they sent a maintenance man over. He couldn't get it on. He kinda hinted that I needed a new water heater. They sent another one out and he brushed out the glass. He put my water heater and lit the pilot and left the glass on my floor. I have also asked that you guys put gates. We already have a gated community. I guess to keep the criminal from running out when the police come in. If you got to just extend the gate over the entrances and the exit ways with the smaller community to keep people that's not supposed to be here out. I had a shooting. I literally have bullet holes going through my window through the bottom of my house where my couch was just sitting at one point in time. It's ridiculous and I feel like that our voices are not heard. They don't mask her. It's just like up in the air and whatever happens to us happens to us. And I don't appreciate it. Thank you, Ms. Lunsford. So what we're voting on today just to be clear for folks is just the bylaws for the Affordable Housing Implementation Committee. But I want to also make it, just make it clear to everyone who's listening with concerns about DHA that we are continuing to engage with DHA around all of these questions where as we implement our housing program in cooperation with the Housing Authority, we will be monitoring and working with them very carefully to address the issues related to the development plan. And we know that they also need to address these ongoing maintenance issues at other developments like McDougal Terrace and Hoover Road. As the DHA liaison, I could personally commit to following up with Director Scott about the status of those repairs. As we know, the situation in McDougal Terrace and then the COVID outbreak has made this sort of work more difficult over the last few months. But we are all committed to making sure that residents in the DHA and everywhere in the community live in safe, affordable housing. And we'll absolutely make sure, follow up with DHA and be, we want to be their partners in this work and make sure that we're moving forward together to help to provide affordable housing throughout our community that meets our standards. And we know that a lot of the housing in DHA needs to be improved to meet those standards. So I just want to thank everyone who came today to speak to those issues. They are very much of concern to us and we will continue to do whatever we can to make sure that all of our residents can live in affordable housing that's safe and healthy for them and their families. There any other comments by members of the council? Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. And I thank the work that's been done on the bylaws. I also want to thank my friends and colleagues from Durham Can who have put some important reminders in the air today. I should say by way of full disclosure, our organization is a use paying member of Durham Can. So I think it's important for me to say that before I make my statements. I, question was asked, can we be trusted? Yeah, I certainly hope so. And I do want to say that I was at that meeting in September when Mr. Scott appeared before Durham Can was at that action and I heard the commitments that were made. And I want to thank the Mayor Pro Tem for committing to the following up. I had made a note to myself to call him as soon as this meeting was over and to follow up with him about those representations for the repairs. You've mentioned that COVID came about and then the issue with McDougal Terrace. When we use a considerable amount, I'm talking about Durham Can before I was elected, when we use a considerable amount of our resources and capital to push for 80 units of affordable housing downtown, Hoover Road was in disrepair then. McDougal Terrace was in disrepair then. When we use an incredible amount of our capital to focus on affordable housing downtown at the police station, Hoover Road was in disrepair then. McDougal Terrace was in disrepair then. I've been talking about gunfire in this city for years. So I'm glad to hear us talk about the bullet holes that are in those complexes. So for those, and I say this respectfully, for those that are kind of just becoming aware of how bad things are in public housing and are aghast, I'm a product, I grew up in public housing. I'm glad that we now have the passion and attention in that area that has been this way for almost 50, 60 years. Anthony Scott is a leader that we brought in came to the city and has been doing remarkable work. When the issue of McDougal, the carbon monoxide issue and the issue that McDougal Terrace came to the fore, what's ironic is that the leader who finally treated it like an emergency and evacuated people is the one we're saying should have been doing better, which calls into question what everybody else is doing prior to that one who did not evacuate people. So I offer no excuse for him. If he gave me commitments to a deadline, we ought to ask about those deadlines and those repairs. But I do want to say that as of today, he has my confidence. He's a profoundly humane person aside from technical competency, he's humane and he cares about the people that live in those communities, again, not excusing any deadlines that he should be meeting and I'm sure he will speak to that. But I do want to say that for those, and I'm not talking about everybody, for those that have just recently found out how bad things are at Uber Road and McDougal Terrace, it been that way. While we were working on other things, it was that way. And I welcome, I hope the advocacy will stay what it is. I hope that organizations and activists in the city will continue to get in our face and make noise about what needs to be addressed. But I want to be very clear, these things have been going on and you're right. We need to do better as a city. But in our power analysis, we know that if Durham emptied its checkbook tomorrow, we couldn't fix the problems with public housing in this city. Tomorrow, if we emptied our entire checkbook. We know that there are a lot of overlapping concentric circles. Those of us that understand the power analysis know what I'm talking about. So I look forward to hearing Mr. Scott's response to the questions about repairs at Uber Road. But I'm also keenly aware of the number of things that have been on his docket and on that organization's docket that don't even make the news that have claimed our attention from COVID to the ongoing cleanup at McDougal Terrace. So I want to, without excusing him for many commitments to deadlines, I want to affirm the job he's been doing and for taking the emergency and the situation seriously and finally evacuating folk. Because I don't think anyone believes that the threshold for evacuation, we've probably been at that threshold many times over the decades. Finally, a leader has come and said, let's do it. And we're doing it. So I just want to invite the city. Invite organizations in this city to keep advocating, keep pressing for us, keep crying out for the poor, keep crying out for the oppressed. We need that. That's an incredibly important voice. But I also know that there were times when we spent our significant capital on things and on victories that these fires were burning then. And that they're not new fires, but now that they do have our attention and now that they've been brought, now that they are on the docket, I welcome. And I'm sure my colleagues do as well. Welcome, continue to advocacy and continue pressing for making sure that everybody lives with dignity, everybody affords a dry place and clean place to live. Everybody affords to live in a community where there's not constant gunfire at night and our babies are jumping in bathtubs like soldiers and learning how to duck and cover. That's a real issue. And it's about time that we take it, or give it the seriousness that it deserves. So these passing these bylaws will not guarantee that everything's gonna be hunky-dory. So aside from these bylaws, the issues that have been brought up today can't be addressed with just a bylaw vote. It's gonna have to be sustained efforts and sustained attention and sustained agitation and sustained accountability. I welcome that. I welcome that because it's what we need in the city. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and thank everyone who spoke about human dignity today. That's basically what it's about, human dignity. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Council Member Middleton. So I think we're ready for a motion. Mayor Stuhl, if you'd like to make your motion. Yeah, thank you. And thank you to my colleagues for their remarks. My motion is to approve the bylaws with two changes. One is on section 3-2-D where it says four members, it should be five. And under section 3-5 under terms that it would read, a member of the Affordable Housing Implementation Committee shall serve a three-year term beginning at their date of appointment and they serve a maximum of two consecutive terms. So with those two changes, I would like to move the approval of the bylaws. Thank you. Do we have a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you call the roll please? Mayor Stuhl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. The motion passes unanimously. I'm going to turn the chair of the meeting back over to Mayor Stuhl. Unfortunately, I have to run to another commitment. I just wanted to briefly say though, unfortunately our new virtual rules won't allow my vote to be recorded in the, you know, won't allow me to record an eye vote for item 55 since I won't physically be present. I would just like to express my support for the ordinance and hope that my colleagues will approve it. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you for presiding. Thank you. All right, colleagues, we're getting closer. We're now at item 55, temporary outdoor seating ordinance. And I'm not sure who will be presenting this for staff. Good evening again, Mr. Mayor and members of council, Pat Young with Planned Department. Our department worked with the city attorney's office and deputy senior attorney Don O'Toole is also on the call if there are any questions. But in brief, the requested amendment is a amendment to city code section 54-110 which pertains to outdoor seating in the public right of way. And the genesis of this proposal was in part feedback from the county task force that you all appointed this time, sorry, the city county task force, the recovery task force where they encouraged us to find ways to allow more activity, particularly dining outdoors, which is a much safer environment to present that. And we also were directly solicited from some of the downtown business owners. So what these proposed provisions would do is temporarily during the period of the emergency associated with coronavirus allow for additional outdoor seating up to 50% of the indoor capacity. Currently that's restricted to 25%. And there's also some other administrative changes that make it a little easier to use and hopefully lower cost for these businesses that are struggling so mightily in this difficult time. So be happy to take any questions or Mr. O'Toole can depending on your question. And this is not a public hearing item. So really it's just your review and your vote of these approval or denial of these changes. Thank you very much, Mr. Young. And I wanna thank downtown Durameg. I wanna thank Nicole Thompson and Rachel Wexler, some of the restaurants that have worked on this with some of the restaurateurs, Sean Stokes, Rochelle Johnson, Elizabeth Turnbull, Dorian Bolden, and especially our planning, transportation and city attorney's office, our own city staff. So much appreciated to everybody for getting us to this point. There are two concerns. Can I ask a procedural question? Oh, of course. What is our procedural posture with respect to these proposed ordinances? If this is a regular meeting, these items have not been through a work session. And so do we need to take any special measures to act on them because this is the first time they've appeared on agenda. Good question and I don't know the answer. We'll see if our city attorneys know the answer. In other words, we would have to suspend the rules and vote that kind of thing, council member. That's what I was thinking, yeah. You're already in a meeting in which you've designated as a voting meeting. The council rules are procedure, councilman race in 2.3.3 do say that supplemental items have to be taken up individually. So you have to consider it since you haven't considered it before, but that says detailed as the rules get. So I would just say deliberate on it, consider it, then vote on it. Thank you, ma'am city attorney. I appreciate it. That's my best guess. I'll stop talking now, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, one other question. Are we, because this is the only time this will appear on an agenda, even though it's not a public hearing matter, are we gonna allow folks to speak on it anyway? I'm happy to. I mean, what I have been trying to do during the COVID era is if someone wants to speak, I kind of treat that as if they had pulled the item. I think that's important. There's at least one person who's been on the call the entire time just to speak on this item. I think it would be important to let them speak. Absolutely, for sure. I see that this person is now showing up and they say that they have, Elizabeth Turnbull who I just mentioned. Yeah, you'll be able to comment for sure. As I've said, you all know my practice. I let everybody speak as long as I can. Okay, let me just express a couple of concerns that I've heard. The first is the, from a couple of, at least one of the folks from one of the restaurants, the need to have the various existing permits of all types in hand when the application is submitted, the ABC license and all those kinds of things. And this person expressed concern that they would, that this was hard to do, that getting all this stuff together is a lot of work and would take time. And so this gave me concern. The second is the need to have, to submit to scale drawings of the plans. And my question there is, can this be hand drawn and approximate or does this have to be professionally done which this person was also concerned with the difficult and time consuming and have some expenses associated with it? So those are two concerns that I've heard and would just be interested in the city attorney or the other staff's comments. So on the second question, it's my understanding that planning has already provided information to some folks that they are not requiring engineered drawings, that it can be a hand drawn depiction of the proposed outdoor seating. So there's not a requirement for a professional drawing. With respect to the ABC permit question, the way the temporary ordinance is drafted, it's drafted such that staff is gonna announce an application period because there is some belief that there will be high demand for the downtown areas that are being made available. I don't wanna speak for Pat, but I do think the department, if people are planning to sell alcohol, I think the city needs to know when the permit is approved that the appropriate ABC permits are in place. Thank you, do you wanna comment on that, Pat, as well? Just to verify what Don just said, we absolutely are not going to require engineered drawings that you have to be to scale and they'll be field verified by staff at the time the permit's issued. And I certainly agree with Don as well in terms of the ABC permit. I don't know that there's a legal requirement, but that was part of the original provisions that were passed seven or eight years ago. There were, Pat, and these restrictions have been loosened somewhat. We're not asking for a lot of the detail that had previously been asked for. Thank you. Thank you, thank you both, Don and Pat. Another question I have is the downtown map of the pre-approved outdoor dining sites is included and I thought that was great work, but for restaurants outside of the downtown, how would that process work in terms of where they would be outside? So I'll take a first attempt at that. So the provisions before you tonight pertain only to outdoor seating in the right of way. So on private property, so say in a suburban location where a restaurant wanted to use its parking lot, there's a separate provision that we recommended to you in the chair of the board of the county commissioners, Mr. Mayer, as an amendment to the emergency order that would authorize us, the planning department, to suspend enforcement of our required parking areas and a few other minor modifications that would explicitly authorize that outdoor seating on private property. What the ordinance for you tonight would apply to anybody who wants to use the right of way. That's mostly downtown, but I think it applies, can apply elsewhere to the city. I'll ask Don to clarify if that's not correct. I would like to add to what Pat said, because I think if you look at attachment B to the agenda, you'll notice that there are areas on that attachment that are not right of way. So some of the city's pocket parks, there's a portion of Durham Central Park that are included. So it's not strictly right of way. Some of it, some of the parcels are city-owned parcels. Thank you. And then, let's see, I have, yeah, I heard from DDI today, requesting that the ABC temporary extension of premises permit onto city property will be necessary pending state action on relaxing ABC rules, which we know that. And they requested that the city issue a blanket letter of approval for the pre-approved city sites for the temporary extension of premises. Is that something we can do? This is the first time hearing of that request. You know, one of the things that is in the temporary order is as I'm sure council is aware, there are restrictions on alcohol consumption on some city parcels. We've waived those for these designated areas. Well, if the temporary ordinance is approved, those would be waived. So if some kind of written document is required for the ABC approval, I'm sure that Kim and I, Kim Raeberg and I can work on that. Thank you very much. Yeah, Mr. Mayor, if I might add to that. So that's something that we, the planning department do as a matter of course, typically, which is to review for ABC permits review that it's compliant with the zoning code. So I think we could issue a blanket approval assuming there's no conflict with state law in terms of the alcohol service. Thank you. I see a question in the chat. It says for clarification, are two scale drawings required or not? Restaurant owners are not architects and drawing to scale is still a difficult hurdle for them. And so can we hear from staff to clarify that? It sounds to me like two scale drawings are going to be required, but that they do not have to be professional. They can be approximations. Is that what you said that's correct Mr. Young and that you all will then feel, you will go out in the field and you will just look at that to see that it's done. Yes, Mr. Mayor, certainly we would be willing, happy to work with any applicant to help. The bottom line is we have to be able to field verify the extent of the outdoor seating and that the area identified meets the provisions of the city code. What we have done in the past, what we'll be willing to do is meet with applicants on site and help scale it off, bring a tape measure or a to measure it off if there's somebody who's unable to provide a scale drawing. Thank you. Let me just go ahead now and ask Ms. Turnbull to speak. She's been waiting a long time and I'm sorry Ms. Turnbull that this was at the end of a long meeting and thank you for hanging in there. Are you available to speak to us now? It looks like you are. Welcome and you have three minutes. We're glad to have you. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and city council members. My name is Elizabeth Turnbull and I come to you today to speak on behalf of my restaurant Koopa as well as in support of my friends and colleagues in the city's independent restaurant industry. I want to be sure to publicly thank downtown Durham, Inc. and especially Rachel Wexler for the effort that they have put into the outdoor dining program. I also want to thank Sean Stokes of Luna and Rachelle Johnson of the Cast Iron Group for their many hours of volunteer effort. And I want to thank Dorian Bolden of BU Cafe for starting the Durham Restaurant Coalition. Now more than ever, we need a collective voice. I stand before you today to ask you to please pass the temporary outdoor dining program in the swiftest and simplest way possible. I also come to tell you that this program is too little, too late. I urge you to pass the proposal yes. This is the bare minimum that you owe to an industry that has helped turn Durham into one of the hottest destinations in the Southeast. I know that many of your policies favor developers over small businesses and you likely have your reasons for doing so. But do you believe for one second that these developers would be here if it weren't for places like Toast, Full Steam, BU, M Sushi, Zwellies, Alley 26, Mateos Tapas, Monats, Easter and Bake Shop or Cocoa Cinnamon. Our independent restaurants not only provide living wages and dignified employment, they are essential to the overall well-being and vibrancy of this beloved city. At the beginning of the pandemic, we held great hope that you would lead us safely to the other side. You showed an interest in hearing our needs and including us in Durham's recovery and renewal. But that hope is now dashed. Dozens of our industry leaders have shown up to meeting after meeting, encouraged by the city to be creative, build resiliency, work together. We have done just that. We have proposed numerous innovative programs only to be shut down again and again with the exception of this outdoor dining program which has taken two months to come to a vote. We have been told at nearly every turn that the city simply cannot help more. The city's attorneys say it isn't within your jurisdiction and your hands are tied. With all due respect, this is not leadership. This is cowardice. This is hiding behind legal technicalities because you lack the political will to offer any real, tangible help to our city's independent restaurants specifically and small businesses in general. Take this outdoor dining as an example. From traffic barriers to lighting needs to furnishings, you have passed 100% of the expense and responsibility on to small business owners who are already struggling. Even the application process itself is unnecessarily cumbersome. For example, we now have to learn how to master a program to produce two scale drawings. These added burdens of time and money are a kick in the teeth of restaurants who are already down. A kick in the teeth you are disguising as a hand up. We are dying a slow death because of your inaction, lack of urgency and lack of political will. So please approve the outdoor dining program. But when you do so, you are not finished. We need you to know that your work is only just beginning. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Turnbull. Colleagues, any comments, questions about the ordinance at this point? Just wanted to take a moment and respond to that very passionate plea and acknowledging that I've been getting calls around the small business community feeling left out, hanging out to dry. And so I just wanted to thank Ms. Turnbull for sharing those words and being as passionate as she is and noting how much has happened in these last few months for small businesses in our community. It's important to note that the process that we have in place, I've been hearing concerns around the grant and loans as well. And so I just wanna make sure we do circle back around and have some conversation on that in the coming weeks as folks are hanging on. So I just wanted to make that note. Thank you. And if you would like to move motion, I'm ready when you are. Thank you. Let's see if we have any other comments. Council member, then I'll accept that motion. Thank you. Any other comments? Council member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We'll be supporting the ordinance today. I think staff alluded a little bit to it earlier. I am concerned about the very, and this is by virtue of this isn't any kind of insidious design scheme, but just by virtue of our geography and the way these laid out. It's a very downtown-centric action just by virtue of the right of ways and stuff. I am wondering if for our small business owners in more suburban areas that have parking lots that may be privately owned, if there's some, and I'm not sure I heard all of what staff said about the leverage we have or if we would be using some of our influence as a government to encourage perhaps private landowners. And I think what they said is we would relax some of the required parking for businesses in suburban areas, but I wanna make sure that those outside of the downtown corridor, those small business owners outside of the downtown corridor restaurants, which many of us frequent outside of downtown, would accrue some benefit from this as well. And I don't know what that looks like. That's gonna require a separate type of ordinance, sometimes down the road, but I just do wanna go on record acknowledging that there are some businesses that don't sit in the right of way, but they're licensed and credentialed by the city to do business within the city limits. And I'd like to make sure that they're given some consideration as well. So with that, I look forward to supporting this measure. Thank you, Mr. Young. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council Member Middleton. As I alluded to earlier, we staff has proposed amendments to the Mayor and the Board Chair's emergency order that would allow exactly what you described, that businesses can use their own private property for outdoor seating. The reason that it requires that change to the emergency order is because the vast majority of folks in these suburban locations are gonna use parking areas to set up the seating. And so that's why we needed to have that change to suspend the enforcement of those parking requirements. They already can use other areas of their site on a temporary basis, but usually somewhere that's got adequate grade and a hard surfacing is most often the parking areas. I'll also very quickly, if I might, appreciate the Mayor recognizing DDI, Rachel Wexler and Nicole Thompson who were instrumental in getting this through. Thank you for doing that. And I'm sorry I neglected to do so. And our colleagues in the Transportation Department. To that end, my colleague Sean Egan, who's not on the call tonight, I certainly hesitate to speak on his behalf, but we had a conversation yesterday where I know he is working very assiduously to try to find a funding source to help participate in those required barriers between the travel lanes and the outdoor seating that would be allowed by this ordinance of past. So I think you'll hear more about that from Mr. Egan in the near future, but the city is aware of the concern about the cost of having those barriers and is looking for a way to participate to help out our small business owners. Thank you very much, Mr. Young. Are there any more comments or questions? Okay. I'll accept a motion. Council Member Freeman. Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry to interrupt. I think Ms. Turnbull may have another comment. Ms. Turnbull, do you have another comment? Please feel free. You're muted. I do not have another comment. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Sorry. Thank you. So we have a motion. Can we have a motion? Council Member Freeman. I'll move. Second. Moved by Council Member Freeman. Seconded by Council Member Caballero that we will approve these regulations. I say regulations. Let me make sure I've got the language right here. Ordinance. Temporary ordinance. Thank you. The word adopt the temporary ordinance. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson stepped out. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Baris. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you to the staff. Pat, we're gonna let you go for this next item, but I wanna add my thanks. And we are looking forward to the party. When we're all able to get together again, we wanna celebrate you and we appreciate you so much. So thank you. Good luck to you and Rollie. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Don't be a stranger. I won't. Thank you. Thank you. All right, colleagues, we're now down to our last item, which was raised in the announcements by Council Member Freeman. Council Member McHenry. Yes. I'm gonna have to step away now. We're 30 minutes past our start time and I've got to go. I apologize. I will watch the recording of this last part when it's posted and Council Member Freeman, if you'll maybe you and I can be in touch over the next couple of days to figure out how to move this forward. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Freeman, would you like to make some comments? Yes. I wanted to share that I had been reaching out, talking to folks in the community and had a chance to speak to a few community leaders around maybe setting up a public arts project, noting that how many Fort Brown great leader and Durham has been able to get the Black Lives Matter painted across the street on Merrick. Was thinking about the public arts program that we have and have acknowledged that there are many artists of color, especially Black, that would be willing to help and participate in a process that we could outline with General Services and our public arts program. I do know that there are some funds that might be available or still available in our PB budgeting or PB budget. And I wanted to see if Council was interested in entertaining the idea or the concept around moving those funds out into the community for a public arts project, acknowledging how much of an opportunity this is to try to stem some of the violence and bring folks together around something positive and in our community, noting that there's an ask right now and many of the communities of color around Black Lives Matter. And I just wanted to see if we're interested in moving forward a public arts project. And if I could ask that if tonight, if you would be willing to have that conversation and move it forward, that we could have staff pull together some type of program around that. Thank you. Council members, any comments? Mayor Schultz, real quick. What was the grant that you shared with us a few days ago around that? I just wanted some updates, just wondering if that could overlap or somehow serve this at all. I think it could. We received a $25,000 grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies called Astrol Art. And it was submitted by our staff, public art staff along with our, in concert with community organizations. And I think it could be very much related to this project. We received in the notification, they said they understood that given current circumstances that the grant could be modified. I think that what I think would be good is, and I appreciate you raising that council member, is that we could ask our staff to report to us on that and see how it might connect with this initiative that council member Freeman is interested in, because I think they're very much the same thing. And I just wanted to add the, I left out a piece of the context of recognizing that July is a very hot month. And it's a very, in the past, we've had a lot of activity that has occurred that is not positive. And so just noting that the time sensitivity of trying to move something so that over the next few weeks, something is happening in the community that is youth focus and actually art focus is the reason why I'm pushing for us to have a conversation tonight to move it forward. Thank you. Other comments, council member Caballero? Yeah, I'm perfectly happy to have this conversation move forward. I'm interested in seeing, since it seems like we may have money already designated that could go forward to this. I think that outdoor art right now is probably one of the safer things that folks could be doing in context of COVID. So happy to, whatever needs to be done this evening just to say yes, looking forward to what could be done. Thank you. I would suggest that our staff report back to us on that grant and let us know about more of the details around timing, around how it could connect with this initiative. I appreciate if staff had any thoughts that they wanted to offer at this time about that. Mr. Mayor, we'd be glad to do that. Again, we don't have the public art staff or the general services staff on this call without knowing it was gonna come up today. I'll be glad to follow up with council member Freeman tomorrow, get a little more details about if there is specifics around a proposal that some folks are thinking about. And then we can certainly look at the Bloomberg grant and report back to you. Obviously we're not meeting again for a while but try to get you some information. In the meantime, and to the extent, there is authority under my budget authority that we can find some resources. We certainly will try to do that. Thank you, Mr. Manager. All right. Thank you, council member Freeman for surfacing that for us. Thank you, colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Manager. I believe that is all the business to come before this body. So I'm gonna adjourn this meeting at 6.34 p.m. Our next meeting is not for a while. So colleagues, Mr. Manager, do you have some comments? No, I was gonna say the next scheduled meeting, I believe, is July 23rd, something like that. July 23rd. And there always is the potential that we would need to request some, either emergency or special meetings as a lot of these situations continue to be fluid. But as of right now, it appears that there'll be several weeks that we won't be meeting and wish everybody some relaxation in July. Yes, let's all get as much relaxation as we can. All right, colleagues. Thank you very much and good night. Thanks, everybody.