 one minute to air the live stream has started recording in progress 30 seconds evening good evening to Durham North Carolina we welcome those who have joined us in person and those who have joined us on the internet on this Monday September 19th 2020 2 at 7 p.m. for our City Council meeting I call this meeting to order at this time and ask that you join us in a moment of silent meditation thank you all and we now ask that councilwoman Dejarauna Freeman if she would lead us in the pledge of allegiance like to stand and salute the flag with us all right madam clerk if you will call the roll thank you mayor mayor O'Neill I am present mayor pro tempore Middleton I'm here on some member Caballero here on some member Freeman present on some member Halsey Hyman present councilmember Johnson here and councilmember Williams present thank you we are all present and accounted for I do know that you see some familiar place people who are normally to my left and the right are not here tonight they are conducting city business I'm standing in for our city manager is deputy chief manager keep chat well and and we you should recognize attorney donal to he is standing in this evening for our city attorney Ray bird we have lots of good things going on in the ceremonial item space tonight and so it is with my pleasure to recognize councilwoman Halsey Hyman who will give us a proclamation about one of my favorite people on the radio Melissa Wade Wade in the order good evening it's great to see everyone in the audience you look really good tonight so proclamation whereas Melissa Wade a North Carolina native is a public figure accomplished news personality community leader whose career has spanned over 30 years and whereas Melissa Wade's dedication to serving as an exceptional gospel music announcer named her the 2022 stellar award gospel announcer of the year and whereas and whereas at a moment when social justice a global pandemic and economics are at the forefront in the city of Durham the state of North Carolina and the nation she was a constant voice for positivity encouragement and motivation for radio listeners and whereas Melissa Wade's creative vision mastery of storytelling and ability to command a room has solidified her as a writer a director and an artist and whereas Melissa Wade is committed to expanding the opportunity for the youth through Wade in the water productions allowing children to showcase their talents productions and summer workshops to encourage self-expression individuality and whereas Melissa Wade's commitment and dedication to mentoring and creating opportunities for youth will serve as a legacy and roadmap for others to follow now therefore I Elaine M O'Neill mayor of the city of Durham of North Carolina but claim but claim September 19th 2022 as Melissa Wade day in Durham and urge all residents to take note of this observant witnessed by the hand and the corporate seal of the city of Durham this 19th day of September 2022 Elaine M O'Neill mayor now I also want to say that I was able to be with this wonderful lady at our the sisters network triangle network for breast cancer where she was the host and I brought greetings from our mayor and city council and I'm gonna tell you to that I don't know if you know but I sing so I wanted to kind of really do this in the song gospel song but I couldn't do that because it's not really on the agenda but what God has for you is for you okay all right thank you thank you all so very much well I'm gonna take you up on that it's Sherri Lee Ralph did this last Monday doing her Emmy so I'm gonna go here and define myself like this and say the race is not given to the swift nor to the strong but to the one that in to read the until and sometimes you walk alone it's for the good imagined that I would endurament my own hometown and it is such an honor I do want to really quickly I know I'll have a little while just to say thank you to my family to my husband Daryl for all of your support to my daughter Darius who's my road dog and she's keeping up with my three minutes I don't know where she is but she's somewhere around here there she is to my son Matthew I am so so very proud of you he'll graduate from UNCG in December yes very proud of you to my mom and my dad especially my mom who always pushed me to do to overexceed she would always say don't just do enough and I never knew exactly why she pushed me so hard that's because she saw in me something I didn't see at that time and I thank her for it to my brother and my sisters I absolutely love you to my oldest sister who took the place of my mom I call her every day every single day and she acts like she's excited every time I call her to my other sister who is my spiritual mom even to my sister-in-law who's been with me but so all the years of my life except for one I think that was they got married when I was one years old so she is my sister to all of my nieces and my nephews I know I'm your favorite auntie I love you I love you to all of my friends who came today thank you so very much to ready a one for giving me the platform to do what I am doing today and to be blessed and to be able to bless others to I don't want to miss anybody finally last but not least the city of Durham the bull city so all of the leaders thank you so very much for just keeping us going for just revitalizing downtown it used to be the place to come back in the day now it back it is again the place to come so thank you all so very much thank you for this honor to the honorable wonderful mayor Elaine O'Neill my sister my friend I love you I love you thank you all so very much grace and peace councilwoman Freeman with the Knicks proclamation that's a hard act to follow but I will thank you I'm gonna take my mask off and I am reading the proclamation a centennial of the founding of the Algonquin tennis club which is in my ward actually whereas this year marks the hundredth year anniversary of the founding of Algonquin tennis club and whereas in 1922 a group of African American business and political leaders founded the Algonquin tennis club to give the black community and Durham the opportunity to enjoy tennis and whereas the original focus of the Algonquin was tennis and other areas of recreation however the headquarters building served as lodging oasis for traveling business associates with the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company and other entrepreneurial entities during the height of racial segregation in the South and whereas the Algonquin soon became an essential meeting location for civic social political and political groups in Durham in fact the Algonquin was intricately associated with the founding of the Durham committee on Negro affairs now the Durham committee on black Durham committee Durham County committee on black affairs and the Durham business and professional chain and whereas the outreach efforts of Algonquin allowed youth to participate in activities such as soapbox derbies soap sock hops banquets oratorical contests and other events that were coordinated by Mary Lawson newbie and whereas after becoming an affiliate of the American Tennis Association the Algonquin's prominence grew to the point that Durham became a major stop on the annual tennis aid ta tour and they're developing years both Athena Gibson and Arthur Ash lob tennis balls on the Algonquin court on their way to becoming the first african-americans to win singles championships at the Wimbledon and at the u.s. Open and whereas Joe Williams Bonnie Logan Nathan Garrett Mickey Michelle Evelyn Roberts John Lucas and other local tennis stars played on the Algonquin courts that were supervised for many years by Sam Moore now therefore I Elaine M. O'Neill mayor of the city of Durham North Carolina do hereby honor the year 2022 as the centennial of the founding of the Algonquin Tennis Club and Durham and encourage the public to visit WD Hill Recreational Center to view the historic display and mark our honoring the Algonquin witness my hand and the corporate seal of the city of Durham this 19th day of September 22. Thank you and I'm presenting this to the friends friends of the Algonquin Tennis Club. I'm mayor, project mayor, council members, official members, my family. I also grew up on the streets of Durham so Durham is my home. I have with me some of the people who helped in getting this work done. Mrs. Evelyn Roberts who is the niece of Mrs. Newby and her daughter Melissa Roberts they are here and then our work couldn't have been successful without the help from the staff of the WD Hill Center they are here too. Alex, Chris, Mr. Hughes, Marcus and if you don't know my name my name is Eugene Victor Marfo I've done all kinds of things in Durham. I was a student I was a hustler but the Lord was kind to me to be able to go to then North Carolina College at Durham and I became a faculty member and it became North Carolina Central University. I am humble to say that I've lived the Lord has allowed me to live long enough to see two of my former students to be mayor of Durham. The first one is the late Chester Jenkins and the current one or the second one is the lady sitting in in the center in the red dress honorable mayor I call her my precious mayor Irene O'Neill it just happened that we also mentioned Serena Williams who is retiring from tennis. I played tennis but I didn't play tennis on the Algonquin tennis clubhouse but I have a young man here Mr. Michael Spears when I came to I came to Durham as an intent to study insurance with North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and that's how I got to know about Algonquin Tennis Clubhouse that's where I lived. I've been in this country for 66 years but I think I've spent 60 of those years in Durham so I know a little bit about Durham now I'm I'm glad to tell you that I know about Hickstown which you don't know but Hickstown is where we have VA hospital and the other Duke medical health outfits and the last part of it is that from the academic field I went to the ministry I took on health ministry so I became clinical chaplain for select specialty hospital it is a 30-bed acute care hospital here in Durham on the sixth floor of now Duke Regional Hospital it used to be called Durham Regional Hospital well thank you very much for making me a part of you and I've enjoyed it so much that if you close the door I'm gonna find a little window and peep through it again thank you very much for the honor you've bestowed on us and we wish you well thank you my professor my economics professor I didn't do well in a class I made it out though I made it out I turn our attention now to councilman Johnson who will read our diaper need awareness week proclamation and then we will have councilman Williams to read the next block proclamation as well good evening everyone thank you for being here with us this evening I'm going to be reading a proclamation for diaper need awareness week and presenting it to Michelle old of the diaper bank let's hear with us whereas diaper need the condition of not having a sufficient supply of diapers to keep babies and toddlers clean dry and healthy can adversely affect the health of infants and their families and whereas national surveys and research studies report that one in three families struggles with diaper need and 48 percent of families delay changing a diaper to extend their supply and whereas the people of Durham recognize that diaper need is a public health issue and addressing diaper need can lead to economic opportunity for the community's families and improved health for children thus ensuring all people have access to basic necessities and whereas Durham is proud to be home to trusted community-based organizations including the diaper bank of north Carolina that recognize the importance of diapers and ensuring health and providing economic stability for families now therefore I elaine and moniel mayor of the city of Durham north Carolina do hereby proclaim the week of september 24th through october 2nd 2022 as diaper need awareness week in Durham and thank the aforementioned diaper bank for their service and encourage Durham residents to donate to diaper banks and organizations distributing diapers so that Durham's children and families can thrive and reach their full potential witness my hand in the corporate seal of the city of Durham this the 19th day of september 2022 I don't know how to follow those two proclamations they were so amazing but I founded the diaper bank of north Carolina here in 2013 from my kitchen table it was Durham born and we are now one of the largest diaper banks in the country you distribute over four million products statewide with four warehouses across the state but Durham is our largest we serve six thousand babies a month in this community one in three families experience diaper need there's no assistance for diapers wick and food stamps do not cover them and they can goss up to $100 a month we know from our research that 76 percent of the families that receive our services are working one to three jobs and still cannot afford the most basic needs so I appreciate you recognizing this for families in our community we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we're covering bottoms and distributing dignity and I appreciate it thank you all right good evening everyone all right I'm the only one that think I sound good singing so I won't do that um so here's our proclamation whereas dementia is a syndrome in which there is deterioration and memory thinking behavior and the ability to perform everyday activities Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia and whereas dementia is the seventh leading cause of death death worldwide and sixth leading cause of death in North Carolina and whereas there is no known treatment currently available to cure most dementia or to alter its progressive course but early diagnosis care and support can enhance the quality of life and well-being of persons with dementia and whereas the city of Durham supports the vision of dementia inclusive community where all persons with dementia are valued and fully supported in their pursuit of quality of life and well-being and whereas the city of Durham invites you to join in partnerships collaborations and advocacy efforts to promote well-being inclusion and health equity for persons with dementia now therefore I Elaine M. O'Neill mayor of the city of Durham North Carolina do hereby proclaim September 21st 2022 as World Alzheimer's in dementia awareness day in Durham and urge residents to join with dementia inclusive Inc to support persons with dementia and their caregivers throughout the year when it's my hand in the corporate seal of the city of Durham this 19th day of September 2022 and we we did have some correspondence that we're not going to be able to make it but just want to make sure we stated this tonight our last proclamation for this evening September is grace month whereas our daily lives are filled with information regarding inequity crime death and disaster often causing downhearted and despairing feelings and whereas the many daily acts of extending grace and being patient that occur in our community are unassuming go unnoticed and not celebrated and whereas by recognizing the need for extending grace being patient and showing acts of kindness all members of our community will be made aware of the importance of these virtues and whereas the purpose of grace month is to remember that everyone is unique and our different paths give us various advantages and obstacles when we extend grace we consider those differences we should be patient with others and during our day-to-day activities show kindness to enable Durham to be a welcoming inclusive kind safer and more secure place to live work and play and whereas the city of Durham honors those who positively impact our community and our world no matter how young or old now therefore i elaine m o nil mayor of the city of Durham North Carolina do hereby proclaim the month of september 2022 as grace month in Durham and hereby urge all residents to participate in extending grace practicing patience spreading kindness and respect generosity and consideration of others at all times witness my hand and the corporate seal of the city of Durham this the 19th day of september 2022 the person that i wanted to present this proclamation to is not here tonight because he's on city business and that will be chief deputy city manager bow Ferguson bow has on his portfolio a lot of departments that require him to interact with the public at large on many occasions and i've had the opportunity to see him he uh is within his portfolio for example is the police department so you can imagine and that's one of many so i wanted to take an opportunity if you've noticed i presented it to three other deputy city managers and bow is the last but i did want to make note that they are the pillars upon which wanderstands and all of us stand and i wanted to make sure that those deputy managers had something from this mayor to commemorate my time as mayor and hero now so chief deputy Chadwell is going to stand for him but bow i've seen you extend grace on so many times in so many different circumstances and i just wanted to say i appreciate your work thank you madam the uh the erstwhile utility person that i am having the honor to stand in for the manager and why not draw double duty and stand in for my colleague mr Ferguson thank you so much for this recognition bow to your hearing i pronounce well earned well deserved you should have it upon your return thank you so much as her honor makes her her way back to her seat let me say good evening uh to our honorable mayor to my honorable colleagues to our residents and citizens who are in presence with us in chamber those watching on television and the internet good evening before we get into the announcements uh with the mayor's permission and directive i need to make an announcement of some council action uh that was taken uh anytime we meet in closed session if there is action uh resulted from closed session we're obligated to report that out publicly if you look at our city's organization chart you'll notice that the city council sits atop of our org chart of almost 2,600 people however there are three employees that report directly to the city council of those 2,600 employees our city manager our city attorney and our city clerk part of our responsibilities as a council is to conduct annual reviews of these employees give them feedback and decide on any adjustments to salary to be made for this fiscal year the council has discharged of its duties to do its annual review of our three employees and at this time on behalf of the council i'd like to report out the action the council is the action the council has taken with respect to salaries our wonderful city manager won the page has a current salary of 255 thousand dollars annually that salary is being adjusted to 265 thousand 200 dollars annually our brilliant city attorney kim rayberg currently earns a salary of 206,700 dollars annually that salary is being adjusted to 219,102 dollars annually and our very able city clerk diana schreiber currently earns a salary of 103,175 dollars annually that salary is being adjusted to 107,302 dollars and on behalf of a grateful city i want to thank these employees for the hard work they do on behalf of all of us each year that ends the report of council action madam mayor thank you thank you mayor pro tem and thank you to our three wonderful city employees we commend them for their work they work really hard and we are glad to be able to compensate them for their well earned efforts i'd like to turn to our announcements for council we'll start with councilwoman freeman to see what she has to tell us tonight thank you madam mayor i first just want to take a moment and just say a word of thanks to my colleagues and to the community for the outpouring of support and just acknowledging the passing of my sister and my uncle in the last couple of weeks and um i just can't say enough that i'm not uh what do you what does it say what do we what do we say all the time i wasn't born in derm but i i can definitely tell you that derm is my home and i felt like my my entire family felt that when they were here this weekend so i just want to say thank you to y'all and then lastly i just wanted to share a a big hearty happy um mexican independence day for our neighbors um mexico in mexico and those of mexican descent acknowledging this past friday i would have probably had a whole party just to celebrate as well and that's all thank you thank you councilwoman freeman we still keep you lifted and we turn now to councilwoman cabillera uh good evening everyone hispanic heritage month started last wednesday um one of the reasons that hispanic heritage month is a mid month to mid month celebration from september 15 to october 15 is that there are several latin american countries who celebrate independence day so i want to say felices fiestas patrias a costarica el salvador cuatamala Honduras nicaragua mexico and mi país querido a chile who had their independence day yesterday fun fact there is a um a very fierce chilean woman named javiera carrera who was part of the independence movement several years or several uh centuries ago and she actually would feed the spanish and spy for uh the folks who were seeking independence and that is one of the reasons i am named javiera um i also want to thank the mexican council for their fantastic mexican independence day celebration last week uh el grito de mexico is always a very very fun thing to observe and take part in i also want to thank um i was able to participate in a really amazing summit last week in greensboro hosted by latinx ed it is a statewide organization uh that leads around education and workforce development issues for the latino community statewide and one of the reasons i attended was because i understand the connectivity between education and workforce development and i know that our workforce development department has worked diligently on this issue and i look forward to further collaboration um and then this coming saturday is pride and i'll look really forward to marching in pride along with several of my colleagues and finally my daughter got her driver's license today so be wary be careful um yeah thank you so much oh and one last thing i'm so sorry i do want to extend um a lot of uh thoughts and prayers to Puerto Rico who has suffered another catastrophic hurricane and is at the moment you know we're seeing widespread electrical failure and puttable water failure i know locally the hispanic federation is collecting donations so i do ask the community if you're able to donate to that organization again hispanic federation they're easy to find online they're already on the ground in Puerto Rico thank you so much councilwoman Conveyora i look back to me a protein for any announcements miss you madame thank you madame good evening once again very quickly madame it was my pleasure to attend center fest uh yesterday was it yesterday yeah yesterday saturday and yesterday but my official role uh was yesterday and madame i was very pleased to bring greetings on your behalf there was music there was dancing there was art there was food there was ice cream just good feelings you know i really hate this job and having to do assignments like that uh matter bear but but somebody had to do it so i just want to congratulate our arts community uh for preventing us from becoming a cookie cutter city um it's our artists and and those who are cultural torch bearers uh that are the dna of Durham and give us our special stamp so again as a representative to the council the council's representative to Durham arts council congratulations we're back it's been a couple of years since we've had it but had a wonderful center fest and i just want to congratulate all those who made that a rousing success i also want to just extend further condolences and love to my sister de draana um cate was one of my favorite visitors to my office um and whenever she came to the office something was going to get moved or redecorated and i loved every minute of it so we pray rest for her and and comfort for your family and may divine win attend her journey home thank you madam mayor thank you mayor pro tem i now turn to my left council on mine uh good evening i just wanted to also say that i had the honor saturday to attend the sisters network triangle north carolina t and that is an african-american breast cancer survival organization and so it was very very humbling for me because i just tell you how god works um my lost my sister on september 18 20 years ago to breast cancer and so it was very much an honor to be in the room with those who are survivors those are continuing those who are continuing to kind of fight the disease and um yeah so it was just really good and i just want to say thank you to this organization that is also continuing to fight to educate uh women and all people around breast cancer and so thank you thank you councilwoman harmon any other announcements councilwoman johnson thank you madam mayor it was a busy and eventful weekend here in the bull city i also had the opportunity to um stop by center fest and see a lot of our local artists and um that was a really a really great experience we uh we missed it so i'm really glad that it's back um back in the community i also um was able to attend an anniversary celebration for the forest at duke retirement community um and bring greetings on behalf of our mayor they're celebrating their 30th anniversary here in the community um and apparently i missed a really great party the night before they were up till 10 o'clock at night which was uh very unusual they told me usually the party's over by 8 so uh stand party until 10 was a big deal also apparently the food is really great um i was sorry to miss that and and only be able to come for the for the proclamation but um it's a great group of folks over over at the forest at duke and um we've been lucky to have them for in the community for for 30 years now thank you madam mayor thank you councilwoman johnson councilman williams thank you mayor and good evening everyone um i'd employ everyone to just uh you know have a bit of grace of your hearts for the families that have lost um young folk this weekend this past week the couple of weeks and we just cannot um we can't become numb to it and and we have to keep you know being village and and and you know creating safer streets and safer safer environments um and and right our right our own narrative you know um so i just want to make sure we acknowledge that they're they're mothers that are won't see their sons again this weekend after this past week and i want to you know it takes a psychological toll on our first responders to see this all the time so want to have that on a lighter note i had the opportunity to attend with our mayor and councilmember hyman the dorm success summit now speaking of the young black men that lost their lives and young women um this is a room full of young black men who are in a program to become entrepreneurs or uh leaders in their own right leaders in their own field and this program takes them through a series of experiences by way of mentorship with folks like us and it is just so impactful to see that we could raise $36,000 in one night to put 36 young men through this program to create 36 more leaders in the bull city and those are things that we need to shout to the top of our voice about and that is how we create safer streets investing in things that are working and investing in programs like that so i just wanted to highlight the dorm success summit tonight uh the executive director dare growths and for all of them to keep up the great work and um yeah thank you thank you councilman williams i too want to just say my thanks to my my colleagues who allowed me to go and spend time with my family this weekend for our 50th family reunion in charlotte north carolina and um Durham is always well covered um they always whenever i ask uh they will go and and give greetings on behalf of the city and so thank you all for your participation in all of the Durham events and i appreciate that i really do so we're going to move on now to our priority items in our first recognize city i'm sitting in for city manager page keep chat well our deputy city manager for any priority items you may have sir thank you very thank you very much madam mayor and mr mayor pro tem and members of council the city manager brings three priority items for your consideration this evening one agenda item 21 a change order to a construction manager at risk contract with gilbane building company for the water department for the water management facility complex additional information has been provided in the item pursuant to a to the council's request agenda item number 33 consolidated annexation for 1409 dock nickles road attachment k a development plan has been replaced the applicant has provided a revised text commitment number nine to stipulate that three completed townhouses will be donated instead of three building pads and agenda item number 34 consolidated annexation of 79 26 massy chapel road attachment d was replaced to correct the future land use map information and attachment f was replaced to correct errors in the formula that was provided in the item that completes the priority items madam mayor thank you mr chat will i will now turn my attention to attorney old tool for any priority items from the city attorney's office good evening mayor mayor pro tem and council members dono tool sitting in for city attorney kim rayberg and our office has no priority items thank you and we now turn to our city clerk for any priority items that she may have thank you uh madam mayor i wanted to let you know that the city clerk's office has no priority items this evening thank you so much you're welcome the next start of business is the consent agenda the consent agenda consists of items that the council has previously considered in a work session all items on the consent agenda may be approved by a single vote of the council items may be removed from the consent agenda by a council member or member of the public and those items will be considered separately at the end of the meeting tonight and i'm going to ask our mayor pro tem if he would read the consent agenda thank you madam mayor uh madam mayor with your permission i need to backtrack and um staff has reminded me we actually need to make a motion to take a vote on the increases forgive me for the oversight so with with your permission madam mayor i'd like to entertain a motion uh to approve the increases that council has put forth on our three direct employees so move again we've moved in properly second and madam clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote the motion passes seven zero thank you madam clerk and thank you madam mayor uh per the mayor's directive i'll now read items for our our consent agenda item number one mayor's Hispanic Latino committee appointments item number two Durham workers rights commission appointment item number three Durham housing authority board of commissioners appointment item number five approval of city council minutes item number six fiscal year in 2022 inventory performance audit through august 2022 item number seven boards committees commissions and task force fiscal year 2021 through 2022 annual attendance reports item number nine interlocal agreement with Durham county for master aging plan implementation item number 10 south mineral springs and pleasant annexation ordinance correction item item number 11 in ordinance to amend the Durham city code provision regulating street or alley closing and abandon and abandoning petition filing requirements within the city item number 12 carolina civil works annexation ordinance correction item number 13 contract for the provision of non congregate emergency shelter supportive services with project access of Durham county item number 14 bull city united update and contract renewal and this item has been pulled by a citizen item number 15 renew interlocal agreement with Durham county for gang reduction strategy item number 16 renew contract with legal aid of north carolina to administer Durham expansion and restoration our deer program item number 17 award of construction the jf wilkerson contracting company ink for the celeste circle force main project item number 18 purchase contract ferguson enterprises llc of virginia advanced metering infrastructure pilot project item number 19 award of service contract for led and copper rule program management cdm smith ink item number 20 purchase contract mobile communications america ink for a booster cell network for the department of water management facility complex item number 21 change order number 3 gillbane building company construction manager at risk contract number 14459 for the department of water management facility complex item number 22 amendment number 4 to the professional engineering services contract with kim lee horn and associates ink for the american tobacco district waterline replacement project item number 23 microwave upgrade project with motorola solutions ink item number 24 appointment of a deputy finance officer item number 25 contract for certain bill printing and mail services item number 26 fellowship placement agreement between the city of Durham and fused corpse for sustainable land use in cemeteries projects item number 28 contract st-319 braggtown street improvements item number 29 resolution to support the local assistance for stormwater infrastructure investments las2 program grants item number 30 contract with edge one solutions ink for the nice inform elite intelligence center that ends items on the consent agenda on the general business agenda tonight we have number 20 item number 27 contract for shot spotter response services agreement general business agenda public hearings item number 33 consolidated annexation 1409 dock nickels road item 34 consolidated annexation 7 9 2 6 massy chapel road item number 35 arborstone way broadstone court flatstone court green mount drive and upland metals lane street closings item number 36 zoning map change dearborn drive multifamily item number 37 zoning map change wabash parcels uh that ends the reading of the agenda into the minutes and by my reckoning we have one pulled item by a residence last year this night of number 14 yield back to you madam mayor that is correct thank you so much now we will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of item 14 second and moved by councilman williams seconded by council uh mayor pro tem madam clerk if you will open the vote if you will close the vote that the motion passes seven zero thank you all right we will now move to the one pulled item we have one speaker so i'm going to pull that item and we'll head and allow for mr jontay dunstan if you will come forth sir item 14 is the bull city united update and contract renewal so you will have three minutes to speak thank you mayor o'neill good evening city council members um city um clerk city staff and the community members of our community i would like to first start by saying that um i would like to see that the bull city united reach their get their funding even though what happened this past week we should not have the fault of one shamed others now one thing i can't speak to the community i'm seeing what these young brothers and young sisters that are trying what they're doing in the community and we shouldn't let one individual take away the resources that these individual in the city and a group leaders in the city that are trying to do there are also other groups coming from apex other volunteers that are coming into our communities and i feel that with bull city united and their funding this is an opportunity for us to unite the other groups other volunteers there are other churches the brothers and young people in the community need bull city united funding because there's nothing for these young people to do with the ongoing violence that happened it's the brothers and sisters of bull city united they're getting through to these individuals out here but it's always the one individuals that always set them back i'm here to approve and my opinion on seeing how these brothers are acting and how they're doing don't let the media paint this group as a bad picture marylneal has tried hard and she's trying very hard to try to get this city our police chief is trying hard it takes us in the community to help mentor these young brothers and sisters it takes a gentleman as myself i'm a business owner in this community and i'm a i have a security company and it's hard for me sometimes to get employees people my age they're not built for the security industry but these young people that i'm coming across have no criminal records and it's up to us to try to get them employed and the industries around here so we all work together as a community because one thing i'm glad to see is a bunch of white brothers and sisters coming from white churches into the black community they're making sure that we have food they're making sure that we're working together but sometimes you know they're hearing you know the bad from the media so it's up for us as a family and Durham community to show that it's brothers like brother learn brother williams over here he's a business owner we need somebody that can like men like myself in his community to show these young men how we can get them up to par how they become professional citizens that's why i'm going to volunteer my time to help show the bullet city united how to be organized leadership how to do book work proper proper work for the citizens of dirham's let's give a second chance because one thing don pascal told me a long time ago it's about your reputation it's not about what you have in this city mr dunson thank you very much sir your time is thank you really appreciate you being with us for pulling the item colleagues that's the only speaker we have on this pulled item from the consent agenda if no members of council have any comments uh we'll entertain a motion to move this item so move second second i heard a motion from councilmember freeman and the second uh from my right from council member caballero madam clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote motion passes seven zero thank you madam clerk and uh per the mayor's directive we're going to move to general business agenda uh item number 27 a contract for shot spotter response services agreement and we do have a a resident citizen who'd like to speak on this dunson you're up again you have three minutes thank you for being with us sure if you'd say to your name and address for the record please my name is john tate dunson address 1304 cosard street dirham county taxpayer okay then gender for tonight is shot spotter okay ladies and gentlemen i'm coming from you from experience in dealing with this i have a security company i've come from washington dc major metropolitan city the reason why i choose that the city should not go forward with spot shotter because number one we don't have the staff and our police department if we install shot spotter number one shot spotter to my opinion should go it should go to the schools first it should go to the shopping centers it should go to the highly public areas that we have a lot of traffic those are who we need to be more concerned about it's the active shooter that we don't know about but the situations that are happening in these neighborhoods are isolated these are amongst groups this is like a small civil war now right now because we don't have the staffing if we install spot shotter what it's going to do is going to drive our police department crazy it's going to run them it's going to run them all over the city just for a celebratorial shots fired i believe that the money that we're going to put in a shot spotter should go straight to our police department to get better recruits we need because the problem is that we're losing good officers we're getting good rookies in they're able to handle the situations in the community but the problem is is that the private security industry is picking them up so it's competitiveness we need competitive salary for our police department so the funding that we're going to put in a shot spotter we don't need technology we need more police officers we need that funding to make sure that we are a competitive salary because all the counties around us are paying their police officers 54 to $60,000 a year and guess what it's taking it's taking our officers away so basically what they're using Durham County as a place to get their certification and they're moving on so i believe that we should give the officers the pay they ask for and put them into a contract so if you want $50,000 a year as a police officer then you got to give this city five to ten years then therefore we can be able to get the officers and qualify but trying to turn our city into me i was watching robocop last night and it looked like something out of ocp that we cannot end up putting more technology into our city have we did an environmental research on this technology because we are in a migrating path for our birds that's our ecosystem i'm sorry i'm compassionate our chief i remember when our chief police chief i remember when she had the most prettiest you still have prettiest black hair but i do 12 out of 13 hour shifts she's turning silver i'm sitting around doing security not doing nothing and when i get off work doing 12 hours she's still on patrol our police chief that's not fair to her so take the money let's increase because the money we're going to spend on spot shotter that can go to the overtime budget right there i ended on no i wish i could talk on i'm sorry i got you baby we we're working with you we're going to help you mr dunson thank you very much thank you that's chief andrew is not baby you you're you're your chief thank you sir colleagues that's the only resident citizen who chose to speak honest if if do any council members or colleagues have anything to say on this item council member copierre yes thank you i just had a quick question i know we got the map of the deployment area but i wasn't sure if we had any updates on where the camp or where the shot spotter technology is going to actually be placed we have uh chief andrews do you want to respond to that or your designee good evening council mayor mayor pro tem council members city staff and my community so the sensors there is there are several locations that the sensors are going to be placed i'm currently shot spotter team and i do have two representatives here from shot spotter are seeking permissions in order to place those sensors the police department does not have an exact list of where sensors will be placed and that is done for anonymity as well as for safety and security for those entities that may have a sensor placed either on their building or somewhere near their their their their property i hope that's answered your so to to understand we won't actually get that information one when it is determined because we're protecting it essentially yes thank you thank you thank you chief colleagues anyone else if not seeing none councilmember seeing none um i'll entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to execute a one-year contract in the total amount of 197 500 with shot spotter ink for the respond gunshot detection location and forensic analysis service second i heard a motion from councilmember hyman and a second from councilmember williams madame clerk would you please open the vote madame clerk would you please close the vote and report out the motion passes five to two with council members caballero and councilmember johnson voting no thank you very much thank you colleagues well colleagues at this time we're going to move uh to our public hearings we have some some uh a number of public hearings tonight and we'll try and get through them expeditiously we want to thank those who are in the chamber to participate in them uh the mayor's uh conserving her voice a little bit tonight so we'll be working together to get through these so i will be conducting uh holding the gavel for the first public hearing uh which is number item number 33 consolidated annexation 1409 dock nickels road and we'll hear from staff at this time mayor anneal may upper tim middleton honorable council members good evening i'm andy lester of the planning department and i'm happy to be here with you tonight before we begin staff would like to state for the record that all planning department hearing items have been advertised and noticed in accordance with state and local law and affidavits of all notices are on file in the planning department the request for utility extension agreement voluntary annexation and initial zoning map change has been received from jared edens of edens land core for one parcel of land totaling 8.282 acres and located at 1409 dock nickels road this annexation petition is for contiguous and expansion of the existing non-satellite corporate limits the current zoning is residential world for the initial city zoning of the site if annexation is approved the applicant proposes to change the designation to plan development residential 7.245 to allow for the construction of up to 60 townhouse units the applicant has committed to the construction and deed a donation of three of those townhouse units to the to habitat for humanity of derm incorporated the properties are located are currently designated low density residential on the future land use map the proposed development the proposed plan development residential 7.245 zoning is inconsistent with the designated use shown on the flume if the proposed zoning is approved staff recommends a change to the future land use map to designate the property as low medium density residential the planning commission recommended approval by a vote of seven to one at their june 23rd 2022 meeting and as a reminder three motions are required for this application the first is to adopt an ordinance and annexing the property and entering into a utility extension agreement the second is to approve the zoning ordinance and the third is to approve the consistency statement thank you staff the applicant are available for any questions thank you very much good to see you colleagues before we open the public hearing i'd like to see if any council member has any questions or comments for staff on this case seeing none we're going to open this public hearing i'm going to ask mr edens are you sorry uh there you go would you approach please mr edens how much time do you anticipate your team needing to make your case tonight it just may it be yeah i'll be brief four five six minutes i'll brief i'll have some time for questions later but my presentation is brief okay why don't we put 10 minutes on the clock for you and uh use what you need and then we'll get our opponents and then whatever you have in reserve you want to use to respond that'd be great okay well all right good evening uh thank you members city council jared edens with edens investments i appreciate your time this evening i appreciate staff's andrew's presentation also i'll just try to highlight a few points this evening as andrew mentioned we're proposing 60 townhomes on dot nickels road it's about an eight acre parcel we're proposing a density of around 7.2 units an acre i think if you look at the location i think townhomes make a lot of sense here this site is located pretty close to the leasville road dot nickels road intersection if you'll notice immediately south of the site it's the fendle farms development that actually has a pocket of townhomes adjacent to our site and that part of the project so we'd be sort of continuing the townhome trend from fendle farms um i think it's a much better option in lieu of of single family development for the area this is another part of durham where when you zoom out on the map you see a lot of single family homes um but you don't have a lot of diversity of housing there's not as many townhomes or apartments i think this would help with that issue um and generally speaking you know we we try to bring strong projects to council as much as we can we try to add conditions and strengthen our proposal as much as we can um i'll highlight a few that we have we're doing the hundred-year stormwater detention which has sort of become standard and i'm glad to see that i think other applicants have been following that we've got some widened buffers for our neighbors we've had a lot of communication with with our neighbors miss night especially to the north about buffers and and opacity and things like that uh we have a significant affordable component you know when the project started out we were because we've been trying to find ways to work with habitat for humanity of durham to give some affordable housing on four sale projects we started on this when we were going to give three completed townhome pads to habitat and then habitat would be tasked later down the line with constructing the three units on the pads the lots that we were giving them uh honestly the way that would probably would have played out and i'll talk to habitat and our builder is habitat would have likely hired our builder to build those units on some sort of fee basis once the lots have been developed we would probably have the same builder building the habitat units it's building the other market rate units so we decided to sort of combine that together and just made the commitment to provide three completed units in lieu of three completed townhome pads uh this is a significant profit i believe i mean three retail units in this part of town that's you know likely a million dollar plus value but it's something we try to do on our projects and it's another precedent that we're hoping that gets set we have a project on sharing road that council approved last year or earlier this year that provided a habitat unit we've got three more here this evening and i'm something we want to continue doing when we can we do have a couple other proffers i've been following meetings you know talking with some of the neighbors and and preserve durham and people like that and i know there's a lot of concerns with erosion control and storm water and environmental issues in this area with lit creek i was trying to figure out some ways to maybe address that with additional zoning conditions because that's what we're here for is to try to improve the project a couple things i had in mind is is and a couple of proffers i've run by staff is we'd like to add a couple of erosion control proffers to our application to address some of those concerns so one would be that we would commit to installing a double row of silt fence so you see silt fence on these properties where this construction is supposed to hold the sediment in and keep it on the site it's usually one row of fencing that sort of has somewhat buried underneath the ground and and you have one row we're committing to two rows of fencing everywhere that you see silt fencing it sounds like a small thing but i think practically it actually helps quite a bit with erosion when you have two layers of silt fencing on the edge of the property so we want to add that to this project and another thought i had is we've been proposing a hundred-year stormwater detention for permanent ponds which is great for permanent ponds and that's great for the site when the site has been developed and it's constructed and all the plantings are in and everything's done but we haven't had any conditions in the past that address stormwater and erosion during construction so what we did you know the current standard for an erosion control pond which main purpose is to filter filter out the sediment before it goes into the creek that standard is basically it's a 25 year storm standard is what the erosion control ponds are based on and what we want to do with this project and likely future projects is commit to the hundred-year sizing during construction as part of the erosion pond not just the permanent ponds so you get because if you get a hundred-year storm during construction that's the worst time you can get it before site's been stabilized and so far conditions have not really addressed that it's always been post-development so that's a second condition we want to add to size the erosion control measure for the hundred-year storm which i think gives much better protection to let creek than what we're getting currently um doing a note on the staff report i always like to to look at some of the numbers the uh transportation related you know dot nickels road has a capacity of about 12,700 cars i think it's currently getting 750 cars a day so i don't think we have transportation issues in this location uh planning commission did approve the project by vote of seven to one um you know it's all i had this evening i just want to bring up those couple extra commitments but i'm be glad to answer any questions you have moving forward thank you thank thank you mr edens madam madam clerk the time disappeared before i looked up you have recorded how much time he's got in bank all right thank you mr edens we have um eight people thus far signed up uh to speak on this uh item uh in opposition um each of you will have three minutes that'll be about 24 minutes so we'll make sure mr edens you have adequate time to to respond to anything if if you see fit i'm going to call of the names and i ask that you would line up accordingly maybe the first three folk give yourself some distance between each other and then we'll go on to the next three uh the first speaker i have is Pam Pamela Andrews sandy wilson and ronnie turner good evening and welcome to all of you thank you for being with us if you would state your name and your address for the record you'll have three minutes you're ready all right good evening everybody um my name is Pamela Andrews 6108 Wake Forest Highway tonight i come to you once again with concerns for our residents in southeast Durham yet another piece of property on dot niggles road is being annexed and developed as you know we have had very little rain the past two months recently several environmental experts went out and took water samples from lick creek and surrounding tributaries current readings from the ecoli levels were 1733 at the tributary and greater than 2420 in the main lake creek the water quality standard for ecoli is 235 this sampling event took place in a very dry period obviously sampling indicated high concentrations of bacteria these findings are high but not surprising given the density of development occurring in the area it is the opinion of scientists that these issues will likely be exasperated by ongoing development if existing sewage infrastructure problems are not addressed in stronger sediment erosion plans implemented as it stands the bacteria levels are high enough to consider seeking an updated 303d listing on the deq's impaired water list the system in place is clearly overburdened and needing attention we're once again asking for a comprehensive ecological plan and study done dynamite blasting continues to feed the tomato soup with every rainfall as loose sediment flows right into the creek bed residents are being terrorized by these dynamite blasts and left with lots of damage as you're going to hear from from residents tonight there are 10 active blasting sites in Durham city alone i spoke to the farm marshal this morning the sites topography maps if you look at it it goes from 396 at the entrance and drops to 320s 80-foot drop over eight acres it would most likely require field material retaining walls and more dynamite blasting no grading plan was available for us to review this extremely highly erodible soil will most likely create more tomato soup in the tributaries which is extremely high tribunity readings in july of 385 to 400 i know on wednesday the un rba will be presented with an algae scrubber as a possible solution where the scrubber would remove 6 000 pounds of nitrogen according to the website where a development in 10 000 acres which is proposed would produce 26 000 to 52 000 pounds of nitrogen a year that's a lot of nitrogen folks that's going to feed this toxic algae per the city documents we know there's currently been 9409 cumulative total units with 3500 359 in the cube every acre clear cut and mass graded is having an impact on the residents and the environment lick creek qualifies for three or three d status it is biologically impaired and the reasons listed were ecoli fecal contamination from sewage backflow habitat destruction development and nutrient runoff from developments thank you for your time please look at what's going on in southeastern thank you miss andrews for being with us tonight thank you sandy wilson good evening if you state your name and address for the record you have three minutes thank you for being with us my name is sandy wilson 4418 carpenter pond road i just wanted to start out by saying that back in january received a letter from geosonics about inspecting homes and that kind of thing they left a note at my uncle's house who cannot hear so he didn't know they had even been and knocked on the door or rang the door bell a 90 year old and knew nothing about it they came to my house and knocked on the door i opened the door they said that they wanted to do home inspections because they were going to be dynamiting and blasting back behind our property so come to find out i live in a mobile home they don't inspect mobile homes but the definition of a home is the place where one lives permanently especially as a member of a family or a household just because i live in a mobile home and they're doing blasting what if something happens to the structure of my mobile home are they not going to fix that either and i just had to have a $12,000 whale drilled in april because i was sharing a whale with my uncle so i just spent $12,000 on a whale all this dynamiting that's going on behind me beside me and all around me not just at dock nickels but from dock nickels the 6,000 block of leisville road now the 5905 block of leisville road all that's going to be dynamited so it's not just one site it's all of them combined together for all of us in that community over there and you have to i mean you have to worry about that kind of thing so i just spent $12,000 on a whale what's going to happen if mine caves in and it's likely to happen it's no different than an earthquake i mean things happen things fall apart so i mean i just i don't understand how they can not inspect a mobile home or if they inspected it doesn't matter and then you have people in the community who are elderly and their houses are cracked the found the sheet rock is cracked the companies will not reimburse them to fix these problems because they say they don't meet code the houses were built in the 60s they weren't built recently code's changed from then to now so it's not fair how people are getting treated in the community by these companies with their dynamite and and blasting and i work from home all day every day i hear it i feel the house shake so i know when it's going on i don't know where it's coming from but i know what's going on so i just wanted y'all to hear and see how the things are transpiring in that neighborhood and in the area thank you for your time thank you miss wilson so miss wilson so much for being with us ronnie turner good evening sir if you'd state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes as well my name's ronnie turner i live at 203 hoecut road i represent my in-laws who are elderly and physically unable to attend they live in its 704 dock nickels road um the dynamite has been going on for a while their whale was collapsed they went without water for two and a half months as i begged and talked and pleaded with the people that were dynamiting to please help that there are people here they're they're taking the water and the ability to live in their homes away and they did not care they would not even respond after about a week we also have neighbors the lady across the street they've had to just leave their house they have no water they can't afford a well the house across and down two houses their foundations are broke their wells are messing up we put a new well in hip we kind of split it with my in-laws because they couldn't afford much it's already turned into sand it's coming in the house this is a brand new well that's already starting to have problems they're dynamiting in the backyard and they had the audacity to walk to the door and knock on it ask my mother mother-in-law would you like to come out and mash the button and do the blasting today i mean this is you're coming to a door of an 82 year old woman and ask her to come out and set off dynamite and it's 10 foot from her backyard these people have no no ethics about them as far as the traffic on the road i beg to differ this that's got to be more people my father-in-law just trying to get to the mailbox had to jump out of the way of a car that was flying down the road fell in the ditch and broke his hip where was anybody to help him we would we're getting overrun they're they're taking advantage of the people that have been there most of their lives and can't fight back if somebody doesn't stand up and protect them they'll be gone and what did you achieve you got some more homes now i was at a meeting last monday downtown and a company presented something that i thought was very unique they had a plan and i have a picture of the plan on my phone if you i'd love for someone here to to take note of it they have to be able to use an septic system and wells and erosion planting trees it's it's all planned and approved by Durham it's going in Durham County out toward rougemont if you applied that technology to what you're doing you would make a better community instead of destroying it it looks like you're strip mining if you understand what that is they go through they just take everything away there is nothing i wanted to build a garage they made me make sure i had three trees a certain diameter before i could even build a garage Ms. Turner thank you sir for being with us the next three names i have are Donna Stainback, Gary McLean, and Pam Williams good evening to all of you thank you for being with us Ms. Stainback you'll if you'll state your name and address for the record please you'll have three minutes yes good evening Mayor O'Neill, Mayor Pro Tem Middleton, and council members my name is Donna Stainback and i'm a lifelong Durham county resident at 4825 Jimmy Rogers Road now i have um they're going to provide you with copies of the handouts i was working on them okay um i was working on them till uh the time to leave this afternoon because we got some updates um what i've been working on is the environmental planning metrics that i'm now doing for like the planning commission and for the city council meetings where we look at the projects in the uh eastern area and um evaluate based upon what is either in the development plan or the zoning document the metrics we're using metrics that have been established by the planning um department and some that are in the new comprehensive plan um looking at this particular site we um started off with 70 percent of impervious soil and we know that that increases the runoff and the velocity of the runoff which causes even more erosion so that's why that is so important and Mr. Eden's was able this afternoon to reduce that to 60 percent the other two metrics regarding open space and tree preservation he said he needed to leave those as they were um for the riparian buffer the comprehensive plan is now stating 150 feet for um perennial streams but the the milestone or the final metric is 100 foot so at this time that's going to be left as 100 foot and um but it does not have any water devices or in the stream buffers which is very important that you know because we've had some before where that has occurred and so that was a good commitment now um for the mass grading my understanding was that is yes and but the acreage is smaller and the blasting what uh Mr. Eden stated was that that would be minimal I didn't put yes or no because I thought you know that his direct input would be beneficial um we're also asking for you know an increased border on the side um but Leesville and um we do have the storm water device there thank you for staying back so much your time tonight thank you Mr. Gary McLean McLean good evening sir if you'll state your name and address for the record you have three minutes thank you for being with us uh good evening mayor O'Neill and mayor pro tem and council members my name is Gary McLean I live at 4712 Jimmy Rogers road in Durham North Carolina I'm a lifelong resident of Durham uh I'm I'm not really an opponent to development and then annexation whenever it's um done correctly but I am opposed to the mass grading and the dynamite blasting that has been going on um it has a negative effect on the groundwater aquifers and the well water in southeastern Durham I spoke the last time about all the sediment that was in the wells and the filters and everything we residents have to drink bathe cook with this water and you we have to utilize this water also the secondary roads that I travel on daily which is the dock nickels road is already gridlocked and traffic studies lane expansions new routes something needs to be constructed planned and utilized because we just um it's just it's just gridlocked out there but thank you for your time and your consideration sorry if you'll state your name and address for the record you have three minutes good evening yes my name is Pam Williams I live at 2130 adventure trail Durham North Carolina I'm in walking distance from this development I walked down dock nickels road I have for the last 35 years um I'm not opposed to development when it's done right but everything now is being done to the minimum standards uh this development is pdr is 7.245 that's the highest uh that any of the developments that's going on now which is about eight of them uh that's the highs per dwellings per acre fennel farms that is next door it's about 50s to 75 feet away but their townhomes are single story these are three-story townhomes that's why I am requesting additional street landscaping along dock nickels road um and yeah as you can see how the first slide it's on dock nickels where they provided the minimum landscaping and it's nothing but heartscape the same thing on Sharon road and the same thing on Ellis road we're requesting a 30-foot minimum buffer with a 0.6 mix vegetation as proposed on mason farms roads uh orchard ridge we have shown up there and also carolina arbors uh are some good examples the next thing we're requesting is that no clearing and grubbin be uh within the proposed 30-foot buffer next to the property line and preserve its many existing trees and supplement as necessary we're requesting a 0.6 of vegetation on the property lines next to the existing family homes uh the 0.4 and a 20-foot boundary it's just not enough it does not approve uh a decent uh vista for the area um there's uh if you ride out on Sharon road orchard ridge there's a farm and then there's orchard ridge you cannot even see the three-story or two-story townhomes uh I'm requesting this additional vegetation and buffers because these are three-story townhomes and that is not within the character of that of Dr. Nichols road I'm also requesting no retaining wells within the 30-foot boundary buffer requesting no clearing and grubbin no stormwater devices no field material and no retaining wells within the 100-foot stream buffers as was done on fennel farms and other developments in the area uh in the area they have cleared up to 50 feet of the stream buffer provided retaining wells less than 100 feet uh from the stream buffers and provided stormwater devices in it and I also like to say that the 700 vehicles per day on Dr. Nichols road there has not been a true traffic count on Dr. Nichols road by NCDOT since 2015 so the 700 may be what's showing up on the the map but there has not been a traffic study and I am requesting that updated traffic counts for this area be prepared and done with a 24-hour count. Thank you so much Ms. Wendell. I appreciate it. Thank you. Your time is up. Thank you. Rebecca Freeman and then Thomas Freeman good evening to you both and thank you for being with us if you'll state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening there O'Neill and Mayor Pro Tem Middleton and council members I'm Rebecca Freeman 1818 Southview Road I'm a lifelong resident of Durham County I had six issues to speak on but the many of them have already been taken so I'll just talk about the ones that I do have left. I noticed that on the plans only one type of housing is included and according to the comprehensive plan more than one type of housing is recommended for development so that was one of the issues that I saw this inconsistent. The plan gives few details about the appearance of the townhomes although the plans state that a variety of materials will be used there is in quotes no proposed architectural style no distinctive architectural building features proposed roofs will be sloped so I hope so not flat and so more details are needed on what they're going to construct there and there is only one entrance and exit onto the property to a to a street the other one shown on plans going to private property and that would have to be developed before there's another exit or entrance into that property that is over this close to between seven and eight hundred feet deep and I think that is probably an emergency exiting problem from the rear of the property if something were a problem at the very beginning of the at the front of the development and the development need to be evacuated to be a problem thank you so much may I give my time to someone else that didn't finish up we know we don't yield time during public even thank you Mr Freeman good evening sir if you'll state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes good evening thomas freeman lifelong resident of Durham city Durham County I reside at 1818 Southview road Durham North Carolina uh I come to uh uh city mayor city council citizens of Durham I come to you tonight to bring to your attention the reason that this is an awful sight to develop I draw your attention to the uh to the topography which is on the screen uh the the grade starts at about 396 which is adjacent to the roadway slide it down a little bit so you can see the roadway okay okay there you go okay well and there you go there's the roadway this is the roadway this is doc nickels road the point I'm trying to make here folks is that that elevation is around 396 400 the bottom of the grade is around 320 so that's approximately 72 76 feet a vertical drop so you've got this huge drop between the front of the property and the back of the property horrible topography next photo please I'm going to take you on a visual tour of the of an adjacent property this is fendal farms I'm sitting on dot nickels road looking down the slope the property to your left is not the subject property but it is typical of the topography in the area you look way down at the bottom this is what the site's going to look like take a look at the image to the right that's all fill material that is all fresh fill material that was brought in there hopefully well compacted and homes perched built on top of it next slide please at the bottom of the hill this is what you're greeted to behind this wall is fill material that holds all of this in place keep your fingers crossed that it holds it all in place next slide please these are engineered devices they have a they have a a pretty good record but it's uh it's not perfect this is another uh shot of that same wall that's holding millions of cubic yards of of soil in place in on fendal farms the same I would expect I would I would show you the grading plan but we don't have a grading plan we don't have a grading plan next slide please so as you drive down Dr. Nichols road this is what you're greeted to the rooftops this is in yet another recent development another mass graded high density subdivision but if they drop the elevation the grade at the uh at Dr. Nichols road this is what you're going to look at the rooftops of homes Mr. Freeman thank you sir but I'll stop and thank you thank you so much mass grading's got to stop thank you Mr. Freeman we have a page poke that signed up to speak but has indicated that a video was to be shown do you know what the duration of that video the time on the video is two minutes all right if you have that cue at this time hello my name is Paige and I live on dock Nichols road right next door to the large fendal farms development and across the street from a developing development that they're dynamic mining up to 15 feet into the ground in order to find stable land to build on and I'm also right on the border right here of where the 1409 dock Nichols development is being planned on being built that's up for annexation and I'm going to show you the impact of the dynamite the impact of this development and how it's actually disrupting our infrastructure not just the ecological equilibrium of the space so you see I have gray water lines and they come straight from my house and this is all of my plumbing and it's actually eroded the land has eroded so the underwater plumbing which used to be completely covered is now starting to show because the land here is trying to find an equilibrium it's trying to even out itself and so this back here all of this is planned to be completely disrupted all of the trees are planned to be bulldozed and this runoff this this issue is going to get worse and worse my land is a prime example of what the impact is going to look like because I'm right next to all of these large developments there's fendal farms right over there and I want to urge you urge you urge you to stop annexing this land more stop building in this land more because it's only going to get worse this is just the beginning of the plumbing what about our electrical what about our sewer what about our sewage we need to think about the future of Durham not just right now thank you very much thank you uh for that um by my reckoning that's all of the card and signed uh folks signed up that we have for opponents that have they're pre-registered um about 26 to 27 minutes of opponents speaking how much time does mystery have in in bank roughly it's four minutes and 20 seconds all right thank you and uh if you need more than that the the opponents spoke for almost about 26 27 minutes so if you want to respond to anything you've heard from the opponents please do so yeah thank you for the opportunity I was making notes as people were talking I try to address some of these that I highlighted there's a lot of talk about dynamite I know that's come up recently on the other projects and uh I do want to know when it's mentioned that there are there are 10 active sites in Durham that that have dynamite there's probably hundreds of active development sites in Durham I had to guess right now on some form of development so uh the 10 is I think percentage wise there's not a lot of projects across Durham that are currently have dynamite I did check on this parcel I checked the soils report for this parcel to see where the rock was on the parcel you know where utilities are likely to go uh I was talking with Miss Knight earlier today or corresponding with her but there's areas in in the site where rock is 16 and a half or feet deep or greater there's areas where it's three to four feet deep in the ground depending on where you are in the site but if you and if you hear some of the comments made about the topography of the site and how it falls down and it's just going to have filled dirt on top of filled dirt and whatever well to flatten the site we will be bringing some fill in to flatten the property and make it buildable but generally when you fill a property you're not blasting a property you know you're generally blasting a property when you're cutting into the existing grade to lower the grade but where the property that falls away like this a majority of the site is going to be in fill so you there's no you know you're not digging into the existing grade to begin with so that the possibility and the of having blasting here I think is minor I mean if there's any blasting on this site it would be just for the trench utilities which are generally you know four to four foot trenches six foot trenches if we have some deep sewer in certain parts of the property but generally speaking just from my experience and looking at the topography I don't anticipate a lot of blasting if any on the site the traffic it was coming about the traffic count I can only go by the staff report staff report says 750 cars that that's I have to go by that it may be a little bit more but my comparison to the to the capacity of 12,000 cars a day I think is still valid I did have a conversation with Ms. Stambeck sorry if I mispronounced that about um impervious surface she had asked me if we'd be willing to possibly lower our maximum impervious surface I hadn't had a chance to talk with staff about that but we had talked about lowering that number to 60 percent the current plan says 70 percent and she'd ask if we could lower that and I told her we could accommodate that you know there's a mention of I know Ms. Polk who lives next to us and mentioned about runoff and buffers her property is actually one of the properties that we widened the buffer for I don't think it was at her request but we widened the buffers adjacent to Ms. Knight and where Ms. Polk lives to a 30 foot buffer I know she has some runoff concerns but our property is below her all the way down the hill so whatever stormwater we're going to have is draining towards the creek and away from Ms. Polk's property so I don't know how we could contribute to any kind of issues she's having on flooding there's some mention of the topography yes it's it's it's fairly steep slide it's not as steep as you know there's been some reference to fendle farms we designed fendle farms years ago that's 450 homes they'd have much much tougher topography on fendle farms than we have on the dot nickels road property and it was fully developed out but again yeah I just wanted to make note on the on the blasting I did check into that I read the soils report I didn't see a major issue there hope I've addressed some of these concerns one mention about only being one entrance to the site well I mean the site has small frontage at 60 units max you know Durham's code allows up to 90 units before you need a second point of access so we meet the code there yeah sort of sporadic there but just trying to hit on the high points thank you thank you Mr. Aiden you have about six minutes and three seconds in the bank this is a public hearing if there's anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on this item who has not already spoken and did not sign up who wishes to speak would you make yourself know this is a public hearing there's anyone in chamber or if we have anyone online a madame clerk who has not spoken and wishes to speak on this item this is a public hearing we'll accommodate those folks now I see a hand raised by Beverly Mills if you'll see that but there's no indication as to if you'll make her hearable good evening miss mills can you hear me Beverly Mills can you hear me hello miss mills can you hear me I can hear you yes are you seeking to speak on this dock nickels annexation case item 33 I am are you a proponent or opponent I'm an opponent all right if you would state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes we're glad you're with us thank you my name is Beverly Mills and I live at 5604 Leesville Road right across from the new townhomes spindle farms and beside Carolina arbors and when it comes to the blasting I would like to say that it has affected my foundation and it has affected well water and and septic system also so I'd like to make that known because I noticed that a lot of people don't seem to think that matters to us people who already live out here with all the construction going on but I'd like to make that known and also I just like to know I mean we have so many environmental issues that everybody is talking about I'd like to know if we have done any kind of studies recently with the inflation and the recession as to whether or not we are overbuilding in Durham for what is needed with the companies that are currently starting to pull out of the area is how do we measure that for what is one thing I'd like to know I would really hate to have all these townhomes built and we not have enough people to fill them in in my neighborhood that's that's one thing I'd like to know about and also the traffic here is really bad um Dr. Nichols is much worse than any other road I live only as well but Dr. Nichols is worse and is backed up at high traffic times of the day all the time and it's very dangerous that's one thing I'd like to say and the other thing is um I would just like to uh you know make it known that I'm not against progress and my cousins and different people have sold their land out here it's just a matter of doing it properly and I really thank people like the rural Durham people that are coming in doing a great job at getting some things worked out to help us have a better development here and us to be proud of what we've got here in Durham Ms. Mills thank you so much this is a public hearing is there anyone else who wishes to speak on this item who has not had opportunity to speak this is a public hearing seeing none in the chamber and seeing none on the uh our virtual platform at this time I'm going to now yield uh to my colleagues on the council for any questions or comments you may have for the developer or the opponents council member hyman yes I have a question for the developer oh bring it I hate this thing hello can you stop um and and this just might be my my lack of knowledge but is there is there any other way to I mean do you have to use dynamite to do you need to do that I guess you're doing that to kind of clear the area but is there another way to do that because um I'm just concerned about some of the things I'm hearing in terms of how close it is to some people's homes and just question yeah and you know unless you're a geotechnical engineer which I'm not you know you don't know a lot of these things I'm I've done some reading recently but I mean rock doesn't necessarily mean blasting you know there's rock all over Durham that a geotechnical engineer will tell you with a proper excavator and the right teeth on the end of that equipment you can it's called rippable rock you can rip that rock and pull it out just like any other material that you would move around it's rock that that I think you know they measure it by because before we went into the project we hired an engineer to go and drill drill drill test holes into the ground so we drilled probably 12 to 14 little holes all across the property to check the soil see where the rock is because we want to know that going into it like I said most of the site the rock is fairly deep but the report says that the rock that they encountered like from the data I saw it looked like the vast majority of it can be removed with equipment without blasting you know blasting is your last resort that's the last thing that you want to get into because there is monitoring of adjacent homes required you have to put sensors and measuring devices on homes and check foundation cracks and things like that it's something that we we hate to deal with and and haven't dealt with in a long time to be honest but just because a rock is there doesn't mean to be blasted as is my main point you can remove it with a regular gradient generally speaking one more question so again um so if you don't have to blast right is there anything that can be put in place so that if let's say you have to do that like you have to bless and then there's some disrupting to people's homes how do you know is there anything that we could put in place to kind of help that in terms of if that happens I mean I'm assuming the current ordinance has to have has to address blasting and and I'm assuming Durham has rules on blasting as is I don't know those rules because I'm not I'm not a blasting company I see Sarah stepping up but um if I might good evening everyone Sarah Young with the planning department I'm not a blasting expert but I've done some research on this recently and blasting is regulated through the fire code or the fire prevention code more specifically and it is regulated through the blasting permit that's required to be obtained that's administered through the fire marshals office for each jurisdiction there are requirements in the fire code in terms of requiring notice to properties within a certain distance of the blasting allowing folks to opt in to a pre-inspection that then makes it so that a blasting company will do a post inspection including for wells that are a certain distance I think it might be I don't remember if it's 500 feet or 750 feet one of those two numbers and then they cut they're required to come back in 24 to 48 hours after the blasting and inspect the well now that only works if they've done the pre-inspection to compare against right and so I think that's that's some of what we're seeing is that blasting companies are not required to give ample notice and folks are having folks knock on their door with relatively little notice and maybe having a hard time accommodating those inspections but that's regulated the fire code which is essentially a state building code did you have anything else councilman all right thank you we don't call out from the gallery colleagues anyone else councilmember freeman thank you um thank you sir uh I just wanted to follow up on councilmember hyman's line of question and around the blasting I guess sorry just making sure you can hear now just following up I had a hold on how to so just from miss young from planning departments comments around the fire marshal I guess spearheading the inspections or the permits in this case is there a is there an online like listing like how we have of our permits in the same way for building for these fire code like permits for blasting so that you can see where the blasting is happening when it's happening or anything I'm not aware of the fire marshal's office having that information readily available online you know and is the fire marshal under the city or the county or the state so each jurisdiction has their own fire marshal depending on where the blasting is happening that's the fired marshal that has jurisdiction so in these cases where these are projects that have been annexed into the city is the city fire marshal that has jurisdiction and manages those permits and I would just like to ask the city manager's office to kind of if you could share some type of format or update any like any information that would be helpful and just making sure that we understand where the blasting is happening and kind of timeline because I feel like in conjunction with kind of climate change these elements are really kind of coalescing in like a hurricane or a typhoon type of way to make this tomato soup a problem in our county area and so annexing these properties continues to keep pushing the kind of water and and soil moving concerns forward and then I would just like to just speak to to our developers representative Mr. Eden I'd like to thank you on behalf of myself and and as a member of this council for always stepping up to to do the things that need to be like I think from a days on planning commission you've always kind of taken the challenge and and kind of slam dunked it so to speak I appreciate the offer the proper of the three townhomes the concern with the three stories and the concern with I guess the heights did you I didn't hear you address any of what miss and I'm going to mess it up I know it's Pamela Williams Pamela mentioned around no clearing around the property property line mature tree vegetation and point four not being enough and I just wanted to give you a chance to speak to that again thank you for your comments I appreciate that microphone just fell it fell through the table but um so we are so a couple of the property lines we're offering more than the more than the 20 foot buffer that's point four opacity it's specifically the property owners that are most impacted which is miss night to the north where we have a 30 foot buffer at point six and miss polk who saw lives next to us to the southwest where we have a 30 foot buffer at point six along the southern property line we kept that buffer at 20 feet because immediately on the other side of that property line is the access road to the pump station and the units are not until further over so I didn't feel the need to add a buffer to the existing units and fendle farms when they already had the pump station access road and their own buffer between their property and ours so we are doing more buffer in the two locations where the neighbors are if it helps like we've had another project where we had a 30 foot buffer that we planted to a point eight opacity that's that's something we could commit to this evening if there's concerns we could plant the 30 foot buffer at a point eight instead of a point six and would the point eight be out of mature not like infant vegetation right so the the code has specific planning requirements so if we say point eight opacity it's going to say x number of specimen trees x number of shrubs they have to be this height at planting they get inspected by planting prior to co's they're very heavy on landscaping here in Durham as we know so and a typically a 50 foot buffer is a point eight opacity so it's equivalent to like a 50 foot buffer in a 30 foot section if we have to overplan it then so be it but that's a commitment we can we can make that change tonight if we need to I appreciate that and then I just had a question regarding if this site would have retaining walls probably some for sure yeah because it's just it's hard the topography all in that area is pretty rough and I don't see not having some retaining walls but again back to the the blasting we talked a lot about blasting you know two things can't be true that the site at the same time the site can't fall way away from the road and need fill material to function and we need to blast into that ground at the same time those two things just can't be true and that's what I I don't think it'll play out that that way here yeah and I'm very aware of some of like you mentioned fendle farms being a site that you designed acknowledging that fendle farms was also a site that was designed by your offices is there a plan around what these retaining walls might look like so that it doesn't just appear as just a wall I mean they're they're typically you know I mean they're going to be if they're located like if they're located along the northern and southern boundaries for example that's the areas where we have tree buffers and whatnot anyways it would be similar keystone walls to what was in those photos that because that's sort of the industry standard is that keystone looking block wall means the cheapest and it's the most effective and it's what we use the most you can get into cast and place walls and maybe make them a little bit more architectural appealing but the cost is outrageous and we've got a lot of proffers already on this one so I'll be hesitant to do that but it'd be your typical keystone kind of wall and just one last question I'll just run back do you do you have an idea of what your planning or your grade plans might be are you trying to do a split grade plan or are you just trying to do all mass grade well it would definitely it'd definitely be a mass graded site I mean you know it's you know mass grading is nothing more than a current construction practice you know we we didn't do it 20 years ago because we didn't do a lot of things 20 years ago you know our cell phone couldn't video 20 years ago either but we do those things today mass grading is just a a current construction practice that help that helps keep costs down when you eliminate mass grading go lot by lot and go back to how things were you know 20 25 years ago the cost really does go up and there's a there's a competition there between hitting the market and and grading things the right way but this would be a mass graded site because it's the only way we can control our stormwater and I appreciate that I think in a previous case we had a developer share that they were going to do like a 30 or like a a phased in mass grading and so they weren't going to do it all at once to kind of control some of the runoff and I was just asking if you were on a larger site like if it was a 50 hundred acre site that was in phase phase it'd be much easier to do that but when I'm only grading four or five of the eight acres I sort of need to control it all at once thank you thank you council member council members questions comments council members any all right forgive me I have a question for for one of the opponents Mr. Turner did you did you say that there was damage to your home because of blasting was one did if you would approach them thank you I'm sorry I wanted to ask you you made a representation that there was some damage to someone if not your someone's on because of blasting damage to three homes across the street on the opposite side of dock nickels from 704 the one across the street the foundation is damaged and their well and the house next to them is damaged foundation and well both on theirs hours with my in-laws was only the well so far that's all we found is that they lost water they've been without was there was there formal documentation of that was there was was there a determination made by some authority or authority organization that that damage was due to blasting they've all had them inspected by home inspectors I'm not sure if that would qualify for what you're asking I'm not doubting that the home inspectors may have found damage my question is was there any formal determination that there was a causal linkage between that damage and blasting from any of those projects out there did anybody say this happened because of this no sir reason being they did it after hours I worked with Jody Morton and Joel Gully a lot the fire marshals on doing fire alarm work at Duke hospital and facilities and I was in the yard and I heard blasting and it was after hours I called them the next morning they said no one had a permit to blast that day and nobody had a permit to even blast that week and they blasted at least twice that week that I understand their rules but they're governed by people calling in and reporting themselves if they call in if they don't call and say they're going to blast and they do that's the ones that are doing more damage than the people that are filling out the forms and requesting it because they go manage it okay but there is no there's no no wonder okay all right thank you Mr Freeman I had a question for you sir if you don't mind if you would approach and forgive me I'm trying to do a number of things up here so I want to make sure I attribute the comments to the right folk and right people if you're not please forgive me the a number of you have said that you're not against development if it's just done in the right way that's right so for our city moving forward what should we what's the right way is it no blasting ever no mass grading ever no townhomes ever mass grading is the most environmental destructive construction method on the face of the planet where you take it has been said by one of the staff so the answer yes that no mass grading would be the right way moving forward ever no in certain applications for certain structures on certain topographies it may be but you build according to the site you you build what the site will allow you don't go in there now this is my orientation my orientation is I used to do park uh campground design and layout so we did hundreds of acres of development we put in water and sewer paved roads that sort of thing and we did it by looking at the site visiting the site looking at the topography fitting those sites to the land not making it flat knocking down every tree exposing bare earth and putting up residential structures that's not the way it's properly done in my opinion track homes are always built in this manner they track home as the term would imply does not include local family builders and uh and that style of builder anymore it used to but they had been squeezed out by the corporate builders thank you mr friend and i know you and i had some exchange about this this issue last time you were with us and i appreciate i appreciate your insights i want to ask you a question very serious question as a resident as a citizen um of a county and city we both love how do you propose we house all the people moving to Durham if we're going to make topographical specific decisions from here on out about building on Durham without doing what we need to do to our topography to accommodate large numbers of people moving here what is your vision on accommodating those people that are moving to our city today my vision is a vision of sustainable quality what i see popping up in southeastern Durham county is not i believe 10 15 20 years from now they will not be desirable places to be okay other than thinking it won't be desirable is what do you base that on i base that own you have significant you have allowed this council and and uh and the county commissioners to a lesser degree have invited in levels of constructs levels of development that the environment will not will not tolerate the environment is speaking up if you will lit creek is calling out little lit creek is calling out those creeks are dead you don't find a crawfish you don't find a minnow because all covered in silt from that upstream development it's all dead so what what would you um what what kind environmentally what is your vision environmentally uh for Durham i have perhaps i have a different environmental vision than you but i think we can accommodate uh increased numbers of of folks coming to town um that doesn't mean we gotta we gotta do it at the expense of the environment this is only environment we've got we can build all the houses all the town houses you want to build we can build them from here to there but we've got one environment to take care of and we're not taking care of it thank you i uh i like if i could say one thing a lot of folks come to me because they don't have a voice they say tom would you please stand up there and be my voice they say i'm not smart enough i'm not educated enough nor am i but i will stand for for my brothers and sisters in my community and i won't run and i won't waver and i'll speak with clarity in every opportunity i can thank you very much we appreciate your voice thank you very much and uh finally for the developer miss reading if you would approach and then i'll check in miss reading is actually uh the mayor just reminded but we are actually at the nine o'clock hour and we need to take a break um to give our our staff a chance to just stretch a little bit we will uh recess for 10 minutes i see nine oh two on the clock we will uh reconvene at 12 nine well nine 13 it's nine oh three now nine 13 will reconvene brian we touched on it briefly but tell us generally what the community safety department is what you do and why was it even necessary sure the community safety department was created a year ago you just celebrated on your birthday congratulations thank you uh we were created to reimagine some aspects of how we respond to 911 calls so that we can make sure that we're sending the best response possible to meet people where they're at and respond to their needs this work was built upon a lot of study of how we you know what time what kinds of reasons people call 911 for what are the outcomes of those calls and we found that people call 911 for a whole range of reasons and not all of those really are about criminal activity or violent crime people call because they have unmet needs because they need to be connected to services in our community here's some tips to ensure that your garbage and recycling gets picked up one your carts should be put out for collection before six a.m on your collection day two your carts should be at least three feet from all other objects such as mailboxes telephone poles fire hydrants trees and other carts three your carts should be no more than three feet from the curb four no vehicles should be blocking your carts the mechanical arms on our trucks need direct access to your carts and cannot reach around vehicles to find more information about garbage and recycling pickups go to this web address access did you know the city of Durham has interpretation and translation services available the city adopted a language access plan to provide language services and help non-english speakers have access to city services and programs without a language barrier through the city's language access plan residents have the right to request interpretation and translation services free of charge receive translation of vital documents and emergency communications in spanish and submit complaints of language discrimination or on the failure to adequately provide services in accordance with the city's language access plan policy for more information on the city's language access efforts visit durham nc dot gov slash language access falling behind on your bills even if you owe more than you can handle you still have rights most legit debt collectors follow the rules but bad debt collectors don't they break the law so if you get a call like this if you don't pay we will have you arrested and deported or this this is your final warning pay up now or we'll contact your employer and make them pay hang up and report it to the federal trade commission you have the right to be treated fairly no matter what that means debt collectors can't use abusive language threaten violence or harass you or call you before eight in the morning or after nine at night they can't lie or pretend to be someone they're not i'm an attorney and we'll take legal action if you don't pay this debt right away or get you to pay a debt that doesn't even exist they can't have you arrested or deported or tell anyone about your debt bad debt collectors like to knock you off your guard to get an advantage create 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acosarlo ni tampoco pueden llamarlo antes de las ocho de la mañana o después de las nueve de la noche no pueden mentir ni hacerse pasar por quienes no son soy abogado y si no paga esta deuda de inmediato intablaré una acción legal en su contra o hacerle pagar una deuda que ni siquiera existe no lo pueden hacer arrestar ni deportarlo ni tampoco pueden hablar con nadie sobre su deuda a los malos cobradores de deudas les gusta atacarlo con la guardia baja para sacar ventaja crear una sensación de urgencia y apurarlo dirán lo que sea para conseguir que pague de inmediato en su lugar cuelgue el teléfono y reporte el incidente a la comisión federal de comercio ftc en ftc punto gov barra queja ya hemos frenado a muchos malos cobradores de deudas ayúdenos a frenar más para más información sobre cobranza de deudas visite consumidor punto gov barra deuda see a pothole there's an app for that missed pickup there's an app for that need to set up water service there's an app for that too introducing the one call app report your service request online on your schedule just download for free from the app store or google play store then sign up and start using it to report problems check the status of your service request or just find out more information try to do on one call app today today the chamber will be in order it's 913 we're ready to reconvene if our guests will take their seats and staff will assume their places we're ready to begin we're currently considering uh item number 33 doc nickels road i was preparing preparing to ask mr eden a couple of questions mr eden thank you so much your company designed fendall farms correct correct did you did did you use any blasting to build fendall farms i honestly don't know the answer to that i really don't we did the design but we weren't involved with the construction we handed over a permitting phase to john armick adams so i wasn't part of the construction process i honestly don't know the answer to that have you ever paid any restitution to a homeowner no damage to their property because of blasting ever no sir have you ever been sued no sir that no sir all right the um what the planning commission voted to approve this project when the what and frappes is the vastity opponents what was the planning commission's uh general response to concerns raised about blasting i don't we really i don't think we talked about blasting that much at planning commission that was two or three months ago and that's the issue seems to be a little bit more recent i don't recall a lot of conversation about blasting at planning commission so i don't i don't remember it coming up because i don't have any notes from it from before would you remind me what you anticipated price points on these uh townhomes yes i checked on that today if they and i always clarify this statement by saying if they were on the market today being sold today as they probably start in the high threes townhomes was starting to high threes would be the market for this location all right all right thank you that's all i that's all i have for now colleagues uh it's on us any council members have any questions or comments council member williams thank you um i i just want to make sure that as we're listening tonight uh that the concerns that are shared are not following on deaf ears but in fact i think that you all are contributing to setting the standard and and i appreciate that um i'm going to continue to listen as i said before um i to the developer i appreciate you know the the effort you're putting into going beyond the code uh and as we prepare to rewrite our udo and um you know just bring our standards up to up to current day i think that this rich debate is what's helping us determine you know what that language is going to look like um i also want to remind the public because i know there's some narrative hijackers out there uh with really strong thumbs on twitter or wherever i want to just try and expose to folks how complex sitting in this seat is speaking for myself but i'm sure i share this with my colleagues we hear from all sides you know it's not just what we hear tonight if we're doing our homework we hear we hear a lot from multiple perspectives um in regards of you know just the mass grading the the blasting the the housing infrastructure those are things that i'm listening to and i'm like you know what i want to make sure that we are doing our due diligence to make sure folks were treated right make sure their properties are treated right at the same time the other contributing factors that makes this so complex is and this this might sound a bit brash but when you have a home or a roof over your head and when you have someone that's trying to get a roof over their head that's a really really really tough space for us to be in because we have to determine how we're going to house the folks that are coming here as well as preserve and protect the folks that are already here so i just wanted you all to know your complaints are not falling on deaf ears this is a very complex matter and whether we vote for or against that doesn't mean we don't care for the folks that are coming or the folks that are already here and for those folks those folks that keep saying every single development needs to be affordable housing is not as simple as that and for those folks the thing that we shouldn't have any affordable housing it's not as simple as that so i i will continue to listen as my colleagues as you give your comments but i just wanted to make sure you all knew that and this is for anyone who's listening your voice it's not falling on deaf ears but please know that the seat that we're sitting in is extremely complex it's not as broad as i don't want anybody to oversimplify it it never is that simple thank you councilmember councilmember caballero thank you so much there was a question about supply there was a comment on the zoom i think um and i just wanted to know if staff had any kind of updates i i have some thoughts but i just wanted to know if you all could maybe answer that so i don't have those numbers with me tonight but as part of the comprehensive plan process we do forecast out population growth number of projected dwelling units that we'll need by the horizon year which for the new comprehensive plan is 2050 and we also project the need for other land uses how much you know commercial industrial etc are we going to need to support all those residences so those again i don't have them with me um those actually i think will be made public at our next comp plan update for joint city county planning committee which will be coming up in a couple of weeks i'll double check with staff to make sure that is correct but i believe that we're going to be sharing those numbers then thank you i appreciate that i think mr freeman i had a quick question for you and i'm sorry to put you in the hot seat again yes i think after the last jccpc several folks from the preserve i can't i can't hear you ma'am all right i think after the last jccpc meeting we spoke briefly the last joint city county planning meeting put private about a month ago and at the time i asked you the same question that my colleague and the mayor pro tem asked you which was what what kind of development do you think we should be doing and at the time you basically suggested we should be doing single family homes on acre lots out in that area i don't know if that's your opinion today but i am curious that is what you shared with me after that meeting and so i'm curious what your opinion is to that statement that you made at the time if you agree with that statement so you're let me make sure i understand you're asking me correct what what is the ideal development in Durham County i'm asking you if you stand by the statement that you made after the jccpc meeting to me when i did ask you the same question well what kind of development would you want to see out in this area suggested that we should be allowing single family homes on one acre lots and i guess my question to you is after all of these conversations that we've been having in community after all of these public hearing meetings that you have been uh participating in is do you still stand by that statement that you that you believe we should only be doing single family homes on one acre lots in the southeast i believe i believe a single family home uh rural residential is the proper zoning for the communities in southeast Durham primarily that's certainly not to say that there couldn't be infields with townhomes but to elaborate just to be it i think our single family homes should have enough space so children could have a play area swing set in the backyard so they could have a picnic table so they could have a grill and a place to sit outside enjoy enjoy the fall months to come that's what i envision i don't envision uh high density where families where children don't have a backyard to play in where they can't explore and be creative in a backyard is that is that asking too much thank you i appreciate the answer so my question for you and there's been a lot of analysis done around land use that we actually waste a lot of space on private yards that people don't use that we actually use public space public parks places that all of us collectively gather much more than we use private property large lots for the very things that you're saying and we've actually isolated ourselves in ways that are unhealthy from one another we've built exclusive high-cost neighborhoods i'm not i'm not talking about exclusive high-cost neighborhoods thank you those are your words question i had i'm not suggesting for a moment i appreciate you answering my question thank you um i answer it you did adequately you did i appreciate it very much i have a question for mr eden's and it's because you're the developer here that can potentially answer this question for me based on the statement that was just we just heard which is you know in this part of our community we should only be building single-family homes on large lots whether they're acres half acres larger than acres based on your experience how much would that cost for that home i mean you could you could do the math on on this project for example all things being equal 60 townhomes plus or minus at whatever value you know high threes same similar development costs if you reduce single-family if you did it per the rr zoning district think 1.2 units and acres the max eight acres say we get 10 single-family homes out of it those 60 townhomes are worth about 24 million dollars that's 60 times 400k um you could spread that same cost over i mean they're expensive homes i mean it'd be a good a fast path to having carrie and southeast Durham if we did nothing but single-family yeah but if you were going to list it i just want to know just like you said the high threes i would like the public to hear what that actual cost would be to the best of your ability total assumption right i mean they would have to be 750 million dollar homes and above i just don't see a way around it with land cost and development cost thank you and that is um what i have seen when i drive out through wake county in the communities that are still on septic that have not been annexed by the city of raleigh and i'm not going to vote for that and to say that i'm not an environmentalist or i don't care is false i would actually be curious to know the residents in front of me what environmental issues have you been pervy to preview per have you participated in before here and i'm not asking you to come up and share but i would appreciate dialogue around that i would actually like to know what kind of cars you drive what what do you keep your thermostats at how much water do you consume if we're going to sit here and have a conversation about environmentalism there is an individual responsibility and there's a collective responsibility and i actually do want to know that because i know about the individual commitments i have made and the sacrifices i have made and the sacrifices my family has made and so i do expect that from residents we do a really good job with our water consumption in the city even though our population has grown because people take it seriously the city provides really excellent benefits for folks who replace their toilets little things like that but what does that mean collectively we are using the same amount if not less water than we did 10 15 years ago when our population was much smaller we have been very successful with some of these things so i don't actually appreciate my residents challenge my commitment to environmentalism my commitment to sustainability and my commitment to the future every single one of us has kids or grandkids on the stylus this is important to us but we are also faced with a very hard dilemma we cannot build single family homes on acre lots anymore in Durham county it's not possible it is actually immoral because we've priced out so many folks i moved here 12 years ago i cannot buy a new home in Durham county i am priced out and that is the fact of so many folks that i know and i can't even imagine my children i have no idea how they're going to afford to live here if they choose to live here and that is the reality we face and these are hard decisions and i appreciate the developer who is time and again over four years who has lived in Durham for a long time sat on the planning commission knows knows what he's talking about consistently delivering projects above and beyond our udo requirements this isn't a one-off i also want our residents to keep pushing i said that last time we get better projects out of it the project tonight is better than what we passed four years ago and i understand that incrementalism is very hard to bear that's a hard thing to be in but i will be voting for this project tonight thank you councilmember caballero colleagues anyone else councilmember freeman thank you mayor pro tem i i appreciate um councilmember caballero's councilmember i'm sorry forgive me a few would suspend for a second if i should say if anyone has any other questions for the developer or the opponent if not i'll close the public hearing and bring it back up here and then we can have our our comments did i'm did you have a question yes ma'am i'm sorry forgive me i i i just want to make sure you can hear me so i remove my mask and try to stay away but i really appreciate um councilmember caballero's sentiments and um i think we consistently try to get to that point of um of sustainability on in these projects and i just wanted to just track back to staff um because i think there's a a little bit of dialogue missing in in the inspection side of this conversation and i do want to make sure that it's very clear for our residents um just exactly how this process should work especially for our senior population when someone's knocking on your door saying that they want to you know inspect your property before they blast or what have you so that would be that was the main question and then i do have comments what y'all hold sure i would just encourage folks to avail themselves of those opportunities when they come um the time frame that i think uh they give folks is not the largest so i know it can be tough sometimes to accommodate them um but a blasting and i you know i'm happy to share with you all the blasting permit it has the conditions of what'll have to be met and um when they have to come back and reinspect and all those things so i can provide that information i i don't have it memorized but um it is it is something that is becomes a private civil matter after the fact so if there is damage um that becomes an issue between that homeowner property owner and the blasting company um and blasting companies are required to have insurance to deal with those claims so yes ma'am i apologize i know there was a resident who mentioned and i understand your county resident not a city but uh understanding that your mobile home was not inspected um i would counter mass if you're going to question residents would you approach the uh i didn't know her name i was gonna ask we just want to make sure everyone can hear i live in a mobile home and since then i have since um geosonics came i dropped off the letter um for the inspections i had to later have a new well drilled because i didn't even have a well i was sharing a well with a relative so since then i've had a well drilled and i actually mr. middleton i was going to ask you because you asked a question earlier and it brought up a question for me as to okay so i probably need to have somebody come out and inspect my well even though it's new that way if my well caves in then i can get an attorney and file a lawsuit and i and i appreciate that because i think that's it's a little bit of miss on the education side understanding that we're not county right representative and these are county lands that are being requested as an extent to the city limits and i i just want to just say that this is different from other uh conversations on planning and zoning and sustainability because these are county lands that we're kind of annexing into city limits and it comes with a responsibility um that's different from you know infill or other developments that are within city limits or filling in a donut hole it's very different and then i just that was all thank you and miss cavillera to to to your point earlier um i'll hold on captain with capio do you do you want to be responded to because it was very she's here at the pleasure of captain refraining you asked a question earlier if you might would stand up happily follow up with a follow-up conversation with all of you i'm happy to do that thank you thank you miss miss um colleagues to know the questions that comes from council i'm going to declare this public hearing closed and the matter is back before the council before we do uh vote the staff will need to give voice to um additional proffers that were were captured you can do that now and then i'm going to have the council why don't i have the council give their their comments or questions first and then we'll uh we'll hear from staff for entertaining motions colleagues the matters back before the public hearing is closed council member johnson thank you mr. mary pro tem um just wanted to make a few quick comments about this case and about uh the development that we're seeing in Durham in general um we i i feel like i say this every time so no surprises here but um i think it bears repeating we're growing city we are going to continue to grow and we don't have the option of not building new housing we have thousands of people moving to this community every year and they have to live somewhere if we don't provide places for them to live then we are going to exacerbate the housing crisis that we find ourselves in supply is not in and of itself a solution to the crisis we can't just increase supply we also have to have government investment in affordable housing um we need to continue to leverage resources as much as possible from the city and in the state and federal government resources that we can get our hands on to provide more affordable housing for people who can't afford to to buy housing on the market but supply does have a very important impact on the market and we are not in the position to to stop building um to stop building housing and in particular to stop building dense housing while the city is is growing incredibly quickly um i don't think that there are many other places i know that there are not many other places in this country that have seen the kind of rent increases that we have seen in Durham over the last few years you don't have you don't have overbuilding when you when you have a city that is overbuilding you don't have rents going up 50 in a year that only happens when you have a lack of supply and and landlords and and rental companies can get away with those kinds of increases because they know that there will be people who people who are so desperate for housing that they that they will that they will have to pay it or that they'll you know move in with relatives or you know double up with friends like we are we are seeing incredible increases in costs of housing right now and it's not going down even though we are building a lot there's a lot of development happening in this region there's a lot of development happening all over the city costs are still going up um and again i don't think supply is the only problem there's also a there's also a uh a completely unregulated market for housing as a commodity which is not what should exist under any circumstances but given that it does we we really don't have the option of not building and new housing has to go everywhere in this community the best places for it to go are of course infill developments downtown of course we also get folks you know upset about luxury apartments going into downtown though that is the best place for new apartments to go but we also have to build out and we have to build everywhere we don't have the luxury of only building million dollar homes on acre lots in the suburbs we need places where people can afford to live and so i'm going to be supporting this project and we'll continue to support projects like this because i just really don't see i really just don't see an alternative that builds a city where we continue to have the people who work in this community the folks who um you know the the people who who drive our buses and educate our kids and fight our fires able to afford to live here um we i'm very very concerned about the direction of the community engagement that we're seeing around development in Durham becoming more and more opposed to new building in particular building of denser housing like apartments in townhomes because i believe that's the kind of housing that we need the most we don't need more single family as much as we need more apartments we don't need more homes to be spread out as much as we need more density though you know in some cases i probably will approve single family homes because every little bit helps but this kind of project um i think is what we need to see more of we need more of what we you know we'd call missing middle housing townhomes garden apartments duplexes triplexes small apartment buildings um this is the kind of development that Durham needs more of in order to keep up with the incredible demand um for people to live here and i don't want us to become a city where people you know are busing in to to do the work for you know for the for the last remaining residents who could afford to hold onto their homes like i don't want us to become a wealthy enclave i want us to continue to be an accessible affordable place where people where people at lots of different income levels can um can live and can thrive and again because i know there's a lot of criticism around this idea that supplies the answer supplies not the only answer but supply is certainly part of the answer um and i want to appreciate the developer for also contributing three units of affordable housing uh that of course the affordable housing crisis is is even more um isn't even more difficult problem to solve than our overall housing crisis and so we always appreciate when developers contribute to that as well we need to do a lot more um but this is certainly part of the solution thank you thank you councilmember councilmember hyman did were you up to councilmember freeman thank you mayor pro tem i um i pause and hesitate just to make sure that i don't create offense and my comments and just ask for grace and um noting that it's not just housing that we need but it is the sustainability and the video that was shared was very helpful and laying out just exactly the context of how i've been positioning myself and voting no on many of these cases and just acknowledging that we have to be responsible for what we leave behind and so yes i appreciate what our developer community has done and many cases to try and you know kind of attack some of the issues that we do have and be supportive of the council's kind of focus but i'm also very concerned that we are limiting ourselves to developers as our guide in how we develop our city and i continue to raise that issue i'm not sure how we answer that question juxtaposed to you know the moratorium but i do know that there is a need for us to make sure that we're not creating the harms that were done in the past in the future and so you can see what it looked like 20 years ago you can see what it looked like 40 years ago you can see what it looked like 60 years ago and if we're right now saying that this is the best that we can do i'm concerned and that's that's mainly the issue that i have because if we're blasting and we don't have a way to control or to notify seniors in their community of you know people who need to get inspections of their homes prior to like all of these are factors in this conversation that keep bringing people into this and so i try my best not to pit the rural community against the urban community acknowledging that i'm within city limits and that none of you are in my constituent group so i'm not trying to to get your votes this is really just trying to figure out how to find a solution that actually benefits the city of derm as well as the county because i'm within the county limits as well i am concerned about how folks are and i don't know because it's all it's almost like as if we're saying as a council that it's okay to cost $12,000 more for a well and and it just makes me uneasy and i haven't figured out how to how to have that conversation yet but i do know that it needs to be had i know that there's i don't think that that the answers are being discussed but i do think that we have we have way more information than what we started three months ago six months ago and so i know that we're in the process of going through this deep dive we had a retreat as a council and i and i could appreciate that there are very different stances or thoughts of you know how housing should work in our community but i think that where we are all very consistently pushing for sustainable ways for folks to afford their homes and i don't think it should be limited to just city residents and that's that's what's mainly concerning in this case i will say that i am i am mindful that this is a very small um property and it's not as many homes as we've seen in the past and so i am still wavering on uh for or against but i i i do think i'll be listening to my colleagues um just trying to figure it out because stewardship is what matters most to me in this conversation and i'm not comfortable yet thank you council member colleagues anyone else i'll go council member williams just a quick question so to the can we ask the developer a question or has we the staff have we closed the public debate we've closed the public but the developer is a petitioner so if you have a question for him you can okay question could you approach who owns this land right now i do yeah with my partner yeah we have an LLC that owns it my company owns 50 of the LLC but yeah this is not a speculative thing for us we closed on the land quite some time ago all right all right and i think that's part of the conversation that's usually mentioned in the process um this is a matter of a landowner working with their neighbors trying to figure out the best way forward and and we're required to hear these cases so i want to be very careful about when we i don't want to use the word um i don't want to dehumanize the developers i'm going to say landowner and i want to say that this is a really really really complex conversation that has to happen throughout a formal process that staff is requiring us to follow uh called a udo and and i i i don't want to dehumanize this this that's why i asked that question i don't want to dehumanize it and and that an actual individual owns this land and we have to determine whether we're going to let that landowner do what they want to do with their land or not and we also have to as council we have to leverage this process to make sure that no landowner is harming the people around them and that also the people around them are having grace to the person who owns it uh so i i think that you know as we're growing and developing the city it's a matter of folks and they're in there you know they're the things that they have they're assets you know and we can't let that we can't let harm happen to people and that's why we ask these hard questions you know uh so yeah that's that's it thank you mayor pro tem thank you council member i'm gonna be supporting this development uh tonight uh for a number of reasons firstly i i want to say i think there was a very important moment in our discussion tonight that really i think crystallized for me the tensions going on and i don't mean tensions in a bad way i mean tensions that attend growth um the the the wholesome bicolec prosaic dream of having a yard to play in for our kids um is something that a lot of us to live in an urban environment don't have and and what we are facing and there are no bad people in this discussion there there are folk who live in different parts of town who all love this city and county who are approaching this from their particular perspectives and i think we have a little humility in this conversation uh would go a long way grace if you will in this conversation there are no bad people in this conversation Durham is North Carolina's fourth largest city not a town and Durham is america's 75th largest city and it's growing um Durham is urban and i remember once upon a time urban sprawl used to mean something i i guess it'd mean something different now but anytime word urban was used it used to mean something else um but the growth of our city is being fueled not by council inviting people to move here it's being fueled by people who see our life sciences industry who see d-pack who see nccu in duke who see our weather who see our art scene who see our restaurant scene and say i want in i wish we were as powerful as people think we are but we're not um so we can't stop people from coming i've asked some very specific questions tonight to look for permission to vote against this development i've asked for specific proof of damage due to blasting i've asked uh in previous conversations about the scientific evidence surrounding turbidity and the tomato soup the tomato soup on my desk sitting up on my desk here in city hall right now is crystal clear with no intervention just from regular settlement and there are staff who uh i trust to tell me the truth tells us that that process that's going on on my desk with no intervention whatsoever can be expedited and sped up through certain uh technologies that we have um miss um page post video uh was compelling but then the developer says that she's above the runoff so facts matter so i've looked for reasons not to vote against it i'll level with you because you all have been very forthright with us i've heard uh a number of you say we're not against development we just want it done right well not a 100 percent of you against development there are some folk who want to keep their house in the woods i get it i used to have a beautiful golf course up the street from my house it's gone there and i was mad i looked at my tax bill i was mad but i also know the value of my house is going up the growth of this city is being felt by all of us for and there's no such thing as government action that does not have some type of impact even when we say no it's yes to something else one of my colleagues said supply is not the only answer and god knows it is not but it's one tool one lever that we can pull and one button that we can push if people are coming here for every 300 thousand dollar development that has affordable housing that actually does 100 year storm prevention that does everything we've asked them to do everyone we say no to and and uh you know we spare homes that are in the woods you know surrounded by lakes and creeks there's a there's there's a there's another action that goes on downtown here in Durham there are folk who aren't looking for a yard for their kid to play in they're looking for a roof for their kid to be on and those prices go up every time we put this this is 100 level economics if when we constrict supply something else happens in our city so our urban inner city folk urban inner city folk are experiencing gentrification they're up against folk who are coming into our city who are younger who are richer who if they don't if they can't get a town home for 300 grand on the outskirts of the city they're going to take their significant pocket books and look for some housing somewhere else so there's no one that's exempt from these pressures some of us want our our our country uh prosaic wholesome living i wanted my golf course and then there are other residents who just want rent that they can pay there is no decision we make as a government that does not have some impact somewhere there's no such thing as negative uh uh consequences whether we say yes or no so my my my i look at the i look at the uh the the planning commissions which is why i asked for the planning commission to be more diligent about giving their their comments they approve this uh this development uh which give if you don't think about their record but it's kind of impressive but that's not my only data point if you you know that's not my only data point if you watch these meetings what the planning commission says but i weigh all these factors um and i just don't you know i'm i'm not saying it's nimbyism wrapped in um environmentalism but some of it sounds like it some of it sounds like it no formal actions on blasting or or or i have uh foundation issues with my home right now it's not due to blasting um there are a number of things i can call this so so i want to see some some documented uh evidence of it the tomato soup i've already addressed uh derm city water is award-winning we went awards for the clarity of our water the safety of our water and the taste of our water consistently documented that's a fact um and you should see what the water looks like before we treat it and drink it but by the time we get done with it it's it's it's some of the best water in the state award-winning so the the issue before me is is this development check some boxes affordable housing check not a million dollars not start a house prices either check uh a developer who's committed uh this is the kind of development we want to see because we have limited power as a council forget what you heard we had we have limited council as a limited power as a council and what we can do we should do but the reality is is that there are people moving here every day the reality is there are people less than two miles from the city center forget a yard they don't have a key to an apartment because they can't afford it and as we uh uh cease providing more supply on another part of town that only makes that issue more worse let me say it that way worser and and that's just the reality of our decisions um you know i i wanted one of you to pull out a a document that says that you know my water coming out of my faucet i'm drinking is is poisoning me i wanted someone to bring me water that looked like tomato soup from their drinking faucet not the tub or the toilet the drinking faucet i wanted to see some scientific information that that turbidity and what's going on in our creeks is is is poisoning our not i don't want to see that but but in terms of informing my vote and none of that standard has been met none so what i'm faced with is is is a planning commission that alas has said yes to something i'm faced with a developer that's providing affordable housing uh in this part of town i'm faced with the reality that as we choke off supply in one area of the city it will increase prices in the other area of city 100 level economics so this development of and and i am i am open i am waiting for those hard facts and and and and evidence of these things um fendle farms and carolina arbors would not be there today had we applied the standard we're being asked to to apply tonight and they're thriving communities influential communities doing well so i you know i i um i've listened very carefully tonight but as much as i'm concerned about all the concerns you brought uh tonight i'm also concerned about Durham residents and citizens who who approach me literally every day and say i can't afford to live in this city i can't not a yard i can't find an apartment a bedroom an increasing supply no it's not the panacea but it is part it is a lever that we can pull it is a button that we can push um and we've been asking for developers to be more proactive and affordable housing uh and being a little more not meeting the udo minimum standards but the maximum standards and and this particular developer in this particular development is doing that and um i'll be supporting it tonight thank you any other council members i've been informed that there are folk on the internet who have raised their hands to speak we've we have closed the um public hearing so my apologies and i did not see those hands and i i did several scans as i was asking were there any more folks so as a council as the public hearing is closed i will say those folk if you can hear me uh if you would submit written comments to us we read all of them um and we will uh your comments will be caught become part of the record uh but the public hearing is closed colleagues if there's no other um questions or comments from council council member freeman thank you um main pro tem i think i'm i'm confident i have a decision and i cannot support this moving forward just acknowledging that this council still doesn't understand that well water does not go through a city process and a number of concerns um we've got to get to a point where we actually develop um in a way that's not harmful overall and pitting the urban against rural is not the answer i just want to keep saying that so that's all thank you thank you council member staff did you want to uh uh fill us in on those additional proffers that you've captured tonight sure thank you andi lester with the planning department i just wanted to confirm the four proffers that were made during the meeting two were erosion control related uh developer to utilize double row silt fencing in lieu of the single row fencing is the first additional proffer the second additional proffer would be developer to size the erosion control sediment ponds for the 100-year event um the third one was updating the maximum impervious surface to 60 percent reducing it from 70 and then the fourth one is where the 30 foot buffer with the point six opacity on the develop development plan is shown the opacity will be changed to a point eight opacity just wanted to confirm that on record thank you very much streetians is that comport with what you all right thank you very much colleagues at this time there tonight is the affordable housing commitment is was because the commitment that i heard from the developer didn't sound like what was in the staff memo yeah the um the three units dedicated to habitat for humanity derm incorporated it's already on the development plan so it's already incorporated okay so it's three whole units built very good thank you councillor for that clarification all right colleague three motions are required uh for this item at this time i'll entertain uh motion number one to adopt an ordinance annexing 1409 dock nickels road into the city of derm effective september 30th 2022 and to authorize the city manager to enter into a utility extension agreement with edensland corp so move second i hear a motion from councilmember williams and the second from councilmember johnson madame clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote and report out the motion passes five to two with mayor o'neill and councilmember freeman voting no thank you motion number two to adopt an ordinance amending the unified development ordinance by taking property out of the residential rr falls jordan lake watershed protection district b fjb county jurisdiction and establishing the same as planned development residential 7.245 pdr 7.245 falls jordan lake watershed protection district b fjb city jurisdiction so move second i hear a motion from councilmember williams and the second from councilmember johnson madame clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote and report out the motion passes five to two again with mayor o'neill and councilmember freeman voting no all right motion number three uh i'll entertain a motion to adopt a consistency statement as required by north carolina general statute 160 d dash 605 move second uh motion from councilmember williams and the second from councilmember johnson madame clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote and report out the motion passes um six to one with mayor o'neill oh i'm sorry it's um seven to zero right thank you thank you very much and thank you all for your time and for your your uh passionate um advocacy and and for helping keeping our democracy strong and healthy thank you very much that ends the matter consideration of item number 33 we'll now consider item number 34 consolidated annexation of seven nine two six massy chapel road this is a public hearing but first we will hear a report from staff thank you mayor o'neill mayor pro tem middleton and honorable council members good evening mandelash with the planning department again a request for utility extension agreement voluntary annexation and zoning map change has has been received from jared edens of edens land core for one parcel of land totaling 5.828 acres and located at seven nine two six massy chapel road the annexation petition is for contiguous expansion of the existing non-satellite corporate limits the current zoning is residential rural the applicant proposes to change the designation to plan development residential 4.928 to allow for the construction of up to 80 or 28 townhouse units the development plan does commit to sizing bmp's to detain the 100-year storm event donation of a completed townhouse unit to habitat for humanity donations to the dedicated housing fund and during public schools the property is currently designated low density residential on the future land use map the proposed plan development residential 4.928 zoning is not consistent with the designated use shown on the flume if the pro zoning is approved staff recommends a change to the to the flume to designate the property as low medium density residential and the planning commission failed to recommend approval by a vote of seven to seven at their may 10th 2022 meeting and as a reminder three motions are required for this application the first is to adopt an ordinance annexing the property and entering into a utility extension agreement the second is to approve the zoning ordinance and the third is to approve the consistency statement thank you and staff and the applicant are available for any questions thank you so much for the good work colleagues any questions for staff on this matter before we open the public hearing seeing them we're going to open the public heat public hearing and i'm going to ask mr. edens if you would approach positions how much time do you anticipate needing for your presentation five minutes max all right let's put 10 minutes on the clock it's always say five and i'll probably go over no problem yeah well discover yourself accordingly yeah um thank you member city council jared edens again with edens investments thanks android for your summary it's a similar project to what we just talked about just a different part of town this is at south point adjacent to the uh you know projects on message apple road it's adjacent to the car dealerships and a lot of the retail at south point it's about 5.8 acres uh zoned rr currently the pdr we're proposing it's only about 4.9 which is a little low for a typical town home development we actually started out on this project looking at toward you know somewhere from 35 to 40 units is what we're expecting we got into the neighborhood meeting process we started making some changes we we widened buffers and locations we made the stormwater pond bigger to match some of the other things we were doing and it led to a little bit of density loss there and just coming up with some of those compromises so we're at about 28 units now which is around five units an acre um planning commission vote was a tie seven seven i mean you'd like a better outcome but the one thing i want to point out from the planning commission that evening is i thought it really served its purpose you know when i was on planning commission i always felt that we were there to vet projects not just making recommendation but try to make them better before they came before you as city council there were several tax commitments that we added at the planning commission meeting based on neighborhood concerns which i thought were really good some of those were um we committed to some extra privacy fencing for some of the neighbors we we did the point eight opacity buffers for neighbors like i talked about before and we've put limits on the the light poles in the neighborhood they're they're noticed they're capped at 25 feet high and they're fully shielded light fixtures because we had neighbors who were concerned about spillover from the property uh we committed them to some electric charging stations uh we also committed to limiting the time of construction that was a new one that i hadn't faced in recent years but we had some concerns about construction timing so there's a condition on the plan that says no construction on weekends only between i think seven a.m. and eight p.m. during the week but that was again a response to some of the concerns we heard uh one unit for Durham Habitat for this one same as last project it's a completed unit that goes to Durham Habitat i do want to clarify what uh because the zoning condition may not be written 100 correct but it will be go to Habitat for Humanity of Durham Incorporated is where that unit goes to a couple other commitments i would like to add this evening based on some of the stuff we talked about at the same case the the two erosion control measures uh these are things we'll probably start incorporating on future zonings but the double row of silk fence the 100 year sediment pond is something we like to incorporate here uh just in summary i mean i think it's a it's a highest and best use of the property you know that the options are you know we've got the american tobacco trail is about a thousand feet west of here that crosses massey chapel road one of our tax commitments is building sidewalk from our property along massey chapel road to the tobacco trail to provide that connectivity for our residents to the trail it's about a thousand feet to the trail it's about another 2000 feet and you're in the middle of the retail at south point from this site and you can access that from the sidewalk we're constructing along massey chapel on the existing trail at the american tobacco you know the options on this site are are similar to last case you could do four or five really large homes that are a million dollar plus and those four or five lucky residents would have access to the sidewalk and the trail and the retail or we could do something in between which i think this property serves as a good transition because you've got retail immediately to the north single family to the south we're proposing a pocket of townhomes in between with some public benefit attached to it so i just think looking at it as a project as a whole i think it's the highest and best use and and i hope you find it to be a strong application i'm glad to take any questions thank you thank you mr edens we'll reserve your time uh in bank that you have not used in case you need to respond to any uh thing from the public um i have well there was a jeremy tar who wanted to speak on this issue that i saw in q earlier on our virtual platform but i do not see now uh madam clerk would you check me do you see jeremy tar mr tar is departed okay um all right then in chamber i have pat brockman brockino mr mayor pro tem yes mr tar is trying to get back into the meeting apparently he logged off and is trying to log back in we'll circle back around and make sure he has opportunity uh miss brockino good evening thank you if you would state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes good evening my name is pat brockino and my husband and i have lived at 7340 abern drive for 30 years and i'm here is in opposition to the development we expected that this piece of property was going to be developed but we did not expect it in this way and we think that it can be done in a more gentle way with respect to the people who have lived in that area three-story townhouses and a brightly lit parking lot are shoehorned and if you looked at the map it's kind of shoehorned next to our one and two-story houses and our quiet neighborhoods the developer proffered sidewalks but the transportation department here has told us that that may or may not happen depends on dot when they realign or not realign messy chapel road so and and could wind up that some neighbors are going to be losing property along messy and that would be part of the process uh we we were especially surprised to see the developers were already advertising townhouses as if it's a done deal and i don't think it's a done deal because you guys haven't voted yet but i read from their ad and they call this development the poplar and it's and i quote featuring new three-story townhomes starting in the 300 thousands messy chapel towns offers the low maintenance living near downtown dorham and downtown chapel hill the vibrant community is conveniently located et cetera to build it up we already have a vibrant community our neighborhood is diverse we have street parties we have musical festivals open to everybody we have cookie exchanges in december we have ice cream socials in the summer people living on our street are of all ages and we feel that we are as well we're vibrant as all get out we don't need this intense development there so i'm asking you to please deny the application and maybe wait for development that comes in harmony with the three existing neighborhoods that it is being put right in the middle of i've heard tonight that um we need housing and i agree i mean there there was housing going up all over unfortunately it's expensive housing that's going up all over and it's our corner of the world i can count five town home developments that have gone in in the last year and a half so we have lots of townhomes down there too but i think the biggest concern is that it is where it is it's a small lot compared to that's it bye miss varkina thank you so much for being with us tonight jeremy's been on all night so i'm hoping he comes i did see him earlier and we will be certain to accommodate him if we can get him back madam clerk do you see uh jeremy back okay well we will uh keep vigil uh for him um this is a public hearing is there anybody else in the chamber who wishes to speak on this item who is not already spoken this is a public hearing all right colleagues do you have any questions or comments for the developer councilmember hyman i'm sorry i'm sorry councilmember would you suspend for a second please if you would master mayor pro tem we do have um jeremy on the line and he can speak through the the microphone in from the phone from the cell phone all right if if it's not clear i'm gonna ask that we keep trying to work so let's see if we can hear him y'all y'all good with that all right mr targ good evening if you can hear me um would you state your name and address for the record and you'll have three minutes thank you sir my name is jeremy tar i'm at seven four nine abron drive good evening thanks uh mayor mayor pro tem and council members my wife and i and every other neighbor uh to this project strongly oppose it i'd ask that you consider the the conclusion of the planning commission to not approve the project um and it reached that conclusion after over two hour deliberation about it where the planning commission uh discussed with the developer and with the neighbors improved each of our positions um of course two hours i've really appreciated the rich discussion earlier this evening i've been on since the beginning while i think a general disposition in favor of infill it's particularly around the south point area it does make sense in general for environmental reasons to accommodate growth all the all the the reasons that it mentioned i'd ask that you're not green light projects particularly this one just because it's labeled it's infill there are other values here that i think it's it's important to consider so this is a really unique um site and unique development and i'd ask that you vote against the project the project it's fundamentally just incompatible with the site in the surrounding neighbors um i think we should be building infill housing that's transitional and has access to proper infrastructure so we're creating walkable community spaces the housing should also respect existing homeowners not just future Durham residents um this is a project it's not a project that helps transition from rural residential to denser housing and then to commercial this project would be squeezed between rural residential lots and a wooded floodplain with no access to commercial except through the residential a rural residential um but ask that you also consider the rural residential homeowners that are going to be impacted here it's going to add vehicle traffic without enabling safe walking and biking options to the tobacco trail or the south point mall um there aren't going to be sidewalks added um the developer sounded open to that planning commission meeting but staff had indicated that there's not enough room in the right-of-way on Massey Chapel for a sidewalk or a bike lane um either down to the tobacco trail or out to Fayetteville for my property i'm concerned about the light pollution it's going to add the site is higher than my property and others on abron drive the developer wrongly insisted at the planning commission meeting that it that the site was lower than my property i saw in some of the appendix the attachments that they're going to put in a six foot opaque fence but it will have 20-foot high light poles up hill of my property which Mr. Tarr thank you so much your time has expired thank you for being with us tonight this is a public hearing is there anyone else in the chamber that wishes to speak speak on this item that has not had opportunity to speak mr. Eden do you have some time in reserve if you want to respond to anything that you've heard from opponents sure appreciate that took a couple notes um now the sidewalk is definitely subject to ncdot approval the sidewalk we're proffering along Massey Chapel road off-site to extend to the trail is definitely subject to dot approval but that's standard the dot has to issue an encroachment agreement for any sidewalk constructed in the right-of-way we haven't designed it yet but typically for us in a 60-foot right-of-way which Massey Chapel is a 60-foot right-of-way with only two lanes you can typically do a shoulder and ditch and sidewalk in that road section that's been my history and i used to work at dot before i started doing this so i don't have concerns about the sidewalk that we're proffering being constructed um another submission of lighting and whatnot i don't know how much light comes off the existing massive car lot that that is already there now i don't know how our light will compare to that but you know as as we mentioned before we're we're shielding the putting shielded cutoff fixtures on the lights we're limiting the height of the light poles durham's udo has a foot candle requirement where we have to go around and measure the um the light intensity at the property line before you get certificates of occupancy later in the development that's something we'll have to do and our light spill over it's going to have to comply to the the udo which is fairly restrict don't want it allows it's like half a foot candle or something like that um yeah so i want to speak to those two things but that's it thank you thank you mr. edens one last time this is a public hearing is there is anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on this item that has not had opportunity if not i'll ask my colleagues here on the dais if they have any questions or comments for the developer or the council member hyman thank you so um i have a couple of questions so the first one is this clarity in terms of is it 28 townhomes i believe that's what the plan the plan calls for 28 i believe and the price point so this is actually it's actually the same builder that we were talking about on the last project is i have the same builder on this one and they're planning for the same kind of product so it's the same expectation yeah okay and i think when i was looking at the notes from the planning committee that there were some issues around um and just correct me if i'm wrong um flood zones in that area so can you just kind of speak to that yeah i mean flooding and storm water definitely comes up and i'm looking at the topography here on almost everything we do but what we do to try to alleviate that is that's why we do these hundred-year stormwater ponds is if there's any known flooding issues or even if there's not flooding issues i know that if i put a hundred-year stormwater pond in i'm not adding to whatever's going on out there which is why we've adopted that standard so i understand the concerns but like if you were to develop this by right as a single family development in the jordan basin which has not as strict of stormwater requirements you likely have a four or five lot single family subdivision with no pond detaining any of the water under the current code so i think what we're proposing is better stormwater wise and my other was there a traffic study done now it would take uh so Durham's requirements on a traffic study is a project has to generate 150 peak hour trips i think for a townhome development that number is typically 180-ish townhomes give or take that that hits that threshold you know we only have 28 years so i don't think it would be a big impact on traffic um i think i mentioned before the massive chapel road has a 80t of 1700 cars a day in the current capacities like over 12 000 cars a day so there's definitely a lot of capacity left in massive chapel road per the staff report so i kind of tend to disagree because that's my area where i live and um it is traffic is sometimes horrific especially on a saturday and sunday when people are frequenting the mall um i used to you know be able to kind of just come out when i develop it but now i literally it takes like five to ten minutes to just try to get out of where i live because of the mall traffic and then my other question was what was your level of involvement with the community because i think i heard a community member say that you had a and just correct me if i'm wrong that you had already been publicizing that this was coming so just give me some clarity yeah i'm not sure what i mean the builder may be doing some kind of marking i'm not aware of we don't when we don't have a zoning approved we don't publicize anything really i mean the only people that that i generally talked to about the projects before they're voted on is the neighbors themselves so we had two different neighborhood meetings talked to the issues again had a great discussion at planning commission where we talked through other issues but the advertising they're talking about i have no clue about and it's not us for sure but i i mean so you said you had two levels of involvement with we had two different neighborhood meetings during the process okay all right thank you thank you thank you councilmember colleagues anyone else on the dais questions or comments for either the opponent or the developer councilmember williams yeah what um this may be an inappropriate question but i'm going to ask what motivated you to go after the level of zoning you're going for now just 20 28 the level of density that you're going after it was really so the use is you know townhomes as a use i feel is the best use just looking at it i mean i i would love to live there and be able to walk to the retail you know and bite to the retail with with public transit sidewalk provided by the developer so i think the use as just just looking at it when i first saw it that looks like a townhome piece you've got retail beside it retail accessible the density is more of a product of of some of those meetings with the neighbors and some of the changes we made because you know if we do 20 foot perimeter buffers and if we do a pond for the 10-year storm and all the standard things that the code has then we could have gotten 35 to 40 units on the site most likely but once you start giving some things away well i didn't mention also we're extending utilities to you know our neighbors to the south who i understand have some failing septic issues but our our project had to extend public water and sewer to these projects adjacent to us to the south so i really think it just townhomes made the most sense and and the density ended up being that way just after we made the changes yeah if that answers the question yeah thank you um i based on the information i get on a daily basis i am like you know what we need a lot more density but i could appreciate you reducing that based on your engagement with the neighbors um as a as a landowner and then working with the folks that are around you um yeah i could i could appreciate it thank you thank you council member colleagues anyone else questions or comments for the developer or the opponents before we close the public hearing all right seeing none here on the day that's where i'm going to declare this public meeting closed and the matter is back before the council on it i'll entertain any questions or comments on part of colleagues all right seeing none i i'll just briefly say and i i i appreciated the the debate that the planning commission had a split vote this this case really the facts of this development aren't really dissimilar at least in my reading to the the previous one only we don't have as much uh no opposition you know based upon environmentalism or or blasting or an income of that nature i i'm going to support this development one of the things that that drives me to support it is is oftentimes what we do as a council is manage outcomes oftentimes we can't stop them but it's a matter of choosing which is which is better and i am i'm just concerned about what can go there by right if we don't put these town homes and it's going to be incredibly expensive uh single family homes which i think is counterintuitive to to what we're trying to do um when it comes to to growth so uh in terms of managing a development and i i appreciate the opponents that have spoken and what i've heard is is um you know it's going to change the character of our neighborhood i get it i get it i uh i get it um and and all of us in Durham are having the character of our neighborhoods uh uh changed uh some of us are in better position to manage it and control it and adapt and some of us aren't um every person on this dais is having the character of their neighborhood changed uh by growth in this city but i i don't want um by right uh single family homes there um i'd rather see uh townhouses with the commitments and proffers that this developer has uh made so with that i'm going to be supporting this development colleagues anyone else all right seeing none staff forgive me i might be a conflate there were no additional proffers we needed to capture or clarify was was there on this thank you andi lester plenty department um there's one clarification regarding text commitment number five which was to clarify that it's the habitat for humanity of Durham incorporated um and in addition i was hoping to see to be in line with the existing text commitments to add the clause that the lot shall be deeded in fee simple to habitat for humanity of Durham incorporated if he's willing to to agree with that um thank you the other two proffers were the erosion control ones developer to utilize double rail stilt fencing or stilt fencing and the developer to size the erosion control sediment ponds for the 100 year event those were the additional ones thank you mr eason does that comport with uh all right thank you uh so much uh colleagues this item requires excuse me uh three motions uh and i'll entertain motion number one to adopt an ordinance annexing seven nine two six massy chapel road into the city of Durham effective september 30th 2022 and to authorize the city manager to enter into a utility extension agreement with eden's land court so moved i hear a motion from council member williams and a second from council member caballero madame clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote and report out the motion passes five to two with council members freeman and holsey hyman voting no its second motion uh to adopting excuse me one second my vote was a no vote my clicker is not it's coming in as a no vote but i as a not not voting but i am and i'm pressing no the first motion passed um four to three with mayor o'neill council member freeman and council member holsey hyman voting no okay all right motion number two to adopt an ordinance amending the unified development ordinance by taking property out of the residential rural rr falls jordan lake watershed protection district b fjb county jurisdiction and establishing the same as plan development residential 4.928 pdr 4.928 falls jordan lake watershed protection district b fjb city jurisdiction so moved second have a motion from uh council member williams and a second from council member caballero madame clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote and report out and again the motion passes four to three with mayor o'neill council members freeman and holsey hyman voting no and finally i'll adopt a motion excuse me one second my clicker is still it should be a no vote they are watching me but it's is coming up as not i announced it should be no vote she announced you as a no i think did you did you capture the mayor's no yes i said no vote okay all right motion number three to adopt a consistency statement as required by north carolina general statute one six zero d dash six zero five so moved second have a motion from council member williams and a second from council member caballero madame clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote and report out the motion passes it appears as um four to three mayor o'neill i voted no i did hear yes but it's still all the money coming up freeman we have you listed as abstaining but this is not a moment to abstain and holsey hyman we have listed as a no vote so can council member freeman confirm her vote is a no vote on the consistency to be a yes vote record did you have a vote of four to three with no votes being from mayor o'neill council member freeman and council member holsey hyman all right no no i pressed yes but it's coming up as a no voting so all of my votes have been kind of not what i'm pressing okay it's coming up as no voting but i actually voted yes on the consistency statement okay so we have um five to two with council members hyman holsey hyman and freeman voting no all right thank you all right that concludes our consideration of item number 34 consolidated annexation seven nine two six massy chapel road our thanks to our residents and citizens that stayed with us and offered comments tonight and to the staff on this item as well and we'll keep moving item number 35 is a public hearing arbor stoneway broadstone court flat stone court green mount drive and upland metals lane street closings i do not uh well we'll hear from staff sorry first okay i'm corninger i'm represent the plan department the case sc 2200 studio four references a request by steve puckett permanent closure in the entirety of greenmont drive arbor stoneway broadstone court flat stone court and upload meadow lane um that runs parallel to east ram zero street and into the north carolinal railroad right of way to the north as part of the street closure the applicant combined seeks to combine all the remaining land to create two new parcels of 18.78 acres and 13.63 acres um for future development running east of channel road thank you very much colleagues are any questions for staff on item number 35 if not i'm going to declare this public hearing open i i haven't received any cards for anyone that signed up to speak on this item um and i don't see anyone on our virtual platform who's indicating a desire to speak on this item that correct no cards on this all right it's correct this is a public hearing is there anyone in chamber tonight who wishes to speak on this item this is the public hearing if not this matter is i'm going to declare this public hearing closed this matter were you getting up brah okay all right the two words are rising if not i'm going to declare this public hearing closed and this matter is back before the council uh colleagues do you have any questions or comments all right this item requires one motion uh motion uh the motion is to permanently close in their entirety green mount drive arbor stoneway broad stone court flat stone court and upland meadow lane so move second uh suspend i'm sorry mr mayor pro tem um can we do a hand vote from here on out i'm sorry can we do hand votes from here on out thank you sure absolutely um restating um well i i heard a motion from council yes second from council member caballero uh we will all those voting i would please indicate by raising your left hand all those opposed all right by my reckoning the vote is six to one it's council member freeman voting no all right i think that is all that's required for item number 35 uh moving on to item number 36 a zoning map change dearborn drive multi-family and we'll receive report from the staff thank you mayor now mayor pro tem middleton and honorable council members and you're left with the planning department um land and cocks of ldg development proposes to change the zoning designation of three parcels of land totaling 9.41 acres and located at dearborn drive in old oxford road in the bractown community the current zoning is residential urban five the applicant proposes to change the designation to plan development residential 19.978 to facilitate the construction of up to 182 affordable multifamily units and up to 5 000 square feet of community service civic space the applicant is also working with the bractown community outside of this process to allow the bca to use the community center affordable units we on average 60 or less am i for a 30 year period the properties are currently designated medium density residential on the future land use map the proposed development residential 19.978 zoning is inconsistent with the designated flume if the proposed zoning is approved staff recommends a change to the flume to designate the property as medium high density residential which is a 8 to 20 dwelling units per acre there is no associated annexation petition with this case the assembled parcels already within Durham corporate boundary the planning commission recommended approval by a vote of 11 to 0 at their June 20 at their June 14th 2022 meeting in addition to the affordable units the proposal commits to a concrete pad bus shelter subject to go Durham go triangle additional asphalt along the east side of old oxford road for bike lane and as a reminder two motions are required for this application the first motion is to approve the zoning ordinance the second motion is to approve the consistency statement thank you staff and the applicant are available for any questions thank you so much any questions uh colleagues for staff on this item before we open the public hearing seeing none i do i want to disclose this as is my practice the not-for-profit that i'm CEO of is a significant landowner in that area i cross no statutory threshold whatsoever of any financial inducement uh at all but i do like to disclose when things are close to things that i that i uh function there uh for purpose of discussion so with that said no no financial inducements whatsoever but it is in close proximity a significant piece of land that the organization that i lead owns in that neighborhood with that i do want to open up the public hearing and mr. gauche are you representing the uh filament good evening good to see you mr. gauche how much time do you anticipate needing for your presentation five minutes five put five minutes on the clock all right well i'm nil gauche uh turn it at the morning start law group 700 west main street here in durham and i'm representing the applicant now uh linden cox out there in becker rich hand so he had a rough night of sleep so i told him i wouldn't make him speak today but i did want to introduce you to him he's been a pleasure to work with ldg has been fantastic i sincerely think that this is probably one of the best projects i've ever had the pleasure of working on in the city of durham and i think that the uh professional staff here in the city also agree you'll notice in your staff report that this project is consistent with 24 i believe out of 24 of the community goals and objectives and that is not a surprise they have taken every effort to engage with the community this is an affordable housing project um so obviously it's consistent with the city's goals in that regard as well um in addition it's so much more than just an affordable housing project which i think the city is greatly in need of but i think the story of how this project all came together um is really quite special uh the property is currently owned by the veterans of foreign wars program mr larry colman in the back um has been a strong sewer to that property for some time and has recognized that it was too large and uh too much of a maintenance issue for that organization to hold indefinitely and so he started planning for the future of this property some time ago with an eye towards affordable housing and was able to partner with ldg ldg um understanding what the importance of the uh mission that that organization carries out um has endeavored here to provide 5 000 square feet of civic space which essentially will be given to the vfw as a permanent home for their organization to carry out their mission indefinitely um it will free them of the burden of uh the vfw of the burden of any kind of maintenance issues that type of thing they will have a permanent space to carry out that mission and then through our engagement we've also um i think it's fair to say build a lot of inroads and rapport with the bracton community association and have been able to essentially i'm going to say broker a deal but i think that's too generous because frankly mr colman is quite generous himself and was very willing um to allow the bca to have some office space in that civic uh space for their organization um to have a place to function as well um because the 5 000 square feet evidently is a little bit larger than what the the vfw needs for its operations so i mean really this project has made a lot of efforts to to try to check i mean more than check boxes you know provide a lot of community benefits in one neat package and it's a really great project um we're here to answer any questions you may have we hope to have your support and uh you know i i think this is a great project for city of durham thank you very much for your time tonight mr ghost thank you very much you've got about one minute and 54 seconds in the bank if if you should need to avail yourself of it i have three uh cards for focal of sign up to speak uh mr larry colman venessa mason evans and donna frederick if you're in chamber if you would just approach over here and commander colman good to see you if you would state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes all right i will keep you to three minutes if there's any other question about the 5 000 square foot i would ask that be done afterwards as stated i'm larry colman durham resident and the vfw bragtown commander which is a large landowner currently on seven acres at 11 acres madam mayor mayor pro tem city council members and staff thank you for the time to speak i'm speaking in strong support of the rezoning request that isn't is the culmination of efforts that actually began in 2019 um from the community little correction i thought it would be great to do tiny homes and i was educated very quickly that that's not the best way to go so i pivoted and worked toward affordable housing as a member of the bragtown community since the mid 60s are over 100 members are excited for the opportunities for this rezoning will afford the veterans of durham and the citizens of bragtown our's goals to make our 5 000 square foot facility within the development a welcoming and inclusive space for the over 15 000 veterans in the durham area uh and the citizens of the bragtown community in this process the team from ldg and the bragtown community association they've been great partners in this effort in closing and then also to the 5 000 square foot we will be bringing in another 501c3 profit to run the facility day to day still in the works but this is going to be so much more than community space if the vision of some of us come to fruition with this space in closing i would like to in closing i'd like to ask the city council also to consider some additional financing options for the developer to move a number of the units from 60 percent ami to 30 percent ami all of them right now this is more the developer's lane are slotted to be 60 percent ami there's some number not my lane but some number of financial financing that would reduce some of those 30 percent thank you for your time commander thank you all right venessa mason evans good evening and good to see you if you'll state your name and address for the record you'll have three minutes good evening mayor orneal uh and city council i'd like to say that uh we have worked diligently with the lg ldg group and trying to make sure we can get affordability in bractown um they have worked with us with engagement through our bractown community association meetings the community as well as our executive board they have went beyond their measures of making sure we we had never had far as a bca or a bractown community national night out they were able to do that with us we were able to bring a lot of community members out to see what the site may look like as well as bringing out free food for the community having really the bull come out we had a wonderful night of just being able to gather as a true community i feel like they really do want to work with the community and making sure that we get affordability of course they did not get the gap funding that was one of the hopes because when we first started out in our conversations everything was at 60 percent am i we are in hopes that we can get at least 31 percent 30 percent am i 90 percent at 60 percent am i and we hope that we can get 31 percent at 80 percent am i which would hopefully knock off some of the costs from the 30 percent am i of course we are looking for funding from the city the county and any other organizations that can help to bring about the funding that we would need to get that 30 percent am i in place i feel that they have went really way beyond what a lot of developers have done even if they wasn't giving us a space within this development i would still say that i would feel they have done what they need to do to try to bring the community to have affordability within the community we know so many people are losing their homes their apartments so many people getting evicted and to have a development that is working with us to make sure that we can try to have affordability that is truly truly important for bradtown because we know that the am i in bradtown is so low because of that income so i'm hoping that with this development it will help us to bring affordability to bradtown thank you thank you miss evans always good to see you donna frederick good evening thank you for being with us if you'll state your name and address you'll have three minutes good evening donna frederick 603 east club boulevard Durham north caroline i've been a resident for over 25 years at that address we have worked diligently with this community and also with this developer coming in affordability is what we hear every day every day every day and anything that can come in and help the community to survive and you know it's very important because you could just hear the words on the page but every day when you pick up a paper somebody's being evicted so we need to have more affordable apartments more affordable homes and that's increasing you know we need residents to have a place to live but a lot of the residents here are facing being put out and that's in the numbers and that's the fact that's not a sentiment so we need to embrace these developers have worked tirelessly with the black town community they've toured the neighborhood they've been with us we've been with them they get it it's not just a building it's a community and space all the veterans that came out on our night out they were just so elated that somebody took such an interest in providing a space for them so again we are in support of this and we hope that they get the additional funding to make it more a funding thank you so much miss frederick and good to see you as well this is a public hearing is there anyone else in chamber who wishes to speak on this item that has not had opportunity this is a public hearing and i don't see anyone on our virtual platform colleagues any questions or comments for uh councilmember hyman hi um so i want to say thank you for the engagement with the community um but i know you talked about some some space that's going to still do some community work with veterans am i correct uh yeah the the 5000 square feet civic space um the prime so the way the deal works on the primary use of that will be for the vfw the veterans for more to carry out their mission uh essentially they would be using that space um how however they feel they need to and in in this case we know that they are planning on subleasing i guess is a term i would use some of that space to the bca um and you know so would it be like some wrap around services like like legal services for their veterans or mental health services oh yeah would those types of services be offered for for veterans yeah i believe those are those are some of the types of services i think mr larry colman might actually i mean he's he's the commander of that post uh might actually be a better person to answer that question but i think what you're asking if i understand is what kind of services will be offered to veterans in that space right and then my other one step before he answers that is are you going to have any because this is these are apartment units right these are apartment right so any apartment is going to be like kind of earmarked or designated for veterans i'm just curious uh not i don't think specifically i think that our program is working on veteran vouchers yeah on what our so we hope the community will be able to accept veteran vouchers so there aren't units specifically earmarked for veterans but that is uh something that this community is hoping to achieve especially with already being you know aligned with the vfw and having that space there okay larry would you want to answer that if i can't short approach katharine heim is that all right yes so the overall concept of the vision of the five thousand square foot is a shared space veteran community we've been i've been working with nonprofits the va the community for probably what's it been nine months now two years it's been a while uh we have a commitment from the va that they will have two homeless counselors full time in this space this is supported by the vision six director that was former va director he's aware of what we're doing there um in the nonprofit we're looking to partner with already has existing programs for veterans community-based type things think flex space see arts program connection to mental health counseling and it's going to segue off of what these same nonprofits we just hosted the a veteran event here in Durham saturday a gray stone and had about 300 individuals in attendance with those service providers and the concept is veterans come there the community comes there and can make connections as needed to these other individuals that have touchdown space space for presentations and other programs that they may want to run thank you because you know our veterans are they still suffer from a lot of mental health issues post-traumatic stress disorder so thank you thank you for answering that thank you councilmember councilmember freeman thank you ma'am pro tem i just wanted to appreciate this item coming forward i know it's been in the works a number of years and i remember the conversation early on trying to figure out how to work with kasa unfortunately that didn't come together and i'm glad you kept at it and sounds like it's really coming together and the piece that i'm going to try and follow up on with staff is i guess if there is a possible way to support getting the am i down to 30 percent maybe that's a conversation we can have in the coming weeks or what have you it thank you councilmember and staff will note your inquiry colleagues anyone else all right last call this is a public hearing anyone in the chamber that wishes to speak on this item that is not already spoken with that i'm going to close this public hearing the matter is back before the council colleagues questions comments councilmember cabillero thank you thank you i'm sorry thank you good evening um i just wanted to say how pleased i am with this project i really appreciate the developer and all of the stakeholders in the bractown community for this is another this in the carver street assemblage project which you all had a lot of um you also were instrumental in making sure that what came to council was better than what was originally being proposed and so i just wanted to extend my gratitude to you all to me these are examples both of these are examples of what is possible for our community and i think just this is the easiest vote i'm going to take uh super excited to say yes clicker isn't working so i'll be raising my hand but um quite frankly rather ecstatic about it thank you thank you councilmember colleague anyone else um yeah councilmember uh councilmember johnson and councilmember hyman thank you mr mayor pro tem um i'll echo everything my colleague said this is a great project really excited to see it come to life um 200 apartments for families in our community that are desperately needed so yeah absolutely 100 percent um in support of this and look forward to seeing it come to life thank you thank you councilmember councilmember hyman i'm going to say ditto ditto ditto because i'm very excited for this also this project and i wish i could clone you but that's a whole nother story uh but so thank i'm excited so i will be also supporting this thank you councilmember freeman i'm just another follow-up just in and just figuring out i guess how the 501c3 that's going to operate day to day is going to i guess function i would just love to keep getting these updates i know you've been sharing them so thank you thank you councilmember madam mayor thank you all this will be a yes vote thank you madam mayor and and i want to associate myself with everything my colleagues have said life moves in seasons and when my season on the council is over uh this will be one of the moments i look towards uh back on as one of the best votes uh most enjoyable votes i'll cast uh being on the council so looking forward to supporting this with that said this item one second yeah go ahead and make the motion on the side so moved oh no one second i do wonder where's the i make the motion there it is all right got to adopt the ordinance i'll read into record uh i'll entertain the motion it's getting late to adopt an ordinance amending the durham you know durham unified development ordinance by taking property out of the residential union residential urban five r u five falls jordan lake watershed protection district b fjb and establishing the same as plan development residential 19.401 pdr 19.401 falls jordan lake watershed protection district b fjb so move oh i heard a motion from council member hyman thank you and second the council member williams uh with all those in favor will signify uh i by raising your left hand all those opposed by my reckoning the vote is unanimous second motion to adopt a consistent consistency statement as required by north carolina general statute 160 d dash 605 second i heard a motion from council member williams and the second council member caballero all in favor please raise your left hand all opposed by my reckoning the motion is carries unanimously madame clerk thank you so much um thank you commander thank you uh congratulations and best wishes we're looking forward for what we hope will be an anchoring project in that neighborhood and thank you uh to the residents for making this happen and for your advocacy and for being with us tonight congratulations all right colleagues our final um public hearing tonight by my reckoning is item number 37 a zoning map change for wabash parcels and we will hear from our staff thank you uh mayor nil mayor perten middleton and honorable council members i'm in delist with the planning department um williams chambers of helenech conference centers llc proposes to change the zoning designation of three parcels of land totaling 9.96 acres and located at 1500 and 1521 wabash street and 1214 truman street the current zoning is residential urban five the applicant proposes to change the this designation to plan development residential 5.170 to allow for the construction of up to 44 townhouse units the parcels already within the Durham city limits the properties are currently designated medium density residential and recreation and open space on the future land use map the proposed zoning is inconsistent with the with the designation if the proposed zoning is approved staff recommends a change to the flume to designate the properties as low medium density residential and recreation and open space the planning commission recommended approval by a vote of eight to five at their march 8 2022 meeting at the planning commission hearing on march 8 the applicant proffered an increase of the donation to durham's dedicated housing fund to 25 000 as a reminder two motions are required for this application the first motion is to approve the zoning ordinance the second motion is is to approve the consistency statement thank you staff and the applicant are available for any questions thank you very much uh long night for you i appreciate you holly's any questions for staff before we open the public hearing if not i'm going to declare this public hearing open uh attorney floyd mckissick the third will be representing the applicant good to see you how much time do you anticipate needing for your presentation uh i would say 10 minutes and i will share and split some of my time with land and lovelace of underfoot engineering so at the appropriate time i will ask him to come up after i finished my brief comments sure we'll start with 10 minutes on the clock for you okay thank you very much good evening everyone um i just wanted to share some quick comments to compliment the city's report that you have in front of you this parcel of land is approximately nine point nine six acres and it contains three continuous tracts of land um addressed as 1500 wild bash 1521 wild bash and 1214 truant the proposal is to go from r u5 to a pdr 5.170 and this proposal is consistent with the comprehensive plan and objectives goals and objectives and also received a favorable recommendation from planning um in addition recording stopped in addition the proposal is that the track of land be used for up to 44 townhomes with an maximum size of 2 000 square foot per townhome a maximum height of approximately 45 feet there also is a reserve open space for a dog park in a playfield the site will maintain a 32 percent tree coverage area where there's only a seven percent requirement and also provide 38 open space where i believe there is a 16 percent requirement they will also feature trails and connections and easements specifically a greenway easement along third fort creek at the southern end of the property that will be deeded to the city as part of this development and sidewalks will in the development will link to this area uh the developer sorry the owner of the property and the uh the applicant will has agreed for $25 000 affordable housing fund contribution which was committed during the march 2022 planning commission public hearing the idea is to have and build moderate income housing in this community which is desperately needed the townhomes will be ownership units not rental units for moderate income individuals and families one of the goals of this project is to provide housing that complements and enhances the livability in this neighborhood and offers some stability to the greater neighborhood which for all practical purposes has been neglected and overlooked for years if you're familiar with this area i believe the report from the city does identify that there's some single-family homes in this area as well as multi-unit in the area however what it does not state is that there are approximately probably 15 abandoned and dilapidated multi-unit structures in this area right now and i believe that the units are owned by development ventures which is a part of the Durham housing authority i believe at some point they do have plans to redevelop that area and in speaking with them they were not only excited and on board with this particular development but they thought that the townhome community would also complement their future plans for what they plan on doing with those dilapidated structures that are currently there the members of the community that we've spoken to whether it's been at the public hearings or via phone have all been excited on board they're excited to see someone come through who can inject some life into this area of the neighborhood they're excited to see someone come through and and potentially build some townhomes that would be affordable for most of Durham in addition they are on board with the additional improvements along the sidewalks in the street lights and and and other attributes of this community that will be offered in addition the project will not displace any current residents since it is being developed entirely on a vacant tract of land three actual vacant tracts of land other than that i think the project will serve as a catalyst for this community and for this neighborhood i will pause briefly and invite Landon Lovelace to join me and offer some additional contributions and comments and i also believe the applicant may be joining via zoom and at the appropriate time can be recognized as a proponent as well. Mr. Lovelace, good evening, welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Floyd. Madam Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem Council, my name is Landon Lovelace. I'm with Underfoot Engineering. I do believe Bill Chambers, the applicant, should be online as well. He is online. So if there's questions for him he'd be happy to to jump in and answer as well. I have not got much to add to the staff report and to Floyd's comments i wanted to speak a little bit just about why you'll notice in the in the staff report that the density is dropping from what the the flume calls for The current RU-5 zoning does not allow for town homes by right. So as we were doing planning exercises with Dr. Chambers we were trying to get the density up to hit that missing middle housing and not just do we've got up to 44 town home units if we were to develop this as a use by right. With our five lots we would probably get about 20 single family homes detached so as we've had the discussion or heard the discussion multiple times tonight that that takes the price point and just pushes it up based off development costs. In addition the the site's got existing streams and wetlands and flood plain that kind of limit the developable area. Yeah outside of that I think I'll just answer any questions that may come up. Thank you for your time. Thank you Mr. Lovelace. I do want to acknowledge the president's far distinguished senator utilities commissioner Floyd McKissick Jr. Good to have you here earlier commissioner former council member Eddie Davis was in the chamber as well and did not acknowledge him so we certainly if he's watching want to acknowledge that he was in chamber as is our custom as the council. Senator commissioner you have a card filled out did you wish to speak or thank you sir. Mr. Chambers is on line. Councillor did Mr. Chambers want to speak or is he just being reserved for questions. I just pointed it out for respect since he was online at appropriate time he can probably just speak for three minutes. Okay Mr. Chambers if you can hear us if you'd make them hearable I just want to verify because they've got some time on the clock if he wanted to say anything. Mr. Chambers can you hear me. Yes can you hear me. Yes good even sir this is mayor pro tem Middleton your item is being considered now did you want to say anything or do you want to just reserve your time to answer questions. I'll reserve my time to answer questions but I just want to thank mayor mayor pro tem and all the council members for all the things you do do. I know it's a thankless job that you perform but y'all have done extremely well tonight I think in serving your community so I'll just leave it at that but I'll let senator Bacchesek speak and if there's any questions I'll be happy to answer them. Thank you Mr. Chambers that's all the cards I have this is a public hearing if there are any other residents citizens in chamber who wish to speak on this item would you please make yourself known. Senator Bacchesek will yield to you if you'll state your name and address you'll have well you have the remainder of the time that was left for the proponents. Okay my name is Floyd Bacchesek Jr. I reside at 690300 Road Durham North Carolina I have a great appreciation of what you do because I've set up there on that deos for eight years and an additional five years dealing with planning zoning matters and the planning commission and Board of Adjustments so I uniquely appreciate your contributions. I think a lot has been said about this project I think the important thing about it that I believe is really critical I own a home over at 720 South Plum Street very close proximity where this development is proposed to take place this will bring a lot of stability to this area it will provide housing options for people working over at Durham Tech people working with North Carolina Central those who cannot afford downtown Durham at the price point that it is today their target is to get it in around the $300,000 rank or so so I mean you know obviously development costs will drive the ultimate entry level but it's designed to be an affordable housing community for people who will be going in to maybe working at Central they may be working over at Durham Tech they be working at other areas where this would be a convenient location to get out RTP or to get over to downtown Durham but they can't afford to live in downtown Durham anymore so I mean I think in my mind that's a significant factor along with the fact that they talked about you're getting a quality development you're getting a place where yeah there's a taut lot here there's open space that's in excess of what's required yeah you're going to have a dog park there you're going to have playfields there I mean um environmental areas are being preserved they're not being touched they could go in by right right now put in single family homes and rather coming in in the low 300s you'd be over $600,000 easily you know depending up on the square footage of the places that they built could be significantly in excess of that so I do believe it's an excellent project and very compatible with the other single family homes in the area when I've spoken to neighbors in that area they've all been very supportive of this particular project I know when they also spoke with the Durham Housing Authority they obviously have plans for MacDougall Terrace which is in reasonably close proximity they were supportive of this project in the way that it's been proposed to be redeveloped but it's a small development it's only about 44 units so for those who I know have been single family homeowners over in this area for a while they all seem to be very excited as well as those that are renting in the area that are outside of some of the other established communities that to be about this in my comments thank you thank you very much good to see you senator I failed to say the most important thing to former council member because well thank you this is a public hearing is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on this item that has not been heard seeing none colleagues are any questions or comments for the developer the team with that I'm going to declare this public hearing closed and the matter is back before the council council any questions or comments council member Freeman just a note the distinction here and just doing a development within the city limits this this is how that kind of density you know kind of building it up from inside out with a plan having this like addressing the streets the roads all of that within a vacant lot the infill side of this is really great and I hear you when you say you know it won't have impact it won't displace which we have to be realistic and understand that how property values work there will be some side effects that we have to be prepared for as a city and so just be mindful of that I fully support moving forward though thank you thank you council member colleagues anyone else with that there are two motions required with this item motion number one I'll entertain to adopt an ordinance amending the unified development ordinance by taking property out of the residential urban five r u five district and establishing the same as planned development residential 5.170 pdr 5.170 district so moved second I'll give it to I heard a motion from council member hyman I was going to give it to her anyway I'll give it and a second from council member johnson all those in favor please indicate by raising your left hand by my reckoning the vote is unanimous second motion to adopt a consistency and reasonableness statement as required by North Carolina general statute 160d-605 so moved second I hear a motion from council member Williams and a second from council members johnson and hyman um all in favor will indicate I by raising your left hand those opposed madam clerk by my reckoning that motion is unanimous as well madam mayor with your permission that's the end of our agenda bring it to closure if you if unless you have any other directive all right no other matters coming before the council madam clerk it is september 19th the gavel is down at 11 o 8 p.m god bless Durham