 Mayor Pro Tem who is not here yet. Yeah, I think we have a quorum. Let's see Mark Anthony middle team as well. Great. Good morning, everyone. I would like to call this meeting to order. This is a special budget work session of the Durham city council. It is 9am on May 27th, 2021. The mayor is running a little bit late, but asks us to go ahead and get started. Oh, and he's not running late. There he is. Steve, I just called us to order. Perfect. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Absolutely. Good morning all. Morning. City Hall. Great place to be. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. And some member Caballero. Here. And some member Freelon. Here. And some member Freeman. Present. I'm here. And some member Reese. Here. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I will now turn the meeting over to John Allure, Mr. Allure. Please guide us through our next steps. Good morning, Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson and members of council. Thank you for being here our second day. The FY 22 budget work sessions with council. Today we have a program of. A variety of departments, including police, fire. The proposed new community safety department, transportation, solid waste, parks and rec. And equity and inclusion. And we'll try to move things along with all of these presentations. So you have ample time to pose your questions and get satisfactory answers. I do want to just take a moment before turning things over to. To thank the wonderful people I get to work alongside with in the. Budget management services department. We tend to think of it as a budget, but it is, it is. It is a full department effort. It is a full department effort. And it is a full department effort. Starting with Christina Reardon, Christina Tux, Pat Mota. Tony Thompson and Lindsay Benot. And then over, we have a parallel budget process taking place right now, as you know, in participatory budgeting. And I want to thank the. The staff who worked so hard on that. Andrew Holland and Jamie Tyndall. Along with our wonderful administrative assistant, the staff that worked so hard on that. And I want to thank the staff who worked so hard on that. Don go to PB Durham.org. If you haven't already voted. For the projects of voting, we'll end on June. Six. And then rounding out on the OPI side, Sherry Metcalf performance management, Aaron Parish. Shannon Delaney. And of course, Ryan Smith. And I want to thank the staff who worked so hard on that project. And I want to thank the staff who worked so hard on that project. And focused on this work. And we thank them for their efforts. So thank you for allowing me. The time to say that. And finally, I do want to thank. My boss. My mentor, my friend, Bertha Johnson, who taught me almost everything about budget. Probably taught me everything about management. And she is. It was a little strange going through things yesterday without her. So I just wanted to thank the staff who worked so hard on that project. And I just want to thank the staff who worked so hard on that project. And I feel ready for the challenge. And I thank her for everything that she's done for me. Thank you, John. Those were some great words about the department and really appreciate it. So with that, I turn it over to the city manager. City manager page. If she has any comments before we begin today's programming. Good. Good morning. Good morning. I'm going to turn it over to the city council and city staff and residents who are listening today at this work session. I will not. I will be very brief. John has thanked a big team that has helped us get where we are today. Yesterday and today. So I won't repeat any of that. I will use a few moments that I have because a very first presentation. I want to thank the city council. I want to thank the city council. I want to thank the city council. I want to thank the city council for the great opportunity that I have had. Both publicly and privately. I want to thank chief CJ Davis. For her service to this community and this organization. As one of its executive leaders. As a community leader. A leader of. The largest department that we have in city government. And she has done that well. And she has done that well. And she has done that well. And she has done that well. Because we wish her well. And much success in that new city. And we will miss her greatly. Thank you city manager. Thank you everyone this morning. Am I clear John to begin? Yes. Welcome. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. As I began to. Do this overview of the Durham police departments. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to acknowledge the budget. I'd like to acknowledge the individuals that. Supported us during this budget process. John. Christina. And of course, Bertha and the entire team city manager. Thank you for the support you provided. To the Durham police department during this process. I will begin also introducing individuals in the room. You can't see them, but they are here. My support staff. And I would like to recognize them. I would like to recognize. That council member and the entire team. And I would like to recognize. Sean. We are budget manager. Also deputy chief. Melissa Bishop. And major David Anthony. So to begin. Next slide. Here we go. I'll begin with our. Organization chart, as you can see. This is the Durham police departments or chart. being cut. These reductions include two vacant motorcycle officer positions in district five, which reduces the unit to eight FTEs. The unit will now consist of one Sergeant, one Corporal, six officers, two vacant slide squad officer positions in district five, which reduces the size of each of the two squads to one Sergeant, one Corporal and six officers, one vacant non sworn senior administrative technician. This was our transcriptionist position from professional standards. Um, we are now going to be utilizing an outside transcribing source for this function. These personnel cuts reduce our authorized staffing numbers from 682 FTEs to 677 total FTEs. Disaggregated the 677 FTEs are comprised of 552 sworn FTEs and 124 non sworn FTEs, which includes four sexual assault kit initiative grant positions, the sake grant that you all are familiar hearing about. Um, those grant positions consist of two sworn investigators, one non sworn cold case victim advocate and one non sworn cold case crime analyst. Okay. Next slide. This resource allocation table illustrates our general fund. The major differences between the proposed fiscal year 21 22 and adopted fiscal year 2021 are as follows. Personal services shows a 1.3% increase this roughly $800,000 increases, a combination of an increase in benefits, mainly healthcare and law enforcement retirement and the reduction of the five FTEs also impacted this figure. The operating line shows a 4.4% decrease. This decreases a combination of an increase in costs for our in car and body worn camera programs as well as the removal of a one time cost associated with equipment for the gang unit, the transfer of non city contract positions to the new CSW department along with various smaller operating cuts. The revenues line consists of record fees, officer court appearances and gold buyers permits, which continue to decline by an estimated 26% annually. We believe the COVID environment has had a major impact in this area as well. Next slide. The next illustration you see here is the grant resource allocation table. The major differences in this chart is a 32.5% decrease in operating and a 77% decrease in capital. These decreases are related to the joint fire police COVID grant received earlier this fiscal year, which covered one time expenses for equipment and training. The capital purchases consisting of larger equipment were for the fire department while the purchases from operating accounts were split between fire and police. There is also an increase in the FTEs by one, which is the cold case crime analyst position for the sake grant. This position has been advertised and interviews are being scheduled as we speak. Next slide. Our budget highlights. We've included three requests. The first is body worn camera cost increase. The city has a five year contract with a V view solutions that will end in fiscal year 22. Axon technologies acquired V view solutions and has transferred all V view customers to axon cameras and cloud storage, which will provide greater reliability and additional capabilities. The only difference is the cost is a little higher. The second is the in car camera cost increase in fiscal year 20 city manager approved a phased in change of the in car cameras from the vendor co ban to axon technologies. This request funds the continuation of that plan and is in line with the budget projections originally submitted. So now both our body worn cameras and in car cameras are now on the same operating platform. And the third is the central square contract cost increase. This request covers increases in annual maintenance fees for the central square one solutions. This is our records management system. RMS is determined that you're used to hearing and mobile applications. Those are the three requests that are in our budget. Our initiatives include the chief search. HR has contracted with developmental associates to conduct a nationwide search for your new chief. The next is a hiring retention. The department will focus on methods to not only hire more officers, but also to retain the officers we have the proposed increase to the police pay structure would certainly be a good start towards retention. Incentives like to take home vehicle program and relocation bonuses will also help with retention and hiring. And then the third is our promotional processes. The upcoming promotional processes for ranks below captain will include revamped study materials to ensure the leadership in the department is on the leading edge of best practices and law enforcement. Training emphasis will be placed on leadership in the 21st century, fair and impartial policing, equity and inclusion and contemporary challenges. And that concludes my budget presentation. Thank you, colleagues. You've heard the chief's report and chief. Thank you so very much. I think this is your last report to us chief. So really gonna miss you. Thank you. But we are gonna take you up on that visit to Memphis with a barbecue in the blues. Okay. Okay. All right, colleagues. I know that we have a lot of discussion that folks want to have around our police staffing and budget. And I'm wondering if we want to hear from our report on community safety department before we do that. I think those are very interlock discussions. And I'll ask Mr. Allure what he thinks about that idea. I think that's a fine idea. We can move right on to that. If you is your choice. We did have the fire presentation next, which is brief at your discretion. Sure. I think that what I would like to do is, if the chief can stay, is to go ahead and have the community safety department presentation. I don't think chief is all this woman too much, I hope, holding his presentation a little bit. And if we could hear that discussion, I think that that will help us think about the budget, you know, for both of those departments in the most constructive way. Mr. Mayor, before you move on, I just wanted to take a point of privilege and just thank Chief Davis for her work over the last five years. And just acknowledge, I think that with the national context of how things have been operating and how systems have been failing, I'm very glad that you've been here in Durham. And I want to thank you for the work that you've done to get us to where we are today. I know it's been a contentious conversation and you've handled it very well. And I want to say that I wish you the best in Memphis. And if there's any way shape or form that I can be supportive and your transition, please let me know. Thank you, Council Member. It's been a pleasure. It really has. Thank you. All right, thank you. And I believe that we're going to be hearing from Ms. Johnson, who's going to be presenting about the new department. Ms. Johnson, welcome. Thank you. As Mr. Allure said, we're seeing you in a different role today, but a great role. I'm glad to see you. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Bertha Johnson, interim Deputy City Manager. We'll be presenting the proposed Community Safety Department. So where we started in August 2020 at the direction of the former City Manager, Tom Bonfield, City Staff launched the 911 Call for Service initiative. And we sought to answer the question whether community resources align with community needs based on the types of calls for service coming to the 911 Centers. We decided to conduct a new study to analyze 911 call data and develop recommendations for improvement responses by law enforcement. We invited RTI International, a nonprofit research institute to partner with us and other cities in North Carolina and South Carolina to analyze their 911 call for service. And to help us develop recommendations for improving responses from law enforcement. The participating cities are listed here, Durham Raleigh, Cary, Burlington, Greensboro, Winston Salem, and Rock Hills. South Carolina was added because that was where Monica worked at one point in her career. We City Council received the presentation at the January 7 work session, which included recommended pilot projects. Also believe you all received actually the memo in September that explain this project and how we're going to move forward with this work. To implement the pilots and a long term strategy and program, a new department is being proposed in the FY 21-22 budget. I also have here the website that has all of the data that I've mentioned, the report, the presentation, the memos, and any other information that would bring folks to where we are today. So this is the proposed org chart for the community safety department. The staff is organized into two groups. The first being the operations team that will implement the pilots. This team is organized under community responder manager. This team would support the initial small scale response pilots currently in the early development stage. RTI would evaluate the pilots which would provide an as an evidence base for scaling up to larger initiatives. So staff of this team include nurse clinical remote responders, field responders as well as clinical social workers who can respond to behavior and mental health needs identified by 911 dispatchers or officers in the field. The other group will be the support community engagement team which would work on designing doing the research and evaluating the initiatives that the department oversees. This team will be organized under the community safety manager, which is currently funded by fuse corp, which is our fuse fellow. This team will support the development of the alternate response pilots not implementation but the development. They will also support the community safety and wellness task force, develop new partnerships and oversee the existing contracts, including the violence interrupter contract. This staff will include community safety analysts, community center designer, a strategic analyst and a research coordinator. The community center design strategies I want to focus on for a minute. This is a very important position for this department. Community center design is based on the belief that solutions to today's problems come from the power communities and not from the engagement of what we might traditionally consider subject matter experts. It's about designing with the community instead of designing for the community. The other position I want to point out is the research coordinator. This position is funded by Duke, Sanford School of Public Policy, and they will compensate graduate level public policy students to coordinate a larger volunteer research team of local university students, including students from NCCU. So next slide is understanding where the positions are coming from and which ones are new. To reconcile the org chart that you just saw, there will be four new positions for this department. Some you saw on the org chart are designated as contract positions. Three proposed positions currently have existing funding, and eight proposed positions are funded with existing vacant positions from various departments. As listed here, general services, one position, it was a real estate position they offered up. They did not need at this time. Five positions from the police department and two positions from 911. None of these positions or all of these positions were vacant positions. And so we're actually using resources that were not being utilized to stand up this department and pilot our projects. So moving to the resource allocation table, the first line here is personal services that includes the new funding and funding transfer from other departments to support the salaries and benefits. And the operations line 1.4 million, that is all funds transferred from the police office, police department for some of the contractual services and other agreements they have in the department. As I mentioned, one is the Bull City United, another one is the Mental Health Social Worker Contract. So just go back just a second, I want to point out something else here. So one of the things I want to mention is that we have so much additional financial support for this department that is not reflected in this resource allocation table. We have $100,000 from Bloomberg matching grants that we use to establish the IT. We have the funding from Arnav Ventures. They were actually very interested in this project and so they agreed to pay for ongoing technical assistance for our pilots through April 22. And that funding goes directly to RTI. We have, as I mentioned before, the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy will compensate the graduate students. We have the Fuse Fellow, which is funded by Fuse Corp, which the value of that position and training is $180,000. And we also have the 1 million to support the Community Safety and Wellness Task Force. So these are resources that are available to us that you do not see in the resource allocation table. So the budget highlights. Again, the purpose of this department is to enhance public safety through community-centered approaches to prevention and intervention. The Community Safety Department will focus on three areas in its first year. One will be piloting alternate response models, alternative response models to 911 calls, collaborate with community members, including the Community Safety and Wellness Task Force, to identify and test new approaches to public safety. And finally, building, managing and evaluating partnerships that promote a safer Durham. So the first area is piloting response models. The pilots are grouped into two categories, one being increased DPD capacity by right-sizing non-emergency in-person responses. And the second one being professional life short-term and long-term responses to mental health, behavior, health, and familiar faces. So before I describe the pilots on the screen here, which you've all seen, I want to note how many people been engaged in this work. I'm certainly not the subject matter expert, but we've had some of those folks on these teams. We have our RTI team you met in January with Dr. Storm, Dr. Mitchell, and Brian Agart. We have city staff working on this, including the budget office, the OPI office, 911, the city attorney's office, our assistant T.S. director, who is also our chief data officer, the police department, including our CIT clinical social worker, Abena, the fire department, and Durham County's EMS medical director. So this team is also beginning to include more stakeholders as we build out the pilots, including Durham County, and the terminal justice advisory committee. They have already received a presentation on some of this work. So these pilots were informed by insights from many of these people, as well as others in the community. And I also want to remind folks what a pilot is. It is a small scale short term experiment that helps us learn how a large scale project might work in practice, or if it will work in practice. So it's not by this by implementing these pilots, we're not fundamentally changing anything in law enforcement. We're just powering ideas to think about how we scale up those ideas that might work for our community. So on your screen now, you see the pilots. Just as a reminder, when you saw this in January, I believe you saw seven pilots. The pilot that was formerly described as familiar faces hasn't been incorporated into a couple of pilots listed, Delegate Mental Health and Behavioral Health Needs. We realized that these are cross across many pilots and programs, and so we wanted to make sure we capture that. So the first pilot is Remote Response, and this is how do we better utilize Remote Response capabilities to non-emergency calls? The city already has some Remote Response capability. We have P2C, which is an online reporting tool, and we also have a Telephone Response Unit. We know that Remote Response for non- urgent calls can help reduce the possibility of unintended negative consequences that result from in-person responses by armed officers. We also can address concerns related to over-policing by doing more online and telephone responses. We believe that there are many opportunities to better leverage our current remote responses, expand call types that can be appropriate responded to remotely, ensure we have standard operating procedures in place so that we can consistently identify calls for response and ensure this capacity is appropriately staffed. We also need to raise more community awareness and around Remote Response options available through Durham's Police Department. The second one is related to traffic, sending trained civilian responders and local police officers to abandoned vehicles and minor traffic incidents. Currently we know that we need legislative action to advance responses to traffic, but we know also that Fayetteville and Wilmington both have received these exceptions, which allow them to dispatch non-sworn officers to minor traffic incidents. Fayetteville, for example, has approximately 10 non-sworn staff who respond to minor incidents in abandoned vehicles. They have been able to divert 30 percent of their traffic calls to this team. Another area is alarms. How can we reduce the number of false alarms by requiring more compliance from our companies and considering alternate responses? Last year, Durham Police Department responded to over 50,000 residential and commercial alarms. The vast majority of those alarm calls were false. Fewer than 1 percent indicate any actual break-in occurred, and the vast majority of those calls where break-in did occur, an on-scene arrest was not made. So we're researching ways to put the onus on alarm companies to verify calls before dispatching police responders, also considering how to respond to unverified calls, including whether to consider alternative responders other than sworn officers. The next three are related to mental health and really are the ones that are least developed at this point, and you'll see when we talk about the timeline that we have sufficient time to develop these. Improving mental health 911 data, we talked about this in January. The inability for us to really distinguish those calls at the beginning, and so what we want to what we want to improve is how do we identify and track 911 calls involving mental health needs before dispatch, how to identify and track some response to 911 calls by responders in the field, and how to consistently and appropriately apply mental health related codes in both of these moments. So this would involve some kind of simple diagnostic tool. So this work is crucial to us understanding the appropriate response allocations and to enhance our ability to send the appropriate personnel type. Number five is mental health respond remote responders. The plan is to embed nurse practitioners and mental health clinicians into the 911 call center who respond remotely to a subset of non-critical calls and the last one being the mental health in person responders. This is moving more towards a cahoots model where you have prices workers as well as other mental health professionals going out to calls that are required that do not require a armed response. So here's the pilot timeline. I would say that I would not get caught up in the exact dates which we don't have exact dates here anyway but we're looking at these in terms of you know when do we think we can get these pilots underway. So first you see pilot one phase one is implementation of enhanced data collection line on calls with mental health. That work is already underway and this is something that we will need to finish before we focus on the mental health pilots. The phase two in the summer would be implementation of remote responses to subset of non-critical calls. This would include remote response to telephone response unit. How do we use one call P2C which is the online tool and remote swarm response. Just pointing out the difference between P2C which is the online form and remote form response is if a resident wants to report they can report directly online. The remote response swarm response is when a police officer calls a resident for information versus driving to the resident's home or to a place of business. Phase two would be implementation of in-person responses to non-critical calls. This is where we mentioned you know traffic calls abandoned vehicles false alarms that would be a phase obviously that requires a little more work than the first two I mentioned and then finally spring 22 would be implementation of an in-person response to critical calls and obviously this is the one that will require the most work and getting this pilot ready to to start. It is really focused on mental health and again you know it may start off in the it will start off in the pilot phase as a co-response but ultimately if you want to implement something like a hoots it would be totally non-sworn or response to mental health concerns. So that is focus one. Focus two would be community collaboration and so this would be collaborating with community members to identify and test new approaches to public safety. This department will serve as a city's main staffing resource and support for the community safety and wellness task force. Of course this department's first priority and community collaboration will be with the community safety and wellness task force. We believe that it's essential that we work together. We have been very much involved with the task force as they have organized. We've also looked at and as you all know the city council members know that there is a alignment between some of the work that's included in the community safety and wellness task will work and the pilots that we have listed here today. So focus area three would be building, managing and evaluating partnerships that promote a safer Durham. This department will take on oversight and management of the following contracts and interlocal agreements that were previously funded in the Durham police department. Those include the administrative office courts, the joint city county gang reduction strategy and as I've mentioned the clinical social worker in bull city united ballots interrupters contract. So based on the work conducted today the current budget request provides the necessary resources for the department to begin small scale pilots and to support the safety and wellness task force and manage the contract. Additional resources may be identified doing the planning implementation of the pilots and to ensure that we actually come back to city council with any recommendation the needs for funding we are committed to coming back at the end of the second quarter with a report on the status of the pilots as well as the other work and share any resource needs. So that is the end of my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much Ms. Johnson and thank you to Chief Davis. Colleagues I think I like to do it like this. Why don't we start with questions and then we'll follow up with any comments and recommendations that council members might have. If you have questions for Chief Davis or Ms. Johnson let me know. Council Member Freeland. Thank you Mr. Mayor and I just want to echo what Council Member Freeman said Chief Davis you are going to be very much missed and thank you for being here. Thank you for that wonderful presentation both Chief Davis and Ms. Johnson this is really exciting to me and seeing the layout really helps me envision what's possible. I'm particularly excited about the community design strategist made me think about that quote the closest to the pain should be the closest to the power and having you know an intentional strategy in the department that seeks that feedback and input from community is really important to me. I have a question about the I'm thinking I'm looking at the pilot model I'm loving the kind of data driven pilot model and I saw the six pilots that you mentioned I think that's a really good start and and and wondering if scaling that is possible and I'm particularly thinking about I remember when the violence interrupter program was brought before council we kind of had like three options there was like the you know focusing on one area then on one end and then there was a middle option and then there was a max option we went with the max option and what I've seen here feels like a really good start but I'm curious if it's possible to to scale what's here and do more in this space. So if I if I understand your question correctly we these are small-scale pilots and so I would take one as an example that I'm most familiar with. Yes you can do larger scale pilots for example instead of piloting something during a certain time of the day or during a certain time of the week if you had more resources you would pilot that at different times of the day different times of the week for a more accurate data based on the conditions during those times. So yes you can you can scale up pilots but I would not be able to speak to I would not be able to speak to the details particularly around the mental health powers but we could certainly that is something we could certainly think about and and and come back to you on. Yeah thank you Ms. Johnson like was I correct in seeing that there's like one clinical social worker that we're looking to hire and and bring on a staff is that correct? So we have two clinicians one is both of those are contracts so those are contracts one is an existing contract in the police department and one it would be a new contract but it is a contract and so you can use those for more hours if needed or a few hours it's not a person it's a contract. Okay yeah well I guess I'm just my biggest takeaway from the presentation is this is awesome but I know that the that the need there's an urgent need in our community around public safety and if I had a choice between you know one or two contracts for a clinical social worker to be deployed to try to gather information about what pilots work and make sense to potentially scale it if I'd option to one or two of those folks and 10 or 12 of those folks I would like to cast a wide net to meet the need in the community and I'm curious about I'd be curious to see options for considering this on the on the small end of what's possible when we launch this new department the those are kind of my thoughts thank you Mr. Mayor and I would just also as a reminder the last pilot is not scheduled to start until the spring so we will be coming back to you before then with any resource additional resource needs as we continue to design those pilots got it okay I have more questions but I know some of my colleagues want to want to jump in go ahead go ahead council member this if you're if you have more please do okay cool um this this question is for Chief Davis um I was curious about uh I know you're there were I think five positions that are coming from the police department to help staff the new community safety and wellness department um I'm curious could you talk a little bit about those five positions and what that means for the police department to to you know let go of those so um our department like the other department since the government were asked to look where we could potentially make reductions to help support not just this initiative but just as a as a budget um sort of ask and we look very carefully at where we could afford to lose you know officers um that you know not saying that the work isn't needed but um we took a careful look at the position that's in professional standards instead of filling that position we saw where we could have a sort of electronic service for transcribing and um that was a spot that that was sort of a low hanging fruit uh we had two vacant um motorcycle officer positions while those officers have regular patrol duties they do a lot of escorts as well and not saying that escorts aren't important but we saw where we could manage with the six and maybe not take on as many escorts uh as we have in the past so um and then we had two additional vacancies and of course you know we have vacancies in the police department anyway and as um as we aggressively try to fill our vacancies trying to recover from last year we know that it'll be some time next year before we fill them all you know um with anticipating you know classes coming up so we looked at areas where it would have the least impact on the department um to to help support that initiative thank you um and how many vacancies currently exist today in the police department unfilled it's approximately hold on man i have that right here so um today we have 79 vacancies 79 wow yes okay okay um thank you mr mayor those are my questions thank you thank you very much councilmember other colleagues questions for chief davis or miss johnson at this point councilmember middleton thank you mr mayor and colleagues good to see you all fellow thundercats and everybody watching uh chief davis good to see i want to echo comments of um my colleagues uh lauding you and you'll get plenty of it i'm sure in the waning days and even as you move i do want to say for the record um chief davis you're part of a cadre of law enforcement leaders around the country that are not bucking or pushing back at the notion of rethinking policing but are actually cooperating the chiefs like you and chief aridondo there's there's a handful that we can identify around the country that are part of that cadre and i want to thank you uh for being a conversation partner and what is so needed in our country uh there's some of you but there's not a lot of you and during take he uh mess around and find out if you want to um there are not a whole lot of chiefs in the country that are on the market that are as amenable and open the type of conversations we're having in this city um we'll find that out so i so as we as we approach this this process and as we uh uh go on and we're going to be all right we got a great city manager we got an incredible teams going to get us a good police chief but i i i want to say very seriously that we need to keep in context what uh in context and then clearly what we had in chief davis and and those type of cheese around the country uh come at a premium so thank you man for your service and i told my friend to memphis already that uh you act up if you want to we'll snatch your right back um so i want to i want to thank the city manager uh in your team for taking what is it clearly palpable and live issue and putting flesh on these bones and you've done it magnificently and i think we should trust our manager our newly minted a newly hired city manager that still has the new city manager smell in her office and on her i think we should trust her uh to guide this process one of the things you know when i when i buy a plane ticket um i choose the destination i want to go to i buy the ticket and i sit on the plane and i i get to my destination i don't i don't knock on the door and you know off of the pilot my take on approach vectors uh for landing i just sit down and and i choose where i want to go and uh let the professional pilot we've got some great professional pilots got in this craft i want to say about this department i'm excited about the work i think it's necessary work um but i do want to offer a caveat about the the the the excitement and the celebration of the department um no i'm a local guy i'm not a member of congress i'm not aspiring congress i'm i'm just a local politician so everything that i do everything that i uh take into consideration when it comes to Durham is my question is what is the Durham fix what is Durham's need what is it being addressed in Durham um so when i look at this department and i think about Durham and Durham's participation in this national discussion and whatever the national discussion is there's always got to be a Durham horolary you know when we talk about ubi i know it's like a national thing but the question is how does it fit Durham what what Durham population should be served um violence interruption is a national thing but the question is what does it look like for Durham uh because i'm a local guy so so this this department for me you know one of the questions i ask is you know what is the local fix for Durham even as we participate in the national conversation what's this doing for Durham and you know and and alas we're finally going to address the inordinate number of people that have been murdered by the Durham police department over the years on our people finally we're going to address the inordinate number of people that had mental health issues that have been gunned down by the Durham police department glad we're finally addressing that um and if you think i'm being cheeky if you say one is too many i agree with you and whatever that number is that the Durham police department has a that threshold has been crossed if that number however high or low you think it is warrants a whole new department and a whole reimagining of our org chart whatever the number is in Durham how much more so should gunfire and people getting shot in our city warrant this type of dramatic nuance multifaceted response the question for me is as important as this net and listen i i i called for unarmed responders last year so every substantive part of this department you're not going to find utterances of me on the record against it i support everything this department is doing but what are we trying to fix in Durham what what is the Durham iteration of this problem and however many people our police department have brutalized that were however many people our police department have shot however many national headlines Durham has made the last five or ten years because our police department emptied a magazine and somebody put their hands up whatever that number is if this is the response that's appropriate for it for the Durham number where's the equal response for gunfire in our city because respectfully whatever the research has been whatever control groups whatever amount of penetration folk have done is to arrive that this is what we need to be doing in the circles i hang in i promise you when the question is asked and it's just an essay question not a fill in the blank question no one has ever said to me you don't count them in what we need it are unarmed folks coming out here to deal with this gunfire not one that's not to say that this isn't important because it is and Durham can lead in a national conversation but as we celebrate this new undertaking this new initiative one of the questions i and it's brilliant and our staff has taken what we asked for and they've done a brilliant job and we should be able to tell our friends to accept yes as an answer we're going to have unarmed responders in Durham we have a whole new department brilliant let's take yes for an answer and let's let the professionals now fly this aircraft when i look at the department one of my questions and you can take it rhetorically you can answer it of chief or staff are any of these 15 people going to respond when somebody here's gunfire are any of and if not that's the headline in Durham so even as we build capacity even as we add to and i listen we need to have a robust response a menu of responses as a government we need to be able to keep black and brown and mentally mentally a challenged people alive we can do that and we also need to respond if the proud boys want to storm the city center i want both i want the ability to do both because here's what i know when you talk to people who are not part of the professional organizing class who are not in city hall who don't have mailing lists who don't do phone making you ask them what their issue is and what their problems are we know what the list is we know what the litany of things is that people live rattle off in Durham so as we celebrate this department i just want to put out there to and contextualize it that there's still a whole group of folks who literally don't understand what this is about and that doesn't mean it's not that it's not important there's a whole group of folk in our city that are still training their children to jump in bathtub not because a mentally ill person's banging on their door but because an ak-47 is being fired because of nine millimeters being fired outside their door and until we look at this not as a zero-sum game i reject zero-sum game politics where success on one end has to mean you know loss on another i reject that this is Durham we're the fourth most educated city in america whatever we've done we're doing in this department i think we have to also hold it in tension with what we've done in other areas i think that and i'm not talking about chief davis personally but chiefs chiefs of chief davis is ill of that mindset have been great partners in helping us get to where we need we spend too much money on police but but but we also understand that for folks watching this debate on the outside watching us who who may not be initiating total nuances of the conversation when they see us do this in this area and they ask me you know has the Durham police department shooting people like that real question is the Durham police is Durham getting attention for killing folk when they ask me questions like that and when they ask me questions like so y'all got a whole new department for this and putting money in it but you can't try ShotSpotter to save my baby for free real question you're talking about wasn't ShotSpotter supposed to be a pilot wasn't that supposed to be an experiment and i said well you know we're deliberative i go through myself we're a deliberative body you know we talk but i said well which one of those folks are going to come when my baby's in the bathtub in the new department real question so even as we celebrate this even as we fed it and we lauded and we fund it and we should let us be muted in our celebration and be mindful that at the end of the day none of these people in this department are going to respond when gunfire that will go off tonight in our city that will be unreported you know we're looking at an 911 department and we're getting data points from a 911 department that itself is being understaffed I have to ask are some of our data points being affected by the staffing issues in the 911 department would our data look different if we got a fully staffed a 911 department so I want to congratulate manager pay and Bertha and the entire team and those of us in our public square that have pushed Durham to lead and to take up an important part in this national conversation but at the end of the day we work for Durham and we work in Durham and the question is because I'm not interested in just being on somebody's national honor roll I have no I don't care about accolades or any national group I want to know because I'm a local guy I'm accountable to people of Durham what is the Durham fix and what does it look like for Durham unfortunately we have a team of experts of pilots who have taken the queue have taken up the call and I think are doing it in a responsible safe effective way guiding us into this conversation tailoring it and contouring it for Durham and I think we should just let the plane be flown because we've chosen the destination that's our job we've chosen the destination and now our staff is doing it and I want to thank them for it and I just want to remind us that when we pass this new department gunfire will still be going off in our city every night and children will still be jumping in bathtubs what new department will we propose for that thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member other colleagues anyone else questions or comments for Chief Davis or Miss Johnson Mayor Pro Tem thank you Mr. Mayor this is a great presentation I want to thank you Bertha and Chief Davis for this work and I'm really excited about putting some real specifics on the community safety department and the pilots that y'all are proposing the couple of pilots that we are planning for the next year seem really well thought out I like being able to see the timeline so that we can communicate clearly with community members about when to expect different pieces and yeah I mean I think this is it's really innovative work and I'm really glad that Durham is a leader in this area and that we're going to be able to we're going to be able to really do do these projects in a way that feels significant I share council member Freelon's questions around scale I feel like there there are some opportunities here to to scale up some of these pilots initially I think there are some I think there are some opportunities to do a little bit more and I don't want you know I don't I don't want us to bite off more than we can chew you know I think it is good to start small and then and then scale up from there but there has been we have done a lot of research we have a lot of data I think we have a lot of good knowledge already about the kinds of calls that we're getting that these unarmed responders could handle and so I I would also like to see a little bit more a little bit more introductory pilot like a little bit broader scale for for what we're moving forward I think what we have is great but I think that I think that we could do we could do more with more with more resources the the question of you know how to resource the department I also think is really important right like we are for me the goal of this there are multiple goals of this work but one of the key pieces is moving some of the work that our police department is doing into unarmed response for a couple of reasons you know wanting to invest more on the prevention and the intervention side than the enforcement side more generally but also because we're taking work away from what police are being asked to do like if we're able to divert a significant number of our traffic calls like you said they've diverted 30% in Fayetteville which is fabulous I hadn't heard that before that we're actually that we have we need fewer resources in the police department because we are moving those moving those duties along with those resources over to over to unarmed response I think that it's important to resource the department initially I'm much less concerned that we give these folks too much and that we give them too little and with any sort of like new and innovative program I think we I want us to set it up for success I want the resources that staff need to be there when they need them and I want to make sure that we are providing those resources initially so that we can draw on them and we can scale up the pilots without a whole without a whole lot of extra extra work I appreciated Bertha hearing about all the other resources that are in the department that aren't listed in that aren't listed in that in the in the budget document and it's really great to see all the community folks who are coming together and who are excited about this work the folks from Duke the Fuse Fellows like this feels like it feels like a community effort which is really which is really great but I know that we are going to need more resources in the department and I believe that those resources should come from the police department because that's the that is the work that we are moving is the work of police we have a lot of vacancies in the police department and we've talked about that a lot I understand that you know the and from talking to Wanda that the that moving all of the vacancies to community safety wouldn't be reasonable that we need to fill some of those vacancies and try to get more get more folks into the department but I think that it would be reasonable to at least earmark some positions in police department for a future transfer and not in this fiscal year so not in the far future but to plan to transfer additional additional positions in this fiscal year and to at least make sure if we don't move them at the beginning of the year if we wait to see what the department comes back within a couple of months about what resources they need to at least make sure that those positions are going to be filled in the police department so that we don't have so we don't have a situation where we're scrambling for resources mid-year where we know that there will be you know we know that there will be some resources available that we can easily transfer at that point I personally I think it makes sense to just move them over into community safety because I know that that's that's where I want those people hired I want I would you know I want to hire more people in community safety but I understand that that waiting to see exactly what the staff tell us that they need is also a reasonable that's a reasonable approach to how we how we move forward toward staffing the department but I would at least like to you know I don't want to fill all 70 something of those vacancies with police officers I want us to make sure that we have that we have positions in the police department reserved for community safety for the you know for to move later later in the fiscal year I think that the asset we've gotten from community of moving you know at the time I think that the 60 officers was proposed because it was a 10% approximately 10% of the police department and in conversations with City Manager Page and with my colleagues you know I feel like that I feel like that 10% number is it's a good start like it feels like a good down payment on what we need to do I'm hoping that the community safety department will be able to handle more than 10% of what our police are doing in the future but I think that moving that having an initial goal of moving that 10% and my suggestion was that we do that over the next three fiscal years is a good down payment on on that work having a community safety department that's about 10% the size of the police department and can take on a significant could take over a significant amount of their work in three years feels like that feels like a real success to me like if we had if we had that level of resources in alternative response I think we would be I think we would be doing something really significant and visionary and that would it would make a huge difference I think we should plan for that's what our goal should be and I look forward to hearing my colleagues thoughts thanks thank you Mayor Pro Tem other colleagues questions or comments councilmember Middleton Mr. Mayor I think I saw the councilmember Freeman's that pangol if I'll yield if that's okay I've already spoken sure councilmember Freeman did you have your hand up yes thank you I I can appreciate the councilmember freelance and Mayor Pro Tem Johnson's questions and thoughts and I want to thank Ms. Bertha Johnson and Chief Davis for the presentation I'm mindful that that this is a critical juncture point and I really am I'm really open to the conversation but I'm not open to just doing what one person thinks and I'm mindful that there are a lot of folks in this community who don't necessarily understand and I know that the conversation should be happening more broadly and I'm looking forward to that happening over the next few months or years or what have you I'm grateful that the staff is being innovative in this work and I know that they're they're their work and especially with the the leadership of Madam Page I'm mindful that this is not this is not about a win this is about you know what makes us safe and I'm very concerned about how we get there I'm very concerned about the the ways in which we use our our platforms to kind of push us there as opposed to working with one another to get there and so just noting like I'm very I'm very aware of of of just how much gun violence you know is is involved in our community I'm very aware of of of issues around domestic violence rape child abuse all of those things and I'm also mindful that police brutality has to stop like seriously I'm I'm not quite clear on why I guess why the the pilot wouldn't be where we start and then we see where we could go so I'm I'm definitely trying to understand and other than making a point of making a down payment on a promise you made what would be the purpose of adding I could hear the one more you know the one more social worker it would need to be hear me when I say this the dollars be spent on government services should be very intentional and if we're going to talk about 60 over three years or even an additional five those need to be really specific because you're turning one system off you're not just I mean you're not just you're not just just setting a pilot you're actually trying to say that in three years this is what's going to happen and if it isn't successful what does that look like and who's harmed by that because I know that more often than not the people who are who are challenged in this criminal legal system and the police brutality look like my children they look like my sons specifically and I'm really more I'm really more vested in how to be successful and effective than it how it looks and so I'm mindful that I you know I don't speak in in prose and I don't speak in very you know like punts and or pundits like I'm really like this is about my neighbors and my very neighbor who has apparently been shot three different by three different guns she had three different bullets removed from her body something is is seriously wrong here and I really think that the community health and safety department is the direction we should go but I think we should be going with our neighbors I think we should be going with the folks who are who are directly impacted and I mean I hear that I'm mindful that this is the fourth most educated you know city in in the United States and I know that we should be ingenuitive enough to come up with a solution it does not mean that you just make demands and that is it so I just want to make sure that we're taking the right steps to figure out what the solution should look like and how they operate thank you bye Cal's member Caballero good morning everyone also thank you for my excused absence yesterday I was able to travel and actually see my mom after 18 months so that was a glorious thing to be able to do I'll just say that the video of your entrance into your mom's house was one of the most fabulous videos I've seen in a long time I can I can send it to other colleagues but she told me I was not allowed to put it on social media because it was mostly just her sobbing for 20 minutes yes it was lovely so good morning I just wanted to share my thoughts because I've had some pretty in-depth conversations with manager Page I thought about this issue a lot and I think for me that was and I said this with when we got our 911 data it was really illuminating for me to see where these 911 calls are coming from and I said it then that there was so two things I think that I want the ability to be able as we see the pilot information coming through I want to thank staff I think it's a great plan it's super intentional it's exactly the direction that I think not just counsel but many in our community have indicated they want to see our community move towards which is a different approach to safety in general it's a more holistic it's a more compassionate view of our own humanity right it's instead of a punitive response it's really looking to figure out how do we stop punishing people and how do we actually help people solve the problems in their lives and have a more dignified quality of life that is my fundamental basis for all of this and I think that there's two things I want to always be and I said this to the folks who are the activists and I said this to the I said it's city staff I want to be methodical and I want to be intentional and so I think this this plan in front of us does both I also want the option when we hear the information to be able to move those positions out of police and be nimble because that is the department that it makes sense for me for it to move from I also know that when we move things like traffic response and some of these other you know mental health parts of the job that I think you know my guess is most police officers did not sign up to do the work we we heard that that they feel overwhelmed at the type of response that they you know the types of calls that they're getting that they don't necessarily feel equipped and it's not necessarily why they went to the job what I do know is that I want more police officers doing the response you know the rape kits and things like that and so when we take something off their plate and put it in a different department it lets our police officers actually focus on the core work that we need them to do which is to solve and investigate for violent crime so to me it's a win-win because we're allowing our police officers to do their core work because they're not responding to parts of the job that they didn't sign up for and is not necessarily it's it's not a good fit it's not an alignment it's like when we ask educators to be you know nurses and counselors that's not what their job is their job is to educate children and so I want to be really clear and what my intent is and what my position is which is that I know that if we clear some of these other this other work from our police officers we are going to get a better response we are going to have police officers who are ready to solve the violent crime in our community and we're going to get better outcomes on the violence that we're seeing now that so many of us are afraid of councilmember Middleton you're right that the gun crime in the city is really intense when we first moved to Durham we heard shots around my house pretty frequently and then it kind of went away and this year especially we've heard things very close to our house we've seen gunfire coming off our street my kids have seen the lights so I get it I understand that we are in a very violent moment in our city but I don't think we can continue on the path that we've done before because the path the work that we've done before has failed because we're still signaling the gun violence so we have to look for a different future and so I appreciate what staff has done I also want to be able to reallocate positions if that's what pilots indicate in the middle of the year and not wait until next year how that happens I will trust staff but I just want to share with my colleagues in the community that if in a you know first quarter second quarter it's clear that we have some good you know we have we've run our pilots there's some good information I want to be able to move those positions out of the police department and staff what we need to staff and community in the new community safety and laws department thank you very much council member other colleagues I see I think I see both council member recent council member Middleton but I think I'll go with council member recent sir I'll yield sir let him yeah thank you yeah thanks for not making making me follow him it's always a bad plan friends although it's hard enough to go after council member Calviero especially when she's talking about how great it was to visit her mom I had that experience a couple weeks ago I didn't have good video like that but I had good experiences so I hope we can all have those experiences soon I'm just so grateful to be on a on a body on in a board with folks like like all of y'all we don't all agree on everything we don't all agree on how to get to where we're trying to go but we all want to be in the same place in a city that is safer where folks feel free to call for help when they need it one of the things that I've figured out as a part of this process over the last couple years is something that I just wasn't aware of not too long ago and that is that there are tons of folks in our community who aren't comfortable calling 911 when they experience a mental health emergency I didn't know that because I am safely ensconced in layers of wealth and privilege that shield me from having to worry about that if I had a mental health crisis in my house I would call 911 and I would be safe and secure in the knowledge that I would be treated with respect and dignity by whoever showed up that should be the experience of every member every resident of this city and for far too many of our residents it's not they just don't feel that safe doing it and this experience has taught me that and so if nothing else has it been accomplished I learned something and so I think that's pretty cool but that's not the only thing we're doing we have all made a commitment together all seven of us to advance this work in this way to make sure that we develop unarmed responses to the types of things that our police officers don't need to be doing and probably aren't that interested in doing I'm stunned when I hear folks talk to me in the community about seeing police officers with big brooms sweeping off debris from car crashes on our streets there's no reason for a police officer to be doing that they should be ready out in the community talking to folks about their safety needs and investigating crimes and responding to urgent 911 calls not on the not taking notes about who bumped into whose bumper not filling out reports that insurance companies require certainly not sweeping the streets after these accidents to clear debris those are things that other folks can do and as we as we create capacity in city government in this new department to do some of those things to respond to mental health crises in a way that does not engender the concern that many of our community members face when we create capacity to let officers not have to do some of the bookkeeping some of the sweeping that I've seen them and that I've heard folks telling me about after automobile crashes and in lots of other ways big and small we reduce the number of calls the sheer number of calls that police officers respond to and when I talk to folks about it that seems to be a huge problem the sheer number of calls that our officers respond to going from call to call to the extent that we can shave some of those off for them and put those calls into areas that don't require an armed response that seems to me the exactly the kind of low hanging fruit that local government is is charged with doing now some of this stuff we can do soon some of this is going to require a legislative response the good news is we've got precedent for it and I hope that our our city and other communities around the state are considering these types of changes can get these kinds of local bills or maybe even a statewide law that allows communities to be very intentional about doing this kind of thing that's work we're going to have to work with our legislative delegation and I know Commissioner Wallace will be helping us move towards that that type of legislative action but in the meantime I'm so excited about the work of this this group this particular department want to thank our staff for moving us in that direction and for being prepared to stand up this department on staffing levels I think we've got some work to do as a group to figure out how we want to go forward my own view as I've said publicly and privately to some folks is that I think a 15 person head count on day one for this department is looks like the right number to me I think the order chart shows that we've got some capacity to do a number of small scale pilots very soon that we've got the staff we need to manage the development of new pilots the maintenance the maintenance of existing relationships like the violence interrupter program and others that we've got I think 15 is probably a good place to start but I truly believe in my heart of hearts that if we end this fiscal year with the department having a head count of 15 we will have failed to meet in this moment and I just truly believe that we need to figure out some way to get more resources into this department at mid-year and I look to my colleagues and our staff to figure out the right way to do that but if we end the upcoming fiscal year and we haven't added more staff to this department I just don't know that we're setting ourselves up for success and I respect the fact that the proposal from staff about the department recognizes that likelihood but I also respect the views that I've heard from my colleagues about the need to be concrete and our commitment to this work and so I'm open to hearing from my colleagues about that but I think fundamentally this is I think I think Councilor Middleton is right to call our attention to what we're actually trying to accomplish here I think it's right that we create this unarmed response for mental health crises because I know there are folks in our community that would call 911 about about a mental health emergency if they knew that there was something else that could happen aside from armed police officers showing up I know that our officers are doing work in relation to car crashes around the city that they don't need to be doing but I also and I also know that if we give that work to other folks to who are not armed that will free up our officers to respond to the calls they really need to be responding to and respond without having been overwhelmed by pushing a broom on our street beforehand that they can really focus their energy on what matters that I think is what local government is about is making sure that we put the right people in the right position to make our community better and keep us safe I think that's what this department will do I'm ecstatic about the work but I understand that we've got lots of other problems too that we also need to put energy into appreciate that call to action and look forward to a conversation about how we can the mechanisms we need to use as a group to make sure that those resources get in the department the last thing I want to say about it and I appreciate your patience with me talking through this is that our budgets need to reflect what we think is actually going to happen I think it's I appreciate staff's recognition that sometime in the middle of the year we're going to have to have another conversation about this department but I also know that we have in the past set up mid-year adjustments when we pass the budget initially you know whether it's whether it's been mid-year pay adjustments that we knew we were going to have to do we set aside the money for you and we did it or lots of other times that we have talked about what we're going to do mid-year I think we can figure out some way to do that now that that makes that gives the department a little bit more runway and it's certainly possible that the department will need more and that's the but and they can kind of talk to us about that but I think adding additional resources triggering those in the current budget but having them not be available until mid-year is something we should seriously think about but as I said we'll probably have seven different opinions about how to handle that I trust this group and our staff to guide us to our consensus I think that's what I wanted to say thank you Mr. Mayor thank you very much colleagues before we do another round here let me just part of my job is to try to figure out a way for us to shape this discussion and move it to some conclusion as well as to remind us that we have a big agenda this morning but this is a super important topic and there's been so much discussion about it among ourselves over the months in our community and so I want to try to figure out a way to give our staff some guidance and to move us ahead I don't want to give everybody else a chance to address this issue this morning I will just say to you that the longer we address this issue the shorter I'm expecting you all to be talking on the other items today because we do have deadline and I will be counting on you for that okay so as I say I know that we have lots of opinions on this we need to give our staff some guidance so I'm going to suggest that if there's someone who has a motion that they would like to put forward that we could at least begin talking about and then we can have another round of discussion if there is no motion I think the best thing to do at this point would be to hear any final comments from people and then we can take this up at a later time I am mindful of the fact that helping our staff get direction is important Councilmember Middleton thank you Mr. Mayor well to speak directly to your to your query or direction I think the staff has done exactly what we've asked them to do already and I'm fully prepared to affirm what the staff has done I think they've been responsive and I think they've been on point and I want to share Councilmember Reese's accolades and feelings about this board I feel really grateful and privileged to be part of this this deliberative body and I think we're having an important discussion you know leadership is Latin for sometimes you have to piss your friends off roughly translated roughly translated and I why can't we just tell our friends that you should take yes for an answer I um and you know respectfully I don't I have no idea where the 60 that 60 number 20 per year comes from I don't I have no idea about the calculus I haven't seen the science I haven't seen the research it seems arbitrary and here's the danger we're running we've done a good thing here but I think the danger we're running is is to appear that we're trying to win something beyond the sacred and important goal and I think those optics are they gnaw at our credibility they gnaw at the gravitas of this body listen I don't know where that 20 comes from and and we've gotten pretty granular in this conversation you know about what police do at the street listen I've done ride-alongs where I thought it looked like it was a routine traffic accident and it turns out that would happen the reason why the car got into an accident is because there was a domestic violence dispute or or the person was criminally intoxicated so the moment in between there's an accident that might look routine by the time you get to sweeping up the debris you have no idea what's going on in that car I have no place getting that granular or getting that deeper level of discussion about policing I don't think any of us on this board do actually that's why we have a Wanda page that's why we have a Seryl and Dave that's why we have a professional staff that we create the vision articulate the values for and let them do their work and I think we're running the risk of appearing of serving a master other than the people of Durham absent the display of what that 20 people and by the way Fayetteville Fayetteville and I've talked to my friends in Fayetteville they're not drawing down the size of their tools it's a police department they're adding capacity they're adding tools to their toolbox so what they're doing is creating an ecosystem whereby they can respond with non sworn officers Fayetteville's got a gun problem too the gun problem isn't going away because we have mental health responders what they're trying to do is to to increase their capacity to respond to those other things not diminish it because we've moved something from one part of the org chart to another part of the org chart and absent respectfully absent the calculus absent the science absent the the the the underlying research that that buttresses and undergird that number 20 60 officers it appears as though we're we're we're you know we're genuinely reflecting at an altar outside of Durham and respectfully the city of Durham and the municipal workforce of Durham is not window dressing and it's not a prop for any program or any campaign for self-aggrandizement or to get accolades from some people outside of Durham what is the Durham Taylor response why where's that number come from who came up with it where are the experts that we should base that our decision on that as opposed to want the page in our team I will not outsource the protection of 300,000 people I will not outsource the governance of an entire city to two organizations I'm not I have no parts of it and I think we should tell our friends to accept yes as an answer we've won we got a whole department and as bureaucracies go if this department follows the path that bureaucracies usually follow it's going to get bigger organically it's going to because that's what happens at bureaucracies departments grow every one of our departments almost across our oil chart have positions that are empty so police department positions aren't empty because we've finished the police department positions aren't empty because oh we don't need them they're empty because there's a moral issue they're empty because we don't have we're not competitive in pay there are people retiring think about pouring water into a bucket with a hole at the bottom of it those numbers don't represent expansion they represent stabilizing trying to hold on to where we are and until we explain respectfully how this department is somehow because we've if we've been doing the same thing we're at relative to gun violence so this is our this is department that after it's running for a couple of years we can expect to see gun violence go down is this our answer to the people of Durham so respectfully without the science behind those numbers I'm going to trust Wanda Pay and I'm going to trust our staff who have delivered what we've asked they have done precisely what we've asked we've won this department is now going to be codified it's going to be a staff it's going to get more money more money as the years go on and we still aren't trying to spot it so so so we're doing what they've asked I think we should trust the pilots to fly this plane because we've already told it where to go and it's going there I'm very proud of the work so my recommendation is to do what the staff has asked us has proposed to us in response to what we've asked them to do if we're going to start putting computing proposals to what our staff has done bring the science that I haven't seen it I've just seen arbitrary numbers based upon dogma and ideological entrenchment like I've never seen before and I work at a church mind you I trust my staff thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member council member Freelon thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you colleagues I have an idea for a motion that I just wanted to I'm not making a motion it's an idea for a motion specifically in response to your question for that so I'm thinking about a motion to direct staff to ask them to put three options this is the longest motion ever three options together similar to the violence interrupter I mean I'm you know I'm trying to work from the precedent that I know in my short time on council I enjoyed being able to look at you know here's what it looks like to go in one geographic region with X amount of folks here's what it looks like to double that and there was a discussion around that and disagreement we reached a consensus to take the max option but I would be curious to see to bring it back to staff to ask Wanda and her team to look at what scaling the department might entail with what was presented today as the smallest option with two more at least to consider for us to look at taking into consideration some of what my colleagues Johnson and Rhys have said about giving us the capacity to scale after we see what some of the numbers in the data reveal you know after our first or second quarterly report I don't know yeah what that looks like but that's kind of where my head's at in terms of emotion thank you that wasn't the longest motion ever made a lot longer motions than that myself Mr. Mayor Council Member Freeman I would not like to waste staff time and acknowledging that I think we're at a junction where folks are on board with the option that staff has already presented I would like to amend to offer a friendly amendment to that motion and just note that we either go with that option or the option to add the mid-year adjustment I think as Council Member Rhys mentioned because I think that's really just the difference thank you I'm going to just say we're still discussing here yeah but thank you colleagues other thoughts Council Member Middleton I would put into consideration a motion to do what the staff has already asked us which would have been regular order we just go ahead and improve the budget within it so my motion is to honor what we've asked the staff to do and what they've done thank you Mr. Mayor thank you Council Member I've heard three different people speak I've heard three different things I would second that motion if I needed a second okay then we'll Council Member Middleton do you have a motion that you'd like to make I move that we affirm the recommendation the staff has brought before us regarding the new safety community safety task force sorry department pardon Department of Public Safety first of all is there a second to that motion Council Member Caballero yeah I'm confused as to what would this I mean we have a public hearing on the 7th I'm just curious about process around around this motion well a lot of times we have discussion about items ahead of time that we want to give staff direction on so for example do we want to have a a green and equitable infrastructure program that we direct staff to implement and then we'll take a vote or do we want to raise taxes for the housing bond and so I think this would be just an affirmation of the whatever we decide today would be an affirmation of what the council wants to direct staff to do okay thank you for that is that helpful yeah yeah so nothing's you know the burden of the budget isn't really until we vote on the budget but what we're trying to do is to try to give staff some direction sometimes we can do that with a head nod I don't think today we could probably do that with a head nod so that's why I'm trying to move in this direction is that okay yeah councilmember freeland I have a question so hypothetically if I were to vote nay on this and then we did another motion I guess well I don't really know my question actually yeah so if there was a if there was a vote if you were to vote nay on this this motion failed that we failed yeah what would that mean that's my question that makes sense yeah councilmember reese I think unless we can get a majority unless we can get four votes for some motion today it seems to me that the current budget proposal is what's before us and so I think that's that's kind of where we are which suggests I'm not sure but anyway that's I think that's the that's the answer to that specific question if this motion fails and if any subsequent motions about this particular issue and on resourcing for this department also fail then the the item that will be before us when we vote on the budget is the current proposal what the staff is recommended I agree councilmember middleton thank you yeah everything council reese just said is true it was true before you asked for a motion Mr. Mayor so so that's true and if there's no that's why we take votes to see whether or not a majority will agree with it but I think there are really two issues that they're they're clearly some of our colleagues want to make a commitment and honor a commitment to take 60 positions or 20 a year then it should do that you should just stand up and go on record and say that's what we're going to do or the other choice is to do what the staff has worked before us I think that's really the issue that the dripping drab and the kind of incremental kind of around the edge approach just say it just just just you know tell the people of Durham that we want to take 20 folks per year and commit it to a community of your safety department or let's honor the work of the staff the hard work that they've done the universal work of view that they take out my my imagination is that my assumption is that when the manager makes a proposal she's not just looking at one small pipe piece she's looking at the entire city the health of the organization population growth cash flow all kinds of other things that inform her decision and recommendation I'm comfortable with going with that that's the choice the other choice is to do whatever commitments have been made in other contexts that's the other choice and that's what the motion should be we've already said the staff has already committed to come to us mid-year with further discussion so there's a breaker an on-ramp already built in for us to take another look at this built organically into the process so the so everything we've asked for has been given to us but if if if we have another goal then we should say that lead to stand up and say it or let's do what the staff has worked before us and then have the conversation mid-year that would be my recommendation that seems to me clearly what's going on Mr. Mayor and that would be my recommendation thank you all right colleagues any other thoughts I'll call the question any other thoughts colleagues yeah council member Reese yeah I I I really appreciate this conversation I'm happy to proceed to the motion but I just wanted to make it clear that I have a ton of respect for the work that staff has done so I have so much respect for the for the way that this department is set up that I want to make sure that they're set up to succeed I'm not I don't know that I've ever tried to hide what I think I want to do and why I want to do it I I spoke at length about all those things not too long ago and I'm I'm sad to have to say that I meant what I said but there it is I meant what I said I will be voting no on this motion not because I don't respect and appreciate and lift up the work of staff but because I want to make sure they have the resources during this fiscal year to succeed as I said from the very beginning I think 15 is the right head count on day one for this department but if we get to day 365 the next fiscal year and the head count is still 15 we will have failed and I believe our budget should reflect well at least my vote on the budget will reflect that that is my opinion so that's what I plan to do thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member council member Caballero I just wanted to uplift what council member Reese said because that's exactly where I'm at thank you council member all right colleagues any more comments I'll just make a brief comment I am definitely in favor of this motion and I'm definitely in favor of it because it it does contain the staff's plan does contain the the fact that the staff will be bringing back to us in six months the recommendations that they need for more staffing and I fully anticipate that they will bring back their recommendation for more staffing and at that time I think it would be very important that the council support that I fully anticipate but I also believe in their expertise and that their recommendations I think will be will really strengthen with the community everything that we want to do I deeply believe that we are moving in the right direction and that we have a tremendous opportunity here to bring the community gather around the need for alternatives to the traditional policing that we have now and that the traditional responses that we have now are we've done a lot of work to get to this place our staff has done a fantastic job of putting together this recommendation and I really I feel like this is an issue on which our community is really polarized and I don't think that's necessary I think that saying to people now we're going to take a certain number of police officers out of the police department with nothing specific for them to be doing in this new department I feel like that's a way for to really undercut community confidence of what we're trying to do I really believe that if on the other hand our staff comes to us in mid-year and says you know we need certain number of people to do this we're recommending you know our pilot has shown us that we can have a certain kind of mental health response that will be a confidence builder for our community something that I think that everyone will be able to get behind so that's the way I think is the wisest way to move all right any final comments council member Middleton thank you Mr. Brown I want to fully associate myself with your comments and say I meant what I said I believe that the staff has presented a department that is set up to succeed that's what they do all they do is win win win our staff consistently brings us proposals and plans that are set up to succeed their program that way it's in their DNA so I meant what I said I believe that our staff has taken the universal comprehensive view of a health of this organization insulated from politics insulated from ideology and have brought us back the most robust appropriate recommendation that this world-class staff could bring so with all due respect I'm not suggesting anybody saying what you know something that they don't mean when it's on the record it's on the record but we've heard recommendations bandied about that exceed what the staff has asked for we've heard numbers bandied about 2060 so it's in the record so I'm responding to that but I meant what I said I think the staff has brought us back a rock solid plan and I intend to support it and I look forward to the conversation six months from now when they come back and ask for more stuff which will probably give them thank you Mr. Mayor Councilmember all right colleagues there's a bus on the floor councilmember Freeman nope I'm good okay so I'm going to ask the clerk to call the roll Mayor Schuyl ah Mayor Proten Johnson no Councilmember Caballero no Councilmember Freelon no Councilmember Freeman yes Councilmember Middleton I would I Councilmember Reese no thank you thank you Madam clerk the motion passes three I'm sorry fails three to four and so now I'll look for another motion again we're we're not doing any official you know we're not voting on the budget here we're giving our staff guidance and so I'll look for another motion so we can give our staff some direction since we just didn't give them a certain kind of direction anybody have one I think I can manage that Mr. Mayor Councilmember Reese thank you Mr. Mayor I'm I would make a motion that the budget for the community safety department and the Durham police department reflect a mid-year transfer 15 additional unfilled vacancies to provide the manpower we're going to need to staff up the community safety department all right just a second staff needs more guidance on mid-year I would assume that the main January 1st 2022 second January 1st 2022 isn't that six months into our fiscal year I see okay yeah got you all right will you state your motion again sure I would I would move that the budget for the community safety department and the Durham police department reflect a mid-year transfer 15 additional unfilled vacancies in order to provide the community safety department with additional staffing at that time I can't you are muted Mr. Mayor thank you moved and seconded any further discussion colleagues councilmember Middleton yes Mr. Mayor thank you I am fully in support of staffing this department and making succeed as it's indicated and as the staff to this direction I'm going to vote against this motion because I believe that optically it puts this department in a position not to succeed precisely because I think we are now creating in this department the same type of conditions that we have critiqued the police department which we're cannibalizing to support it if we have a community safety department that goes without filled positions now we have the exact same situations in this department that we have in the police department where folk will say hey they must not need them but the fire department needs more folks general services need more folk why would we do that who are we trying to please here I mean what is what is that I'm going to vote against this because I think this department would be better succeed if we demonstrate science-based database need I think a community safety department with positions unfilled because the staff is trying to make up stuff for these people to do as opposed to being driven by data and the work that they do I think we're setting it up for ridicule I think we're setting it up for failure I think we're doing violence to the very thing we want to succeed I don't want a community safety department with a bunch of empty positions so folk can look at that department and say oh look they're just like the police they must not need those positions because we do need them and we do need the department we should vote this motion down this is this is optics this is posturing and it does not forward the mission in my assessment you should vote now thank you council member council member freeman thank you mr mayor and thank you council member militant I also will be voting no just acknowledging I think we're heading in a path down a path that is strikingly similar to what we saw or what we've been seeing and other spaces that have been dysfunctional and I'm concerned I want to also note that this is really not about policy it's about politics and it's unfortunate I really am mindful that there's a national context there's a state context and there's also the city context and I want to make sure that it's noted that if we're in this position and our city is uncharted because of it it is just unsettling to just make decisions based on demands and I think that we should have more conversation and I think that we should have more details laid out because I don't think moving 15 positions from one department to another noting that there are so many other departments including a whole DOS committee that's been asking for an open space and trails like there's so many different facets of the budget where positions are needed that are not even being factored into this conversation and it's frustrating because it's posturing and it's just not real thank you thank you council member Freiland yes thank you Mr. Mayor I just want to offer you know some some thoughts on this choice I mean you know coming from a tradition of black of the black freedom struggle which you know I count among my the ancestors of my cultural through line people like you know Harriet Tubman John Lewis Ida B. Wells Polly Murray there's a lot of things that they did that may have seemed unusual to their peers and contemporaries and I think that's okay to have the discussion to have the disagreement to have some folks that don't align or vibrate with the vision for me as a black millennial activist who is feels very much accountable to and a part of the movement for black lives and recognizing the intergenerational struggles that I see in the black community in particular around issues like these it really harkens back to the way the elders must have been looking at the Greensboro for when they walked up in Woolworths or here in Durham in 1957 at Royal Ice Cream like what are you trying to do here what are you really hoping to accomplish it must have seemed very unusual because it was out of the box it was different and I think that we need a different approach when we're trying to change fundamentally systems rooted in entrenched in legacies of white supremacy so that we can create something that's healing and I think that that's what this is a step in the right direction towards which is why I'll be voting for it I look one of the takeaways that I hear especially hearing from my black colleagues on to my black colleagues that have spoken so far on this issue is thinking around communication this is not what you said just now but earlier when we talked about you know people in the community not really knowing what's up and I've heard that too Council Member Middleton mentioned people asking like so who's going to show up you know when a shooting occurs is it going to be a mental health worker I get those questions all the time too they're legit questions and I think our department chairs and staff and we'll have a big task on their hands to figure out how to steer with the direction that we're giving but I think it's the right direction and I trust our staff particularly with this piece around of the community design strategy the community design strategies role a particular person whose role is to listen will help mold and identify what we want these what we want this department to look and smell and feel like as a uniquely Durham entity for my part I am really behind the idea of making an early investment and a proclamation to the people of Durham that we are taking a shift in our approach to public safety and I think that's that's an important statement and an important investment more importantly I like what Charlie said about your budget is a reflection of your values this shift reflects my values and the values of folks that I feel accountable to so that's why I'll be voting yes and Mr. Mayor I appreciate your comments brother Middleton sister Freeman I appreciate your perspectives and descent and would ask for if this passes for your collaboration and solidarity and trying to figure out how to make this work despite the fact that you know it didn't align with what you had in mind if it passes as I hope it will thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member other comments Mr. Mayor I just wanted to just note that I would be very careful about my arrogance and how our elders thought about the Greensboro for and I would also just note that it's kind of striking that there's a disregard for the governance that has to occur and in this work and so just be mindful that when you assign an intergenerational struggle that there's also an inter government an inter system struggle as well and I want to be mindful that as as young as I may feel there there are a lot of elements at time has allowed me to see through a different set of eyes and the way that you view what we're doing today may feel like it's right but just be careful because the the repercussions in the back flashes are real and lives have been lost and it will continue to be lost if we continue down this path of arrogance around what people need versus how to work together and so I'll just say that and note that it's that it's pretty much a given that there's a block of folks who want to vote in this direction and so you know whatever the city decides I'm going to speak the court if I'm not going to work against that that's of course you know that would be counterintuitive I live in this city I love this city and this is the city I'm raising my family and I just want to be on the record noting that it's offensive it's disgusting and appalling that you would even try to use my ancestors and the struggle that they've experienced as a part of this acknowledging that this is not that this this has been about white supremacy this has been about defund the police not Black Lives Matter because if it was about Black Lives Matter and we would have had shot spot a free program available in neighborhoods if it was about Black Lives Matter we wouldn't be saying goodbye to Chief Davis we wouldn't be disrespecting Madam Page we'll be honoring the request that she brought forward or the proposal that she brought forward and we will be honoring the work of a police department who has worked over the last five years to shift from what Chief Lopez had in place I want to be very clear on the record and noting that I am completely disgusted that you would even try to make this about my ancestors who have struggled I'm very measured about how I respond to things and I want to be clear that this is this was the biggest offense you could have done thank you Mr. Marriff, I might I Pierce Freeland is one of our brightest lights in the city he's a gift to the city and he's a gift to this to this council and I want to say that I've said it to him privately say it to him publicly but I stand in direct lineage of black prophetic speech and struggle that mantle rests heavily upon my shoulders the invoking of the ancestors and our struggle as a people connected to this motion I think is wildly inappropriate every name that you call is dear to me informs my world view and I've had conversations with John Lewis and informs my work this ain't that let me say what it is since everybody's been unbridled with their tongue this motion is about satisfying promises and commitments made to other groups in this city that's what this is wrote to check time to cash so and that's fine I mean we're this is public square that's politics that's the way the game works but to conflate that with with an intergenerational struggle this isn't about older folk and younger folk there's nothing radical or or or or or popping about saying let's take 15 people we don't know what we're gonna do with them let's take 15 people and put it in a position in a department and we'll decide what we're gonna do with them later to to send signals yesterday there was concerned about passing attacks without spending the money in this year and and and what would that look like doing something in anticipation of what was going to happen today is perfectly fine so so this ain't about the black struggle and and we can engage whenever you like about the nuances and intricacies of the ancestors and how they speak in my spirit and how my work is informed by that struggle on any day publicly privately tell me where it is I'll show up but this motion is politics this ain't John Lewis this ain't Mother Rosa this ain't the ancestors this is about satisfying the commitments you made at all to Durham beyond policing and Durham for all that's what this is about however the it that we refer to having unarmed responders listen Durham every person on this council supports unarmed responders it was me last year that said let's put two million dollars in the UBI program it was me last year that said let's hire and field unarmed responders it was me that proposed expanding violence interruption in the city so every substantive part of this department I support this motion is not about the it it's not about the overall arching proposition it's about detail it's about nuances it's about cash and checks that some of you have written we grow men and women that's fine do what you need to do but please do not conflate our our participation in our place in the long bright glorious sacred procession of the ancestors in the struggle which each of us has a position in has a place in and mine is on a teachable mine will not be questioned based upon a motion to move 15 folk who we don't know what the hell we're going to do with them to another department that's politics that ain't a sacred procession of our people thank you Mr. Mayor frankly I'm just glad enough to be old enough to be one of the ancestors Mayor Pro Tem thank you Mr. Mayor I just want to say a few words about commitments and why I personally make commitments to any group in this community to my colleagues or in general in my life and that is because those commitments align with my values and with my goals um specifically this commitment to to sufficiently resource the community safety department and honestly personally I don't think that 20 officers isn't or 20 positions is enough I don't think 60 positions is enough I think we should endeavor to create a department that is as robust and as effective at responding to public safety issues as our police department to me this feels small it feels like a down payment on a future investment I believe that our 9-1-1 call data gives us clear evidence that there is a significant amount more work that this department could be doing that we are not asking them to do right now and that as we scale up these pilots it does not feel unclear to me what these people will be doing I think that that is in fact very clear and has been we have been provided with a lot of data based on our based on our research of our 9-1-1 calls as to what our unarmed officers safety safety workers could be could be doing the services that they could be providing I make commitments because they align with my values and what I want to do on this council and those commitments align with the platform and the ideas that I ran on when I was re-elected to this body that part I was very clear about what I believe and what I want to do for this community and want a democratic election and I'm now obligated to put those values into practice and to vote those values when these situations come up so politics sure I have very clearly communicated my politics to all of you to this entire community and I will continue to implement the policies that I ran on in alignment with my politics and my values real I don't see anything wrong with that so I just wanted to make it clear that I think that the conflating of of well this is just politics is not reasonable like we this is a specific policy decision that I am committed to and I am working I am I am willing to work with anyone in this community to move those policies forward with other people who share those values and share those policy and political commitments yeah that's all thank you Mr. Mayor if I might amen Sister Jillian you're one of the most respected leaders in the city everything you just said I agree that's real talk and that's all I'm saying this ain't sacred black stuff it's politics and as grown folk when we make commitments and we gotta carry them through I have no problem with that whatsoever everything you just said is 100% correct nobody's mad at you for doing what you said you would do for doing the things you said you wouldn't want to I'm I have no problem with that whatsoever I do have a problem trying to dress it up and put the cloak of the sacred veneer and air of the black struggle on it that's the only part I was speaking to ma'am do you and I think we expect nothing else other than that so I respect that that's real talk I'm just talking about the other stuff that's being poured on it it ain't that it's politics and that's fine thank you council members councilmember freeman thank you and I just wanted to echo councilmember meadowton's sentiment and and to note to may approach pro tem's point I think it's important that you do honor who you are and how you operate what I don't approve of is being disvalued and and the context of how things have been happening in our community across the board and so I'm a you know I'm a faith centered Christian who understands the black struggle and works very hard to to be in the center or the cross-section of where race equity and poverty meet so just acknowledging that there are other thought processes that there are other struggles that there are other just viewpoints I was also elected and I I truly it's truly expect that anytime that one of us is elected that you should be valued as such which is why when councilmember Freelon is elected it would come across very differently to say that this is about our ancestors looking at us and saying we're doing something weird that is not my issue at all I have no problem supporting moving officers from from the police department to a community safety program that is fine but I do think that there's a there's an air of ethics there's an air of of democracy there's an air of a lot of different elements of of arrogance that is so frustrating I appreciate the apology brother brother Pierce I do but hear me when I say this we are all in this work we are all trying to do our part and to undermine each other does not serve any one of us as black people I've worked really hard not to undermine mayor pro tem's positions even if they were at at odds with mine I've worked really hard not to not to even subscribe to that kind of context even though so many people around me would rather I tear that down that is not who I am that is not how I operate and I rebuke it which is why when it comes from a younger generation a black male it is so offensive that I am I just feel a tear and if this is what it takes for you to make a point about emotion I really want to say but I'm holding that back and that's what's bothering me I can appreciate like I said I can appreciate that you have the votes I can appreciate that this is the direction that you want to go in I can appreciate all of council member caviaros points I can appreciate all of council member Reese's points and I can also appreciate mayor Schultz points but what I don't want is for us to look like other boards commissions committees or the capital because we want to tear apart our city making our points the only point that matters we are all progressives this nonsense where we call Democrats Republicans where we call each other not progressive it's all BS that I'm just not willing to deal with that's not how I live my life that is not what I hold is a value and I will not I will not tolerate it I'm telling you this from the start and as we get into this political season all of the nonsense that is going to start I'm telling you if I'm calling it all out that's all thank you thank you council member council member Reese thank you mr mayor I wanted to address the idea that I've heard a little bit today that that demands are suspect the demands of the community are some kind of unsavory political transaction I fundamentally reject that and we've all been part of of responding to demands from our community we've all been at for example a Durham can accountability sessions where we are forced to stand up and say yes or no will you do A, B, C, D and E that's the job sometimes I've been colleagues say no I don't want to do that and but mostly colleagues say yes because the things that are being asked for align with our values as individuals and as leaders in the community and so I don't see anything wrong with demanding things I've heard it said before that power concedes nothing without a demand I will I will say also that this board has been subject of a lot of demands a ton of them many of them by the very same people that are demanding that we transfer today 60 positions from the police department into the community safety department many of those folks are not going to be happy with what we're doing today I know because I've heard from them these are many of the same people thousands of them who emailed me last year during this budget process to say that if I didn't vote against the budget that they would never vote for me again guess what that argument has never swayed me once and it will never sway y'all going to vote who you're going to vote for I'm going to do what I need to do and last year I just put a finer point on it as we went through the roll call on the budgets by virtue of the alphabet and the fact that Mayor Schuyl it goes first I get to vote last sometimes that's awesome sometimes it really sucks and last year it would have cost this city nothing for me to vote no on that budget zero the budget would have passed six to one and guess what I would have been the newly minted hero of all the people that wanted us to slash the police budget last year but guess what that doesn't matter to me doing what's right matters to me responding to demands in a respectful and responsible way is how we govern with our community alongside our community we can call folks the professional the professional organizing class that we want to and in many cases that's true but but you know that's Durham can too friends that's you know that's the that's that's this is who this is who motivates us to do the things we already know we ought to do you know would we have acted with the same speed and deliberation on 505 West Chapel Hill if Durham can had not demanded that we do so would we have put out the millions of dollars in city money to repurchase they at place if Durham can hadn't been on us constantly to get it done no I don't think so so demand is good demand is awesome we have to say no when we have to and yes when it aligns with our values I don't agree with the demands that that Durham beyond policing and Durham for all have made on this council about the police budget but I do agree with what I've proposed today which is that I think we need more resources at mid-year in this department to make sure that we get that the department is ready to do the work that it can do that's why I'm voting for this I don't know why we would want to call that politics because it's what I think is the right thing to do and logistically the right mechanism to do it if that's politics okay but I'm doing what I think is the right thing to do I'm responding to a demand by saying no to one thing but yes to something that I think we ought to do and that's the way this process ought to work the last thing I just wanted to say is this isn't the last time we're going to get demands we get lots of demands all the time our job is to say is to say what we think is the right thing to do sometimes that's yes and when that happens we're heroes when we voted against the development project in Merrickmore neighborhood we were heroes because we we listened to the community and we said no to a developer right but you know later on we're going to see us the lots of other stuff that folks don't like and that's just the way this goes the characterizing these decisions is politics is I don't think particularly productive it's just the way that this has to work because we have to make choices they're going to make some people happy and some people mad and I think we all recognize that's the job or else we wouldn't have done it so that's what I wanted to say about the motion Mr. Mayor and I'm happy to stop talking now thank you I'm going to ask Councilmember Caballero if she has any final comments and then I have a comment and then we're going to take a vote no I was my ask was are we ready to move on from discussion because I'm looking at the time it's 1111 thank you all right I'll just make a comment I have a question first for Councilmember Reese would you accept a friendly amendment that inserted the words up to 15 can you help me understand what that would what that would do for us I don't know amid here where the staff has said in your motion agrees that staff has said that they would come to us with the necessary with the recommendation for the necessary resources I agree that with that we are over time and starting now with the five people we've already got wanting to be moving people from policing as we are able to create alternative forms of response into into different kinds of jobs some of them I might add I believe will be should be in the county I don't think we want to start another social services department we need we have a social services department in Durham we don't want to start a competing one we want to be working with our county colleagues which is why our county is involved in the community safety and wellness task force for example but I believe that we'll need more employees within the city to do this work and I want to be guided by the work that our staff will be doing and that they can recommend to us in mid-year how many people they will be needing and so when I say up to that gives us the opportunity to at that time to allocate up to 15 positions that the staff will tell us that they want and that they need and I think we will that again I think the biggest risk that we face here is that we take actions that are further polarizing and I'll just say that you know this is a very unusual discussion to that it's not a discussion we usually have and I believe that that same kind of discussion with that same kind of passion and dare I say anger and is going on in our community right now around this I don't think that's helpful and I don't think it's helped for a lot of reasons especially don't think it's helpful for the cause of trying to create a community supported alternative response to 911 calls I think it's and I would like to figure out a way for us to come together that can move our community forward we're never going to get everybody's consent I get that I'm not looking for that but I also don't think that we want to do this with 51% of the people I think we want to bring as many people as we can into this into a large consensus that's the way I think big things get done over time you know it's the way you create a it's the way you create a an affordable housing program that you know wins big support it's the way you merge the schools merging the schools was hard and it was a long process and it took but it got huge buy-in at the end and so that's what I want here so that's a long way of saying council member that I think that if we I think that if we say that we are planning to move positions from the police department I don't think that they need I'm in full agreement that the police department as we add functions that to other people if we had other people other positions to do this work that some of the work that police officers are going now will not be necessary and therefore I believe we won't need as many officers I say let's do that in a way that wins the support of our community you know again more than 51% so when I say up to that that says to me that the staff will give us advice they'll tell us what they think and we will at that time be able to follow that advice and move those positions and that would be something I could support so that's my question council member I'd be curious to hear what our colleagues have to say about that idea okay council member Caballero council Mayor Pro Tem Johnson and council member Middleton I'm open to that if we rescind the last motion and we can get seven votes on this I'm sorry could you speak up a little bit I said I'm open to what you're proposing if we rescind the previous vote and we can get seven votes on what you just suggested otherwise I'm not comfortable because if the point is to build consensus and in my mind everybody moves that's consensus in my mind everybody moves from the position that they're in or where they started in the conversation so moving to me means the previous motion which was to adopt what staff presented I would want to take that motion away and we get commitment from all seven voices right now to what you're suggesting which is essentially a compromise between the two okay thank you I can't remember who I call on next I think it was Mayor Pro Tem thank you Mr. Mayor I appreciate your comments and your and your goal to build consensus for me I don't think that's the biggest danger that we face for me I I think the biggest danger is that we don't provide the resources that we need for this project to be successful and and then it fails I up to 15 could be zero I don't think it's meaningful and I'm not willing it doesn't feel like a commitment to me so I'm not I'm not willing to to support that to me 15 already feels like a compromise it feels like nowhere near enough for what we actually need to make this work successful and I think that the work that we are doing and continue to do to ensure that we have the evidence that our staff need to make decisions in the context of the calls that we are getting for service the work that our police department is doing here in Durham not just a national model but specific data for them to guide their choices has already indicated that this is that we need more than this that we need more than this number to make this work successful yeah I support Councilmember Reese's original motion and would not support this change thank you Mayor Printembe Councilmember Middleton thank you Mr. Mayor and I'm going to thank you for your proposal I was prepared to vote against of the original motion but if if Councilor Reese accept the amendment I'm prepared to support it I think that's reflective of precisely what we've been talking about ability to build consensus I think it honors the work of the staff it gives us the flexibility and let me go on record right now let me go on record right now I'll back up let me go on record right now I am fully committed to the success of this department and I trust that all of my colleagues are honest brokers and are dealing honestly this this department needs to succeed because it fully aligns I believe with Durham and my values that I don't want black and brown and mentally ill people gunned down or killed or brutalized by police full stop and whatever we need to do to get there of course we need that to succeed I believe that this department I believe to suggest that we need to make sure that this department is fully funded whether we need it or not is kind of a side way saying that staff you may not have gotten it right I think the staff has gotten it right I think the staff has put us on solid footing for this department to succeed again 15 20 to me those numbers are arbitrary I haven't seen any of the science that supports those numbers but it is what it is if we say that it's not enough well what's the mathematical endpoint of not enough is it 80 is what's that number I don't think any of us know that it's like we want to have the pilots but then we want to determine what the pilots are going to show us so let's go ahead and tool up for what the pilots are ultimately going to show us that's not science I mean I think we should let the science goddess so if if if councilor reese my friend councilor reese would accept that amendment I could I would fully vote for that because I think it honors the work of the staff I think if Mr. Mayor it goes to the point of building consensus in the community and I think it gives us the flexibility to honor the science and let the data speak to us and make an informed decision like this staff always does I would vote for the amended motion thank you Mr. Mayor thank you councilmember okay so councilor reese are you interested in accepting that friendly amendment you're muted but yeah I got that I appreciated what councilmember Kavira said about trying to get a broader consensus on this at the same time I want to make sure that we we do right by this department that's what I've said from the beginning I guess for me part of it would would hinge on what is the what is the budget mechanism that that that accommodates up to 15 a transfer of up to 15 I mean would the budget reflect the transfer of 15 and then somehow they get backed out if we decide to do less in advance the January 1st deadline what would that look like because I never I never heard of that before I guess my sense would be it would be the same as if it was the number 15 as opposed to up to 15 but I see I see that manager Page is arrived on scene so good afternoon mayor mayor pro tem members of council I have been listening to all of the discussion and I don't want to add a whole lot to it at this very moment but as I see nearing the end of your deliberations I did want to bring a couple of points to mind one of the we get into the to the details we get into the documents ultimately there will be a page like you saw as Johnson present today that shows resources that go along with the budget that gets approved on June 21st whether we intend to fill a position at the beginning of the year at the quarter at the half that all goes into the numbers the dollar figures that we that help us make the budget balance where a position sits you know we have to have we have to make a determination of where it sits so we know which page to put it on I want to be really clear about that and we can freeze positions that is something that we do and have done in the past when we haven't decided how we are going to you know when we're going to actually hire people into those positions so that is not for resolution here but it is to give the council some additional information about how what you have been talking about you know and trying to get agreement or or consensus around may be reflected in the document that we present to you the final document after you have given us direction for approval thank you madam manager customer Reese did you have any other further questions or comments well what I heard the manager to say was that we have there has to be a number I don't think we get to add a greater than symbol in front of the or a less than or equal to number in front of the symbol and have the budget actually work well let me ask Ms. Johnson or the manager if we were to say that we would be waiting a recommendation of staff at mid-year for up to moving up to 15 positions from the police department to the community safety department as needed is that something that we could do through our budget process and how could that be accomplished so I think the part about freezing positions is where we would freeze the positions one option would be the positions would remain in the count for police but they would be frozen which means they would not be able to fill those that is the option and then those would be transferred as needed to the department the other option is to put a number in the new department and those positions would be available to be used as needed I don't foresee an opportunity where we would need to hire 15 positions at any given point at one time so they would be available so those are those are two ways to do that what she's referring to is we actually when we show in the budget page each department has a page and we show those resources taught through that department which includes the dollar amount in the FTEs associated with that department and so to her point the positions have to go somewhere they can stay in the police department be frozen which would be done in the past and then when we come back we would make a recommendation that we move one, two, five, 10, 15 of those positions to the community safety department but that could happen incrementally as we do the pilots thank you miss johnson all right other comments councilmember caballero I appreciate what miss johnson just shared if colleagues are open to it the freezing on the police department and I don't know where everyone is but I feel like that's a clear demarcation of what we're intending to the community it lets us move to all the way to 15 if we need it it lets the police department know that they are those are not a positions available to them but I'm unclear if other folks are where I'm at councilmember middleton thank you Mr. Mayor again let me just be clear there's no magic or science connected to 15 so whatever the numbers I mean our staff may come back and say they need more than 15 and I think in the original iteration there was enough flexibility I trusted our staff has no dog in this fight they're going to ask us for what they think they need for this department to succeed that might be 25 so even inserting the number 15 we are already circumscribing the conversation for a professional staff that does their thing all the time I don't understand by the life of me why would we want to do that we trust each other I trust the staff but be that as it may I think the 15 with council copy her said and up to 15 I mean I've seen contracts where we say to council the manager can't spend beyond such and such and I guess that gives our flexibility if the number is going to come in a little less than what the contract is but we've used those upper limits before but I'm fully prepared again as I've said to while not in any way acknowledging that this 15 is somehow scientific based I've seen nothing to demonstrate that or the 20 is scientific based but that's the number in play right now and I think that that would get us to a point of closure I fully think that the original iteration put us in a position we wanted to be in be it 15 or 50 but if we want to stick a number in for good measure I think you know I can go with as I said once again the amended motion to council recess in motion thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member Reese so the whole reason that I made my original motion was to make sure that that if the department needed additional resources and I think we all agree that at some level they will which they will that they didn't have to go through the agenda process to get back in front of us to ask us to move the positions at mid-year that's the whole reason I did it if the proposal if the suggestion by Ms. Johnson is that we can freeze those positions within the police department for a future decision by this council based on staff recommendation with six months of experience of running the department that in my mind accomplishes a very similar goal except now the staff knows they have to get on the agenda at a certain time to get us there in time to hit that date and I think that's that seems reasonable to me to be a hundred percent honest I would have preferred my original motion which is why I made it but but it feels to me as though while I don't think this is likely to be a unanimous decision I think it still demonstrates a level of comedy amongst our number while accomplishing what I'm trying to accomplish here and for that reason I'm happy to change my original motion to be what the mayor said with the understanding that we're going to move forward with freezing 15 unfilled vacancies in the police department for a future decision by this council and transferring up to 15 of them to the community safety department based on a recommendation from staff thank you so I'm not sure is that so I'm not sure who made the second on your original motion but that person would need to agree and if not we would need to have a new motion in a new second and I don't agree okay so councilmember Reese do you want to make another motion I'm making the motion I just said okay can you state it again sure we are the the budget that we're working on right now we're directing staff to freeze 15 unfilled vacancies in the Durham police department such that when staff comes back to us at the end of the second quarter with a recommendation for additional staffing needs in the department of community safety that the city council can then elect to transfer up to 15 of those positions into the department of community safety thank you for that is there a second second seconded by councilmember Caviado madam clerk I believe we've had all the discussion that we need up is that council may I have one quick you have one quick comment because I think it's important the way and I think councilor Reese for his motion I intend on supporting it but I want to be in light of the way he's clarified and contextualized I think I should say something to the people watching this debate the freeze of this 15 does not mean that we are agreeing that the police department will now henceforth from forever more be reduced by that amount of folk and I want to be very clear because I think in some people's mind that means that as our population continues to grow the police department may not come back and ask for more people because whatever logic we use not to grant those to me seems we can apply that to the fire department as well or any other department I want to be very clear that I will tether reducing the aggregate static complete number of the police department when the legislature gives me the power to stop population growth in Durham because then when I can do that I can save us money and a whole bunch of other departments fire water waste management so I want to be very clear that in this vote I want this department to succeed I think as all departments doing bureaucracies they will grow if this is the commitment we need to make to for goodwill and to move us beyond where we are so be it but this does not reflect that here henceforth now forever more the police department will never get expanded again as long as our population continues to grow I think we need to acknowledge for the folk of Durham we will in the name of good governance respond according to how our population grows with that I'll support the motion and vote for it thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member Madam clerk could you please call the roll on this motion Mayor Schuyl aye Mayor Pro Tem Johnson no Council Member Caballero aye Council Member Freelon aye Council Member Freeman aye Council Member Middleton aye vote aye Council Member East aye thank you thank you colleagues for an excellent heartfelt and difficult discussion thank you to staff we will now take a five minute break it's 1132 we'll be back at 1137 and then Mr. Allure we're going to have to we've only gone through two departments so far we're going to have to move quickly but we will thank you so much everybody see you at well now I'll say five minutes 1138 see you at 1138 eat an apple good morning feels like afternoon but it's not it's morning and welcome back everybody I know we're all still probably grabbing a snack so but we'll proceed and want to turn it again over to Mr. Allure and I believe we have Chief Saldis great to see you chief that's it and John do you have any preliminary words no just to say we've conferred internally and we're up to the challenge and so our goal here is to move quickly and get to your questions thank you thank you so much welcome chief thank you mr. Mayor madam mayor pro tem and members of city council good morning I'm chief bobs all this now the pleasure of serving as your fire chief and leading the Durham fire department on behalf of the four and twenty one women and men of the Durham fire department like thank you for setting this time aside for us today I'd also like to thank our city manager our DCM Ferguson and the budget staff for their analysis and work in this process I've asked two members of our senior staff to join me in case you have some technical questions with me today is our chief fire marshal assistant chief gody morden and our chief chief of planning administration assistant chief briny enough like 20 year fire department ran twenty three thousand six hundred and forty four incidents which resulted in forty six thousand five hundred and sixty nine individual apparatus responses so far in this fiscal year your fire department has run twenty thousand forty two incidents with forty one thousand one hundred ninety apparatus responses where our call volume typically increases each year's population grows these numbers will be down slightly this year due to cobalt response reductions for safety of our crews in the public your your fire department is an all hazards first responder agency that responds to fires emergency medical calls hazardous materials emergencies technical rescue incidents and all manner of emergency calls your fire department operates out twenty three facilities including our headquarters warehouse maintenance and training buildings your fire department operationally serves out of nineteen fire stations which are divided into four battalions or service management areas each day your fire department staff with twenty five heavy vehicles these include fire engines ladder trucks and our one rescue company along with three squad companies five five operational chiefs in several services or specialty units your fire department holds an insurance service officer ISR rating of two with one being the best possible score and accredited by the commission on fire accreditation in their national rights our slide here is our chart your fire department is organized into four divisions moving from left to right on the chart the first is administration planning which includes our incredible facility maintenance team our payroll and benefits section our warehouse and PPE personal protective equipment and logistic staff it also includes strategic planning and technical support to the right of that is operations this division is the most visible part of our organization and includes the vast majority of our personnel the operation division is divided into three shifts which operate our 19 stations 24 7365 this division is on the front lines every day helping ensure our community safety throughout the pandemic and is required to get to work in any kind of way next to them is training safety and wellness our training safety and wellness division is responsible for all of our basic training continuing education EMS training and program management and firefighter safety wellness is a relatively new focus within fire service and one that I'm proud of we're starting to make headway in one area within wellness we'd like to highlight as our focus on behavioral health of our members while this is a concern year round the need for this type of health care of our firefighters was highlighted after the 2019 gas explosion in our downtown a new tool protecting our firefighters is the addition of a brand new member to the department and one that didn't cost an FBE these are new behavioral health canine Cosmo will be joining us in the next few weeks to assist firefighters with PTSD and other related concerns to the right of that in our final division is fire prevention the fire marshes office this division provides annual business inspections multifamily dwell and fire inspections new building inspections fire investigations as well as blasting inspection and oversight this division also houses our public education team who will step up during the pandemic with a focus on social media and videos to help us stop or slow slow down common safety issues you also may have watched some of our helmet camera footage for of our on scene video series it's the newest part of our videos and we posted actually a brand new one last night these videos given the first person view of what it's like to be a firefighter here in Durham and it's been a great recruitment tool as well of no work chart you'll notice the proposed new FTEs there are three within the fire marshals office and one will be in the MS training I'll get both those momentary there are 421 currently authorized members of the of the Durham fire department we start every fall with 100% staffing with zero vacancies when our next recruit academy starts and throughout the year we will gain a few vacancies as retirements happen again they are they are filled every summer fall when the next recruit academy begins of note our first academy to be brought back in-house after many years being provided for by Durham Tech we'll be graduating June 25th so just under a month from now we hope many of you will be able to join us for that celebration our resource allocation table is next one note is the higher than average capital another category under proposed FY21-22 it shows 167,000 and that money is actually provided for the outfitting cost of a possible hiring of new firefighters under a staffing for adequate fire and emergency response grants otherwise known as SAFER SAFER provides for the personal costs of hiring new firefighters we believe will be an excellent candidate for this grant as we applied for it to provide for staffing of a new ladder truck to provide service to Northern Durham to include the Braggtown and old farm areas this addition of a new unit will provide for a dedicated aerial service which will bring our total six ladder truck city wide provide for better safety to this underserved area we've not been given a date for when they will be given that award it should have happened Monday but we have haven't earned anything as of now we'll move on to our highlights the first of addition of three shift inspector FTEs to the fire prevention division as many of you know our fire marshals currently conduct over 10,000 required fire inspections per year throughout the city they also investigate approximately 150 fires a year as well these FTEs will reestablish a program that we piloted this past year that was developed to meet the needs of our grown community especially the businesses restaurants bars and nightclubs and others who have their highest occupancy during the evening when our inspectors were off duty these new FTEs will ensure that our nighttime destination thrives safely these positions will also provide more timely and focused fire investigation prevention services throughout the city by having an investigator on duty at all times throughout the day as I mentioned we did test this program using currently assigned FTEs by diverting them from the regular inspection duties what we found that this diversion was not sustainable due to loss in quantity of daytime inspections that prove viable approve the viability of the program and we expect to see a continuation of the positive outcomes and then lastly the addition of an EMS educator FTE to the training and safety division as you may know the DFT is an important first step in the pre-hospital care of our residents with your fight of heart responding to EMS incidents 10,208 times so far this fiscal year along the DFT is unique in North Carolina as we're the only fire department in the state who provides advanced life support care to our residents other than Greenville who also runs their family and service so we're unique in the state by a fire-based EMS first responder system the training of our EMS providers is so important to the well-being of our residents because on critical cases the DFT almost always arrives first therefore we're excited to be able to really professionalize our training and oversight with this new FTE this educator will provide for the basic basic EMS training of our recruits and continuing ed for our operational personnel in cooperation with the Durham County EMS it'll also help provide EMS program oversight which will examine both care and documentation of quality control and we believe that the hiring of an EMS trainer will enhance the department's ability to ensure the effectiveness and quality of instruction while providing for specialized or customized classes to ensure a greater alignment with Durham County needs I'm sorry Durham community needs and responder skills and abilities and with that that concludes our budget presentation and we're happy to take any questions thank you very much chief and chief I just want to say it's really good to see we've so haven't been able to see people this year and I'm digging the new mustache thank you it's a it's a quarantine mustache that I've kept it's not it's the voting at home is not not been good well I think it's quite handsome you can pass that on and see if that weighs any in the money yes sir thank you chief the safer regulations and grant does this relate to so we've had a lot of discussion over the last couple years about two in two out is this relate to that or is that something different and where what where are we on this about the staffing that will get us to two in two out that's my first question and my second question is around the I kind of missed and maybe because I was still having my snack about what you said about the the mental health you know you were talking about the mental health of the firefighters and I just but I kind of missed what you said so if you could just respond to those two I'd appreciate it yes sir so the safer staffing will provide for a northern ladder truck which is one that was highlighted in our ISO audit which said that's one of the the necessary things to provide better service to our community it will somewhat help with the two out two and two out but really what that focused the two and two out was focused on is providing for what's considered safe staffing on apparatus which is for people on every single unit that's the NFPA 1710 requirement and we don't meet that's on most of our units every single day it's something we'd like to get to we we get brought to the council a plan to do that over seven years two years ago but we understand this is not the time to be able to really to dig into that but we'd like to get to that safer staffing level which is for for you as far as behavioral health behavioral health is really one of the one of the the piece of the fire service that's been ignored over the decades and in some ways it's sort of the attacking the cancer of the fire service one that doesn't hurt through our car synogens and our exposures but still is an exposure of our minds to it it's something that we're trying to dig into one of the you know part of our health safety and wellness or I'm sorry training safety and wellness team is to investigate and to start moving on behavioral health we haven't made a ton of headway but we're starting to and we were just excited because we do we are bringing on our first behavioral health canine the agency I came from had three of them and they're very effective they're really at no cost to the department it's through a canine provider who trains you know prepares a dog for us and that dog will be assigned to fire station 13 you won't see him on the fire trucks but you'll see him in the station and the way it works in general is that the members actually when they return from a call maybe a critical call such as a pediatric CPR or something like that when they return the dog still needs dog needs and they found it is extremely helpful responders because they have to then take care of the dog rather than worry about what they just want to it's more complicated than that but that's that's simplistic we're going to look at and it's a pilot program as soon as we get one you'll know every station we want one we want to try it out and see if it does work for the run fire department Thank you very much and will the dog be a Dalmatian? He is not a Dalmatian I think he's a mixed breed I'm not sure I have a picture of him but I'm not sure I do have a Dalmatian in my house so if you need to see one you're more than welcome to stop by Well I just think that it's the dog that rides the fire truck Yes sir as it should be right Okay well great that sounds great and I'm appreciative and I hope that we will over time get to this two and two out ability I know it's important I know we really need to try to meet that safety standard and I know I know that part of it is that when we're not able to do two and two out firefighters aren't able to go in and they have to wait for a second vehicle so I just want to put that out there for our future thinking and then thank you so much also for describing the the K9 thank you very much colleagues other questions or comments from the chief council member Reece Thank you Mr. Mayor Chief Soldiers it is great to see you virtually eventually we'll get back to the person I just wanted to thank you first of all for your responsiveness to me over the last little while for whatever reason I just had a need of your time and attention it seems like recently especially we want to thank and if you'll pass on my thanks to Chief Morton for engaging with one of our neighbors not here in my neighborhood one of the one of Durham resident about some open burning that was giving rise to some issues just the way that that you and your staff handled that was just fantastic and that's the kind of that's just the kind of thing that I've come to expect from you and the folks that work for you so just so grateful for you and your firefighters you've faced some pretty challenging situations just within the last couple of months and just want to say that I've been really impressed you know it's clear that we have the right leader at the right time in you and our department so thank you for everything you're doing thank you council member I appreciate it it's we have a great organization and I enjoy any time you have a question we enjoy talking about that's great I seem to be one of those folks that always has these situations coming up I want to talk a little bit about firefighter pay and I wonder if you could share your thoughts about where we are in this budget and where you think we need to be headed and I guess I guess let me just preface this by saying I think one of the issues that that has been raised in in folks who talk to me is the pay structure for a new firefighters I know that we've gotten and I'm grateful to our staff especially the city manager and Ms. Johnson have worked with us to help us understand kind of what happens with new firefighters at the bottom of the pay scale in terms of the hours that they're working and how that calculates with respect to our living wage I totally understand that work appreciate the math that goes into it but but ultimately I think we have to get beyond that and I'd like to chief hear your thoughts about where we are and where we can go on that particular issue yes sir thank you for the question we do struggle with firefighter pay it's something if you'd ask me what is the most important things in front of the Durham Fire Department what's our biggest needs as we look you know in the next year or two firefighter pay and then staffing for the two things as far as firefighter pay how does it hurt your fire department it makes recruitment it makes recruitment harder and it makes retention sometimes very difficult we people want to work for the Durham Fire Department they enjoy the progressive fire department they enjoy the aggressiveness of our operations tactically and strategically I think people want to work here because the work itself is doing and they like what we do as fire service if they're a student of the fire service however that only goes so far and it is a struggle for us to retain people because they can look around us and in some cases we're 10,000 below our neighbors and it's as much as I think our people love working for the city of Durham and they they enjoy this city it's hard to keep them from looking across the border and going you know I could work over and carry make a lot more money so it is a very big concern of ours we still have enough applicants coming in that want to work here but we want to always attract the best that there is and I think that's the city of Durham you know goal is to always get the best so no it is a very big struggle for us we're behind in a lot of the categories really our hardest one though is entry level and at the firefighter level in many ways our pay scale does catch up pretty quickly but without the the past two races it's very hard for us to uh to continue to attract and retain people yeah I just wanted to say I appreciate that response and I think that's honestly what what I think we would all expect to hear in this situation I think the what we have to as a group have to be aware of is that the issue that exists with our new firefighters just starting out and also the staffing issue it's not it's not a problem we're going to solve in one budget cycle and I think we're making a good commitment this year to addressing some of those concerns but I think over time as a council we're going to have to keep the situation with our firefighters front of mind in addition all of our city employees but I think the situation seems especially acute for those just starting out firefighters and I want to make sure that we keep that front of mind not just in this budget cycle but in addition in the following cycles as well the last thing I wanted to say she's all this and I wanted to say this to the end the work that your firefighters did out at the battle scrap yard fire that happened about terribly long ago was especially impressive but I'm not sure my colleagues know that that your firefighters took the extra step of taking a look at one specific home that was the closest in proximity to that particular blaze and identified thanks to your work high carbon monoxide levels inside the home and found a way to address that problem with the resident that is the kind of thing that really in my mind goes above and beyond and it's just exactly what we what I would want to see out of the out of the fire department in the city so I've said a lot of nice things about y'all keep doing that but it's because you guys are doing an y'all are doing a fantastic job it's just we need to be as as forceful as we can about making sure that we support you and your firefighters as best we can and for myself I commit to do that so thank you chiefs all of us keep doing a great job thank you Mr. Mayor Thank you council member Reef on the the FOSS recycling fire one thing that we try to to really push and I think we do a really good job of this is we can take the emergency and fix it and then be able to give it back to the residents in a way that they can not only take it from there but they understand what's going on what are the concerns and that's a good example of of of doing exactly that it's not just putting out the fire but it's taking care of the environment it's taking care of the community around it and making sure that everyone feels empowered to know what's next and that they know that they have the tools and resources to contact us without a problem so thank you for that thank you chief thank you council member and I appreciate council member you raising those issues of hey they're so important and keeping that in front of us thank you and chief it was it was subring to hear your answer but much appreciated and I know that this across the board in our city council member Middleton thank you Mr. Mayor chief good to see you I had to do a double take with the mustache but it's good to see you it looks good it's good I want to thank the mayor and councilor Reece for their question about the two two of the three questions I had the two and two out mayor covered in the pay councilor Reece covered so I want to thank them for that chief I want to tell you that the the mystique and the awesomeness that fire department have held for me since childhood has only deepened hanging out with you guys and what so I want to thank you for allowing me to the get a inside view of what you folk do from time to time I particularly want to congratulate you and commend you and further provoke you on your efforts for promoting diversity in the ranks of our fire department growing up the fire department the police department particularly the fire department was the province of Irish white men for generations their fathers and their fathers before them very proud strong legacies but very insulated so to see the work you've done I remember yeah folk actually come to my church a couple years ago as part of the effort so this has been ongoing efforts to recruit folk I'm going to congratulate you on the historic hire as well the battalion chief hire that occurred in our department keep it up we thank you for that I think it's important for little black boys and little black girls to see all that brass on the shoulders of the profession that oftentimes seemed distant and exotic to us so I want to thank you for your efforts in that and encourage you I wanted to ask one of the things I noticed and this kind of dovetails on on firefighter pay and benefits and just the experience of a firefighter I couldn't help noticing of the and I visited and done a ride-alongs and spent you know whole days and nights in a few houses around the city it's there's a lot of differences in the accommodations and the amenities from house to house and I'm the firefighter and I was surprised to find out how much firefighters are responsible for their own stuff you know food and other things they're in the house and I don't know if there's much I've been in police I know they got their coffee set up and stuff but it just seems like firefighters not only being there for a long time there's a lot of extra expense they're basically setting up another household and a lot of that expense falls to them and then you couple that with concerns about pay and you know I've spoken to a number of different people in houses some houses are more desirable than others from amenities is there's something in addition to focusing on pay are there some other areas that the city and if this is completely out of base for fire to firefighting where does let me know but maybe kind of standardizing or normalizing at least some of the amenities in each house to kind of lessen some of the out of pocket expenses that firefighters have to bear to sustain themselves while they're on duty you know answering calls for the city and if none of this makes sense just tell me but there's some conversations I had with some of your your folks some of your troops and I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on that Dore well a couple different things with that first of all one of the biggest challenges of the Durham fire department as far is trying to equalize that across all the station stations is the station designs are very different most of our stations were based based back in the public safety where police and fire were merged so a lot of our smaller stations which are really a challenge for us because they they're really resigned for a fire engine and a police car side by side and in some some stations like station six you'll see a very small ladder truck in a fire engine side by side and it's extremely tight so developing the stations of the future you're going to see a lot larger station our newer stations station 17 for example you're going to see a lot of that and that's going to be the footprint of the future for us the smaller fire stations make it so difficult for the members as far as locker facilities living facilities and so forth it just makes it very difficult as far as the amenities part a lot of that is choice of what that station wants to do I can tell you during my career certain stations fund certain things certain stations don't and that's really a station by station decision is there a coffee fund is there a tea fund so a lot of that's hard to really standardize because it's the employees making that decision but a real big challenge for us is station one station two are huge fire stations station six and seven are very small so you're going to see some differences there and fire stations are 50 year investments and we want to get the lifespan out of those as we can we are looking at refurbing or replacing several as we move through in the next you know five ten years to allow some a better parity of those and to allow the large apparatus apparatus has only gotten larger since I've been in the fire service the days of the you know the horse drawn wagons and the small fire stations are gone and having a large facility that can not only hold today's fire apparatus but the futures is where we're heading in most cases thank you that okay that's very helpful but thank you I think that's all I had and I again I think the mayor and councilor reach for their questions shout out to everybody who let me hang out in the station to those who didn't let me drive whatever we still can set that up it's got to be the time where no one else is around you got you're going to say it in the whole city streets are clear yeah let's let's just make really really sure we're safe there chief and he's on record there he's on yeah don't make any promises chief okay other comments or questions colleagues councilmember free thank you I wanted to make sure that I noted I appreciate the comments from my colleagues and I want to make sure I associate myself with them I won't repeat them I really wanted to also just take a moment and just really appreciate the work that was done in eastern recently with fires and then the kind of like the the kind of off-shoot fire that was occurring and I really appreciate how the staff handled the fact that the the warehouse or the commercial building was vacant and um I'm just mindful that at at any point all of this goes into action and you're needing multiple like resources and the two-in-two off is really important I just wanted to make sure I say that and I am also mindful that the salary pieces is important as well and I want to note that that it's that it is important to me I I'm I'm in this budget cycle I know that there's there's some work to do around what it looks like at the end of the day but uh but I'm hopeful that we'll get to the point where we we actually are showing our staff in total the parity that they need in order to be the professionals that they or to support them as the best professionals that they are and so I appreciate your being here today and I also want to just note that Italian Chief Green is phenomenal for my daughter to see and I am very excited about that higher that promotion and I want to encourage you to promote from within as much as part of not just Black folks but all the folks I think you have a really good team and the folks that I've been able to interact with have always been of most stellar what do you like they offer the most stellar services and I appreciate what they do thank you Council Member thank you very much for the kind words that that fire actually that you referred to was extremely difficult it started in a single family dwelling a block away from where those embers fell and luckily we had additional resources on scene that could respond to that quickly and kept that to really just being a wood fire with a little bit of drop down but kept the damage up in second building to extremely minor so but thank you for noticing that our members do the incredible work every single day and I'm sure Chief Green enjoys being a role model because I think she does it I mean I know she does a very good job at this thank you thank you and I want to selfishly say yes thank you for saving my life because I was in the building across the street from that building and all of the evacuations and making sure we all understood what was happening was appreciated thank you thank you thank you Chief colleagues if there are no further questions I see John is up and I don't see any so Chief I just want to say thank you we really appreciate you thank you for your good work and we'll hope to see you soon in person so thank you Mr. Mayor thank you Council okay we'd like to move on to Sean Egan this year a Director of Transportation to give us an overview of the Transportation Department good afternoon Mayor Mayor Pro Tem I'm members of Council go to the next slide I am Sean Egan I'm Director of Transportation and I'm proud to present today on behalf of the nearly 90 current employees of the department in the last year we have welcomed our new Assistant Director for Mobility Services Rachelle Parent formed and staffed a new business services unit and we have Tom Devlin and Trevor Minor here from that unit who were integral in preparing the budget materials you'll see today and we've continued to benefit from the experience and expertise of Assistant Director Bill Judge who leads planning and engineering for the department I want to draw special attention to our frontline staff who throughout the pandemic have continued to serve the Durham community by maintaining traffic signage and signals to keep our streets safe and others who have adapted parking services to respond to the pandemic's impacts it was wonderful to hear the Council's enthusiasm yesterday for the City Manager's proposal to provide retroactive premium pay for our frontline staff and I also want to highlight the importance of Go Durham bus and access systems and their personnel and express appreciation for the Go Durham staff who continue to provide essential mobility for our community during this challenging time if you go to the next slide as we look at our overall budget while there are minor changes in our general fund in grant budgets we primarily have a tale of two funds it is the best of times for the transit fund well for the parking fund it is the worst of times so I'm going to pass over the grant fund table and move to the parking the next yeah so parking demand has been severely reduced during the pandemic in response the department has undertaken a series of cost containers hiring freezes for select full-time positions refinanced debt service and reduced contract expenses despite the savings generated from these measures the budget assumes all currently available fund balance will be utilized in FY 22 and we believe in the form of transfers from other sources will be needed we will continue to monitor developments with our colleagues in bms and finance and provide updates to council through the quarterly recording process in FY 22 on the next slide you'll see the transit fund the benefits from federal COVID-19 relief that has made it possible to weather the suspension of fare collection the loss of state aid and the additional expenses for personal protective equipment for staff and riders over the last year for example we have distributed nearly 400,000 masks on go Durham buses across our community next slide please the proposed budget includes two new positions one to manage the delivery of infrastructure projects funded by the Durham County transit plan such as those in the go Durham better bus project as well as a new staff position at the sign and signal shop for maintenance of the city's growing number of traffic control signs and pavement markings the increase in federal aid for transit also allows us to address deferred maintenance needs replacing bus lifts at the end of their useful life and an HVAC system that recently failed on one of the hottest days of the summer forcing staff to evacuate the facility while also adding a bus vacuum system to address concerns about bus cleanliness we have heard from our riders and through community engagement we have also proposed improvements to frequency and hours of bus services as well as expanded on demand services to respond to needs identified through community engagement and are working to maximize the funding available through the Durham County transit plan to support these initiatives one of the key constraints on our ability to offer additional services is personnel we are always hiring new bus operators and we find that many struggle to complete the required training particularly around customer service and communication skills as a result we often lose more than half of our recruits during the training process to address this we are partnering with Durham Tech to offer essential skills training to Durham residents to build these skills and enable graduates of that program to successfully complete the training required to become a go Durham bus operator next slide please to address the parking fund losses we will need to address both revenues and expenses continuing the cost containment efforts implemented over the last year to reduce part-time positions reduce contracted security and insource certain security and maintenance functions using parking staff for revenues we are currently working on a study of parking rates and plan to present the study findings and recommendations at a work session in august with the support of federal funding from the congestion mitigation and air quality or CMAC program recommended by the Durham Chapel Hill Carboro Metropolitan Planning Organization we are excited to add eight miles of bike lanes this year we will also continue the installation of audible pedestrian signals like the one completed earlier this week at Fayetteville Road and Renaissance Parkway the budget also includes one-time reductions as we deplete our current equipment inventories however additional funding will be needed in future years to restore full services levels next slide please for transit the city manager announced in her presentation last week that her budget continues the suspension of fair collection for both bus and access riders through FY22 this decision was informed by a race equity analysis conducted by our colleagues at budget management and services that showed that communities of color would see the greatest benefit from this investment as we have discussed Go Durham represents a unique opportunity to focus investment in disadvantaged communities as more than 80 percent of our riders are people of color nearly 75 percent have incomes below $25,000 a year and more than two-thirds live in zero car households so transit is their transportation last month on Earth Day Go Durham launched our electric bus program with an inaugural trip on the Holloway Street corridor starting at the site of the Village Transit Center modernization of our fleet continues in the coming fiscal year with delivery of eight diesel replacement buses and six electric buses for service expansion expected by the end of December this enables Go Durham to retire the 2003 series buses like the one shown on the left with the data branding and grow our electric fleet to eight buses next slide please work is also underway for a series of infrastructure improvements through the Better Bus Project with better pedestrian connections to bus stops through the bus access initiative bus speed and reliability changes to traffic signals pavement markings and signage where buses and riders experience delays and the corridor improvements on Fayetteville Street and Holloway Street including the Village Transit Center better infrastructure will be paired with an expansion of the on-demand zone in East Durham to make last mile connections to the transit network as well as new services in response to engagement conducted for the Durham County Transit Plan we will also be working with Durham County Go Triangle and the DCHC MPO to update the Durham County Transit Plan and associated interlocal agreement to provide the City of Durham provider of more than 80% of transit service in Durham County with a formal role in the recommendations of the staff working group we are also excited to begin our partnership with Durham Tech to equip Durham residents with the skills they need to become GoDurham bus operators so that we can continue to grow the services we provide in our community so I want to say thank you to our colleagues in BMS and finance as well as our city manager Paige and deputy city manager Chadwell with that I'm happy to take any questions great presentation Mr. Egan wow what a year you've had on on the buses oh my gosh but you all have handled it so well I've just been so impressed with to use you know a pandemic word the way you've pivoted you've done a wonderful job and I know it's been a difficult year to be a leader but you've been a great leader so just want to thank you and this report you know just shows the intricacies and the so much that's associated with your operations so much to be excited about the free fares and thank you for that analysis and for budget management services we've discussed that earlier as a council we're very excited we're excited about the electric buses and I think some of your initiatives around training with Durham Tech are fantastic the could you explain a little bit more and you were talking about a couple of your funds and the kind of and a level of uncertainty about the funding and I could you describe that a little bit more and talk about how it relates to potential federal funding and our ability to you know fill the necessary holes so I'll start with the transit fund we've received the first two allocations from the cares act as well as the chrissa so we're working through applications and drawing down those funds we're waiting on the final figures for the American Rescue Plan that they're ground of federal relief funding and what that does for us is it gives us the flexibility to address initiatives where we have needs for training we have needs for deferred maintenance and it puts us in a position to have fund balance available by utilizing those federal funds and then diverting some of our local dollars to other needs and you know and that's that flexibility it offers us the the ability to do things like the fare free extension through FR-22 on the parking side we're seeing you know a significant drop off about a million and a half dollars from our last full pre-COVID year so that while we've done some cost containment we have not been able to do enough cost containment to avoid depleting our fund balance for the for the parking fund so we've been utilizing that throughout this year we'll continue to realize that but we expect to draw that down and my understanding is that the parking losses are an eligible use of the American Rescue Plan funds that are available to the city so the manager's office and BMS are going to be looking at that as a potential way to offset the losses that we'll experience if we can help you thank you very much colleagues questions or comments for Mr. Egan I think Councilmember Reese wants to comment I did thank you Mr. Mayor and then I think Councilmember Freedman thank you Mr. Mayor Sean thanks for being with us today I just wanted to say you you said a lot of great things about the operators on go Durham who have really persevered during the pandemic and I just want to add my voice to that these are folks who who went to work and did what absolutely had to be done and you know I think one thing that folks may tend to forget because there are a lot of national headlines about public systems of transportation in larger cities that saw significant drop-offs in ridership during the pandemic Durham's not one of those places we saw a small reduction early but then we were pretty much at at levels pretty quick such that I know that you had to because of social distancing requirements we ended up having to increase capacity on some of our major lines during this process but even during the midst of the of the greatest global pandemic any of us have ever seen Durham Durham found a way to expand transit service along those heaviest corridors and move to 15-minute service in a way that I was actually really surprised that we could manage and I know that a lot of that has to do with the support we've gotten from our partners but it also has to do Sean with your leadership and making sure that we understand that that's a priority I sent all my colleagues the Better Bus is Better Cities book and after I read it I came to understand Sean that that almost everything you're doing to try to improve our bus system is is described in this book as a thing that you have to do especially in a city like ours Sean as you mentioned where 80% of our riders are people of color low-income folks who don't have a car and so to the extent that we want to improve the lives of our residents to the extent that we want to put more fuel in a true engine of racial equity I've always believed that GoDurham is one of those places and so that's why it's so important that we that we work with our partners to make sure that the city of Durham has a seat at the table when it comes to deciding how the Durham County transit funds will be spent and I'm so grateful to our partners at Durham County who are moving to make that kind of change and I hope and pray that our partners in that will also see the value of having the city be involved in crafting the Durham County transit plan and deciding about and helping make those funding decisions because that's because the most the vast majority of folks who ride transit in Durham don't ride regional transit they ride our local transit system there are lots of exciting ideas and projects about how we can improve regional transit and at a good price I think they make sense for us but I think we have to stay focused as you have done Sean on your department on making sure that our local bus system has the resources it needs to meet folks where they are and get them where they need to be I'm also wanting to say that part of what you have done during the pandemic is begin the Better Buses project here in Durham starting with some corridor improvements along highly traveled our busiest bus corridors that's really exciting work because these are small physical changes to the infrastructure and to signaling to signage that can make a huge difference in terms of keeping our buses on time which is one of the key kind of undervalued aspects of a healthy functioning transit system not just that buses come frequently but that they come when they're supposed to and so that combination of on-time performance and frequency is what can really flip the switch for so many folks to begin taking advantage of what is a world-class system of public transportation in many ways the other thing I wanted to say as part of the Better Buses project has there's a whole section about improving access to our bus stops and that involves a number of quick build projects that are going to be deployed around the city to try to make some changes to improve those levels of access and Sean you and I have talked a lot about about making sure that those quick build projects are where they can do the most good but also I'm happy in parts of our city that have been underserved for a long time with these kinds of improvements we specifically talked about Route 9 that goes through the Braggtown neighborhood and how some of those projects we hope can be included in there the final thing I wanted to say on trend on service expansion specifically to route 9 in our for our neighbors in Braggtown is that this is exactly the kind of project that we would in a different world under different circumstances with a different operating agreement around the Durham County Transit plan that we would take to the to the staff working group and say you know this is a community that has been underserved for generations that could use more frequent and better bus service and put that in front of them but we don't have the opportunity to do that right now for lots of reasons and I think getting that operating agreement renegotiated will give us the ability to do that like I said there are lots of great regional projects on the horizon that I think we should support at the right price but ultimately if you ask 10 people any random 10 people in the city of Durham what do you think about transit they're not going to be talking to you about regional transit they're going to talk about their bus stop having no shelter or no bench they're going to talk about they're not being a sidewalk between where they have to start their journey and getting up to the to the bus stop and they're going to talk about how buses aren't coming on time the way they would like and not as frequently so that's what I hope this body can continue to be focused on for all the reasons that Shauna said the very last thing I want to say and then I'll be done with it is that I'm really looking forward to the to the shared active transportation update that we're going to see at some point in the next several months you know I think especially as we emerge some folks emerge from the pandemic and begin riding these devices I'm seeing more and more complaints about sidewalk blockages and I know that's something that our staff is working really hard on as we speak during this meeting on social media you can see our staff making sure that these blockages get reported to the vendors but there are I think there's some ways that we can improve that experience for pedestrians and our disabled neighbors who are trying to use our sidewalks especially downtown and look forward to talking about that but Shauna I've just been really impressed with your your entire staff and your personal leadership you're one of the department directors that I've probably spent the most time talking to unfortunately for you and it's and the responsiveness of you and your staff has just been tremendous so I want to thank you for everything you're doing and and let's keep going and oh by the way we're going to have to figure out how to go for your free next year but we'll we'll talk about that all right bye I just want to say Mr. Higgin Councilmember Reese says all the account all the directors that they're one of the ones he talks to the most I just want you to know that you don't get special treatment we have 26 directors he talks all of them a lot apparently but I do I do want to say express gratitude for councilmember Reese is incredible activism and expertise on the transportation transit firm he has really committed himself to knowing it and to being active around it and has become our expert and it's really it's a gift to all of us so thank you I'll be on week five tomorrow morning other comments and questions I think I called on councilmember Freeman next yeah councilmember Freeman thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you councilmember Reese for covering just about all of the questions and covered covering all the areas that we need to talk about and I won't repeat those areas but I do want to just hone in on one area specifically around the loss of the funding at the state and federal level and just noting that some of these grants and the lack of their replacements could prevent a lot of folks with disabilities from actually being able to transport to have transportation or transport to doctors appointments to regular food and grocery store pickups and so I just wanted to hear a little bit about how you plan to I guess to alleviate that or try to address it in some way shape or form and this next year acknowledging that there's such a a heavy lift certainly so we have lost significant state aid through the state's state maintenance assistance program SNAP program we've been fortunate in that the relief coming through the federal aid for the first two rounds and the third round upcoming for the American Rescue Plan has been enough for us to continue to provide full services across our community we saw certainly during the pandemic that our access riders still need to get to lifesaving medical treatments like the their dialysis appointments and those we've been absolutely committed to making sure that we're providing full service to our access riders and we've even offered new services over the last few months anyone who has a vaccination appointment doesn't need to have registry with our access system they just can call and our access system will pick them up and take them to that vaccination appointment so you know despite some of the funding challenges that we've had particularly at the state level we've actually increased our services over the last year and tailored some specific services to respond to the needs related to the pandemic and we're also I spoke with a group called vision insights last month about which represents visually impaired riders many of them use both our fixed route and our access systems and they offered a great deal of input on how we can do better and so I'm going to be continuing to work with our access operations team as well as the general county transit plan update process to identify how we can how we can better serve the community that uses our access services so thank you I appreciate that and just one noted point I just wanted to make sure that we're not leaving it to chance I do want to make sure that route nine is included I don't think there's a think about it I think it needs to be included and just making sure that that's clear so that's a route where we've it's one of the routes that we've requested funding through the germ county transit plan it's included in the scenarios that are under consideration for that plan so we're going to be continuing to advocate for that that plan is about to go up for community engagement and I think it's going to be really important for the bright time community as well as other communities that are looking for better local bus service to fully participate in that process because that's the best opportunity that we have to add frequency add evening hours and weekend hours of service is through that funding that's available in the germ county transit plan so I will be participating in the the bright time bus tour on g12 and learning more about the needs in that particular community I really want to encourage our residents to fully participate in that process and make sure that those needs are prioritized in the process thank you Mr. Egan and I also just wanted to share but I think it's important to note there are there are there are intersections around this conversation around the regional and this and the local that are are starting to kick up and play out and I just wanted to make sure that that it's not going to be at the expense of so just acknowledging that folks in the community have expressed their displeasure with how things have worked out with the light rail and how 10 years spent focused on light rail was at the expense of all of the folks on the buses and if we do the same thing again in commuter rail that it doesn't serve our local needs and so I just want to make sure that I highlight thank you council member mayor pro temp thank you Mr. Mayor I just had one question thank you for all of your work that I know the bus system has been really important for all a lot of our residents during the pandemic it's amazing that we've seen more people riding the bus over the last year I just wanted to ask real quick about the parking fund do we do we imagine that that situation is going to be better in the next fiscal year or like do we see a path toward that being solvent or are we looking at like a multi-year situation of losses in the parking fund and do we do y'all have any ideas on what we might need to do to deal with that so we do expect to see a loss in 22 as well as again in 23 and then we see recovery in the later years a big part of that is going to be adjusting rates so some of the hourly we developed a plan to have every other year adjustments to our hourly rates and then every other year adjustments to our monthly parking rates the hourly rate changes were initially going to go into effect in October of last year that's been deferred and the monthly rates that would have gone into effect in July of this year have also been deferred and we're using this time now to conduct a consultant study that will be bringing back to cancel in August with a report and recommendations on how we can adjust those rates so that the rates provide a better reflection of the true cost to the city of providing these parking services so you're saying rates would go up that's what we expect from them that's what we had as our multi-year plan we're looking at which rates should go up in at what rates so that the multi-year plan that we had developed had increases in both monthly and hourly rates to be implemented every other year and so we'll work you through the recommendations on what what the right level of increases and the timing of that as part of the study okay thank you that's helpful yeah I mean I remember a few years back we were worried about the parking fund and thought that building that parking garage in downtown over by the post office was going to help seems like maybe it didn't and we're still kind of in the same in the same situation it just it feels bad to have the city subsidizing parking I know that it's it's something that it's hard to get away from but but yeah it's it's worrying that we're doing that and that we're you know we've continued to do it even though we've tried to get out of it it just feels like we you know feel like we can't ever stop subsidizing parking and I don't know how to how to do that but I would like to if we could figure out how to do and then we you know but we can't make the rates so high they know what actually uses the garages so yeah rock and hard place but thank you for your insights I think one of the questions there is when demand returns that'll be hopefully a different equation but yeah right now no demand no ability raise rates yeah okay Councilmember Middleton thank you Mr. Mayor Director you can good to see you my man in person you've got that signature look with your headset on your kind of say you look like a gamer yeah he's different than the other director Mr. Mayor you have to put our boy Charlie out there like that we uh he's eager about the work and we're better for his engagement with the department director so I thank him for that I want to thank him for the book too and and I'll use that as a jump off point the the better buses better cities so much of that's in the book I kind of knew intuitively and anecdotally but it was it was good to see it codified and it's good to also see it at work Sean in in our transportation department I was really really anticipating this presentation believe it or not amongst all others because I think that if we're if we're to have a Marshall plan for Durham for our legacy communities transportation is going to play such a key part of that I remember when I was first getting settled in Durham riding a bus years ago and somebody on the bus asked me what's wrong and I mean what do you mean what's wrong because I was on a bus in Durham and I grew up riding buses in trend not commuterary our buses and trains and one of the things I loved about it is the egalitarian nature of it you know millionaire stock broke on your left homeless person on your right nobody assigned you know social economic value to you riding the bus or the train and we know that the difference between the magic of enjoying open spaces in Durham or one of our trails or getting a job at Google or Apple the difference between that experience and not having it is oftentimes a ride and so many of our people in the city need to be able to negotiate the city in order to make the magic happen so I want to thank you for the work you've been doing this important work my colleagues have touched on a couple of areas that I had to ask questions so this will greatly lengthen thankfully my engagement with you with respect to what we're going to be looking at the CIP project and bring an equity lens to the CIP project bus stops are going to be play a big role in that in that view so it's already been asked I don't have to say more about that but just to put you on notice that you're going to be an important conversation partner as we look to do justice to our legacy areas in the city obviously with perspective transportation as far as you're concerned second thing I wanted to do is just thank you we have a resident I don't know if this is risen to your desk but you've had some ambassadors in your department working with a resident who lives on Fayetteville and you probably know what I'm talking about what the DOT is doing that massive project and there's a stop light literally I mean it's literally you open her door there's a light there and and there's nothing state did it imminent domain issue when she's really really upset but I was and I was heartened to hear how members of our transportation team have been working with her and trying to find creative ways to make the space more livable but I don't know what the ultimate outcome is going to be but you need to know that that I think that's the type of culture that that's flowing through our transportation part department and working with her I won't call her name they didn't get permission to call her name but you know what I'm talking about that particular case so I want to thank you for continuing to engage and continuing to address that finally I'll dismount here and the the mayor pretend touched on parking my final question was about parking but with a little twist on it insofar as parking is a revenue source for us and and we're being asked as a council to consider turning outdoor dining making it permanent and that will affect some of the parking in Durham and I've gotten this question from a number of folks do you foresee that having a major I'll say deleterious impact on our revenue generation if we were to make outdoor dining permanent in the corridors where it's been asked you have any thoughts on that right now we have a good deal of parking inventory so demand is low so we if you know folks can't find a space on street because it's been repurposed for you know a curbside pickup zone or for outdoor dining we have plenty of spaces available in our parking decks to accommodate that demand so in the near term as long as people are willing you know the the on street parking is our most convenient parking spaces but if folks are willing to go around the corner and parking all of our decks then there's not really a significant revenue loss in the near term as the city continues to grow and parking demand recovers we may get to a point where we've maxed out our off street capacity but I think we're a ways off from that and so in the near term there shouldn't be a significant impact on the other side cool I appreciate that my my question was yeah it was strategic well if we codify that and and we return back to our normal way of life is that going to be a you know do you foresee that being an issue you know and also the dovetail you know the mayor the mayor protems sentiments about the city subsidizing parking and I'm I'm with her on on kind of having a queasy feeling about us subsidizing parking I know the general thing is that in doing so it's supposed to spur economic we're supposed to realize economic benefits from from you know subsidizing parking there's a flow through effect because businesses get you know more feet past them more dollars spent so it accrues back to us on the back and I get the economic undergirding proposition of it but but I I do share the mayor protems I don't know I don't know if queasiness is the right row but where but certainly it raises questions in me but I do appreciate the prognosis if you will about because I'll just say I I I like the idea and the idea of codifying making permanent outdoor dining resonates with me think it brings more character to our city I think it makes activates it in terms of foot traffic but I also want to get a sense of how it might impact us in other ways as a city particularly when we're looking at you know parking revenue or the lack thereof so look forward to working with you on these all great all you know exciting things coming down the road on transportation is going to be a major player in that so thank you Sean thank you Mr. Mayor Thank you Council Member I'm going to call on Council Member Reese and I hope that could be our last comment so we can move along Council Member Thank you Mr. Mayor I just wanted to make two points first the reason that Council Member Middleton and the Mayor Pro Tem feel bad about about supporting parking is because it's bad that's why you feel bad because it's bad understanding the economic stimulus argument but the other thing we're stimulating is people getting in their cars and driving downtown and parking them there and that's not great and so understand that we've got to figure out a way to write the ship in terms of the parking fund but Sean I'm really really hearten to hear your remarks about the kind of the capacity on the street and what what what that looks like the other thing I wanted to say and Sean this is not a criticism I promise you because you're right that one of the main entry points that that folks in Durham have to the work of the Durham County Transit Plan and trying to get additional funding for service expansion along route nine is through the public engagement that's going to be going on I think that's exactly right but it really sticks into my craw and I suspect my colleagues will have the same reaction that we are we are we have to resort asking the same people in Braggtown to tell us yet again they're not being well served I feel like we've gotten that message on the council and so I think what I'd like to do is figure out a way that we can as people the seven of us make that perspective known to the folks who are making these decisions they are other boards that are populated in part by us and in part by other people and so I think I'll I'll take the opportunity to talk to Sean a little bit about how we can be better advocates for the folks in Braggtown along route nine as the as the staff working group considers these types of expansion funding because I don't I don't I know and Sean again you did not mean this but it's not fair for us to ask those folks to be be on point in terms of making their their needs known yet again they've they've done that we've got that message so let's go ahead and see what we can do to boost that signal for them that's all I have to say I promise I'll stop now thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member I do it remind colleagues that we had the the mayor's challenge grant from Bloomberg that was figuring out helping us figure out ways to reduce the number of cars that were parking downtown let's just say the timing on that was not perfect and so I think we're all very aware of this problem and we'll we'll have to figure out a way to deal with it okay Mr. Egan thank you we're grateful for you being here with us thank you so much for your work thank you for that team I want to say final thing I want to say before Mr. Egan goes off I realize we see Mr. Judge a lot and I hope you will offer Mr. Judge our deep appreciation every time we see him he's in some you know hey Mr. Judge come on and solve this like really hard problem for us sorry to put you on the spot in front of everybody but he does it with a lot of grace a lot of objectivity and you know a lot of sort of just the facts ma'am and I really want to appreciate him and I hope you'll pass that on to him certainly well we we couldn't do the important work that we're doing without the it's just absolutely integral and I'm a great leader for the organization so great thank you for recognizing your work yeah please pass it on to we're glad to have this parent as well all right Mr. Allure it's up to you I am we are prepared to press on if you are willing to listen well we'll press on and I'll see Mr. Long is with us welcome Mr. Long good afternoon my name is Donald Long and I'm the director of solid waste management for the city of Durham with me this afternoon Wayne Fenton and Jim Ryan Gruber my two assistant directors and Brandy Manor my senior business services manager you see our org chart the department requested and received approval for six FTEs in FY 22 and the four positions approved for residential collection division were previously approved as over hires where the four positions are requested were previously approved as over hires in FY 21 these positions will help the department alleviate some of the service issues we encountered in FY 21 most notably in our yard waste division next slide please you see our resource allocation table capital increases as a cost for the split body real order is in there and the cost of contract repairs that the annex are in there as well program revenues are down due to tipping fees because of the mix of commercial and residential waste being generated the pandemic calls the commercial revenue producing waste tonnage to drop quite a residential waste tonnage went up we met with our recycling processor recently and recycling markets have been stronger and we hope they continue to improve we hope we will go from sending them money to them sending us money next slide please our budget highlights the department submitted eight budget requests this year as shown above most of these are self-explanatory I will highlight three the first is the maintenance assistant FTE for card services disposition with primarily repair damaged cards also assisting card delivery it is this it will essentially pay for itself as the department will save money by repairing more cards instead of replacing as many damaged cards with a new card the second is an administrative technician scale attending at the transfer station this position will allow for full-time operation of both scale houses to provide adequate coverage during employee absences it will not be hired until January of 2022 as the completion of the second scale house is completed right around December of 2021 the third request is the add to base for Sonoco and GFL contracts this was needed as both contracts have built-in escalators these are cost increases projected to maintain our current level of services at the transfer station and for recycling processing next slide please our budget highlights we have four major initiatives we want to highlight that are coming up over the next six months curbside collection for compost and route rebalancing both of these were pretty well put on the back burner in the last year we were moving forward with them until the pandemic hit and we are planning to move forward as some of the restrictions affecting our operations have been lifted we're developing plans to rebalance routes in order to more efficiently manage the growth experience we had a plan on the table but Durham has grown so much in the last year that that plan kind of became obsolete and the longer we wait to get a rebalancing done the more things we have to move around to make it work but we're going to be moving forward with that and it'll be a relatively small portion of customers having their collection days changed that was our major deal we don't want to move too many people around and get them confused participation in the triangle region solid waste consortium city council approved this agreement with our regional partners at a recent council meeting we meet on a regular basis with triangle j council of governments Lee warsley coordinating the group and that is because we have common needs Raleigh, Durham Chapel Hill, Orange County we all have common needs we all are really suffering from the recycling market down turn and we think if we combine resources we can come up with something that will help us financially on that level scalehouse renovation we are adding the third scale and associated second scale house to our current operation the approved scale attendant will allow for separate operation of a second scale house the renovation also includes a new break room and hopefully when we have periods of high usage this will keep those cars having the line up on the street I'll take questions from here I want to thank everybody who assisted us in getting this together the budget department has been especially helpful as well as our deputy Bo Ferguson Thank you Mr. Long it's great to see you been a long time really good to see you at least virtually and look forward to seeing you in person your department has also been another that was really you had so many front-line workers really hard hit by the pandemic needs and quarantine needs and so forth social distancing needs and just want to thank you as I did Mr. Egan for getting through it so well I know it's been a really tough year I have a couple of questions I'll start with one is about yard waste service which we've you know had a difficult year with and wondering where that is and how you're feeling about our ability to do it well and do it on a regular schedule moving ahead I feel very good about our ability to do it well June 1st we're going back to our regular collection process so we have 22,508 yard waste customers we are adding 102 customers per month that is unprecedented just to give you an example last fiscal year we average adding 62 customers a month and basically what happened was we went from collecting 12 routes a week to collecting those 12 routes in two days because we were utilizing yard waste personnel to help us collect garbage and so we just fell behind we knew that was ambitious when we proposed that we felt like we could we could keep up but what we didn't anticipate were that large number of people being out and so now we're getting people back at present we still have eight people out long term I think three of those are yard waste and I think we will be hopefully we'll be back up to snuff in August at least but we will have enough people and during the pandemic something happened that was really nice the trucks that we had been waiting on for two years came in and so now we're up to snuff on trucks I think on June 1st we'll be functional enough personnel wise to get it done we'll be going back to regular service and I feel very confident Mr. Mayor we'll be able to do that great and your ability to hire is pretty good at this point our ability to hire is pretty good at this point we what we do is we establish if we run a if we run a process at the end of the process we establish a roster we get them registered with HR and then when we have vacancies rather than start a process all over again they allow us just to go to our roster and call people and ask them if they're interested great and then on the other question regards the the curbside compost pickup organic waste let me see what you call it exactly on the on the budget sheet here yeah curbside collection for compost can you talk about where we are with that like I said that was one of the ones put on the back burner we because of the restrictions we didn't try to move forward with that as of July 1st we're gonna get our boots on the ground and start doing canvassing and see who's interested in participating in the program and I feel like we ought to get be able to get that that moving forward in the very near future that's exciting well there be separate bins or how will that work we think for right now we're gonna try to use the yard waste carts yeah I don't I'm not well I've had some conversations with my staff I'm not real keen on adding another bin you know we already have for people who have yard waste and some people have more than one recycling cart we already have a lot of bins in front of people's in people's yards and garages side of the house so I'm not a big fan of adding another cart unless it's something that people would want to keep inside of their house and and take out so that's still kind of a working in progress but I wouldn't count on that and another bin at this point great all right well thank you very much I'm excited about that it's great to think that that's going to be coming soon and I'm really excited I'm going to now move to Councilmember Caballero and then I'm going to move to Councilmember Freeland and then Councilmember Freeman all right afternoon good afternoon Mr. Long good to see you nice to see you thank you your staff was amazing this year I would periodically tell my kids like look you know the city is moving when you're recycling and garbage is still getting picked up like lockwork in the middle of pandemic and so it was really a lot of appreciation to your staff I had a couple of follow-up questions on compost how often are you and if this is two in the weeds it's fine I'm hoping that we will we can't we can't do compost on the you know the way we do recycling especially in the summer so I just want to throw that out there as we're thinking about it and just curious about if that's two in the weeds we all have gotten there that's been a you know even the garbage in the summer because of the smell is something that I'm wondering how we're going to handle it no ma'am that's not two in the weeds that you are exactly on point with that I would for the same reason every now and then we'll have someone say well we're recycling more so why not make recycling every week in garbage every other week and I always point out in the summertime that's a big issue so compost is going to have to be collected on a weekly basis we wouldn't want to have create odor problems all over the city by asking people to hold that stuff for in every other week collection so no I don't think it'll be every other week it would well most definitely it'll be an every week collection thank you and add me to the list for any kind of cheerleading y'all need we're avid comp posters and I'm really excited that we're moving forward well but what I plan on advancing with my staff and with Beverly Thompson's staff is having you guys be advocates for us when we kick it off so we would be in touch with that and the council member Caballero can do it in Spanish absolutely council member Freelon thank you Mr. Mayor good to see you again Mr. Long nice to see you sir ex-employee yes I used to work at the department that's always back in high school that is correct and um yeah under David McCarry and uh it's one of my favorite departments and yeah my question was building on a question um Mayor Schull asked about yard waste there have been some folks who kind of were asking about how the pricing with yard waste works I think it's I mean if I understand correctly it's kind of baked into the fee and then but people are asking if it could be like a one-off or I don't know could you just explain how pricing for yard worse makes yard waste works rather okay so when we went to every other week a lot well we didn't get a lot of it but but uh the voices that we heard were loud voices campaigning to cut the fee in half since we were cutting the collection service in half we don't establish that that fee as a result of the the number of trips we established that fee with um it's a formula that I could not recite to you right now but we tried to build in the gas usage the employee cost and how many how many miles we drive and things like that and and we come up with that fee scale based on those numbers we don't come up with that fee scale based on the amount of time had we been had we been able to pull it off and really be efficient at collecting at that rate it would it would have pretty much amounted to the same number of collections as we were doing when we were doing it every other week so moving forward come June 1st the fee will stay the same if um if anyone feels as if they were sold short during the pandemic when we had to cut services we would apologize and we would explain to them just as I explained to you that we don't base it on the number of times we come by the house and it is a subscription fee so it's not anything that's forced on anyone okay yeah that's really helpful for me to explain to residents who reach out and I've got to commend y'all every single time someone comes out and complains you know when we check and I check back in on them they say y'all jumped right on it so I do want to commend y'all for being responsive to folks who complain but yeah there are people who asked about that fee structure and hearing that it's not based on the number of trips is helpful I think most people can hopefully be empathetic to the fact that we've had an unprecedented year last year and it sounds like things will be back up and running in August you said is when you expect to return to normal yard waste we're expecting to return to normal June 1st next June 1st oh great okay wonderful wonderful okay thank you for that those are my questions Mr. Mayor thank you sir okay thank you and I'm glad to hear about your employment history I didn't know that that's great on council expert we could have used him I could have used him this year that's right and of course we know the council member Freemans husband has a lot of expertise in this area as well council member freeman thank you I just had a couple questions and just following up I I realize that the rebalancing conversation around the routes is still concerning to me acknowledging that in a plan in the planning process in the zoning case there's kind of a check check off or feedback that comes from solid waste and it doesn't usually indicate that there's going to be a negative impact or positive impact or what the impact might be and I think it might be important to know again because I've noted it for the last three years that it would probably be good and many of our departments to acknowledge where growth is going those costs are going to go to and so the need for these additional staff is increasing on the on the base of where we are but when we create urban sprawl that is greater than if it were in a in a compact area and so just no sending folks all the way out to us to a donut hole to actually provide the type of traction and recycling service or composting or yard waste servicing is also more expensive and I think there needs to be a way to factor that in on each of these zoning cases because we do continue continue to see an additional I don't notice that now we're going to stay flat at 102 per month I think it might grow even more so that's just my own thing but I just had a question I noted that there was a private recycling company shopping an ordinance around to try and have commercial recycling as a requirement or as setting an ordinance that made it required and I just wanted to get some feedback on whether you felt that because I know that they were setting their tipping rate below where our tipping rate was if you if you'd had any conversations around this or not and I have not I have not had a chance to catch up with you and I do apologize but this was a chance to make sure that I get on my on your radar I have not had any conversations with any privates in regards to commercial recycling I think if they would check the state already requires commercial recycling and I think more or less without me knowing any details this sounds like a company that's just trying to spread his services around the businesses because they're already doing so and they are allowed to do that while on the other hand while the business has a contract with a private company we are not allowed to contact them we are not allowed to intercede on any private contracts but I have not heard from I'm not aware of that and I would check with our recycling folks to see if they are aware of that thank you I'll follow up with you afterwards but I appreciate that at least that lets me know it raised the flag for me and I was trying to figure out why but that helps thank you yes ma'am thank you council member are there any further questions or comments for Mr. Long council member Middleton thank you Mr. Mayor Mr. Long I didn't think I would see you to the G-Hope but it's good to see you if G-Hope happens if he happens I think it's going to happen I think it's going to happen I think it's going to happen I think it's going to happen yes sir good to see you man let me let me add my word of thanks to you your department in particular you know for those of us that are blessed and fortunate enough to be able to sit at home and still do our work in front of a computer it's a good reminder of just how impactful this pandemic were to some who still had to carry on the mission and and you you carried out the mission under extreme fire in the extreme circumstances and we are so grateful to you and the men and women that work for you I don't care how shiny or how hot or how happening your city is don't let the garbage get picked up and everything else is placed on hold so so I just want to just add on behalf of a grateful city thousands of us to thank you for operating under some incredibly difficult circumstances and we're grateful for those that have recovered in your department and we honor the memory of those who did not recover across the city as well so thank you so much for that I wanted to just first of all one of the ways I think the most dramatic numbers to indicate to us how much our city is growing is when y'all talk about how many new accounts you get each month and how many people are just moving to our city and this reminds us of the challenges of governing an emergent and growing city this department in particular I think it's a pretty graphic reminder to us of this how much our city is growing and how we have to stay on top of providing services across the board in every area that we don't have the luxury of declaring that the city is closed and nobody else can move here and if each area is looked at we know that we have to do what's necessary to govern a growing city so I want to thank you for doing an incredible job in this area for managing and helping to grow our city I just wanted to manage our growing city I want clarification because I think in Council Freelon I touched on it because I get a bunch of we all get a bunch of emails about yard waste I got some yesterday from residents about yard waste schedule and I just wanted to pick up Council Freelon so I thought I heard you say June we would be back to normal schedule but it might take towards August for the whole the backlog or to feel the effect of it or is that or is on June 1 folk are going to notice their yard waste getting picked up with regularity just want to what I was referring to in August that we will resume and be getting the closer a better handle on was the curbside compost program okay okay yeah okay so I'm conflating the yard waste the yard waste program we hope to see an instantaneous pick up pick up on that and let me drift back and talk about the growth a little bit we do provide an impact analysis to John Allure when there are donut holes and and buildings new developments being raised up we do provide the we do provide an impact statement to John Allure in that case we do get to share what we feel like the impact of adding a donut hole or adding a develop would mean on us and say eight times out of 10 it will mean very little because it might not have any collection points in it or it might be very near and close to a point that we already collect that so if a if a development or if anything is added outside of our scope of being able to do it we will provide that information to them to say that's going to take another truck and another crew for us to do that efficiently so we would provide that information that that's very helpful that's very helpful thank you and that's a great reminder we as a council don't have the luxury of pretending that we can add developments or build more housing and not think that those there won't be human beings living there that are going to need services across the board every service that the city provides so I appreciate that so I'm just if case you're hearing on the streets I just want to be clear so the next time somebody asks me about yard waste I'm going to tell them Donald Long told me that on June 1 we're going to be back to normal operation so if you hear that in the street I'm just I can say that right that's fair because we've been pushing it we've been pushing it out through all the social media outlets we will we will be back to normal June 1st thank you pride thank you man thank you pride I wonder what Jiho was and now I know it's some Aggie thing okay I was going to ask but I was thought I was worried I might embarrass myself but now I'm good okay you're my plus one it's the greatest homecoming on earth you're my plus one there you can come oh I'm there I'm there okay all right any final comments or questions for Director Long Mr. oh Council Member Freeman I was just going to say thank you I appreciate that I think it would be helpful to see it more clearly is what I'm getting at because it's not coming across in the zoning cases um Mr. I think I think John might be able to shed more light on that yeah I was going to I was going to I was I was I'm sorry I was going to interject and say what Mr. Long is referring to by the impact analysis is the cost benefit analysis that is included in every annexation package you see where there is a section on that having to do with solid waste impacts and I guess that's what that's what I'm getting at in that those impacts are by case and it has to be a way to collect them all together because if you're doing olive branch and there's little impact little impact little impact and so it says nothing it says zero impact on the case it doesn't reflect the actual impact on on that like how they're having impact on our costs all right thank you Council Member and um um thank you everyone Mr. Long we appreciate you you're a great leader we're so grateful to you please pass on our gratitude to the staff of the solid waste department and I will do that hope to see you again soon in person looking forward to seeing you thank you thank you all right we have two more departments let's let me just say that I turn into a pumpkin at quarter to two and at that point I'm going to ask Mayor Pro Tem Johnson if she will be presiding but hopefully we can get close to finish by then so Mr. Allure let's move right along to the Parks and Recreation Department and I believe Mr. Walcott is with us yes good afternoon thank you Mr. Mayor Madam Mayor Pro Tem and members of Council wish we could have met by now and been working together for a long time but obviously the circumstances are such that we haven't been able to but I am I'm Wade Walcott and I'm very proud to be able to have this time and to share with you our department budget and it really comes from the entire department this was something that was very important to all of us when developing our budget this year is that for every employee to have a voice and have an opportunity to contribute to that so we're very excited about that and I did want to underscore a common theme that we've been hearing a lot lately and I'd be remissed if I didn't take the opportunity to do it right now like police like fire and like you've heard from all the other operations departments we've been affected by COVID in so many ways but so many of the men and women in those departments including Parks and Recreation haven't gone away and we've been performing those duties and those services to the public and so I wanted to take time to make sure our team was recognized during all of these stay at home orders from you know federal and state and local area oftentimes parks and trails were excluded and we've seen how many people throughout Durham and even the country for that matter have really flocked to our parks and trails during this time and even though we've been saying for years the benefits that you get from Parks and Recreation and being outdoors the community really embraced it this time and just wanted to thank them and especially thank all of the men and women that kept our restrooms our bathrooms clean our parks clean picked up litter and did a lot of great work in our playgrounds as well and the last bit is just thanks we actually provided space and rooms for children that needed internet access to do their remote learning for school so a little unique thing there I just want to make sure was so you can see with our org chart the only addition here is the increase of four new full-time employees and those are specifically for athletic field maintenance and we can talk about that probably in a couple in an extra slide or two on our resource allocation table the biggest thing that jumps out and differences here is when you look at the row of capital and other and you look at the adopted 21 budget and see 863 and you compare that to our proposed 22 budget there's a big jump in there and that jump mainly represents two big things one is a one-time cost related to capital equipment purchase purchases for athletic field maintenance so mowers and equipment heavy equipment like that the other big portion that represents that that jump up is the money that we receive through the half penny fund for maintenance for parks and recreation which is included in the proposed two cent property tax increase so that represents the big jump on on this slide next please so in terms of highlights and what I alluded to a little bit ago with with full-time employees one of the initiatives that we requested and approved was athletic field maintenance we're at a point where we're just trying to have enough resources to be able to maintain the athletic fields in a way that meets our standard and that we're proud of we also know over the next year and into the fall we'll have some improvements and some new parks and athletic areas coming online so this request represents extra staff and equipment to be able to maintain what we will have starting this fall in terms of new field space to manage that includes of course the Hoover Road Park that the mayor of course will be the first person to kick the ball in the soccer goal for that and then that also includes some improvements that we're doing at Campus Hills with a new field multi-purpose field and a Herndon Park turning a natural turf field into synthetic turf the other two highlights represent utility costs at the recently acquired wheels property this is just to keep basic functions going we start our planning process the other highlight is community play days what this means is this is for us to offer the community more space in the evening hours when it starts to get dark that they can have lights and play in a court free of charge next please so the big initiatives that we're looking at over the next year the aquatics facilities what this means is the the engagement process for the aquatic center that we're looking at and why we bought wheels in the first place what's exciting about this project is we're partnering very closely with general services and we're using this this project this engagement as really as our pilot and a joint pilot between general services and ourselves of how we follow the equitable engagement blueprint and using it as a pilot project of our racial equity plan so we're really excited about working with general services but also NIS and of course the community to put together the vision of what this space looks like what it wants to be how it connects with the community and the Merrickmore neighborhood and how it connects even across the street to this park that's coming online another exciting addition or improvement is the Rock Quarry Park project that should be online by I would say late fall this includes some really good improvements there's a multi-purpose staging area we've already got a musical playground installed there'll be some trail connections and one of the most uh best improvements really that's not the exciting piece but just regrading and improving with drainage so many times when it rains there that area stays wet for way too long and so this will improve you know the experience for everybody and be able to for us to attract a lot of special events into the city the last two bullets here really talk about what we've learned in this past year you know due to COVID and as I mentioned that the beginning the significant impacts that we've had with people being out into our parks and passive recreation and on our trails and so it we're due to upgrade our strategic plan to identify what the community's goals are what our initiatives need to be and how better to use data to measure our progress and to make sure we're meeting if not exceeding your community's needs so between that and planning for the future and a comprehensive master plan are some of the big initiatives that we're looking forward to next please and of course this year where we are today compared to where we are last last year at this time everyone's excited about the restoration of programs and bringing things back and and yes all these things that you see here will be back as of right now staff we're planning to have a little bit more of restricted in terms of capacity and numbers that we can safely operate under and still following both state federal and local guidelines but the takeaway is yes we are going to have camps at our traditional sites and these camps are actually full right now we are we're going to bring back our my Durham program we'll have plenty of team programs special events they've been going on already and we're going to continue with those throughout the year including the fourth of July and we've added a laser light show so two different opportunities there for the fourth of July the aquatics the pools will be open we're looking to at least bring one pool online as early as June 9th and we'll have kind of a cascading opening after that date athletic programs youth and adult those are going to go full bore this summer and other opportunities specifically mean what what else have we learned two things that stood out to me special events we tapped into some really cool things of what's what was old is new again drive-in movies for example staffed a wonderful job of being adaptive throughout the year and especially our special events team I hope some some of you were able to make it out to our drive-in Bend Bay event a couple of weeks ago very creative it wasn't the Bend Bay that everyone knows and loves but it was still a great opportunity to bring people together and celebrate culture other opportunities we learned is and that will continue is the hybrid approach a hybrid approach of in-person programs and services by keeping virtual opportunities available to those that need that one of the things I'm excited about and that lens is the neighborhood engagement the community engagement opportunity where we'll continue to go to the community where they are and meet at times that are convenient to them but we can also have these opportunities if if if that location still or time isn't as accessible to still have those available for virtual virtual opportunities the biggest challenge that we're currently facing and I know we're not alone in this is staffing some of our programs this summer specifically hiring enough lifeguards and hiring enough camp and youth and team staff it's no different than in the hospitality sector I think that you're seeing right now it's been a hard time for us more than usual to attract and get applicants for these jobs what we have been doing is our first and foremost was looking at our furlough list see what was left on there and contacting those folks first and then opening up to others so those are our biggest challenges that that we're facing right now but also some of the most exciting things of being able to bring back these programs and services to the community Mr. Walcott thank you so much and I know we keep saying this but what a time to be a department director in Parks and Rec I'm just immensely difficult I was glad we were we've been able to meet in person behind a mask and looking forward to being able to spend more time and just really want to appreciate your work jumping right in during this very difficult time and as you said at the department has had to make so many changes so many difficult changes in the way you've had to operate and really want to appreciate you and your staff and I hope you'll pass that on to everybody in Parks and Rec I also want to second what you said about use of the Parks and Trails I know for me the Parks and Trails were a lifeline and I know for so many people in our community and I agree with what you said I think that the pandemic has ironically really increased the appreciation for our Parks and Trails and I think we'll really be building support for that I think I think we're going to just see increasing support and and it makes me think about just you know our the potential there for the future because I think our community is really behind these assets even more than ever so now I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues and I'll start with council member Reese for a question Thank you Mr. Mayor Hi Wade, how's it going? Good thanks Good to finally meet you hope we can fix that in the weeks ahead I just want to share in Mayor Schultz's gratitude to you for the way you jumped right in the job during what we have come to call us unprecedented times hopefully we can get to more precedent in time soon and just so grateful for the way that your department has weathered this storm I'm glad to hear that we're going to be back to a lot of our regular programming this summer I know there are a lot of kids like mine who could use socialization again assuming it can be done safely so I appreciate all the work that you and your staff are doing to make that happen I wanted to let you know today and I guess some of my colleagues know as well what I suspect your assistant director Tom Dawson already knows from my emails to him over the last several months for the last four months I have been embarked on a project to visit all of our city parks there's a page on the DPR website that says a visit all 68 of our parks of course then they list 73 locations below that's okay I've never been one to step back from a challenge and so I threw all of those locations on a Google map that I have kept with me for the last four months and I checked them off as I go this includes some of the parks that folks know a lot about in addition to some of the parks that don't have signage indicating there are parks my favorite was Overlook Park up between the Wilkins Road area and Lake Mickey which is a gravel area on the side of the road the way you can tell by the way at parks and rec facility that it's supposed to be a park is you got the two posts and the black garbage can barrel if you find one of those you've probably found a parks and rec facility Glendale Heights Park on Murray Road just on this side of the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science is another one of these kind of stealth parks without signage but is a lovely place very close to the Bronto Trail some nice picnic tables there and you know you'll have the other one anyway there are a lot of great parks in Durham is what I'm trying to say and my experience over the course of the pandemic was really extraordinary because I visited our parks in every weather condition you can imagine hot cold wet dry windy not windy and there are always people in our parks there are always people enjoying our parks and I came away from the experience with just an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the people of Durham in the past elected leaders staff and ordinary residents who created and nurtured this incredible asset in the city of Durham so that folks like us today in 2021 could have places to be outside where it's predominantly safe to be during a pandemic and I just saw so many residents enjoying our parks it was truly amazing to experience I don't know that I would recommend that all of our city council members visit every park because it's kind of a hall and by the way we really got to do something to let folks know that the Holly Grove area exists because you got to drive really far down someone's driveway before you can actually get to it so let's put a pin in that but what I did want to say is how grateful I was wait to hear you talk about long-term strategic planning for our parks there are despite the fact that our parks are incredibly well used and incredibly well loved based on what I've seen there are some under used assets in our park system that I think could really be a benefit to folks more than they are now which isn't to say we need to put a place structure on every unpaved part of our parks that's not at all what I want to say there are some beautiful areas that our staff has let get grown up a little bit that are just that are beautiful Sherwood Park is a great example the backside of Sherwood Park is just glorious right now and I know there are some folks that are going to be reviewing that park soon but I just want to say there are lots of ways that I think we could invest some time, energy, and money to making our park system even better and I look forward to partnering with you as you develop these long-range plans to make sure that we can do that that's all I really wanted to say Mr. Mayor just again to say that I think it's my experience that I think our system of parks is maybe the thing that folks use the most in the city that most folks in our job don't think about a ton you know we had there was a burst of activity on this council back before we most of us came on to create the half penny for parks maintenance and I can I have seen firsthand all across the city and county how those funds are being well used to maintain this incredibly precious asset but I also think it's true that that we don't talk about our parks a lot in this setting and I think we ought to change that because if for no other reason then what we value we should be working on to maintain and to expand and that's why things like the Hoover Road park are fantastic what we plan to do with wheels is fantastic but maintenance and upgrades to our existing incredible facilities is super important and I hope we can keep talking about that in the years to come that's all I want to say about that thanks everybody council member Reese how many parks have you been to so far there are 73 addresses listed on that site and two days ago I visited my last address I picked it let it was Burton park which I've been to many times I picked it last because I have a friend that lives across the street from it and I was hoping to be there with her and her kids but unfortunately she's out of town so instead I met some guys who were enjoying an adult beverage in the park and we discussed Carolina basketball and I gave them some churros well congratulations 100% true story that is an awesome awesome tour of our parks that's really great council member Freelon thank you Mr. Mayor Charlie didn't you hear him say he was going to turn to a pumpkin in 15 minutes okay so I'm going to try to be really quick Mr. Walcutt it's good to see you again I've had the privilege of playing basketball with Mr. Walcutt he's got a nice little jumper and I wanted to give you some thanks for the work you've been doing with Coach Keenan and others on the initiatives they've been trying to provide for youth in the community during this unprecedented year like Charlie said I'm really excited about the restoration of programs and services and this is kind of a broader conversation that I've been having in the community I've been talking to a lot of black men about developing a strategy for black boys and a lot of the folks who provide services and programs for black youth I think could link in with the parks and rec department and I'd be also curious to see what it looks like for parks and rec maybe the office on youth and our public safety department to put their heads together around linking that into our you know public safety initiatives as we think about where violence is concentrated and how we can interrupt it at the source by keeping kids engaged because in the work that I've done in the community talking to folks finding something for the kids to do is the most frequent thing I hear from people when asked how they envision making their communities better and safer so maybe that's just a larger alley for you and manager Page and our new department chair of safety and wellness and maybe Lara Khalil to discuss but just wanted to offer that I will be coming soon with some you know fleet of black men that have been thinking a lot about this and you know brother Middleton included you know to address this issue and I think parks and rec could play a big role and should play a big role great we look forward to it thank you very much council member I so agree with what you're saying about so often hear that same very same thing I just think that's such such important work thank you and so important to link it to parks and rec all right colleagues other questions council member Freeman thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you council member Freelon I think of just noting I would add the impact team to that conversation as well just just acknowledging that there's some there's some context around conversations that DPR and impact team need to have around some areas I just wanted to also just say that I think that that overlap on out of school services in general and just out of school activities overlaps with the workforce development piece and I would also include workforce development and this is actually the work that I do with Durham Children's Initiative and we've been doing for the last seven years I think it would be important to make sure that that is not lost in this conversation and just acknowledging that it's it's not just the fish fixing aspect of it is also the systems that we have in place and so for the last two years I mean the under employment of youth in the city is unfortunate and then we adding another summer where our youth aren't getting that kind of workforce development support they need I'm mindful that I know that the adjustments have been made based on COVID but I do know that coming out of COVID we should be much in a much better position and I'm worried that we're not and so I would also like to make sure that we're having that conversation so thank you thank you council member any other comments for Mr. Walcott Mr. Walcott thank you so much we really appreciate your being here and we're all looking forward to seeing you and meeting you in person thank you very much for the opportunity Mr. Allure I'm going to ask Mayor Pro Tem Johnson to preside at this last presentation today because I'm going to be leaving leaving at 145 I did see Ms. Giles come in this morning to City Hall she and I came in at the same time so I know she's been waiting patiently for this and Ms. Giles good to see you Mayor Pro Tem Johnson is if you don't mind taking over and if there are any final I'll be here until 145 and Mr. Allure are there any final things we'll have to do after the department presentation? Just to inform you that there's some follow-up items and we'll get those to you it's Monday is a holiday but our expectation is by next week so that we we're in good shape I am not aware of anything unless Council is aware of outstanding items at this point I believe that we have a potential day morning schedule do we not? That is correct and so if there are any follow-up items you can let us know if we need to have that meeting June 10th at 10 a.m. correct great Madam Mayor Pro Tem it's all yours Thank you Mr. Mayor and I'll just turn the reins over to Director Giles Thank you very much to the Mayor Mayor Pro Tem and members of the Council it's an honor and privilege to always appear before you and I'm presenting the budget for the equity and inclusion department whose primary purpose is to create an environment to promote support and advance equity and inclusion in the City of Durham's contracting activity and its organizational decision-making next slide our organizational chart hasn't changed much we are we have seven full-time employees are funded by the general fund and we are proposing one new employee for a new budget year to assist in the work of the equity inclusion department well division we have also on this call Sharon Williams who is our equity and inclusion division manager and who I know you are all aware of it's done in the government's job and making sure that we move forward in our work and so she will be available to answer any further questions you might have in regards to our progress equity and inclusion the next slide on our resource allocation slide the budget increases that you see are related to the new position that's being proposed and any increases that might be relevant to the benefits of existing staff we are continuing to support the mayor's committee the persons with disabilities and that's the non-departmental allocation that you see next slide we indicated that we were looking to hire a new position and this would be a full-time budget analyst position that I will support Sharon Woon's work and essentially this position does support the work of the council and you're objective to advance the equity and inclusion of Durham and our departmental objective which is in developing an effective and accountable language tools and process for advancing equity and inclusion in the decision-making during the presentations that you heard on yesterday and particularly you heard equity used multiple times so I would have to say that some of the work that Sharon is doing is at least in graining the language now we have to continue to move forward on boosting the relevance and activity next slide for our budget highlights aside from the presentation of the new position we have some efforts that we're going to make with regards to our contract and in compliance and one of the things that we're going to do is to try to continue to work on our strategic plan and the largest of the focus on our strategic plan this time is going to be on doing some additional research largely on efforts that are being done in other areas of the state and the country and how they are being maybe more successful than we in engaging women and minority-owned businesses in their contracting activity the other area in which we'll be exploring with the the acquisition of an intern is to look at what might be happening to our small businesses certainly we know that women and minority-owned businesses had substantial impact with regards to COVID and so one of the things that we've noticed of course is that we're not seeing the numbers of firms that we normally see actually bid our work and so the question is are they still in business we don't know but we're certainly going to jump out there and try to see if we can identify who's still in business what kinds of challenges they are facing in sustaining themselves and what we might do as a city to continue to support their sustainability we'll also be looking to improve our website to enhance opportunities for folks and just as an example if you visit our website there is no connection there for our bid opportunities and so that's certainly something that we should correct and there are other aspects of the language that's being used on the website and the way that we have organized our material there we don't think is advantageous for our firms and so that's something that we're going to take very hard look at in addition to enhancing our brochures and developing a training module for all city employees one thing that we believe will really help in our work is to make sure that from day one a person is hired by the city they understand the value that we place on inclusion across the system and this will be our opportunity to do that and we're working on it now and we're looking forward to getting that started in the next little bit next slide the next slide is with regards to the racial equity and inclusion division and we have a myriad of things that are being done and in that regard one being the 21 day challenge and that's it's actually done twice by some people within 21 days but certainly can be managed based on the time that you might have available but it's a series of readings and vignettes and informational material that's designed to assist in personal self-awareness where are we as individuals with regards to race and inequity and where we might be able to move in terms of social change and so that's some work that we're going to be doing in addition to training all city employees on racial equity and inclusion I believe that Sharon is proposing a two-part series that will serve as a base for everyone who's employed by the city and I think she's proposing to start this in July our introduction of the racial equity impact assessment and I'm sorry for the period that showed up there with additional coaching and utilization is basically an expansion of the language for our racial equity tool that was actually benchmarked and used during the course of this budget cycle by our budget management staff and they did a good job of trying to use the tool to evaluate all of the new initiatives that were brought forward by staff in funding consideration we also are planning to introduce departmental pilot projects this is going to serve sort of as the basis for helping departments move to what will be their own individual departmental equity plans and so that's sort of the framework of what Sharon has planned she is available to expand on any of those and with that we can move to questions thank you so much that was a great presentation I'm super glad to see the new resource that's going into the racial equity side of the department and we're continuing to fund and commit to that work any questions or comments from council members council member Freeman thank you Mayor Pro Tem Johnson I really appreciate the opportunity to share comments and actually just thank Director Giles and acknowledging the long history of work that she's had around race equity in a different form and doing all the e-bots work with the city I do want to note I'm really hopeful that there'll be some context or some handles put around or some type of programming around the double minority by federal standards kind of focus acknowledging that race, gender and equity also still plague women of color and so just hoping that you could share a little bit around you know what might be in place or what you might have a vision for moving forward I'm going to have to ask you to repeat yourself because I was I had a siren going by my office at the time I'm sorry just your vision around addressing race equity and gender as well so acknowledging that women of color face a different level of a barrier so if you have any ideas around what you're going to do in the coming year or years or any vision for that well first of all let me say that it won't be years it'll be the next six months and I am planning to retire but over the next little bit we certainly will continue in fact we are looking at a specific way to sort of break out our way of viewing minority in the way that we look at minority particularly for African Americans we combine them as a group without consideration of women as having oftentimes many different types of dispositions and problems and so to that extent we will be trying to address them and trying to enhance their participation in fact we do have substantial numbers of African American women who are reprimand business owners for the firms who are certified by the State Department and so we will be looking at it I don't have a specific plan for you at this moment but certainly recognize that what you say is more than important and deserving of a special interest and thank you I really want to just make sure that I note that if you are retiring it's unfortunate but I understand that you've served our city and you've served our county greatly and I appreciate all your service thank you very much I will tell you that I am at that point for sure I understand I understand thank you again for your server thank you council member if you all don't have any further questions I would like to ask Sharon to check in so that you so that I have a chance to share with you just how much work I think she has done and that she certainly deserves many accolades for just being a single force for driving the racial equity initiative within the city and so I wanted to have this opportunity to thank her personally in front of all of you and certainly encourage her to continue people are always trying to steal her out of the city I get calls all the time and so far she's said no to everybody thank you Sharon we can't hear you okay should we should we just move on you should move on she's having computer issues okay sorry about that yeah well thank you for your work we appreciate Sharon so much other questions or comments from council members getting on to the end of a long day council member Freelon I just quickly wanted to echo council member Freeman sentiments of gratitude to you Miss Giles and Miss Williams as well really important exciting work in the city thank you so much from all of us I'm sure yeah special thanks to all of you or without you we wouldn't be this far certainly it's been your support along with that of our manager and all of the city staff to get us in a very good place so so much so that people contact us frequently to find out about the work that's being done so my special thanks to all of you thank you we we want Durham to be a leader in this space and we have been blessed to have staff who are committed to that and have been moving us in that direction for a number of years so thank you for all of your work in the department we're going to miss you we're looking forward to you having a lovely retirement and I'm sure we'll see you around don't leave town oh I'm sure I will see you guys around I'm not worried awesome thank you so much all right friends have we done it John have we done it Mayor Pro Tem I just had one item that occurred to me that it it came up on the budget 111s with council and there was some discussion around the possibility of of adding approximately $85,000 for immigrant refugee coordinator position so I would ask you do you want to have that conversation now do you need to have that conversation or would you prefer to to table it until the extra session we we can use on June 10th sure do we have any other items for that session not at the moment not that I am aware of okay so if we could knock this out quickly y'all I think that would be ideal my understanding was that the we were waiting for the county to decide whether they would contribute half of the cost of that position before we committed to it the county has agreed to contribute half of the funding for that position so I believe we that we said at our previous meeting that we would do it if they did but if folks have comments that would conflict with that understanding let's hear them I have to cut out but I look forward to seeing whatever comes out of this conversation thank you thank you councilmember Middleton and may I pretend I think your characterization comports with what I remember after that conversation so I have nothing to add to that the county's up in a part then yeah we good thank you awesome thanks John I think we have a by acclamation approval to move forward with that allocation very good thank you very much so I think we've now done it and I'm not going to take up any more of our time with saying things so John if it's good with you I will declare this meeting adjourned at 155 p.m thanks y'all have a good one thanks y'all peace