 30 seconds. It is now 10 o'clock on May the 27th and I want to call this meeting of the Durham City Council order our budget work session and I want to welcome everyone here today. I want to thank our I want to thank our staff, our budget staff for all the amazing work they've done to get us to this point and Bertha I really want to thank you and your team as well as our finance folks and deputy city manager page. Plus everyone who is here can can everybody mute? Thanks and also our tech staff. Everybody from technology solutions. Everyone from our clerk's office. Everyone from our office our office Republic Affairs who all work together to make these online meetings happen and we're very very grateful. Thank you so much. And now Madam Clerk could you please call the roll? Certainly. Good morning everyone. Mayor Shul. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Councilmember Caballero. Here. Councilmember Freeman. Present. Councilmember Middleton. Here. Councilmember Reese. Here. Thank you. Thank you Madam Clerk and now I'm going to turn this over to City Manager Tom Bonfield and he will direct us about how we want to go through these presentations. Mr. Manager. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Members of Council. Good morning everyone and thank you for the time you've carved out for us and these this first of two abbreviated budget work sessions. As I indicated when I presented the budget week before last this budget process obviously as we all know has been unique but it has been very fluid even since the the initial budget presentation there are a number of additional items that have changed that you will hear about today. Not many but a few that are very important. I also want to say that you know you're very much used to the formats that we've tried to use in budget pass with hitting much of the the budget documents performance measures and those kinds of things but as I'm sure you've seen if you've reviewed the the materials that we've sent to you and I would say too thank you for your patience and getting those I wouldn't not necessarily last minute but toward the end of the process as I said those have been fluid and we wanted to make sure that when they were presented today they had they were as current as the information we have but we really tried to highlight and balance the aspects of of the budget going forward in terms of the the more traditional kinds of things with the the resource allocation tables and some of the things you've used to see but really a lot more input on kind of updating you on the the impact of COVID-19 on budget both the current year budget operational decisions that we have made in the current year but also how it will impact the the budget that you'll be considering over the next several weeks as well as many of the operational impacts that that we have built into that budget so this really is kind of a hybrid approach in my opinion of thinking about it in terms of the the budget and the appropriations and those kinds of things but also hopefully as we've go through the next couple of days we can talk about some of these operational aspects and answer any questions you have as well so with that I am going to turn it over to Bertha and let her begin the process you've seen the agenda and hopefully that is a sequence that is okay over the next couple of days we've carved out the goal of three hours but the the zoom allotment is four hours in the event we extend over but I think that we are know we're prepared to to engage you and hopefully answer any questions you have as you consider the budget so thank you for your time today and with that I'll turn it over to Bertha. Good morning everyone Bertha Johnson director of budget and management services I do want to bring up the agenda just for the viewing public to go over what we're going to discuss in the meeting today I also want to remind everyone that all of the presentations on the schedule are on our webpage as well as the budget book which we just finished yesterday so again one of those delays and trying to work together and pull together budget pages for 25 departments in all the multi-year funds and with the numbers changing as as the city manager mentioned so today we will have a revenue presentation we'll talk about paying benefits general services parks and recreation and transportation those are mostly related to updating on programmatic changes as it relates to COVID-19 as well as some questions we receive from council they'll be responding to in their presentations tomorrow start at the same time at 10 and we will have a city county planning public works community development office of economic and workforce development and we'll have a discussion at the end around engagement as you hear from several of the departments listed here they have engagement components in their work and so you'll hear some of that and we wanted to hold that discussion to the end so we can talk about engagement as an organization versus individual departments and get some solicits and feedback from you all so if there are no questions about the agenda no additions to the agenda we will move to the revenue presentation so while John Allure is pulling up the revenue presentation I wanted to say about this presentation it's a it's a lengthy presentation and I'll go through it quickly because this is the same template we use each year for the revenue presentation but we've had several meetings with you and so a lot of this information is the same information we've shared with you you've also heard a lot in the manager's presentation so I'll go through some of it quickly and especially since you haven't had an opportunity to hear from the departments that we'll be presenting later I want to make sure that we have adequate time for those discussions so if you feel like I'm going quickly just just let me know so we'll start out by talking about the key issues which are not new to you the revenue losses that we are projecting around property tax sales tax power bill gas tax hotel tax and some program revenues also no tax rate increase as we had discussed early in the year and an extremely significant use of fund balance more than we've used in a in a really long time probably most recently back to 2009 10 here is a slide that's really key to the presentation and probably most of the focus is that just to be clear about what revenue losses when we say revenue loss what we mean and we're really focused on we had projected we had EOI projections which is the second second column here and pre-covid in the pre-covid projection of those projections we share with you at the budget retreat on February 14th and so when we talk about losses we're really talking about what we where we thought we were going to be in terms of revenues to support our budget to where we are now in the proposed budget one line item has changed since the manager presented his budget that is power bill we shared with you when we met last time at the special meeting and at the update that we probably would be updating that power bill number the mayor has shared with you all as well that you know he had heard the 25 percent reduction we've since confirmed that through meetings that not only we've had with with the league but also our transportation department with their peers as well as some some folks at ncdot so we have now recognized that 25 loss in the budget and we'll we'll talk about how we were able to do that as we move through the presentation but that's the only number that's changed here since we met last time so moving on to our just a overlook of our overview of our general fund revenue summary and this is just to compare some from year to year looking at the major revenue sources in the general fund we primarily focus on property tax and sales tax because those are the primary sources and when we talk about a budget deficit or gap or where we can find additional revenue those are the really only sufficient sources and the only one that we really have control over is property tax and we're not proposing a rate increase and so there is not a lot of additional revenue there to balance the budget sorry can i ask a question would you would you like me to hold it to the end you can answer that you can ask now thank you this slide the property tax for f y 2021 the far right column looks to me like a different number than on the previous slide and i wasn't sure if they were supposed to be different from some reason or if that just had not been updated uh good question those are supposed to be different the property tax number here includes prior your levies uh delinquent taxes penalties it's the total tax revenue the other one is just a car in your levy got you thank you thank you for asking that just looking at the makeup of the general fund revenues again just another way of showing you how dependent the general fund is on property taxes and other local taxes which is of course our sales tax and our hotel motel tax so when we think again about how do we generate additional revenue there's no other place really to go accept the property tax we are again proposing the rate property tax rate to remain the same we talked about property tax rate increase in february uh this council decided and we recommended that we not do this at this time and so therefore the rate will remain the same for for uh we had some comments um i think from the general public in terms of uh people calculating their their property tax rate and um really what they had done when they said our our numbers were not correct is that they were not separating out the city tax from the county tax and so when the manager presented the uh budget and people calculated their tax bill um i just want folks to know that that is uh you need to separate out the city and county when you try to do that property tax uh base growth um this is uh the chart that we typically include it's also included in our budget book um just one thing i want to point out here if you look at our our motor vehicle tax we talked about that being projected to remain flat um that is a recommendation from the uh tax office in terms of what they're seeing with um people uh the uh relinquishing their vehicles as well as not purchasing vehicles property tax projections again looking at um what is the the assessed value here and the other slides were really focused on the revenue but assessed value growth which is really driven by the real property which is uh the majority of that growth so the overall growth is 2.31 percent um the second kind of section of the slide shows um the rate breakout which you saw on the previous slide um and one thing i want to point out here when we talk about the loss um in revenue from pre-covid to now we had intended to raise our collection rate uh because of the great job that the county is doing in collections to 99 percent but based on the update we we allowed that rate that percentage to remain at 99.6 so that was the million dollar loss from february to what we're now again we we didn't change the numbers other than uh hold the collection rate uh flat versus uh changing it to 99 percent which we had intended to do in february and at the bottom of the slide you just see the revenue allocation so just another look at the property tax rate allocation but what is new in this slide is the second row from the bottom shows the tax collection fee and then you get the net amount that each of the funds listed here will gain um in the next fiscal year the total collections budget to to actual so the blue line represents the represents the budget the red line actual and then our end of year projection which is what EOI is so the blue line is just what we have in the budgeted in the 21 budget sales tax collections we haven't changed this from when we met last time also uh this number the numbers haven't changed from uh what you saw in the manager's budget um the bottom uh the bottom uh note here is probably uh the one of the relates to one of the questions we were asked at the last meeting about the additional revenue from the sales tax agreement with the county just again we expect to get an additional 2.4 million that number those dollars are included in the budget to balance the budget um sales tax is one of those revenues that we usually can depend on uh getting a big chunk of additional revenues and that's not going to happen uh next year and so that is the that is the biggest uh drain on the general fund and on the revenue side again to that point if you look at the blue um 18 19 the blue 1920 and the blue 20 21 you can see the reduction um of 6.6 percent uh for sales tax um that number went down in 2009 10 significantly you know it rebounded and you know we expect that to happen again in the future but for next year that number is projected to be significantly lower we hope that it's better but we will not find out for a while since we do not get our first uh sales tax payment for next year until October and so we're doing our best to try to make the best of the information that we have and make the best projections we can at this point look at the other uh general fund revenues uh pointing out here uh looking at the power bill number that's the number that we updated since the manager's presentation um that added about 1.5 million to our our budget um gap and so uh but we felt uh confident as the manager said we we held out as long as possible because we don't want to we want to be as best we can with the numbers to uh make that change so going to our fund balance slide um the only thing that's changed on this from when you saw it last is that we we did increase the revenue loss due to covid which was what was in the budget guidelines that we would use fund balance to uh supplant revenue losses uh we've added the 1.5 million and so that number is 8.7 million uh the decision to use fund balance for the 1.5 million primarily is one it's a it's a big number and the other option would be to go to personal services because that's where the majority are our expenditures are but also when you use fund balance um there's no harm in terms of if you don't have the revenue loss the money just stays in savings so you're not making significant programmatic changes and then to find out that these projections that we're making and you know we made in april and may we won't know really until october our first payment with sales tax really the first quarter we'd need to see so that'd be october november december and property tax is not collected until primarily december january so there's a long time before we'll know how good these projections are and they're in line with our pier cities as well as the recommendations we're getting from the state and so we feel feel confident but we don't know and so we feel like the the best option is to um put in fund balance as a placeholder if the revenues come in as we project it bertha let me jump in here a second too you know this is one of those uh uh you know swallow hearts for for all of us because it's so out of character as to how we have uh typically gone about the budget um this is an area that I really feel like um you know we're kind of at the at the end of options around fund balance particularly if things as we progress through the year uh are our revenue the revenue projections are worse than expected I think we're going to be very challenged to uh to dig deeper into fund balance not because there may not be some money there between the 16.3 percent and the 12 percent but because that is just building a huge challenge for the following year's budget and uh one of the things that you we're going to have to give some some serious thought to as we begin the fiscal year uh is to begin to even you know prepare for other modifications to the budget should as as berth indicate when we start getting into october and seeing you know sales tax numbers or or even later into december with property tax numbers if if those numbers are you know are lower than we are projecting here we're going to need to have a plan in place for for reacting to that rather than waiting till december and then developing that plan so that is something that that's on my mind I know it's on bertha's mind we don't have a strategy about that if anybody wants to know what's the plan I think I'll be honest to say we don't have one right now but we also know that you know we really can't wait until probably december to start thinking about that when some of these significant milestones of revenue collections come forward so and a berth if you have any other thing to follow up on that but I just really want to emphasize that you know the use of the fund balance here the 8.7 million is really heading into a any any more than that I think you know would potentially be very problematic as we think about what has to be made up in following years if that money is in fact needed this year I think that those are important points to um for us to reiterate because we don't know what's going to happen and I don't want folks to we don't know any more than anyone else knows and so we're all making the making the best projections but we are concerned that you know it could it could be even worse than than we anticipate so just a summary of the multi year the general fund multi-year what has changed here if you look in the 21 column under revenues and additional revenues we've added the 1.5 million that is the fund balance number primarily and so that is that balances the budget we removed it from power bill reduced that by 25 1.5 million and increased our fund balance to keep the budget balanced perfect could you go back could you go back to that slide a minute go down to the 2021 additional revenues I think this is a question that council member Middleton had asked about at the the budget work session I believe in that that eight million dollar number that includes the revenues from the uh the proceeds of the Chapel Hill Street sales is that correct no it's not it does not so good so so we just need to clarify at this point then there is no revenue built into this model for the sale of the Chapel Hill Street property that is correct okay there's no revenue there's no budget for that okay so I want to be clear be real clear about that so what that means is that when that happens and I do believe it's still going to happen the flow of funds because it's a sale of a public property will roll through the general fund but then what the council does with those funds in terms of other appropriations will still be uh you know your your determination whether that money is is needed in the general fund because of other other aspects of things like we just talked about or if you determine that it's not needed here and it's more appropriate to transition to you know the affordable housing component uh that still is an option an opportunity you would have either through the you know through this uh you know during the budget year or or subsequent uh subsequent budgets and I just wanted to pause there and see if anybody had any questions and be sure that I'm on the same page with with the budget staff and we're on the same page with the council I have a question mr. mayor if I might thank you sir uh and thanks tom for that the um and that's an important clarification I think because is it still really a full eight million that will be getting from that sale or have we already charged the money we spent on the google terrace to that pool of money um is it safe is it fair to still think of it as a full eight million yes okay and you'll get an update uh you know during the this session on from community development but those mcdougal terrace monies as I recall came out of other other sources in the um dedicated housing fund okay on bertha or anybody else is on can certainly correct me but I believe that's the case okay and and we've made no determination that those those funding streams are going to be replenished from that eight million dollars that that is is that a fair characterization isn't that that's my understanding that'd be correct okay um thank you tom bertha do you have anything to add to that no I do not again those those dollars aren't budgeted here because there's not there was no decision made about where where they would land um initially yes they'll come through the general fund uh but we you know transition those transfer those to wherever wherever it was decided and then I think um when reginald johnson presents I think the question is about we there is no plan to replenish those dollars but I'm sure he'll be happy to share with you his thoughts around that sure thank you and just to be clear my and um please I may be misremembering but I I thought that the eight million dollars was being placed in general fund as opposed to going directly to uh the affordable housing fund precisely because of things like mcdougal terrace because we were anticipating needing money for actions um like mcdougal terrace so that that I I seem to remember that kind of conversation kind of swirling around of the money but but I I could be wrong so I think those conversations did happen councilmember middleton in some in some regard but just in terms of the the accounting flow of funds you know they they the revenues need to flow through the general fund initially because that's that's where the asset is located and then you know your decisions about appropriations from uh would in essence be from fund balance at the end of the day uh of the general fund to other purposes would be would be your decision uh I think there you know there was a certainly back in the what seems like an eternity ago quite frankly when we were talking about where where how how much money would be needed for mcdougal terrace not just the initial appropriation but the ultimate in any ultimate which I think we still don't know because of the other commitments that um the affordable housing you know fund has there was a you know thought that there wouldn't you know potentially wouldn't be enough there and so some people said well we have all that extra money in the general fund whether I don't even recall quite frankly that it was the the Chapel Hill Street sale I think that was kind of it's some in some fashion uh suggested for even other purposes in mcdougal terrace uh but but still the it still rolls up to the general the general fund um but of course a lot of things have changed since then and uh there will be you know some some challenging decisions along the way thank you fair enough I appreciate you thank you thank you I just wanted to add appreciate that explanation and I think that the key thing that I know the council is interested in is that once that money is received and congratulations to the staff on continuing those important negotiations and looking forward to their success um that the council be consulted before we expend those funds and tom appreciated your assurances on that I've uh we you know a lot of us have talked um over the last few weeks about this and we've had some discussion at council some individual discussions amongst all of ourselves and so um I think it's you know that's going to be important to the council absolutely I do have one other question bertha about about the previous slide which is can you remind me uh you probably told us last time about the assumptions in the out years are we what are we assuming about pay are we assuming that we're going back to our our previous assumptions around pay and benefits yes yes we are okay so we have pay increases in the out years built into this yes okay thank you no let me ask you one let me ask you one more question bertha this could be also at the end of your presentation whenever you feel like answering this but when you think ahead about um what is the biggest risk that we're facing we know we have a strong ability to control our expenses um we know that I think we have fairly strong confidence in our property tax you know we know what the we know what the um we know what the assessment is already of you know the for the all the properties um we don't know exactly what the what the collection rate is going to be but is the biggest risk it seems to me is the biggest risk of sales tax really falling out from what we project even our lower projections would you agree that that's the biggest risk or are there other big risks that you see on the horizon I agree sales tax is the is the biggest risk um and of course those businesses um in terms of their ability to to even come back and and and bring that sales tax tax back you know up quickly so absolutely um a lot of it comes from construction as well and with construction is installed um other than nonprofit organizations you know we lose the sales tax there um it's and it's so much uncertainty around it and even if we you know could project the numbers it's just when when are we going to get back to uh where we were and is that going to happen over you know one year a Dr. Walden seems to think it's going to go into uh 22 so um and and that's what he shared with us and so how long it will take us to get back to Tom's point about you know uh saving our fund balance because again the only only significant changes you can make or the only way you can make up dollars if you don't have savings is you have to get into to people because majority of our expenditures is personal services uh paying benefits thank you Bertha so to that point um you know what we need to do carefully and so I don't want and I think Tom said this or alluded to this is you know this budget is not a budget that we you adopt in June and we can't amend it at some point uh we can amend it July 1 and so we will continue to monitor our revenues and expenditures and you know provide our quarterly financial reports to you all and share with you if we are on target you know what's going on on the revenue side um and and amend the budget if needed so it's not making a decision now and you can't make another decision so the budget um the but next budget process and that's how sometimes people characterize the budget we make a decision now and we don't get another opportunity that's certainly not true every year we do a carry over mid-year where we look at what actually came in at the end of the year and where we were and we make adjustments to the budget um at that time uh and we do amendments throughout the year so we'll continue to to closely look at those you know monthly and share with you quarterly we are continuing to work on our multi-year financial plans to your point about paying benefits you know looking at where we ended this year and what the numbers will look like with we um bringing back the the the pay adjustments next year strategies to look at gaps you know it's it you know the go-to was fund balance and we didn't really have another option because there's so much uncertainty and we want to balance that would not make drastic decisions on personal on on the employee side and and and not been really in a position to make those you know exact projections at this time and we will continue you know one of the things that tom insisted upon is that we continue to check in with our departments you know based on the reductions that we made to make sure that they're able to continue to uh you know provide training or certifications or money for certification and other things that may be necessary to continue to assess their needs and make adjustments as as necessary and this is just a look at just a summary of the property tax you know pre-covid uh compared to budget and uh what our numbers what our losses were and you know when we talk to um our employees we talk about you know again the property tax and sales tax being so significant that there's no other place for us to go to get to get additional revenues in the general fund so just another summary again we um our loss was 12.7 million um we are now using 8.7 from fund balance because of the additional 1.5 for gas tax um you know hopefully that number will not be more than 25 uh for for gas tax but the other concern is also and you know even with sales tax and you know all of our state-shared revenues you know we also don't know what the state is going to do in terms of trying to make up you know their their deficit and so we have to be careful um as we look at our state-shared revenues and have an additional uh resource available if the state decides to change some of its methodology and sharing formula and again um we're going to look quarter by quarter there may be some other adjustments that need to be made after July one we certainly bring those to you um and um and the manager will share them with you prior to us coming forward um with the decision so I believe that's my last slide um I'm happy to take any additional questions thank you Bertha excuse me anybody have any questions for Bertha please go ahead and speak up thank you mr mayor um I don't really necessarily have a question right now although I'm sure stuff will come up I just wanted to say a few words of thanks to our staff for uh what has been easily the most difficult budget cycle and will continue to be the most difficult budget cycle of my tenure on the council and I'm sure in the uh in the work of the staff that prepared this uh these these presentations in this new budget I've heard as all of us have heard during the last several weeks um calls from certain um from lots of folks in our community um about the possibility of using more fund balance right now to do various things and I just want to say that from my perspective the way that staff is proposing to handle it during this budget cycle is exactly the way we all be handling it um I think it the fact that we are in such a good position with respect to our fund balance is a testament to how well managed the city has been for many years and the fact is we've also heard over the years uh calls for us to use more fund balance to do other types of things uh sometimes we have um done that but for the most part we have been vigilant as stewards of the public money and um and this year is why this is why our staff our our manager um and as council members we have been as vigilant as we have been over the years because now we are in a position to make up and to use 8.7 million dollars of fund balance uh to make up for lost revenue and still be in the position to sustain additional revenue losses if as I fear the sales tax numbers uh continue to be bad and the and and and Bertha you pointed out the problem is we won't know until October whether or not that's going to happen um and so the ability to have this cushion and the understanding that we need to be ready for additional changes is something that I just want to say I'm really proud of our staff and the difficult decisions that have that have resulted in where we are right now as I said I don't have any specific questions I do want to say that um that you know we we will get through this budget cycle um we're gonna I suspect we will have to make more hard choices as the fiscal year goes forward but I do want to say that the chart um that I think merits more long-term decision is the multi-year financial plan for the general fund that's lab 15 I think what we are gonna we're gonna need to be focused over the next couple of years at getting the city um keeping the city on a on a solid financial footing this is not a one bad budget cycle and then we're back to we're back to business as usual not only because of the deep red numbers you see in those projections but also because we don't know what our economy is going to look like um as a result of the COVID-19 uh we don't know what the restaurant industry is going to look like in Durham and North Carolina and around the country in the world after after COVID-19 and so we you know we uh I think it's really important to get through this cycle as best we can to focus on giving us ourselves flexibility during the fiscal years and move forward but also to say that we've got to keep our eye looking a little bit down the road to make sure that we understand that it's not just one budget cycle of tough choices we're going to have to do this for a while now as we kind of figure out what our new normal is um like I said I don't have any specific questions stuff will certainly come up but I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to say how proud I am um to serve with the folks who are doing this really hard work um none of this is easy but you've made it as easy for us as possible so thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you council member. Great comments thank you any other questions or comments on this on this presentation if not we'll move ahead um before we move ahead let me just ask um I would like to get uh split up the chairing a little bit today uh and I've already spoken to Mayor Pro Tem Johnson about that uh she has some kids at home and um what I've been thinking about doing is that I would chair through this next presentation uh and then um Mayor Pro Tem you can let me know via chat or otherwise if you would like to chair through the next couple presentations and then I thought council member Reese is our next as our other senior member you might want to chair through the transportation presentation um that sounds fine Mr. Mayor the kids have kids have chilled out a bit so okay we're good sounds good to me Mr. Mayor I'm locked away in my bedroom and hopefully my children can leave me alone for a little while so just let me know all right great so I'll just chair we don't need to do much sharing today which is great it's all really in the hands of Bertha and company uh but um in so far as we need it I'll go through um paying benefits then uh Jillian if you'll do general services parks Iraq and Charlie if you'll do transportation is that good all righty Bertha we're back to you I turn it over to Regina Youngblood for the paying benefits presentation thank you Bertha Regina Youngblood human resources director here to present to you the paying benefits presentation for fiscal year 21 so as you've just heard in Bertha's revenue uh presentation that there is a lot of uncertainty around our revenues due to COVID-19 and so the city has found itself in the unenviable position of recommending no pay increases be budgeted for fiscal year 21 while we are not budgeting pay increases for FY 21 the city is still going to maintain uh its contribution to employees 401ks at five percent and what I want to make sure that you know is that the share of city benefits cost is increasing by approximately nine percent this year so the the last time that we entered into a situation where we weren't able to give pay increases to employees was back in 2009 in that year no general employees or firefighters received increases and then in 2010 no increases were provided to all city employees and that was during the great recession in the general fund there are benefits increases as I mentioned in the previous slide the the city's share of its contribution for benefits is increasing by approximately nine percent which equates to about three million dollars the greatest amount of that again is for health insurance and also increases to our retirement contributions for employees into the local government employee retirement system in addition to that there are some decreases for pay in the budget of approximately five hundred thousand dollars uh compared to the current year and those decreases are due to reductions in part time and some full-time salaries that were being moved to different funding sources so the net pay and benefits increase for 21 budget is 2.5 million dollars I mentioned that there were some increases to the city's contribution and benefits we also had to increase the employee contribution for benefits in both of our plans this year uh our lower cost plan etna whole health had been subsidizing our higher cost plan whole health plus the loss ratio of our higher plan was approximately 126 percent and the loss ratio of the whole health plan is about 78 percent and so to move individuals to change their behavior we increased the premiums for whole health plus by 15 percent and to maintain enough revenue in the insurance fund we also increased whole health premiums by three percent so the impact of the increase of 15 percent on whole health plus the greatest amount is going to be seen or in felt an impact on individuals that have family coverage that is a difference of 45 dollars and 20 cents per month and that comes out to about 542 dollars and 52 cents per year or to break it down by pay period an additional 20 dollars and 86 cents per pay period for those increases related to whole health plus but we've kept the whole health option very affordable that 3 percent increase for whole health and the family rate really just comes out to a difference of four dollars and 79 cents over the previous year so employees have the ability to pay less for their benefits if they're willing to switch to the lower cost option our COVID response included the need to furlough approximately 176 employees as you can see most of those employees are coming from our parks and rec department just to give you some demographics associated with the furloughed individuals 76 percent of the individuals furloughed are black 18 percent white three percent Hispanic and three percent all others the greatest amount of individuals furloughed happen to be females about 56 percent of the furloughed employees are females and as you've heard some of these details before when we were talking about the $15 an hour minimum during minimum level wage for part-time employees we shared some statistics around parks and rec and we find that the parks and rec part-time employees tend to be people of color and largely women the city implemented a temporary premium pay policy to help recognize the employees that were working in the front lines during this COVID crisis those individuals that are resident facing having high contact with the public and working in teams and work groups where they're not able to socially distance themselves that premium pay that started a couple of months a month or so ago was five percent on top of their regular pay we have right now about 1339 employees who have received premium pay through May 22nd the cost of that has been around the cost of that has been around five hundred and twenty one thousand dollars the slide says that the succession date is to be determined but we had a conversation about this yesterday and for now the decision is being made to have the premium pay which was due to expire at the end of this month extended through June 19th and so what you see here on the slide where it says that an estimated additional four hundred and fourteen thousand would accrue if we kept going to the end of fiscal year 20 that number would be decreased by about 130,000 because there's only two more pay periods between now and June 19th something that we also did in response if you go back to the next the past slide John for me thank you in response to COVID-19 was to give every employee in the city hired before May 1st the equivalent of five weeks of leave we've called this leave COVID leave but it can be used for any purpose as long as it is pre-approved and this leave will not expire but it does not have a compensable value so individuals cannot cash this out if they have balances remaining when they leave the city it's employment you have any questions council members anyone with questions or comments council member Freeman thank you I hope I first and foremost want to thank you all for the presentations and say that I also agree with council member Middleton I mean council member Reese and noting just how hard and difficult the pulling all this together has been so I just want to put that as a preference preference or preface to the comments that I'm making but I wanted to know when you apply a race equity lens to this recommendation for the human resources department and you say 76 percent of the people who were furloughed were black and they're black and of the 76 percent more than half are women is there anything that you applied or any shifts that you make differently and what you would recommend like have you walked through and or just walked me through what difference you made and and how you came to the decision around the budget being around three or the numbers being around three million and landing at 2.5 with the decrease in and pay well the decisions around who was to be furloughed those decisions were made department by department based on the services that had to be scaled back or ceased completely due to COVID-19 and it is coincidental but not something that we shouldn't look at that the individuals who were working in those programs that needed to be reduced or closed happen to be you know people of color and I think I say that because I realized when you say coincidental that that you realize that that's not how it works and that's exactly what keeps it going as far as noting that the people who are most disproportionately vulnerable are those at the margins and those usually people of color and if the decision was made to furlough those workers you have to at some point take into account some type of race equity in this conversation and figure out how to address it because it's not going to change if we do the same thing. Councilman Freeman I appreciate that and I understand the concern I think it I want to be sensitive to you know the the individual employees who were impacted but at the same time I think it would be helpful maybe if we provided all of the demographic demographic information for the parks and recreation department because certainly the profile of that department is not what you would see as consistent with say the the profile of our community I think it's substantially more diverse so I think maybe we could provide you some additional backup background information about the starting place that may be helpful but I certainly understand and appreciate the questions and concerns that that you're raising. I don't know that you're going to show me that if it's 76 percent and there's that would be a huge shift in a way that the demographics in the parks and rec look. Well again I think we want to go back and take and take a look at that and and be sure that you know it's consistent with what I think it is but it is a good question and information that we can provide without necessarily disclosing individuals names but I've been protecting some privacy there but still providing a backdrop of that demographic we can do that pretty easily. We can do that Tom and that kind of echoes what I said before that the demographics of park and parks and rec do run towards heavily female and people of color. Just making sure you're taking that into account and thank you those decisions thank you. I've got the data now at 62 percent black parks and rec is the demographic 53 percent female. Thank you for that. Thank you for that important question council member others. Mr. Mayor for Regina. We'll go first to Councilmember Milton and then I believe Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem for allowing me and thank you Mayor and thank you Regina. Good to see you. In addition to the demographic information I'd be curious as to the actual job titles and functions of the folk that were furloughed because this for me this this statistic about the folk we furloughed or the number of folk we furloughed to me is going to inform how I look at any other requests for FTEs citywide from other departments because as I said I think at our last meeting for me the metric now is what is mission critical what is absolutely mission not just adding value or increasing efficiency but what is mission critical. My assumption is that some determination was made that furloughing these folk we looked at what we could do absolutely and what we could not do and who was absolutely mission critical and when I see departments like the police department as well furloughing people you know for me that's going to raise my standard of scrutiny as other departments come and ask for FTEs if we're going to bring on FTEs on one part but furlough people in other parts and to me there's got to be some type of ability to say this is absolutely mission critical. I hope that we will at some point be able to bring those folk back or or provide an opportunity for those folk to get back. I appreciate the demographic information but even beyond that I'd be curious as to exactly what the job title and duties of these folk who were furloughed in each department that's been listed here. I just want to serve notice that this this will be very much informing my consideration of the rest of the budgetary asks from other departments moving forward so I just wanted to put that on record thank you Mr. Mayor. And Councilmember Milton I think several of those questions may be at least informed I don't want to say answered presumably be answered but at least informed as we move through some of these departmental presentations with those the specificity of the positions and the programs that that would either be suspended or or furlough depending on how you want to describe it. Absolutely and to be clear I'm not telegraph I haven't made any I'm just reserved judgment until those and I appreciate that time and I'm sure they will be appreciate them. Thank you sir. Just quickly on on that to answer some of your questions and we can get you the specific details of all of the list but in parks and rec it was lifeguards facility attendance and school crossing guards and police and transportation it's parking ambassadors and 9-1-1 and water management had some administrative staff. Okay. Regina I think it would be good to get that in writing when you get a chance. Okay we've got several people lined up for questions we're gonna go to Mayor Pro Tem then we've got a council member Freeman and then council member Reese. Thank you and thanks Regina for your presentation. I also just had a couple questions about furloughs I know you mentioned in parks and rec there's a lot of part-time workers have we furloughed full-time workers in parks and rec or in any other departments? No. All of these folks on this list are part-time. Correct. Okay and is the plan I know now folks who are on furlough are eligible for federal benefits for the special federal covid benefits. Do we continue to provide health insurance or for employees who are on furlough? Yes we do and of course with part-time individuals not all part-time workers qualify for our health benefits they need to be working at least 30 hours to a week to qualify for the benefits and of the 176 individuals furloughed there were two who are eligible for benefits and they have been given the option to continue their benefits and they just need to pay for those directly. The other thing that I want to you know communicate is that when we gave the five weeks of covid leave to every employee or the equivalent of five weeks based on their work schedule that included part-time individuals and several of these furloughed individuals continue to have covid leave that they can access to continue to receive a paycheck. Right now there's approximately four days worth of leave left on average that each of these individuals has. Okay thank you so when you say pay for that directly you mean cobra? No they continue to receive the employee rates but we normally take the money out of their paychecks but if they're not receiving a paycheck they have to do a direct bill. Okay got it and I imagine we don't have a sense of when we might be able to bring folks back and with Parks and Rec programming I know a lot of that is suspended indefinitely do we have a sense with any of the other departments when or if we might be able to bring folks back on? We did ask actually and so Parks and Rec as well as all of the other operation departments have been working very closely with budget management services in their reopening government work and so Parks and Rec says that they should be able to bring some people back by mid-July and then begin to slowly reopen programs between July and September. There are no firm plans and Sean Egan can speak to this when he speaks in transportation to bring back those individuals that were parking ambassadors but possibly parking enforcement would begin in June and so that might be the first time we see some of those people coming back. Police again I mentioned that those are all school crossing guards that were furloughed and so that will have to align with when school begins and water management does not have any plans to bring back that one individual because they were already phasing that workout. Thank you. If I could just jump in too just to kind of reiterate any confusion the furlough situation was not a cost-cutting measure of the budget. It does impact some reductions in costs but it was more about programs that were not able to be provided and and many of those programs were in fact performed by part-time people so you know the the program isn't provided that's why the position was furloughed it wasn't furloughed to to cut costs so there you know there's a portion of the the cost reductions obviously that are built in the budget but it and it and it impacted how we balance the budget but that wasn't what you know kind of precipitated or drove the the furlough decision it was really more that the programs themselves particularly the summer programs and parks and recreation were not going to be provided or not going to be able to be provided this summer and as indicated particularly in parks and recreation but also transportation you'll hear more about those details shortly when we get to those departmental presentations. Thanks. That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you Tom and now we'll go to councilmember Freeman and then councilmember Reese. I apologize I had a phone ringing in the background. I had a specific question regarding the benefits specifically when you said the cost of the medical premiums increased and the lower cost was due to wellness activities and not like service I wanted to make sure that was clear that it was not a service decrease it was just like if you participated in wellness activities. That's correct. That's right so we ask everybody to do a biometric screening and also to do two additional activities and and there may be another requirement there that I'm blanking on right now but those wellness activities get them the wellness rate. And then I think councilmember councilmember Middleton and may approach him Johnson and ask my questions as well. Thank you councilmember. Just before councilmember Reese goes just a follow-up on one thing Regina. Does is there someone assigned in every department to I believe the answer to this is yes to work with employees in that department and kind of remind them about their their need for the for the to do the things that are necessary for the reduction in cost you know the wellness things. Yes we call them HR champions every department has an HR champion and we hold monthly champions meetings to make sure that we're pushing out information through them as well as the message managers within the city and we also do direct emails to every employee as it relates to their wellness requirements specifically. Would you do me a favor would you do us a favor and maybe this could be someone in the clerk's office on or maybe someone in your office. The when I was reading through the benefits book. There's a lot of specific information directed to council members. And if there was someone maybe I guess probably in your office rather than the clerk's office. I'm not sure how to do this. It would just be in touch with us councilmembers to make sure that we know what we're supposed to do. I feel like we're sort of outside the information loop on the system. We certainly get the emails. But I know that over the years I felt a little bit outside this information loop. We could discuss that later. But I think it would be helpful. Make sure that we're doing all the things we need to do. We'll do. Thank you. Councilmember Reese. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just a lot of the things I wanted to get clarified have already been gone through but I just wanted to say that listening to hearing councilmember Middleton's remarks about the furloughed employees. The employees are currently furloughed versus new fte's being requested in the upcoming fiscal year budget made me want to ask about kind of the how those 2 things are related. And I think the city manager made it really clear that the decisions on furlough that were made in mid-March when we started getting into the COVID-19 public health emergency were not a cost-saving measures. They were directed at programming that it's no longer safe to do. And I think that is definitely true for our part-time employees in parks and rec who are currently furloughed. I guess from a budgetary perspective what are the assumptions built into the proposed budget around those furloughed employees? Do we have new start dates built into the model? Maybe that's a first step at trying to get at that. So as it relates to the budget in terms of the individual employees, we did not remove, we did remove some revenues from parks and recreation budget and I think that number was about 300,000. And then when Joy Guy speaks, she can talk about her projections for her part-time employees. I think that would be the best way to respond to that question is allow her to talk about what it ties to when she plans to, when they project bringing folks back online. So I defer to her to talk about that when she does her presentation. Okay. That's great because I guess if it's true that there is a specific plan that DPR has for bringing their furloughed employees back online and it's related to kind of the expectation and projections about when programming can begin, I guess I'm curious number one to understand what that looks like and what kind of public health assumptions are built into that. But also I think from a budget perspective it helps us understand that it's not especially clear that we're furloughing employees to save money that we're then using to hire new employees. I don't think that is not how I understand what's going on and I just want to make it real clear that obviously that would be bad at some level, but it doesn't appear that that's what's happening and I just wanted to get that out into the conversation. But I'll wait until we get to DPR to ask more specific questions about that, that kind of restarting the programming that we've just decided right now is not really safe to do from a public health perspective. That's great. The other thing I wanted to say is while I'm not thrilled about the increases in employee contributions, I think we are where we are, but again as I said a couple weeks ago I'm really grateful to the administration for finding a way to maintain the 401k support for employees. I think that's really really important especially for employees who are near in retirement age and so I just wanted to express my gratitude for that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Any other questions for Regina? Mr. Mayor, if I might. Sure. Sure, I just want to clarify some things that I said. There's cost saving that occurs when an organization is just being fiscally responsible and kind of proactively looking for ways to cut costs and that goes on, you know, notwithstanding what's going on around you. That's just a default position that healthy organizations engage in and then there's a cost cutting that occurs because you have to because you have less money and the reason why these employees are being furloughed, my understanding is that because COVID, we weren't looking to furlough as these folks had COVID not occurred and my understanding that the overall amount of money that our organization will have to deal with is being impacted by COVID and because of that, when I say I'm going to be looking at strict scrutiny for things that are mission critical to the organization, what I mean by that is, yeah, we're not cutting costs but our money's been cut and therefore because our money's been cut, we're cutting costs not because we're looking to save money but because we just have less of it. So in so far as that is the case in which we're operating, the conditions under which we're operating as an organization as a city, when I look at FTE requests because we have less money and because we're going to be trying to put ourselves on right footing financially the next several years, this year in particular, we've told everybody in the city that we've got less, we've got to tighten our belts. So because of that, when I look at FTE requests, I'm not just going to be bringing a lens as to cutting costs but I'm going to be bringing a lens that we literally have less money to do things and like any other household, their household, heads of household watching this meeting right now who with their money's cut, they have to make decisions. Maybe we're not going on vacation this year, we don't get the body extra car, and this is a big old house and a big old family. So as one of the leaders of this house, I'm not looking to cut just to save money, we literally have a crisis where we have less money. So I want to be clear that I'm not tethering the furloughed employees as a cost-cutting measure to, am I going to agree to hire new people on the other end, or we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. Peter and Paul both have less money is my point. So I just want to be very clear on that, that I'm very clear that there's no causal linkage between cutting costs on one to get money to hire other people. The house has less money overall. And I just want to, you know, just be clear that that's the prism that I'm looking through all the decisions, at least all of my decisions moving forward. So just wanted to be clear about that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Any more comments or questions for Regina? Mr. Mayor, just if I might, in light of Council Member Middleton's comments, I think it would be good for me to say that I am tethering the race equity aspect to this in the conversation and context of recognizing that if we continue to do things the way we've been doing them, which is to look at where's the easiest place to cut, or the easiest place to furlough, or the easiest way to shift and move without regard of race or gender, then we'll get the same results. And so I do want to make sure that I push in and say, like, we've got to figure out ways to do it differently and to spell it out clearly. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you everybody for all these good questions and comments. And now we're going to move on to our next presentation. And I'm going to turn the chairing over to you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, for the next two presentations. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I believe all I have to do now is turn it over to our General Services Director, Gina Probst. Good morning, everyone. Gina Probst, General Services Director. I'm happy to be here today and to share with you updates on our department's COVID-19 response, primarily talking about what we did during March and April, and then share out how our changes and efforts will influence our operations through the school year 21, and then share out some updates on our budget highlights. Next slide, please. Specifically, I would like to make sure that everyone is aware of who our heroes and heroines have been during the COVID-19 event for the city. And typically, General Services is available in a resource for severe weather events and emergency response. This year and this time, our custodial services team has been the team that has been the emergency responders on behalf of the city for our city facilities to ensure that they have stayed clean and safe and sanitized while they've been occupied. So the heroes and heroines during this time period has been custodial services. I wanted to make sure that they are given accolades for their hard work. What we've done during the months of March and April is we've adjusted our central cleaning services to the facilities where we had occupied staff and continue to evaluate where our facilities are occupied. And we've also increased our frequency. We've added additional deep cleaning processes and protocols. We've increased sanitation of surfaces, door knobs, elevator buttons, common areas, chairs. Anything and everything that could get touched has been improved and increased with our custodial services response. And in doing so, we've been using all approved CDC and EPA supplies. We've also invested in some new equipment, including some misting sprayers and electrostatic devices, so that when we move through our facilities, there's a cleaning process followed by a disinfected process. Those protocols have been what we've been doing during March and April. We'll continue and have continued through May and we'll be part of our routine processes moving forward. And as we adjust our team members based on reoccupancy of various facilities, we also are getting prepared to, in the new fiscal year, address summer camp locations when and if they become open. During March and April for our facility maintenance side, we scaled down our services based on what was essential. However, we did keep and continue to provide routine preventive maintenance and oversight of all of our mechanical systems during the shutdown time period or the time when we had less occupancy in our facilities. So those protocols stayed in place and have continued. We adjusted staff schedules to respond just to emergency and urgent work orders during that time. And we adjusted our staff to ensure that we had facility checks on buildings that were not occupied, including some of our smaller rec centers and coordinated parks and rec as to which department would check in on different facilities during March and April. We are now in a process and have been since early May of returning our staff to work and are addressing projects that were previously on hold. Next slide, please. Here are some pictures and images of the supplies that we've been using that are CDC and EPA recommended as well as some of the other types of supplies that we use to disseminate. Does it disinfectant? We have closely coordinated the types of materials and supplies that we're using in consultation with risk management as well. So this allows our team to work more efficiently and effectively when they are in various spaces using misters and electrostatic devices to disinfect. Next slide, please. During our COVID response, we have been very mindful to and have paid attention to stay at home orders and how we've adjusted our cemeteries operations and ensuring that we've complied with the number of folks that have been at various burial services depending on the updates from the stay at home orders. Our burial appointments have now been focused primarily Monday through Friday and we have been doing weekends as needed. We've adjusted our office hours to Monday through Friday from 10 to 2 so that we could employ safe social interaction and procedures and have created that window of time for appointments. And as of May 4th, we've returned to our traditional normal hours for maintenance of the facilities as well as other operations at cemeteries. During the months of March and April, we deemed landscaping and urban forestry services not essential and we were able to suspend some of those services including mowing and some of the routine work that we do with urban forestry. Our landscaping units came back, scaled back as of April 13th and urban forestry as of April 20th and we have now returned our staff to work and are on their routine regular mowing routes and traditional operations for urban forestry. Next slide please. During this time, our project management, our real estate staff, our public art, sustainability and other administrative staff have continued to provide the services that they typically provide. They've just been doing it remotely, been leveraging a lot of the virtual tools to ensure that we continue to have meetings with designers, pre-bid meetings and other options. Our construction projects were initially put on hold. They resumed May 4th. We've been working very closely with risk management on our contractor guidelines to ensure that we have updated safety plans and protocols in place for when our team members are inspecting construction projects. We had deferred our real estate in-person closings. We will be resuming those gene first with safe protocols in place. Our security projects which was our access control and integration of our HVAC into a master web supervisor program, those projects continue during this time and as of May 4th, our inventory staff has resumed its normal operations. Next slide please. So carrying on to how what we have been doing during the months of March and April have transitioned to May and what looks like in the next fiscal year, we continue to look at how we schedule our work and our service delivery adjustments. We've been evaluating our our timing of shifts based on the ability to ensure that our shifts come in safely and that we proceed with our wellness screenings. We've been doing our vehicle adjustments to limit the number of people in vehicles and in order to ensure social distancing compliance. So we've done all of that on the operational side with our teams and that will continue into the near future. We've increased the frequency of our facility cleanings and again that will also continue some facilities. Pre-COVID we only clean three times a week and now the recommendations are that if they are occupied that we disinfect every 24 hours. So on buildings that are a Monday through Friday operation, we are cleaning five days a week and those that are seven days such as police 9-1-1, we have implemented a seven-day regimen. We've also developed a custodial emergency response after hours protocol in conjunction with risk management. This is anticipation if there are issues that arose you know 24-hour facilities like our police or 9-1-1 that we had a response team ready to go and sanitize and disinfect if necessary. Next slide please. Following on with the additional contractor guidelines we as I say before we've got new safety plan protocols in place things that we will be closely monitoring in next fiscal year and thereafter are our supply for PPE as well as other supplies that are new and different for our custodial team. We'll continue the management of our mechanical systems with a focus on ventilation and filtration. We've been closely following recommendations from ASHRAE, from AIA, from WHO, from CDC, the alphabet soup of those with jurisdiction that provide this information to ensure that we continue to keep our mechanical systems operating properly as well as during this time we are leveraging all maintenance opportunities that we can in our unoccupied buildings so that we can do touch-up paint and other things that typically are difficult when occupied. Currently we're serving as a resource for city departments working with the Office of Performance and Innovation as well as risk management as we look at restoration of services, how and whether facility modifications will be necessary, signage how we can work to de-densify certain areas and other mitigation efforts as we work to provide assistance to departments based on their needs. Next slide please. Moving into FY21 we will continue as we stay previously to evaluate our custodial staffing resources to ensure that we are right size for the increased frequency and schedule. We also will monitor and provide budget updates for any space adjustments or other mitigation efforts that arise out of our support for various departments monitoring our supplies. We do have more hand sanitizer stations on order they've not arrived but these are all things have been put in place in order to make sure that we have a safe environment for folks to return to work. Continue to monitor our tree planting goals and look for creative funding so that we can plant some larger trees as well as our focus on our cemeteries ground maintenance and beautification and how we adjust our staff to address that. Next slide please. Here's some images of some of the signage that our public art team has been working on that we'll continue to evaluate and change based on the needs. We'll have different signage for when the public returns but thought that this was a creative way to ensure that we continue to have thoughtful communication about how we are to interact and behave when we are in our buildings. So finally I have our resource allocation table. There there's not much change from our operating budget except to acknowledge increases the paper performance the FTE count remains the same. I believe that is our final slide. And before we get to questions I want to just express my appreciation to Gina and the general services staff for doing just an incredible job in a whole new environment and way of thinking. As you've seen they've been able to at this point make significant adjustments in the way they work without significantly increasing without increasing at all the the FTE counts something that we're going to continue to to take a look at. They've been able to adjust their many of their operational resources to be able to provide the enhanced supplies and chemicals those kinds of things that are that go along with that work. But I just am truly appreciative of Gina and all of her team who have quietly been behind the scenes but been thinking a lot about how all of our facilities will be ready and safe for employees and the public when the time comes to return. So thank you Gina. Thank you. Thank you Gina so much for your presentation and thanks Tom. That is an incredible amount of work and it's work that we don't often see. So thank you for making us aware of everything that your team is doing. So I have questions from members of the council. One question Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Sure Mr. Mayor. Actually I have I have a couple questions. The personal services expenses on your charter Gina what are the reasons for that again? Personnel services due to pay for performance. Okay and that would be from the this current year's full year implementation not for next year. Correct. Okay so can you pull that slide up? Yeah. See the proposed 2020 one Gina. Yes. Is higher than the current year. Can you talk me through that? Let's see if someone from budget is available to assist with that as well. That's John Alaur assistant budget director budget management services. Mr. Mayor I am quite confident that the that increase has to do it's not only pay for performance it's also the the effects of the full implementation of the pay study and with a lot of that we when we budgeted it we were unsure how that was going to hit departments with different classes of employees obviously in the case of general services it hit them more severely than some other departments. And if you'll recall the pay study implementation was January 1st it was mid-year and this ends up being the the full year implementation of those changes. Yeah good thank you. The ballpark fund what's the explain the you'll see the you see on the FY 2021 it's very different from every other year I don't think we've had an explanation of that could you talk us through that as well. This is another item that I think I'll need to defer to the budget department and or finance as finance manages the ballpark fund it shows up in our in our rat table to the extent that we assist with capital projects but the ins and outs of the ballpark fund is managed by finance. Let me also while that just to add to that because I may be the same folks need to address it. We haven't talked about the the effect of the deep pack closing on city finances and I wondered if that could also be wrapped up into. Mr. Mayor I can talk about that when the time comes. Okay great. With the John all or again budget management services the large increase to the ballpark fund if you look at in the budget it was about a little over $800,000 increase to the ballpark fund a lot of that had to do with capital maintenance and that's why you're seeing a very very large percentage increase for that one. Great thank you and then I guess Tom the deep pack do you want to sure so certainly you know that the performing arts center operates under the same fiscal year as the city so the you know the the facility shut down in early March and the shows and those kinds of things that were scheduled were canceled so I do think the the the year will end in a in a favorable way for the deep pack you know operations and performance so there won't really be a current year budget impact next year and we are in conversations with the the operators at PFM in Nederlander about what what next year looks like they have not made any official announcements yet although we have a pretty good sense of what that looks like so I'm not really prepared to to make that announcement you know right now or you know as a part of this session but the the good thing is that the way we have structured deep pack it is in a separate fund it is a place that has not required any general fund resources to operate and as a result of that and from from savings that we have previously incorporated and the risk that the operator takes there is not going to be at this point any general fund exposure for the time period that the the deep pack will will be closed waiting for uh uh conditions to change thank you very much and thank you all for that good planning thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem thank you Gina I'm gonna go to councilmember Reese and then councilmember Freeman thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem Mr. Manager do we have a city department with a newer department head than general services oh you're really testing my old brain councilmember Reese I think that transportation is fairly fairly new and general services is fairly new and we certainly have an interim parks and recreation director who you'll hear from shortly it was my recollection that I thought Gina was made the director after we hired Sean that's probably correct all of that is my way of saying that that Gina you have done an amazing job under fire in your first year of leadership I know you've been with the department for a long time but as you have rapidly learned leadership it has its own challenges and I just want to say on behalf of the people of the city of Durham how grateful I am for how you have risen to that challenge how you've led this department during one of the most difficult times in the history of how we try to administer this city general services has done an amazing job during this time I have been impressed every time I've seen our general services employees out in the community doing that essential there's essential services that we have to have and perhaps more importantly arming the other city departments to do their jobs safely so Gina I don't have any questions the the mayor got the the one thing I was going to ask about but I just wanted to thank you for for really stepping up and being the leader that we needed general services right now thank you thank you madam mayor pro tem thank you councilmember reese and councilmember freeman thank you I would echo councilmember reese's comments and appreciate the mayor asking many of my questions as well and the one additional thing I was going to say is that the the way in which uh general services highlights the way that they shifted in thinking around the art speaks to exactly what I was talking about in a previous conversation with Regina and I'm hopeful that the parks and rick has done the same thank you thank you thank you for your kind comments and please let me note that I have a great team and a wonderful team so I appreciate it but I can't take credit for it so thank you thank you any other questions from council members all right thank you so much Gina and please do pass our appreciations onto your team as well our next presentation is parks and rec and I turned over to interim director guy hi good morning everyone um I hope everyone is doing well this morning um I am joy guy I'm interim director of the parks and recreation department and I also have our assistant directors jason jones and tom dawson as well as rich hawn our business manager um in the meeting I'll give him a second to get the slides straightened out for us here we go um our presentation will focus on a few highlights of the challenges and successes relating to our department's response to covid I will review our drafted phased reopening plan and the operational impacts that we project will occur in fiscal year 21 as a result of our projected delays and restoring programs and services I will also review our allocation table and first I will discuss our challenges um to say we've been challenged by covid is a bit of an understatement our mission Durham parks and recreation provides opportunities for the Durham community to play more connecting our whole community to wellness the outdoors and lifelong learning at our core we work to engage and connect with our residents through our parks and trails and through our program services and events which has been a challenge during this difficult time however our staff are resilient and very creative with the initial challenges of covid and our response to the state home guidelines they were more technical in nature as a large operational department our first challenge was to transition our staff from working in our recreation centers and facilities to telecommuting our recovery from the malware attack on the city added another dimension however we were able to transition our staff and continue much of the critical work that was required initially for us to coordinate with our participants to cancel or reschedule programs services and rentals as well as to provide the necessary refunds were applicable during our initial work from this stay at home period our part-time staff were busy assisting with these processes as well as catching up on required trainings assisting with program research and helping to connect with our participants however as we progress further into the stay at home time period it was difficult to assign meaningful work to many of our part-time program support staff it is for this reason that we made the difficult decision to furlough those that we could no longer keep productive ongoing challenges include our community's need to maintain mental and physical well-being our parks trails and open spaces have recently become even more of a respite from stress a survey completed by our national recreation and park association park polls citing parks are essential especially during a health crisis revealed that 83 percent of adults find exercising at local parks trails and open spaces essential to maintain their mental and physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic ongoing challenges also include our need to maintain connectivity with our participants specifically those we were routinely serving in our programs and centers and I will share more on these efforts momentarily if I could go to the next slide please our current challenge is to develop and implement a reopening plan to restore our programs and services for the community and a rapidly changing environment as the stay at home orders are relaxed and restrictions are removed we want to ensure we are well prepared to reopen our facilities and programs and reconnect with our residents our goals are to provide equitable access to our programs make necessary modifications to our programs to adhere to recommended safety guidelines and as we are able to reactivate our furloughed employees hiring and training staff for essential positions is also a current challenge we know our programs and services will be vital and continue to be vital for helping our residents maintain mental and physical health and now we'll talk a little bit about our successes we've been able to keep our parks and trails open and safe for the recreational communities that are allowed under our stay at home order we posted signage throughout our system to educate and promote the allowed activities and also posted signage to promote and remind users of safe social distancing guidelines we implemented a park monitoring program visiting our heaviest used parks and trails to inspect and monitor use and conditions and to report unsafe practices or violations our marketing team has done a great job in maintaining our website and using social media tools to also educate and promote safe recreational activities and leave no trace practices for our parks and trails in april our marketing team facilitated a marketing communications in the time of COVID-19 North Carolina Recreation and Park Association virtual roundtable discussion for nearly 100 ncrpa members and students from across the state our staff shared their efforts and promoting our leave no trace programs as well as our virtual earth they campaigns attendees were encouraged to share stories and strategies about how they are staying engaged and connected with their communities and how they are planning for what comes next our staff also responded with many great online virtual programs for children and adults to try to keep them entertained and healthy while at home some of the examples of these many programs include basketball skills and drills with our partner coach to inspire which is a nonprofit organization that park partners with our athletics unit to provide student coaches for our youth athletic leagues and skills clinics our support and participation in the virtual one-mile walk to support special olympic spring games in partnership with the Durham academy virtual muddy boots and other programs offered by our outdoor recreation team our zoom hangouts which are twice a week connect programs facilitated by our care program staff for our after-school participants some of the activities included home scavenger hunts get moving exercise routines and dance parties these hangouts often included siblings and and times even parents and as mentioned we also hosted a virtual art day celebration instead of the full festival we partnered with pulse radio to promote and shared various tips information and videos via social media several organizations contributed to providing information including the city's water management department keep Durham beautiful storm water the city county sustainability office etc bill ray meteorologists with cbs also helped by recording a promotional commercial to promote the event so we have worked hard to maintain connectivity with our community we were able to complete online engagement surveys together input and information needed for playground replacement for two of our parks vey hargrove and drew grand b we intend to be able to complete these and reopen as we're able to open playgrounds again staff have also assisted other departments and agencies we've been involved in local state and national meetings providing recreational programs and services in this time of coven as mentioned some of our staff helped facilitate round tables with ncrpa these networking efforts have strengthened strengthened our relationships with our peers in the industry and these relationships will continue to provide a great support network as we continue to navigate this uncharted territory if i could go to the next slide please other successes we have had over the past few months include staff completing online certification programs and training examples include our recreation specials specialists and child care programs completing a required course at Durham technical community college to obtain their child care credentials one and two we've had staff complete certification and spin bikes and also in pool operations to provide a few additional examples many staff completed updating their unit and program manuals supporting necessary work and complying with accreditation standards we worked with our technology solutions department and have been fortunate to restore operating systems that were impacted by the malware attack we continue to seek out flexible and creative solutions to complex problems as we learn to navigate our new normal thank you go to our next slide please our national recreation and park association has compiled guidance to help parks and recreation agencies with the development of reopening plans we've taken advantage of the many resources and recommendations provided through their path to recovery program in addition we're in communication with regional parks and recreation agencies including Raleigh, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Kerry to discuss trends and prepare aligned reopening strategies were feasible as nrpa has recommended transitioning through the various phases of our plan will require meeting a set of outline indicators and gating criteria as well as the implementation of additional mitigation strategies to ensure our efforts continue to protect public health indicators that will be considered when transitioning between each phase effectively meet federal state and local phase progression guidelines and metrics as determined by public health officials conduct a risk assessment of all spaces facilities and programs we will assess contact intensity the number of contacts and the degree into which activities are considered to be modifiable through mitigation strategies we will ensure sufficient staff capacity and resources to support reopening secure cleaning supplies personal protective equipment and establish an implement related standard operating procedures we will ensure community awareness of public health measures and develop plan to scale up mitigation measures if needed we recognize that changes in public health may require mitigation measures that slow our progression through the phases of the plan and might even require reverting back to a previous phase we are resilient and prepared to pivot as necessary to ensure we continue to align with the recommendations of our public health officials as well as federal state and local guidelines our phased approach in our reopening plan prioritizes public health and safety considers equitable service delivery and recognizes our adherence with all federal state and local guidelines for these reasons many of our offered programs will be at a reduced and or modified service level this slide in the next slide of our plan will indicate those modified those planned modified or reduced service levels by the highlighted blocks so highlights of our phase one and what we've been able to restore so far of course our parks and trails continue to be open to this courts pickleball courts and disc golf courses were open on May 18 private boat launches are now permitted at Lake Mickey and bank fishing began at both city lakes on May 22nd for review of phase two we're planning to open dog parks and our park restrooms on beginning June 1st we'll have non motorized boat rentals at city lakes to begin on June 19 and we anticipate opening our hike and park tours on June 22nd and on into July we anticipate providing teen and youth enrichment activities as well as the myderm summer program beginning on July 6th limited interaction recreation and fitness programs such as spin classes arts and crafts dance et cetera city lake paddling programs and boat rentals tennis leagues open computer labs and open fitness centers and on the next slide you'll see our phases three and four which are now marked to be determined because of so much being unknown at this point as to when these will be allowed this phase is three and four will include programs that have increased interaction and physical contact between participants or between staff and participants many of these programs also have higher participation levels and so mass gathering limitations will need to be relaxed before we can resume them programs within these phases will open as guidelines allow go to the next slide please and these are budget highlights um our we reduced our proposed budget by a total of three hundred seventy five thousand eight hundred thirty three dollars and as discussed earlier um this these were reductions that occurred because of our programs being closed these were totally operational um two hundred seventy nine thousand five hundred fifty six of this is due to reduced part time staffing that we're projecting to continue to to occur july through august as well as the elimination of part time step increases for this year an additional reduction of ninety six thousand two hundred seventy seven dollars and operational expenses were reduced just from reduction to training and travel for example we know our state and national conferences for this fall have already been canceled um printing publications um office supplies summer vehicle rentals and some of the trips that we had planned for the fall we also um project a reduction of two hundred fifty two thousand six hundred dollars in revenues in program revenues um and of course this was due to our program cancellations and delays in and opening um as well as a loss of our rental revenue from our rental facilities and if we could go to our next slide um and of course this is our resource allocation table um and even with the reductions that i just went through um our personnel line is still increasing by eleven point nine percent and this is attributed to the annualization of the current year's performance increases that were implemented in july 2019 the benefit increases the full-time pay study annualization um those were all for the full-time employees in addition this includes the annualization of the part-time darn minimal livable wage based pay plan that was implemented mid-year on the capital line you'll see a slight decrease of six point seven percent um this was also due to funds moved to personnel to cover the increase for annualizing salaries and benefits for our position our full-time positions that are funded uh through the half penny tax for parks and i believe that is my last slide and so at this point i'm happy to entertain questions great thank you so much for your presentation um your department and all departments have been um significantly affected by covid but i think parks and rec um is one of the ones that has seen the most impacts or something thank you for all your work with navigating that and um this very well-thought-out um reopening plan that you'll put together questions from members of the council madam chair pertinence of mine absolutely council member middleton thank you so much and thank you joe it's good to see you and uh congratulations on your leadership during these challenging times um as interim i um i was really really looking forward to this uh presentation uh and just full disclosure of parks and rec um has a very very uh special place in my consciousness as a just as a person as a leader of the city it was it was um really the brilliant kind of uh conspiracy that my parents had with with the new york city parks and rec when i was younger uh that i really i don't think it's an overstate that's it kept me alive uh programming uh that parks and rec get during the summer combined with free lunches at our local public school subsidized by the federal government were major i think trajectory trajectory changing impacts in my life so i'm really hearten to see in your plan the intention of restoring furlough workers when we can i want to thank you for that i expressed to the city manager in our in our one-on-one meetings my deep concern about programming for the summer you know when we talk about crime in the city or or or you know negative things going on in our city oftentimes what people will say is our kids one need something to do and two need a job um well and often for many of our young people in this city particularly black young people um it's parks and rec during the summer that gives us that something to do to keep our kids occupied and uh one of the things that i'm sure folk in the city have noticed that even during the stay at home order we have not had really a sensation of gunfire in our city and as we you know those of us that know these things know that as the weather gets warmer and we get to the summer months there's more opportunity uh for things to happen so that reality combined with uh covid impacting programming through parks and rec for our kids paints a rather ominous picture for some of us and raises concerns for some of us so uh and i shared this with the manager and other colleagues uh that the the impact that covid would have on programming during the summer um is is a source of concern for me so i i just want to let you i want to thank you firstly um in in giving us a picture of of how soon uh we can open up safely of course and i just want to i guess not it's not really a question just a a note of commendation and just a an underscoring of how important we realize that that these programs are in parks and rec all of our departments parks and rec in particular i don't think there's any more sacred responsibility a government has to its people than to to protect their lives first and foremost keep them alive so they can participate in the economy so they can enjoy our parks and trails and i think for for many in our city uh who are dealing with issues that will still be there when covid is over uh the safe and comfortable amongst us when we go back to and i include me in this when we go back to our normalized there will still be some things that folk were dealing with before covid um and will still be dealing with when covid passes and parks and rec has been an important part an important arrow in our quiver uh to addressing some of those issues so i just want to commend you uh and encourage you to to keep doing what you're doing thank you for the work um and for those that are listening that are not elected officials a part of the government um particularly i'm looking at my colleagues in the faith community around the city there may be some some stop gap measures or fill in the gap measures that we need to be doing this summer that we need to be thinking about with our facilities with our resources um to fill in some of the gaps that may exist uh because of covid on city services to to keep our kids alive and to give them something to do while the jobs are being worked on while our shared economic prosperity plan is is being put together and those jobs come online down the years right now we've got to keep our kids alive and give them something to do um so kudos to parks and rec thank you so much for your leadership and i look forward to working with you uh through these challenging times thank you madam mayor pertin thank you council member uh there are other questions or comments from council members i have questions mayor schuld thank you i want to thank joy joy uh i bet you didn't think this was going to happen when you became an interim director uh it wasn't in the works wow well thank you i would point out it was it was about 45 days later well joy thank you for stepping up to it um we're lucky to have you um and we appreciate you for stepping into the gap um i thought that uh council member melton made a lot of good points and i know we're all concerned about the same thing uh and as the summer gets hot and kids have less to do so i know it's a big concern and so i appreciate you all think about everything you can do to open things up um the i have i've had a couple of emails about concerns about opening up the city lakes when we open up the city lakes how does that work like what are the how are people what's the social distancing like and and and what are the steps in that um well we've started very um slow um actually with our opening of city lakes at this point um we're only allowing bank fishing um and allowing uh some the self-launched boats with with like mickey um and the reason for starting that out slow is because of we wanted to ensure that we weren't creating um issues with social distancing um we set up the um the only transactions that occur one we're providing these services at no additional cost to uh participants because of the demand we have staff have very creatively created a method in which they do a lottery system where folks wishing to come out and participate text in the day before they want to come out they're chosen at random staff have markers along the bank for the bank fishing to promote the social distancing they have signage up promoting wearing masks and maintaining that distance um we also um general services worked with us we instead of for example instead of using the small boat houses to conduct that transaction they set up tables in a pop-up tent outside and so that they can maintain the distances with the um the participants check-in um general services worked with us we have plexiglass shields to um shield at that point of transaction as well um and that's really just to issue the permit and collect the person's names so we know who is on the lake um so again we started out very slow um we're working now through our risk procedures for how we can modify some things to allow for the non-motorized boat rentals um one of the things that we do for example with our boat rentals is with the personal floatation devices our chat our staff do checks to make sure they're on uh correctly and securely and because of that close contact we did not start that initially because we're reviewing how that is done and how it can be done safely and so we're very very much aware of every step and we're really analyzing the procedure itself and doing what we can to minimize the points of contact reduce the points of contact where possible joy thank you that was a fantastic explanation and it really illustrates all of the things that you have to do and and all of your activity so thank you that gives me a lot of confidence um the the outdoor pools um I know that we I mean I just think them of them as just anchors in our summer life in Durham and I know that we they they attract they attract huge crowds and we can't have huge crowds um and um and right now our limit on the number of people that can gather outside is 10 for a mass gathering and so I I get why we're they're closed I was so I'm hoping that you all can think creatively about ways in which the pools over the summer could be open in very limited ways to small groups of people um it would have to be you know I don't even know what you know but I can imagine uh you know a couple of families in the pool at a time on one end you know you'd have a lot of demand it would be really hard to manage but I just uh you know I think it would be good to look at what other pools around the city are going to be doing that are starting out this summer I know you've got them scheduled to reopen for 2021 but I hope that you can think creatively about a way to maybe make some of that happen this summer I don't know that that will be possible but I just want to ask you not to shut the door to that um and I don't want to pretend to know how um and I recognize it would create lots of issues because a lot of people would want to do it and you have to have a lot of re-system or something like that but please give that some thought and Mr. Mayor I would say too we're in contact with all the other you know large cities contact with them every week and I think we're pretty consistent with the realities of pools right now you know Greensboro, Raleigh, Winston Salem, Charlotte we're all trying to think through that but you've outlined many of the complications and some some impracticalities particularly in those high-demand areas whether it's what happens in the pools but also what happens at the gate for people who are waiting to get to the pools yeah understood it's very very challenging but we're going to continue to look at that but I don't know anybody who's really come up with a solution yet but I think Joy and her staff if there is one to be found I'm pretty confident they'll find one thank you I appreciate that Mr. Manager and I just wanted to say I've been using the trails relentlessly in the last few weeks walking biking and when my Achilles will let me running and it's such a gift to our community to have these trails it's so important I don't think I've ever seen so much appreciation among our residents for our parks and our trails especially our trails at this time Joy I want to say that the American back of trail is very crowded I hear some complaints that people say that people aren't trying to socially distance my experience is that most people really are and there's a big effort made but we also have a lot of trails for people are concerned about that that aren't as crowded third four creek trail alibi creek trail especially alibi creek creek trail west extension and others of our trails which don't have the crowding and I just hope that we can push out to our through our social media and other things to our residents the knowledge of these other trails it's a great opportunity for us to help people understand how awesome our trails are and everybody thinks about the American tobacco trail but we have so much more so I want to thank you for I want to thank you in the department and you know general services also and everybody that makes these trails work so well and are such an incredible asset so thank you thank you mr. mayor council member Reese thank you madam mayor pro tem joy I wanted to pile on your head many of the same types of praise that I reserve for a gene at general services a few minutes ago you have really stepped into the breach and and I don't think very few people could have expected our parks department to be to have responded much better than y'all have done during this incredibly difficult time you know parks and rec is one of those areas where the rubber really hits the road with a communicable disease like COVID-19 and our response has been so good and much of the credit belongs to you and your team so thank you for that um wanted to ask a specific question around the city's baseball facilities as it relates to the drum long ball program as well as a south term little league and find out if if you've been able to make any progress in determining if and when those groups will be allowed to have access to the city's baseball facilities um we're actually discussing that this week again on Friday the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services released additional guidelines on sports and administration of sports and those guidelines while still very stringent if you will on the provision of baseball and softball um we are taking a look at them and seeing whether or not we can do anything or we feel we can possibly do something with that safely and so that is very new sort of off the press with the latest release on guidelines and so again we're in communication this week and hoping to work through some of those requests that we have pending from some of our local athletic organizations i appreciate that it's my understanding um that long ball has gone ahead and canceled their season um i don't know that that's solely as a result of the their inability to access the city's baseball facilities and there's some other considerations there but i know that's a huge loss for our community um the south term little league is the other organization that i think is working hard to try to create a set of procedures that will let them operate safely you know bull city little league is in a different situation because they own their facility in north Durham and so um as someone who lives and works in south Durham and who has heard from a number of of parents and folks affiliated with south term little league just wanted to put that bug in your ear that um that this is that if if there's a way to do it safely um i think it'd be really great so thanks thank you thank you council member any other questions from members of council council member freeman thank you i appreciate the presentation and i commend the response on the public health side um overwhelmingly i i really wanted to just raise um in addition to the comments that um council member middleton made that it is unsettling to think about what the summer will look like in eastern and other parts of the of Durham without activities and i also wanted to make sure that i noted um so when i was looking at the numbers i was just trying to figure out exactly how much staff was actually because i'm looking at the chart that shows the staff into the future and it shows 78 as the number of part-time staff moving forward and i wasn't sure if it was because they were seasonal part like part-time workers that you just didn't bring on or if there were actually 147 or 146 part-time workers you had to let go or put on furlough and i wasn't sure if they were like if there's a continuation like an overlap or like an open like if there's folks who just work for the summer and then they come back in the next summer are those folks able to come back how does that all look um it's a little bit of a combined um problem if you will the um the 146 that were furloughed um were from those that typically work a year round um we had just started um our summer hiring process um in which we do bring on typically an additional 100 to 150 seasonal staff and and so we um immediately you know we stopped hiring um knowing that our programs were going to to be dramatically impacted initially um and so um the reason why we didn't make an adjustment to the rat table and the number shown there for the part-time full-time equivalence is what they are um is because of the loss of the summer staff and the and the full-time i mean in the year round part-time that we were losing there for july and august so it's hard it's hard to really see i guess like a clear picture um outside of the numbers that um miss young blood actually shared earlier where she said that uh 78 or 76 percent of those furloughed were black and of that i'm figuring around 78 percent of those from parks and rec and if that is the case how do you i guess i'm i'm trying to understand when you're looking at uh how you come how you come up with the solutions beyond the public safety aspect the actual like equity issue that raises up for me is just how many people are at the margins as staff and if we don't account for that at all uh there's there's just a an unsettling feeling about it so i hear the mayor when he says opening up the pools um i acknowledge that soccer and basketball might not happen this summer but we know usually who plays soccer and basketball is black and brown children and people in the community and i just don't want the same sentiment to go to come across with staff and so i'm just trying to i'm i'm not saying that this is something that you overlooked or something that you know that that you've intentionally done it's always almost as if it's it's the inevitable it's going to happen and i'm trying to push on how we how we stem it and so i'm not i'm not sure what that looks like but i know that if the positions are are all year-round positions that are furloughed and you're only showing like 206 and the next fiscal year budget but the with the additional 146 that would be 362 i'm trying to i'm trying to wrap my head around what the logic is and how that unpacks across the year uh because phase three and four i'm going to be where you bring in 146 new people okay the um the part time number that's showing on the rat table the 78 yes it is um that's a calculation that's done to determine the full time equivalency of all of the part time hours basically 2000 what is 2080 hours is a full time equivalent position and so when we talk about the 146 part time staff those are staff and i'm i'm trying to look at my my numbers here but those those staff were averaging somewhere between anywhere between five most of them averaging anywhere between five to 25 hours a week and so there was a range um one of the first things that we did and working with human resources on the assignment of covid leave um was we had looked back at the past i think it was six months to determine the average hours that each employee was working per week in order to ensure that the covid leave was assigned um equitably across those employees to ensure that they would have sufficient leave to cover what they would normally earn within a week long period um and so again those 146 even there's 146 person impacted by this again they their work range was from five to five hours i reached to 25 hours but the 78 that you see on the part time equivalency and in all honesty we just did not adjust that we were things were moving very quickly um as we were trying to determine the savings that we would have from not having those staff um all on board july 1 um and just making a projection of what the savings we determined we thought would happen um because of our delete uh opening of our programs and services in our centers um and the ones the staff that that had not been furloughed part time staff that were not furloughed um were basically we had um we knew we were going to be opening city lakes earlier and so we kept our city lake part time staff on board we knew we had um some of the first things out would also be our park tours and whatnot and so our historic interpreters for example that work at the west point on the eno we left them on board they were helping prepare research and modified programs so that we could bring those back online um we had some of our um uh for example our part gatekeepers that you know had meaningful work because they were already out in the field and deemed essential to open and close gates um um each night for our part that that work continued um and so really the ones that we kept on board um what were because the work was there for us to keep them employed and it would not impact they didn't have the reductions um that may have led them to needing to apply for an employment or having reduced benefits so when you when you're making those judgment calls if you could actually factor in racial equity as well as equity and being equitable around the fact that those folks who are working five additional hours that could be the difference between being able to pay the rent or not uh that would be helpful that's the gist of it so and and bringing on any as you look into being more creative about how to engage some of the phase three and phase four I would encourage you to look at how um people show up in those spaces and how race plays a factor thank you council member thank you are there any other questions or comments all right thank you so much joy for your presentation and for all of your hard work and um in these difficult times please pass our appreciation onto your team as well um for all the work that they're doing to try to keep our parks and trails up and running as much as possible during this time thank you I will thank you so much have a great day you too thanks uh and I'm going to turn the chair responsibility for this meeting over to council member Reese if he's ready to ready to rock I was born ready madam mayor pro tem great uh so uh thanks for the presentation so far they have been great next up is the department of transportation with their proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year and uh Sean Egan um our director is uh I see him online thanks for being here Sean and take it away all right thank you very much council member Reese um and members of the city council we really appreciate this opportunity to talk about the work that the department of transportation has been doing in response to COVID and how it will impact our uh work going forward so uh we'll walk through a few different uh items here our response uh our resource allocation tables and then our proposed budget and some of the impacts of recent changes on the Durham county transit plan and on revenues that we received from the north carolina department of transportation so as we move in uh we'll start with our parking so we ceased our revenue operations in march uh we've been working with uh the restaurant industry and and our downtown partners to identify on street zones that can be used uh where we repurpose what would be metered spaces to pick up and drop off and that's worked really well we've adjusted our security presence and done some increased cleaning to improve the the safety of our facilities and common touch areas and as was described this morning we furloughed our part-time parking ambassador staff in transit we've uh experienced relatively high ridership we're at about 60 percent of our normal ridership when other systems are down in the you know 10 to 20 percent range so in march we implemented an end of service at 9 30 p.m and we suspended certain trips we were operating around 80 percent we at the beginning of may due to limited staff availability we were down at about 50 percent of our service with a standard sunday schedule and we've added service across a series of routes and that went into effect on may 18th and so we're now operating at about 70 percent of our normally scheduled service and those service levels are really driven by our staff availability so as we've talked about before staff have commitments to their families and have health concerns and concerns about exposure to coronavirus and so that's kept certain staff members from being able to report to work as they normally would so we are working very hard to recruit additional staff one of the things that we are looking at for example is where we had part-time staff who are parking ambassadors could we offer them part-time opportunities in the go Durham system as a way to bring those furloughed employees back into employment and then also to address the staff shortages that we're seeing in our transit system so we're really trying to think comprehensively about these issues and how we can you know take care of the employees who are impacted by the furloughs and also address our staffing needs for transit so we've implemented a 16 passenger limit on the vehicles and identified the seats that should be used but we continue to be concerned about crowding and social distancing so we're looking at things like having the windows open in the buses as much as possible to increase airflow and circulation and any good idea that comes along we're willing to try it and we're attentive to what our peers are doing and trying to learn any steps that we can take to reduce the risk exposure to our riders and our staff our traffic operations team has been split into A and B schedules and they've been out in the field and taking care of traffic signals signs that are down and then working to support major projects construction and development projects one of the things that we're not able to do right now is data collection because of the unusual circumstances that we're in right now we don't think that data collection in this time would be meaningful for making decisions about traffic operations during normal times and some of our our heavy duty long line pavement for example has been suspended as we work through the procedures to be able to conduct that work safely in terms of our transportation services most of our planning and engineering staff are maintaining services while working remotely we're conducting development review digitally we're holding our MPO board meetings there's a technical committee meeting this morning those are proceeding virtually we're seeing some increases in service requests from residents some of our residents who are observing things at home during the day that they might not have otherwise seen while at their worksites are identifying issues that they're concerned about safety and noise and such so they're bringing those issues to our attention and we're working to address them and one of the tools that we would typically use to address those concerns is studies but those are as I said suspended for right now so as we look ahead to the next fiscal year we're looking to return parking operations to gates down revenue operations next week on Monday we're working with downtown Durham Inc on an outdoor dining program that would enable restaurants to set up space on sidewalks and potentially in the say parking spaces on the street to be able to have outdoor dining and reduce exposure that way and we're working on evaluating the the timing and the appropriate market demand for special events and and evening parking ambassador services and we'll be doing that in consultation with the renewal and recovery task force on go Durham by the end of next month we're looking to get back to that 80 service level but that that continues to be driven as I said by staff availability and so we're going to be looking at different types of recruitment campaigns that we can do to try to get more people involved we know that there are many people who are out of work during this time and so there's an opportunity for us to provide good paying living wage jobs for people who have been economically impacted by this so we really want to find ways to match people who are looking for work with the job opportunities that we have in transit one of the steps you'll see on the next slide that we've taken to protect our operators is partition so we have these installed in three of our vehicles right now we're working to get them installed across the fleet we did an initial installation of two and got feedback from the operators the feedback was very positive that we did receive so they they see the value and they appreciate the additional protection that is afforded by this barrier so that's an example of one of the things that you could see with our service that is an improvement for better COVID protection in terms of our operations and services for next year we're looking to get back up to full service levels as we can do so safely so we can take on some of those larger projects like the pavement marking projects we're looking to resume data collection potentially when schools are back in session although that is an open question at this point and we're working through community engagement different practices so we've done some things innovatively like we on east main street we were looking at reconfiguring the roadway there and we had one of our community rooted partners lead a video conference where she walked down the street and talked about different observations about what we liked about the way that that road it was laid out and got feedback from folks about what they they would like to see what they like what they don't like what they would like to see for for that east main street so we're trying out different approaches and really trying to take advantage of the resources that we have with community rooted partners through neighborhood improvement services to do that with our passenger vehicle program we would normally do taxi inspections in april that's we were working with fleet management to conduct those in august and where our bloomberg mayors challenge is working with the budget management services on doing analysis of telework what we're learning from the telework deployment that we've done in the city we're doing some surveys and then how we can use that to inform policymaking and encourage telework going forward within the city and then throughout our community so you'll see on our org chart we have a new structure proposed with business services as a new branch reporting to the director with the new business services manager this is really important for us because of the increase financial and administration that goes along with the parking that we've the parking operation that we ensourced that had been previously contracted we've been relying heavily on our colleagues in the department of finance over the last year to provide us with additional support to address all of the business services needs of our in-house parking operation and then we're also seeing significant growth in transit with additional resources available through the germ county transit plan where we have access to additional funding and we want to make sure that we manage that in a transparent and accountable way and so having a business services manager and then restructuring MPO parking and transit services we can make sure that we're identifying opportunities to use resources efficiently and scale the level of investment that we're making in our services so the next slide is the resource allocation table for our general fund budget so this has that one additional position but other than that our general fund positions are are pretty stable we're consistent from where we expect to be at the end of this year to what's proposed for next year and that new position is split across general with support from parking and transit as well with our transit table we have we're expecting a significant decrease in revenues from Fairbox we suspended fair collection in March and so some of our and then we're looking at reduced support from the state department of transportation as a potential risk similar to what was discussed this morning with the Powell bill there is support for public transit as well as support for signed signal payment marking operations that transportation receives from ncdot and we're looking at potential reductions in those sources as well what's not included in this table is our federal assistance so we were very fortunate through the federal cares act to get an allocation of 12 million dollars that was just recently approved through a split process by the npo and so we're now in a position of working through the fta process to identify expenses that eligible for that use develop the grant and work through that drawdown process so that that will help us as we try to make sure that we're sustaining operations with some of the revenue reductions that we're seeing we'll still be able to see we'll still be able to maintain full service levels and staffing permits and then for parking we're seeing a significant drop in revenues and we're seeing a much higher reliance on appropriation from fund balance than we had anticipated and so you know when we were having this discussion in February the parking fund looked to be in balance through 2021 and 22 and then would be looking at a negative balance in 23 we're now based on the suspension of revenue collections and reduced demand we're expecting to see a significantly greater reliance on fund balances in both fiscal year 2020 and 2021 and we do not expect to have significant fund balances available in FY 22 so we're going to have to be taking a hard look at the FY 22 budget and what we can do to ensure that the parking fund is in balance in FY 22 so as I said Go Durham has available $12 million in CARES funding we've been very successful in advocating for additional resources through the Durham County Transit Plan several of those have been approved in the FY 20 work plan others are recommended right now and we'll be going to the Go Triangle Board for final approval in June just to give you a sense of that we're seeing an increase of two and a half million for service level increases and 7.8 million for transit emphasis corridor infrastructure and electric bus vehicle purchases so that's a really exciting opportunity for us to utilize those resources and improve service infrastructure rolling stock for our customers as we look to the update of the Durham Transit Plan we're really we're trying to think through different ways to approach public outreach I think there'll be some more discussion tomorrow on public engagement citywide and so right now we're trying to front load as much as possible the technical work for the the plan so scenarios of service levels regional connectivity needs some guidelines some operations analysis and then as we work through those technical pieces we'll have information that we can bring forward for the public to respond to and to get some priorities from as we as we present these different scenarios see how the public responds to the different scenarios and what their priorities and what their feedback is as we work through this so the project schedule has been modified for the transit plan update so we're now looking at releasing a draft for comment in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 21 to be followed by adoption by the boards so as I said we're front loading more of the technical analysis work in the hope that we can resume some of those public engagement activities later in the cycle we've talked a little bit about ncdot and our funding concerns as was described this morning the Powell bill revenues are expected to be down 25 percent we're seeing reductions in uh the state aid for public transit as well as sign marking and signal so we're looking at a 0.8 million dollar loss for sources that are provided directly to transportation that that would be in addition to the the cuts for the Powell bill and it's not just direct funding but we have locally administered projects that require ncdot approval at each step so if you look at the next slide when we want to go from design to right away or right away to construction we need ncdot to approve us advancing those projects and right now the information that we're getting from ncdot is because of their funding crisis that they're not ready to make any of those approvals so we have a number of projects about 12 projects that are directly impacted but as time goes forward even large projects like the Durham Beltline trails project stand to be significantly impacted by these restrictions so this is something that we've raised repeatedly through the mpo process and we're going to continue to talk about how important these projects are for local governments and that this really should be a priority as funding is available at ncdot that these projects should be prioritized if we have funding identified and we don't use it it could lead to a loss in those federal funds if they're not utilized timely and so we're also working with public works and general services on our work plans for the next year and and throughout the cip to see how these delays will impact their work plans and we'd really like just to get work out on the street right now because of ncdot's funding crisis and the economic conditions we think there's really good value in the marketplace there's capacity that's available and so we would really like to take advantage of strong competition and price competition during this time but without ncdot's approvals we're not in a position to proceed so those are the major points council member risa i'm happy to answer any questions sorry i couldn't find my mute button but i've got it now thank you shon that was really great in detail before we get to council questions can you clarify the business services manager position i don't i don't necessarily know what that means you said some words about it but sure maybe it's just me but i didn't really understand some of those words either so could you could you give us try to try again why that position is important right now so we have significant financial management needs within the within the department that are driven by the insourcing of our parking operations so we have revenue collections billing and financial controls needs that were we've been relying heavily on support from the finance department over the last year to address those needs as we stand up we stood up the operational aspects of our parking last year when we transitioned from contract operation to the city administered operation but much of the financial management work that comes along with that that needs to be sustained is more than we're in a position to do right now with our current staffing levels and then as i talked about the growth that we're seeing in funding for services as well as infrastructure for transit drives a need for us to increase our financial management capacity we have significant reporting work that we need to do and significant compliance work that we need to do we have more procurements more contracts to manage as a result of these additional resources so the business services manager in this structure puts us in a position to support these additional financial procurement and other administrative work that is needed to advance these services john is there any possibility that cares funding can support that position because of the additional requirements so i think we can definitely look at that right now it's split a third a third and a third between general parking and transit but if because we have these additional transit needs over the next year we could replace the the general fund contribution with a transit fund contribution in the budget i think we could support that thank you thanks john that's that's an extremely helpful explanation and let's definitely kind of talk about the source of funding for that position i want to open it up to my colleagues if anybody has questions if you'll just raise your hand then see anybody jump it into the chat so i'm mr america right ahead thank you very much councilmember and thank you sean we've seemed like we got all the new directors up today figure we torture them early i guess tom right um we really appreciate you um and you've also just really done a great job taking hold of all the various it's such a the department has so much variety i don't know if we have any other department maybe a couple but that have the variety that you do um i i want to thank you for the support for the outdoor dining uh downtown i've heard a lot of great compliments from the folks from downtown Durham Incorporated and others about uh thomas leathers and other people in your department have been working with them to try to make the downtown outdoor dining work and i'm excited about that i think that's great i know there are a lot of issues to be worked through but want to appreciate that we we really need to make that happen if we can and so thank you so much um the a couple of questions the oh yeah one other one other thing before my questions and i want to applaud your leadership on the the way the transit plan has turned out the county transit plan i know you really did a great job advocating for the the transit emphasis corridors and our capital needs and it's really great to see and i want to thank our county commission colleagues and the go triangle staff and board and and and for for supporting that but especially to you sean for having a great plan in place it's getting funded it's a big advance to especially for our transit riders it's huge um so you've we've received a lot of comment and um about the idea at this time of trying to create what our bicycle and pedestrian advocates are causing calling calling slow streets uh that's one of my questions i wanted to know if you could comment on that um well why don't you start with that i have just a couple others that our guests are kind of unrelated to that sure so i've had some good discussions with advocates at bike Durham for example and i've read a lot of the requests that we've gotten from citizens and we're really interested in advancing a slow streets program here but we really want it to be done in a way that engages the communities where this would be implemented so right now we're working at developing information that we can use for outreach to the communities and neighbors who would be directly impacted by this and try to build understanding and build support for the slow streets concept so that when it's implemented it can be sustained and there's an understanding of what why it's important how it improves safety um and that it's going to it's going to change neighborhoods and we want to make sure that people are prepared for that and that if they have concerns that we've addressed those so we're working on that outreach piece right now and once we've identified and we also think there's a role for neighborhoods to help us with some of the quality control issues to be our eyes and ears in many respects and that's one of the comments that we've gotten from the advocacy community is that the neighbors are ready to play that role and so we want to enlist people to help us if there's a sign that's twisted or something that's fallen down that they'll let us know and we can deploy resources to take care of that whereas if we had to do all of the monitoring and quality control with our resources we wouldn't be able to sustain that so that's part of what we're trying to do is make sure that this is something that's a community-led initiative and it's that has strong support in the community and that it's deployed in those places where we have good community support but we think there's a lot of value in taking streets that were identified in our Durham walks plan as well as our bike and walk plan and using those where we've already gotten public input that those are good places for walking and bicycling that we build upon that framework and implement some measures that can help us slow streets and improve safety in those areas but we really do want it to be a community-led initiative. I think that's a fantastic approach I really appreciate that and I also think that will help us with the equity as our as our program goes forward so thank you. I've heard I had a Zoom discussion with a paratransit employee who was concerned about the safety of their PPE and can you talk about that or how do we feel about the quality of the PPE that we have for our transit employees? So we've been working through the PPE availability issues for the last two months during this event and I think we're now at a point where we feel like we have adequate PPE for our paratransit staff. The nature of the paratransit service is that there's closer interaction between our riders and our staff and so we really want to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to make PPE available not only to our operators but also to the extent that it's medically feasible to our riders so that they can you know protect each other through this. So that's one of the things that we're working through right now is is the availability of masks and face coverings where we can make them available to paratransit riders so that provides an additional layer of protection for our operation staff but I'd be happy to look into any specific questions or concerns. Thank you very much and then the my last question is do you know what is your sense of the percentage you know a range or a good estimate or a guess would be fine here Sean. In terms of our people riding our transit system the fixed routes what would you say that the percentage of people who are who are who are wearing a face covering is and what do you how would you go about quantifying the need of for face coverings for our transit riders that are not covering just thinking about you know one of the things we're trying to think about is what is our total kind of community need going forward for face coverings and what are you know real vulnerable populations of course is our transit riders so you have any thoughts to offer on that so I can say that we've had regular discussions with some of the non-profit groups that have been making masks and other face coverings available to our riders ecoderm station and that's something that we're really we're pleased that the community is stepping forward I was also really glad to see at the work session last week the discussion of the county led effort to make additional face coverings available and and your advocacy mr. mayor for making sure that those become available to our transit riders right now we're seeing relatively low adoption of masks and face coverings so I've heard in some cases less than half in other cases maybe 10 percent of our riders are are using masks or other face coverings so I think the availability of the face coverings is really important but then also supporting that with the right information for our customers so we've been doing on board announcements for example letting people know how important it is to wear face coverings we've also done some videos with our operations staff talking about how important it is that we use masks and face coverings to protect each other but we're very aware that we're not having as strong of adoption of that as we would like to see and I think availability is one piece of it but also that educational piece is going to be really important making sure people understand that you know this is the service that we share together and that our continued ability to share relies on us looking out for each other and wearing masks to protect each other so that's part of the effort that we're still trying to work through from the communications front we have a new communication staff person that go Durham who just started last week so that's been kind of top of the order for for that work is is trying to increase that that education to go along with the availability of equipment thank you thank you council member Reese and thank you Sean who else council member Middleton go right ahead thank you chairman Reese and thank you Sean I appreciate you being here I want to say that I really I'm not only impressed with the credible amount of experience and skill sets you brought to your job but your temperament as well and we've been becoming quite good friends as you've been helping me address a number of constituent concerns around the city so I want to thank you for your your patience with me and your partnership with me and those matters the mayor already asked one of my two questions so this will be really short and I want to thank the mayor for bringing up the face mask issue and how good our penetration was in terms of riders riding them I didn't want to ask also about any sanitation protocols that we're employing when our buses are offline if any at all if you had any insight into that sure so we've increased our sanitation protocols one of the biggest steps that we've taken is the deployment of a disinfecting fogger so at the end of the day when the bus returns to the depot it has a disinfecting fogger that that coats every surface on the vehicle and that's been a new step that we've implemented this year or this since covid since march in order to try to reach some surfaces that wouldn't be reached with a typical cleaning but we've also increased our cleaning frequency and then also stepped up so at Durham station for example we have now hourly cleanings of our our most frequently touched surfaces like door knobs and elevators and such so we're working and there's more information about that available at Go Durham transit so we're working to address needs in our fleet as well as in our facilities to try to protect our our riders and our staff do you know if that applies also to our paratransit vehicles or any supplemental vehicles we're employing yeah my understanding is that we're using the foggers for the paratransit vehicles as well thank you that's all my questions thank you chair thank you cats River Middleton councilmember freeman i believe you're next in line thank you i uh grateful that us the mayor actually asked a couple of my questions as well and i just wanted to share the comment that i really appreciate your community focus and doing some of the outreach i know we had this conversation at one of the council presentation and it looks like you've you've taken the bull by the horns and you're definitely digging in on making sure you're engaging the community rooted partners and there was one other thing i noted and just just a a question of regarding the insourcing on the parking i just want to make sure that we're so there were a number there were like a very small number of of staff that came in from the parking insourcing and i just want to make sure that i note that staff is very valuable and i appreciate you making sure that they return as soon as as quickly as possible yeah we're very focused on finding the right ways to bring people back who have provided really strong customer service and service to the city and and so what steps we can take to bring those those team members back in their original capacity or in some other capacity but make sure that we take advantage of their availability and their their knowledge and skills going forward um any other members have any questions for shon before i start to dig in awesome hi shon hi how are you i was really excited when i saw that um you were going to be chairing this um session shon i thought i might get off easy but doesn't look like it shon i think one of the things that that is the responsibility of the chairs to make sure other folks are heard before i then step up and suck the rest of the oxygen out of the room um so uh shon i think it's fair to say that i've probably spent more time talking and working with you since you started as department head than any other department head in the city and i say that to make sure folks know that that i have really come to respect and appreciate your incredibly straightforward brand of leadership um there's i've never been in a meeting with you where i didn't know exactly what you thought about a particular thing and didn't know how you thought we ought to move forward with it and that is that is amazing and the kind of leadership that i think we need more of um everywhere in our country um i think one of the i've got a couple of sets of questions but maybe my biggest question is about the parking fund um as you pointed out um over the next over this year and the upcoming fiscal year we're looking to use something in the neighborhood of 7.2 million dollars out of fund balance to keep the parking fund solvent um you addressed in your presentation the need to really bear down on uh parking operations as we move through this fiscal year and planning for the next fiscal year but i wonder if you could give me just a little bit more color about what that might look like you know the the the market for parking downtown has gone really whipsawed over the last three years really two years um at the same time we brought our new parking deck online a number of other facilities came online and we're undercutting us on price now there's no demand um no telling when demand is going to come back it's of all the departments in the city this one seems one of the most um i guess up in the air in terms of how how we're going to get back to some something approaching normal so what if you could just spend a couple minutes talking about kind of over the next 12 to 18 months what what can be done um about parking operations sure so you know we talked a little bit about this in february um that uh we're very focused on making the parking fund um self-sustaining and there are steps that we can take to do that um but we're going to have to take steps on the expenditure side um on the revenue side um and then also uh with our capital improvements so um on the expenditure side uh i talked a little bit about how we've been right sizing our security staffing so we have contracted security for our facilities uh right now for our five major facilities it's um it's um 24 hour service uh and what we've identified is that because of the proximity of many of our facilities uh and we've um and the levels of activity that we're seeing that we can uh reduce that contracted staffing um and provide a zone coverage uh that reduces our our security costs there there continue to be concerns from some of the downtown businesses about um security but we think that um by having more of a zone coverage model we can maintain uh security uh and uh also right size our expenses on the revenue side we've also got uh proposed changes where we'd be increasing our hourly uh parking fees by 25 cents in fiscal year 21 and then we'd be coming to increase our monthly parking fees in fiscal year 22 so and that's part of a regular schedule where each year we uh we increase either the hourly or the monthly but as you said the the market has changed pretty dramatically for us so we'll have to see um what impact that has but we think that setting the price of parking is very important and it helps us to recover our costs and it also helps us to encourage other forms of transportation like our bus system so and then the other piece that we're looking at is the timing of major capital improvements to our facilities and what's sustainable for us for major projects like wayfinding that has been postponed from our work plan for this fiscal year and and what are some of these major initiatives that we would like to do we think there's value in doing but we have to make sure that we have the resources to be able to do that project and and also keep our facilities in a state of good repair and address safety and customer service needs so I I think we need to focus if we just focus on expenses or revenues or capital no one of those is going to solve this problem for us but I think looking across the board at all three of those and and understanding the market forces at work here that we can we can work through and develop some scenarios and solutions to carry us forward I appreciate that as I've said before on the revenue side I think it's it's a frustrating challenge because you've got major commercial competitors who were undercutting us on price so you know strategies to increase parking charges might not necessarily have the revenue impact we're looking for but that's why they pay you the big bucks is to to to come up with solution to all the annoying problems that I that I come up with the with respect to outdoor dining I think one of the things that I've been really interested in is looking at Charlotte's temporary outdoor dining program and the allocation of a certain percentage of restaurants dedicated parking spaces I think downtown that's not really a model that works given kind of what we what the setup downtown and I really appreciate you working with downtown businesses and restaurants who many of the restaurants are kind of surviving to the extent they are on the drive-up takeout service and the city's quick response at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis to open up our on-street parking program to that kind of drive-up a pickup has been was really fantastic and I've shared that with folks actually around the country as kind of a model for what might happen so I appreciate that appreciate your work with them but I think in terms of outside the downtown core I think we might think about looking at Charlotte's program I'm not sure that's necessarily a transportation issue so maybe this is more directed to the city manager to have folks take a look at at what Charlotte has done and kind of the the little the program that they've developed and see if something like that might work for us outside of the downtown core the only other question I had was oh to appreciate your conversations with cycling and pedestrian advocates around slow streets you know we've the city and our community has done a lot of work around identifying streets in Durham that are good candidates for whatever we wanted to call them at one point they were like boulevards and there's lots of other incarnations of that but I think those are great candidates to move forward with with the participation of our community partners and I appreciate your growing partnership with them as that as we try to make that work I think as the mayor said when we're in the in the dpr conversation I haven't seen a huge I haven't seen huge crowds on on sidewalks and streets and whatnot but I know that there are places where that is happening and I think whatever we can do to create new spaces for folks you know one of the things that I've been floored by is that when the governor opened up our state parks I want to say a week and a half ago maybe they are still I mean they're just jam packed and I get these notifications periodically from the state parks department that tells me when the parking lots at various state parks get to capacity and they're often at like 9 a.m. 9 30 a.m. just I think that just points to the desire that folks have to be out and about and I think we all know that that transmission risks are much lower for the coronavirus in outdoor settings although not completely eliminated so all that is is by way of saying thank you for keeping those for having those conversations and would love to hear more about what happens with that as we move forward and again those don't have to be big permanent installations we've even seen a community do a kind of a renegade a rogue street slowdown that I went and walked through took pictures of a couple three weeks ago I'm not necessarily recommending that as something that more neighborhoods ought to do but more pointing out that these don't have to be be expensive permanent installations that we can do some things pretty cheaply and quickly that really increase folks quality of life in some of our neighborhoods I just wanted to keep your make a plug for that as well and just I just want to echo what the mayor said about your success in advocating for new funding through the Durham County Transit Fund you know that's been something that you and I've been working on for a while really happy to see that get through the MPO vote I guess was last week and looking forward to seeing those projects move forward I really appreciate your vision especially on the corridor improvements to making sure that transit can move more smoothly more on-time service that's really important oh and also thanks for ratcheting up service levels whenever we can we have the staffing for it because obviously as you said we have our ridership has gone down much less than really any other jurisdiction that I've heard about and keeping that service up and running is really important okay that's did so thanks did did my rambling trigger any more questions with my colleagues I know they've triggered some boredom but but maybe maybe questions ah councilmember for even go right thank you I would say that I'm in the same boat usually with the rambling sometimes so I just wanted to note that I'm excited I know that the fines and fees work will touch on some of that parking I hope and I'm looking forward to having some conversations about what it looks like to really bring into the full you know fines and fees actual justice around it so that the disparities that always show up don't aren't as uh as large I'm sorry and um just along that along those lines I just wanted to make sure that I did restate or clarify I know I was rambling with parks and rec around the issue I just want to note that I as a value centered leader it's hard for me to to express those values and words sometimes and I'm just trying to make sure that I that I impose the the kind of support that encourages all of our staff to be very creative and imagine imaginative around how to address race equity because as a person of color over the last couple of weeks it's been really hard just leaving it at that to even understand how we don't see a problem with the way that things work and so I just encourage you to please continue to surprise me please continue to push and make those um just I mean I've seen staff staff has presented some of the most phenomenal ideas around you know being more equitable over the last three years that I've been on council and I can imagine longer but I really just need more out of this this process because I can't do a Katrina outcome and I know what it looks like when we when we look at what's easy and we look at and we rush to to to make decisions around cost cutting and I don't want to see that out of Durham that's all thank you yeah I would just say you know the biggest increase in our budget is in investments in our go Durham transit service and infrastructure and we know that in terms of equitable investment of resources that we have you know approximately 90 percent of our riders are people of color and so when we talk about racial equity and how we can direct resources and make investments that disproportionately benefit communities of color that the types of investments that we're able to make and the big increases that you're seeing in investments in transit service and infrastructure are disproportionately benefiting communities of color and we're going to continue to advocate for even more and greater resources for our local transit service and infrastructure along those lines and as as the really a really focused way to address the equity needs and to share the economic prosperity of our community. Sean is that one of your staff people in the background upset with some of your leadership skills I can't what that noise is when you're co-workers yeah I think it's Korra my daughter she's a little out of sorts right now I don't think she wants to go down for her now yeah I know the feeling um so if does anybody else have any questions or comments for Sean on transportation speak now or forever hold your peas okay Sean Sean again just thank you so much for everything that you've done in your short time with us especially as it surrounds go Durham and making sure our transit service is up and running to the maximum extent possible right now it's so important and just appreciate your leadership on that and everything else and I just want to just take a moment to thank the team we talked about the great work that Thomas Leathers has been doing Bill Judge my assistant director has been doing outstanding work and has really been a critical part of of the work to prepare this presentation for today to help me get up to speed and address the many complex issues that we have here so we have an incredibly strong team and really strong partners at the MPO echo triangle with the county and we're working together but I certainly couldn't do it without the strong support of the team and the partners so I just wanted to say a word of thanks great thank you Sean again is that the end of our presentations right now mr manager oh sorry Bertha that's correct so can you kind of set the table about what's next for us Tom I'll try and certainly want to take this opportunity to thank you all for great questions and interjecting some ideas to us also I thought the staff presentations today from top to bottom were terrific for a format that was new to us all but I hope you can get a sense of just how engaged all of our staff is and so many of these challenging issues in terms of COVID response and and recovery so I just want to congratulate and thank you thank the staff one thing that we traditionally do with these sessions that we didn't really focus on this morning but want to come back to certainly give the mayor a chance to talk but any make sure that we know what are the flagged items that you feel for what you heard today need additional follow-up and conversation in the past we have held time on the work session after the public hearing or prior to the work session after the public hearing for kind of final budget check-in and reviewing flagged items so I think it would be helpful mr mayor if any council members have particular items that they heard today that either are unsettled or or need more information if we could take just a few minutes and get any recap from council members about those we'd be sure and capture those all righty thank you and I want to thank council member Reese and mayor pro tem for presiding so well I appreciate it you know it's interesting I I find presiding over these zoom meetings more taxing than presiding over regular meetings maybe because I'm always having to constantly arrange my face because I feel like they're people watching me from not sure exactly but anyway so it's going to have to be a group effort you guys and I appreciate everybody pitching in and all the call all my colleagues for great questions especially want to thank council member Freeman for her you know putting forward these important equity issues today they're important all the time and they're important to all of us but we really you know I think the it's just so important to be having these constant challenges and reminders so council member Freeman thank you for that it's much appreciated um and mr. mayor Buck had mentioned just real quick I apologize to interrupt but I mean yeah no we haven't spent a lot of time with the council talking through the work that we are doing with the you know kind of reestablishing city services and the service level adjustments you heard some of that today but we have integrated in every aspect of that a the folks from our equity inclusion department helping us and be sure that we are thinking about those equity issues as well sometimes they don't always come across as maybe as clear and articulate as as we know we're working on them but rest assured every aspect of us thinking about COVID response and in particular service restoration doesn't happen without some equity lens approach as well thank you very much mr. manager colleagues the manager has asked us to think about any items that we have flagged for further consideration on the budget front and I'll just open the floor is there and mr. manager do you have anything that you heard that you think is I'll start with you anything that you heard that you feel like we need to take up well I think there were some some questions in in parks and recreation potentially that uh uh counselors had questions about staffing uh hopefully we've clarified those uh also I think uh there was a question about additional staffing and around the uh the transportation uh financial manager picture I I think those were answered but if they if they weren't or they need more more more discussion I think we'd like to know that those were two that jumped out at me Bertha do you have any other notes of things in particular that you flagged I do not that we're not that I don't feel that we're answered going to discussions no thank you mayor pro tem thank you mr. mayor um I'd like to continue to talk about the additional position and transportation I think that um Sean made a strong case for why that position is important but I'd like the opportunity to weigh that against all the other potential needs in the city as that's a new position and we um um have talked about other possibilities for spending that money so I'd like to put that on the on the list for follow-up thank you thanks thank you uh council member Reese mr. mayor I just want to follow up and um second what what the mayor pro tem said but also point out that Sean um I think proposed to shift the funding source of that from the general fund uh do I think it was transit and that would certainly help me um when it comes to that particular position so I just want to put that out there as well thank you council member caballero some of that could come potentially from cares the carers money correct not just general fund that that distribution because it was a third a third and a third and that distribution could be reevaluated moving forward correct thank you I have um the transportation my transportation questions were answered I do want to know a little bit more around the um with parks and rec just kind of the breakdown because it was really helpful to hear the explanation of the part-time workers being from anywhere to from five to 25 hours and just to understand more I guess percentages of of how many folks were at 25 hours versus five hours um so and that can be provided in an email but just more of those work workforce statistics would be super helpful thank you thank you colleagues others council member middleton thank you mr mayor and uh let me add my thanks to charlie julian for a great job I'm presiding today with a respectful part of the agenda strong team strong team we got um I did want to just um get remind uh staff I think we said we would get a specific written listing of the specific job uh titles that were furloughed Regina did give us a great verbal rundown but I think we said we would be getting a a written copy of that the specific job titles uh that were furloughed so I look forward to that thank you thank you thank you anything else anybody wants to flag all right um thank you uh mr manager miss johnson I believe we're at the end of our agenda is there any either either of you all have any comments to add on I'll then ask it if my colleagues have anything to add as well mr manager do you all have anything uh no other than to say that we'll be back at it tomorrow morning at at 10 o'clock uh we had a very productive day I think and we've got a lot of uh other departments that have important issues to present and discuss tomorrow so we will you know block the time up till two o'clock but hopefully as we've been efficient today move through the process and and be you know be able to conclude in a reasonable time but that's all I have right now thank you very much miss johnson just a reminder that the presentations and other budget documents on our website and that you will receive a separate and different link for tomorrow's meeting tomorrow morning and then also some additional information I think is still forthcoming from a couple departments right bertha there's one presentation to still come the engagement presentation which we will get we will send out today thank you very much and just any final comments just one additional um I'd ask the way that the transportation department had their breakdown of staff that would be actually helpful to see for parks and rec because it's not just who was furlough there's actually who was who was kept so who actually continued on working like what that looked like that would be helpful I think you mean I think you mean the uh chart the uh staff chart yes the staff the org chart yeah the org chart it's a little a little more complex and parks recreation just because the number of positions but we'll try to think of a way to describe that even if it's just paired with the one we had last year with like three separate documents of what we had last year what we have this year and then just those numbers that middleton councilmember middleton mentioned yeah it would be the part-time piece would be hard because the part-time positions wouldn't show up on the org chart but we can figure out a way to get that information to you in a different all right yes thank you anyone else final comments councilmember caviato yeah I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of our staff there's been a couple of times everybody's presentations were excellent you know just reflecting on that we had three people today who are either interim or new higher directors and the challenges that they faced these last few months and just how much appreciation I have for them and then just two times while I was listening to presentation first was during the general services presentation thinking through all of our custodial services and how over the year so many organizations have contracted out that labor so those folks aren't making living wages and we know that many of the folks who provide those services are black and brown and so these are folks who have living wages are continuing to be employed and just that the appreciation of having that value and not having done that and then additionally knowing that so many of our staff and it was actually Sean's kids screaming in the background the reminder that so many of us have a lot of stuff going on in the background and so again so much appreciation for our staff knowing that the last several months many of you have been home with kids with potential elderly parents that you're having to worry about and so we have several hard months ahead of us and I am constantly reminded about the the stress that all of us are dealing with right now thank you so much councilmember Reese um mr mayor I just wanted to thank everybody for participating and all the good questions and thanks staff um from the city manager uh to bertha on down for making today really productive I look forward to another productive day tomorrow did want to note before we got off the phone about three weeks ago the james beard foundation announced nominations for their various awards having to do with uh food and um and the culinary arts one of those categories is the james beard award in journalism and one of the nominees was uh local uh historian and writer dr synthia greenlee and this morning while we were on our uh zoom call she won the james beard award for journalism in her area I just wanted to congratulate her and just another feather in Durham's cap she is uh the thought some of you might be interested in the piece that she wrote that garnered her this james beard award is in vice.com published uh in February of 2019 the title is a real hot mess how grits got weaponized against cheating men so as soon as we get off the phone here I'll definitely be uh talking into that particular article maybe enjoying some tasty grits along with it so anyway dr greenlee congratulations well-deserved award thank you mr mayor thank you and and I will say she's an alumna of the independent so we're proud uh any other comments any final comments council member middleton thank you sir uh charlie I recommend you listen to al green while you're reading that uh article uh mr mayor I just wanted to say um just the overwhelming sense of gratitude I have uh for the staff but also to be in the position uh that I am uh personally I um and I say that because I recognize that as I sit here uh with this distinguished distinguished group making decisions um at the highest level leadership in our city um that there are still uh some things that that I'm not insulated from notwithstanding my position or station today I want to send out um solidarity and condolences to the family of george floy um today who died at the hands of the Minneapolis police department I also want to send um good regards out to mayor fray and Minneapolis and to our colleagues on the Minneapolis city council many of whom had the opportunity of meeting through my work with the national league of cities um I think that's all I want to say I just wanted to call his name in this context and on record uh and signal that we understand uh that here in Durham how blessed we are I want to uh express gratitude for the type of leadership we have here in Durham particularly I want to shout out chief sarah and davis and her command staff our fire first responders all across the board and for the hard work they do uh to to properly convey what we will have and what we will not have in Durham and the standards that are important to us I do not know what the future holds if one day we'll wake up in Durham and we'll be facing um challenges that some other cities face but I would not want to face those challenges with any different type of leadership than we have um at our department head and I would add that to this council as well so I just want to say to the floyd family our prayers are with them for all of the countless victims who did not have the benefit of cameras present we're with them as well and we continue to do the hard work of making this a more perfect union at least that's what's in the pamphlet um so god bless uh the people of minneapolis god bless the floyd family god bless our city black lives matter thank you mr mayor thank you for those important words council member and I think the words I can't breathe are going to continue to resonate through generations any final comments anyone else council member freeman thank you I wanted to echo uh council member Middleton's comments around uh just acknowledging just how hard times are right now and council member Caballeros as well and noting that I want I want to make sure that I say it out loud that it's important to breathe it's important to actually take stock of where you are and how things are going um I realize that a lot of people have also um lost loved ones in this time and we've really been hit hard here in Durham I know with the loss of you know Andrea Harris Marianne Black brother Ray and how that shake-up has created uh gaps in our community um that will need to be filled is important and even with with staff just noting you know being at home and dealing with the challenges it's it's it's important to make sure that you're aware and present where you are and how you are and and who you are because I mean there's no we're all human beings in this and I think um I often feel like I need to say that because I've spent so much time addressing the race equity aspect of these conversations because it's often the underserved the marginalized the voices that are unheard and it it it tends to make me feel like I'm overcompensating and so I just want to make sure that I note that it's not just that it's that we are human beings we're all in this together and we're going to get through it but it's not going to be doing things the way things were done before so when people say the new normal it needs to be something new and better and I'm looking forward to that so on that note I'll leave that with you thank you thank you Mayor Pro Tem thank you Mr Mayor um I just wanted to take another moment moment to thank our staff for all their work on the budget and through this difficult moment I noted as council member Cabero did that all three directors are new to their positions only one new to the city but have stepped into additional leadership roles very either during or really shortly before very shortly before the pandemic and so I just wanted to appreciate them for the work that they're doing in this difficult time for the city a lot of institutions are really struggling right now and I continue to be impressed by the leadership that we have here in Durham and the way that our staff um are navigating this crisis uh we're you know it's it's a difficult moment but I feel like we're in very good hands here in Durham and so I just wanted to express that and thank you all again for your for your leadership in your work thank you thank you everyone I think we have wrapped it up Mr manager uh uh uh we will see everyone tomorrow at 10 o'clock uh we have I guess the one more presentation coming tonight that we haven't gotten yet the engagement one um and uh we're we're all looking forward to being together again tomorrow I want to thank staff we miss your smiling faces we we we always enjoy these times we have our our budget staff around us and we get to see you all in person and the good work that you do and I'm sorry we can't do that this year but I feel assured that next year we will be back together together in person uh and uh we just want to appreciate you so thank you and I'm going to declare this meeting adjourned at 1 27 p.m hi everybody thank you have a good day everybody great thank you thanks bye