 Good evening. We would like to call the Durham City Council meeting to order at 7 o'clock this evening on Monday, February 6th, and certainly want to welcome all of you that are with us this evening. If we could just take a moment for silent meditation, please. Thank you. I ask Councilman Davis. Mr. Mayor, thank you. We have the privilege this evening to be led in the Pledge of Allegiance by PAC 411 from Union Baptist Church. We will allow them to lead us in the pledge now. A pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Madam Clerk, would you call the roll please? Mayor Bell. Present. Mayor Pro Tem Cole McFadden. Councilmember Davis. Councilmember Johnson. Councilmember Moffitt. And Councilmember Rees. And Councilmember Shul. We have several proclamations that we'd like to present this evening. The first one relates to teen dating violence awareness and prevention month in Durham. And we'd like to ask Mr. Rico Dunstan, DCRC dating violence prevention educator, Detective Michelle Sosie, Durham Police Department, domestic violence unit, and members of the Durham Youth Commission. They would join me. It speaks to the fact that whereas a community, we care about the safety, security, physical and emotional well-being of all our neighbors, and we recognize the right of all individuals to live their best lives free of violence and fear. Whereas teen dating violence is a serious public health concern involving a pattern of destructive behaviors used to exert power and control over a dating partner, according to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, one in three adolescent girls is a victim of physical, emotional, or verbal abuse from a dating partner, a figure that far exceeds victimization rates for other types of violence affecting youth. Whereas a centers for disease control found that high school students who experience physical violence in a dating relationship are more likely to use drugs and alcohol at greater risk of suicide and are much more likely to carry patterns of abuse into future relationships. Whereas by providing young people with education about healthy relationships and relationship skills and by changing attitudes that support violence, we recognize that dating violence can be prevented. Whereas an essential to raise community awareness, to provide training for teachers, counselors, and school staff so that they may recognize when youth are exhibiting signs of dating violence, whereas in 2016, Durham Crisis Response Center provided teen dating violence prevention education to adolescents at 18 agencies, schools, and churches located in Durham County. Whereas everyone has the right to a safe and healthy relationship and to be free from abuse. Now, therefore, I William Lee Bilbell, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do my proclaiming February 2017 as teen dating violence awareness and prevention month in Durham, hereby urge all citizens to observe this month by increasing awareness of teen dating violence, take an action to change the culture and working together to end the violence. And what's in my hand, Corporate City of Durham, on this, the 6th day of February 2017. I'm going to present this to you. Good evening. I am Sharika Dunstan, the Youth Prevention Educator for Durham Crisis Response Center, and it is definitely a privilege to be here today surrounded by community partners like the Durham Teen Center and the Durham Youth Commission, and even the Durham Police Department DV Unit investigator. Healthy relationships is something that should be afforded to everyone in our community and is up to us to teach our children how to have healthy relationships so that they can live safely and experience the joy of living with people and being crime free. Unfortunately, in our city, we did lose a teenager two years ago, so this is a very important cause and we all need to spread awareness and teach our young people how to live healthily. Thank you. I would like to ask the CUP Master Sean Hemsley and Yolanda Brown, Founder and CEO of the State of substantial Clark, Boy Scout Master, if they could join me please. Whereas the Boy Scouts of America was founded on February 8, 1910 by William D. Boyce and chartered by Congress in 1916. Whereas the mission of the Boy Scouts of America is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of always doing their best and being helpful to others. Whereas CUP Scout Pack 411 has been chartered by Union Baptist Church and Okonichi Council since 2007 with Founders Tyrone Meuse and Anthony Perry. Whereas CUP Scout Pack 411 has provided scouting opportunities that develop character, citizenship, fitness and leadership skills to over 100 youth from Durham and surrounding cities. Whereas CUP Scout Pack 411 has contributed to the Durham community through activities such as collecting food donations for urban ministries of Durham, distributing drinks to Crop Walk participants, mulching the global scholars academy playground, bearing flags for several local organizations, marching in the Durham holiday parade and neighborhood outreach activities. Now therefore I, William V. Bilbell, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do have our proclaim for February 7th, 2017 as Boy Scout and CUP Scout Pack 411 Day in the City of Durham and urge all citizens to join with me in expressing appreciation to this chartered organization and a volunteer of scouting leaders for bringing this valuable, full-based program to our young people and community. With my hand, Corporate City of Durham, this is the sixth day of February 2017. I'm going to present this to these young leaders for them in the comments that you might have. Good evening, everyone. We are so excited about the CUP Scout program through Boy Scouts of America. Pack 411, as you know, this is our 10-year anniversary. We have been around for 10 years and we're so proud of our CUPs. This is our first time as being CUP Master and my committee chair, and we are very proud of our CUPs and we're very proud of our program. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to give the Scouts a minute to get out of here, by the way, which I want to say thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the opportunity to allow me to proclaim January 30th Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution here in Durham, somewhat belatedly due to our meeting schedule, but better late than never. I also want to thank Dr. Tracy Tzutaki, the chair of the Japan American Society of North Carolina, for being here tonight to accept this proclamation and to say a few words afterwards. Before I read the proclamation, Mayor Bell had asked me to speak a bit about why this proclamation is so important and necessary right now. Because this is an especially appropriate time in our history to honor the life of Fred Korematsu. 75 years ago, this month, during a time of geopolitical uncertainty abroad and nationalist paranoia here at home, the president of the United States signed an executive order that required the forcible separation of people based on their nationality and the nationality of their families. And American citizens like Fred Korematsu, born and raised in California, were caught up in the sweep of this illegal and constitutional executive order, an order that was sold to the American people by our government as necessary to protect our national security. Eventually, a federal judge found that the executive order was unlawful and it's come to be known as one of the darkest periods in our nation's modern history. Perhaps you're like me and you see some parallels between that executive order 75 years ago and what's happening in our country today under the new administration. This proclamation is also important in the life of our city. In recent years, Durham has opened our hearts and our neighborhoods to thousands of refugees and immigrants from all over the world. Nothing exemplifies our city's values more than the enthusiasm and the happiness to welcome these new Durham residents into our gracious and loving city. Finally, this proclamation is important to me on a very personal level. Some of you may have heard me say from time to time that I am a 10th generation North Carolinian and that is certainly true on my father's side. But on my mother's side, the story is a little different. My mother was just three months old when she and my grandmother immigrated to the United States from the nation of their birth, the nation of Japan. And as the son and grandson of Japanese immigrants, today's proclamation is deeply personal to me as is the courage exemplified by its honoree, Fred Korematsu. So again, Mr. Mayor, thank you for giving me this opportunity. I'll read the proclamation and I'll ask Dr. Sataki to come up now while I read it and then he'll say a few words about our special relationship with the nation of Japan. Whereas Fred Korematsu, the son of Japanese immigrants, was born on January 30th, 1919 in Oakland, California. And whereas on December 7th, 1941, Japan attacked the American military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, propelling the United States into World War II. And whereas during World War II, Mr. Korematsu refused to comply with the Federal Executive Order 9066 signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19th, 1942, which authorized on the basis of supposed wartime military necessity, the relocation and internment of 117,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens. And whereas after being jailed in California and subsequently sent to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah, Mr. Korematsu unsuccessfully challenged the relocation order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. And whereas Mr. Korematsu continued to maintain his innocence for decades following World War II and in 1983, his conviction was overturned in federal court after the commission on wartime relocation and internment of civilians concluded that the decisions to relocate Japanese Americans were not justified and occurred because of, quote, race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership, end quote. And whereas President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 issuing an apology and payment of compensation to individuals of Japanese descent who were interned during World War II. And on January 15th, 1998, President Clinton awarded Mr. Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. And whereas until his death in 2005, Fred Korematsu remained a tireless advocate for the constitutional rights of Americans to liberty, due process, and equality without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin. Now therefore, I, William V. Bilbell, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim January 30th, 2017 as Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties in the Constitution in Durham and hereby urge all residents of the City of Durham to contemplate the life of Fred Korematsu and the critical importance of preserving Civil Liberties even in times of real or perceived crisis and to take special note of this observance with just my hand in the corporate seal of the City of Durham on this day 6th of February, 2017. I'm here with my son, Alexander, who's a high school student here at Durham to acknowledge the fact that we are celebrating January 30th as Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties in the Constitution. I am a benefactor of the resiliency of Fred Korematsu and the over 100,000 Japanese-Americans and ancestries of Japanese that were on the West Coast and were put into internment or concentration camps back in the 1940s. Personally, I also am touched, as Mr. Reese indicated, because my mother and father were both put into concentration camps in California. And I am a benefactor having had the opportunity to learn from this point in history, which was a dark period of time as my mother and father had indicated. There's really nothing that happened good from this particular instance other than those that stood up for their civil liberties and rights. And since this period of time, Durham follows that of many states and other regional areas to honor Fred Korematsu. In 2010, California honored Fred Korematsu with the Fred Korematsu Day as the first Asian-America so honored in that particular capacity. And since that time, other states, including Florida, Virginia, Hawaii, have also had Fred Korematsu's days as well. This is an important occasion as a 75th anniversary of the Executive Order 9066. And I will add to the fact that for those interested in learning more about this period of time in history, that the Smithsonian Institute and the American History Museum on February the 17th is opening up an exhibit that will have the actual document of the Executive Order 9066. I do want to thank the city of Durham for honoring Fred Korematsu. Durham has shown great leadership in the friendship between Japan and this area as well and in particular have had the pleasure to work with Mayor Bell as well as city manager Tom Bonfeld in working together with the Sister Cities organization and the city of Toyama, Japan to build the friendships between Japan and the state. So again, on behalf of the Japanese-American community, thank you very much. Finally, we have this evening a very special occasion, not just for the individuals involved, but I guess for me personally also. As most of you know, the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority is a joint effort of the city of Durham, the county of Durham, the city of Raleigh, and the county of Wake. And we each point two persons to serve on that board. Tonight we have the honor of swearing in two of our appointees from the city, one for Raleigh, who most of you know is a former city council person on this council, and the other is Rob Teer, who has served very faithfully for a period of time on the airport authority also. But what is meaningful to me and certainly to the tears is tonight represents the combined service of the 50 years between father and son on the airport authority. And I certainly know Rob since I've been here, but just as important, I had the privilege and honor of serving on the Durham Board of County Commissioners with his father, Dillet Teer. So we take great pleasure in having them to have served this community for as long as they have and continue to serve it. And equal importance to be able to be a part of their swearing in ceremony this evening. Before we do that, I understand we have a PowerPoint presentation on the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority. I guess we're going to present that now. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm delighted to be here. I'm Kristi Van Aachen, and I'm the Vice President of Communications at the Raleigh-Durham Airport. And I thought we would maybe take you down memory lane a little bit as we celebrate the Teer family and the ceremony, the swearing in ceremony also of Mr. Ali. So this is a great picture of father and son in early service back in 1979 at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. A ribbon-cutting ceremony, again, father and son joining us in 1982. And other board members that you may know as well as Governor Jim Hunt. Here you see the site preparation for our 10,000-foot primary runway, five left, two three right, and that's circa 1984. So you can see the legacy that the Teer family has had here at the airport. So here you'll see a picture of our past board chairs and then also John Brantley, who served at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport with distinction for several decades. So here, Robert Teer, Mr. Teer, has been just an unbelievable advocate for the USO and for our soldiers at the airport. And we thought that this was important to add because it's really because of his service and his advocacy that the USO at RDU is as robust as it is. So thank you, Mr. Teer, for your leadership. Here you'll see both father and son at the groundbreaking in 2011 of our Terminal 2, Phase 2. Groundbreaking again here for Terminal 2 in March of 2006. So as time goes by, as it always does, you see now the exterior shot and aerial shot of our terminals and more of the service. Our current board chair, Dickey Thompson, along with Mr. Teer. And then here, a very great day. Mr. Teer and John Cain led the public-private partnership to acquire non-stop service to Paris, which commenced just in 2016. That was a great day for our community and certainly for the citizens of Durham who like to travel internationally. And then finally, we'll wrap up with this wonderful picture of father and son out at the Teer Farm. And I had the pleasure of being there the day that this was taken. It was a beautiful day. And you may not know that that is actually the original tower, air traffic control tower at Raleigh Durham Airport. And Mr. Teer acquired it in... Gosh, when was that? It was in 1949. Does that seem about right? About 49-ish. And he bought that tower for $2,500. He sold the steel underneath it for $3,500. They made a profit of $1,000. So, again, our great congratulations and deep gratitude to the two Durham City Council appointees to our board. Thank you. Well, I'm going to ask Rod and Rob if you care to have your father join you and your wife and whoever else. And Anne Gray is going... Clark is going to do the swearing. Do you want to go now? She's going to come down there. I, Robert D. Teer, Jr. I, Robert D. Teer, Jr. Do hereby solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States and I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina not inconsistent therewith and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of my office as a member of the Raleigh Durham Airport Authority so help me God. Do hereby solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States the Constitution and laws of these United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina not inconsistent therewith that I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of my office as a member of the Raleigh Durham Airport Authority as a member of the Raleigh Durham Airport Authority so help me God. Thank you, sir. Okay, let me first ask of their announcements by members of the council. Recognize the Mayor Pro Tem and recognize the councilman, Eddie Davis, in that order. Thank you, sir. I would just like to thank the police department for the role it played in Point in Time Count. If any of those police officers are here, would you raise your hand they made it so much easier for us to find people who were in the woods and other places where they've made their homes and I just want to thank them for the work that they did to support that project. The next day we have the Homeless Connect which has a different name but they were also there for that and so Chief I want to thank you for the environment that they're working in now one of community service and it was really a blessing to see them and I'd like to thank Sherita McCullis for pushing and prodding and pushing until she was able to place a guy who had been in the woods for 20 years in permanent housing. She works for the Lincoln Community Health Center and it took a lot of work and so if we had more employees like Sherita I don't know what we would be able to do but I'd like to give her a round of applause for her work and when you're placing the Homeless you must have a commitment to do that and that gentleman is now in a warm, safe place to live. Thank you. Right now it's Councilman Davis. Thank you Mr. Mayor. We had the PAC 411 here with us but there are some other uniformed members of the Boy Scouts of America who are here with us. I'd like to ask if they could just stand and be recognized. I think it's not only some Scouts but also a Scout Executive and some Scout Masters here. Thank you all for coming. They know the announcements by members of the council. If not, we recognize the city manager for our times. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Good evening everyone. Mr. Mayor and members of the council as I'm sure you are well aware of the late last week and through most of the weekend the towns of Chapel Hill and Carborough and parts of Orange County had a major disruption to their water supply in no large part because of foresight and advanced planning of water professionals in the Triangle area including our own Don Greeley Director of Water Management. The City of Durham was able to very quickly come to the aid of the OASA Orange Water and Sewer Authority to assist in providing backup water supply and getting those towns back online. So this evening I was contacted quite a bit over the weekend I should say by Ed Kerwin the Executive Director of OASA City Manager Roger Stansel and David Andrews. Roger Stansel from Chapel Hill and David Andrews from Carborough with their great appreciation for the support they received from the City of Durham but Mr. Kerwin insisted that not only was the emails that he sent me over the weekend not going to be good enough he wanted to be here in person to make comments so if I could introduce Ed Kerwin from OASA he has a few comments, thank you and that's all my priority items. Yes, thank you very much and I would have waited until the end of your meeting to deliver our message of thanks as well but thank you very much just thank you I mean the experience that happened suddenly Thursday afternoon your team responded immediately to our call for help and you all provided high quality drinking water for our community from Thursday afternoon to late Saturday night and if that did not happen I wouldn't be here I'd still be working the emergency back in our community so on behalf of Chapel Hill, Carborough, Orange County University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill they also boarded directors in our team thank you very much I recognize the city attorney working in the prior time Thank you Mr. Mayor, no priority items Likewise the city clerk Yes, Mr. Mayor, members of the city council we have us with us this evening Alicia Grant who was recently reappointed to the firefighter's relief fund board of trustees and she's here to be sworn in this evening Thank you Hi Alicia Grant Do hereby solemnly affirm that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States that I will support and maintain the Constitutional laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina and the Constitutional laws of North Carolina not inconsistent therewith not inconsistent therewith that I will faithfully and impartially and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of my office discharge the duties of my office as a member of the firefighter's relief fund board of trustees relief board of trustees. So help me God. Well again thank you Ms. Grant for your wellness to serve and of course if the administration or council can be of any service to you as you serve feel free to call them. Thank you. I will now move to the regular agenda and the first item is the consent agenda. The consent agenda can be approved with a single vote. Mr. Mayor. I'm sorry. I just wanted I'm sorry to interrupt but it was Mr. Curran's remarks are very kind but of course I didn't do anything but Don Greeley and Vicky Westbrook are on their way out the door here and they're actually the people who lead the Water Department and are responsible for that work that the department did that Mr. Curran thanked us for and I just wanted to acknowledge and that they're actually the ones who are due to thanks. Thank you all. Thank you for your work. Thanks Don I guess what's equally important in that situation is that the system we put in place to provide service to communities work and I would hope that if we were in a similar situation coming back this way it continues to work. So thank you. Again as I said we have the consent agenda consent agenda consists of items that may be approved a single vote if a council member a member of the audience chooses to pull a consent agenda item. We will discuss that later in the meeting and as usual I will just read the heading of each one of the consent agenda items. Item one is approval of city council minutes. Item two is a Durham City County Environmental Affairs Board appointment. Item three is the bid report for December 2016. Item 14 is proposed leave with lease with Allbright Community Association of Durham for city owned property located at 1017 Juniper Street. Item five is professional services amendment of R&D architects PA for the solid waste management annex and truck wash project. Item six is the fire and police compensation and classification plan recommendations. I'm going to pull that item for someone to speak on it. Item seven is South Elby wetland and stream restoration design services contract. That completes the consent agenda items and attain a motion for the approval of consent agenda with the exception of item six. That's been property moved in second. Madam clerk will you open the vote and close the vote. It passes seven is next. We have the general business agenda public hearings. Let me do this. I'm gonna take this out of order. I was glad to see that we only had two persons to speak on this item six to fire and police compensation piece. I was hoping no one was going to speak and I don't mean that to be discourteous to anyone but I think we've gone through this quite a bit with a lot of discussion on the part of the administration between the police department and fire department. We've also heard from members of the community and I dare say that I want to congratulate the administration for working with the police and fire department to bring this to the point that we're at and rather than hold this up any longer to the agenda I want to move on this item. So I'm going to recognize those two persons that assigned to speak. I'm going to ask you to limit your comments two minutes and then after that I'll entertain a motion to approve the item. Item six is the fire and police compensation. I recognize Ms. Jackie Wagstaff followed by Ms. Victoria Peterson. Good afternoon. I'm not opposed to this. I just wanted to say that I believe that this should happen and that for the chief she's done a wonderful job in a short amount of time that she's been here and I believe that if you give them more money we'll be able to keep them here in Durham and they can afford to live here as to right now they can afford to live here and I'm all for giving good pay for good help. So I believe that this should move forward. I'm not against it. I just want to let the chief know that there are people supporting this giving this money and giving this raise and if you can give them a little bit more I appreciate that too. Thank you Jackie. I didn't mean to expect anybody to say anything negative about it. I just thought it's important enough. Let's go ahead and move it on. I suspect that people will be in support of it. Recognize Ms. Peterson for two minutes. Yes. I want to say two quick things about this. And some of you already know this. I actually have a criminal justice background. Sometimes over the last several years we have had some issues in our community dealing with some of our police officers. But overall I believe that Durham has some very very good good police officers. I have spoken to many of them over the years. I would like to I want to make sure that our officers are really going to get a good salary increase Mr. Mayor as well as the city council members to know. I have not heard tonight and I would like to hear what decision has been made for them for those new police officers that are coming on. What will their starting salary be. And those that are already working and have been working for years will they get a very a very good increase on their salary. Also for those persons who who want to move up as investigators and different folks like that the city the city requires them to take an exam. Not everybody does well on an exam. And we're only going to use exams to see who's going to be be able to move up. I do not think that that's fair. I think there should be a combination of things that officer how long they've been working. They have good rapport with the people in the community their supervisors have given them good recommendation Mr. Mayor and city council members and Mr. Davis you've been a school teacher. You know that a lot of folks don't do well on exams. And if we are only going to promote persons who do well on exams and other folks don't get promoted and they have labored in this community for years I do not think that that's right. And Mr. Mayor I really need an extra minute. Peterson I really do miss Peterson you understand the guidelines and let me say again this has been discussed. I don't know how many times between the administration the persons involved. It'll be a matter of public record. You can have access to the public record. But having said that I'm going to entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Mr. Mayor can you tell us what their salary has been properly moved in second. Madam clerk we open the vote close the vote. It passes seven zero again. I can't tell you. I can tell you that it's a matter of public record. I'm going to move on. We've completed the consent agenda. We're not public hearings item eight is the economic incentive agreement with the city of Durham and self health. Ventures. Chris is going to introduce this item. Mayor Bell members of council my name is Chris Dickie with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development before using item for before using item to consider an approval of a proposed agreement between the city of Durham and self health ventures fund. Before I get into the details of that agreement. What I would like to do is just give a little historical perspective because this is a project that the Office of Economic. Well at least in reference to neighborhood revitalization fund has been working on for several years back in two thousand six. City council approved a R. K. G. report which was a neighborhood assessment which did a assessment of five neighbor four neighborhoods. Along the Andrew driver corridor the Fayetteville Street corridor the Magnum Street corridor in the main street corridor. And it was a buy in with the community and since that time the city council came up with a fund to support activities that came out of this revitalization fund. And more specifically along the Andrew driver corridor there were some strategic strategic commitments made by this council in two thousand eight council made a two hundred thousand dollar commitment to have Joe's diners done. And to twenty twelve there was a commitment of three point nine million dollars to construct the Andrew driver commercial corridor. To there was also a commitment on one oh seven self driver street to self help which help create the magnet school there that was a two hundred thirty six thousand dollar commitment. And there was ten million dollar private investment on behalf of self help. In addition to that in eleven twelve there was a hundred and seventy thousand dollar commitment to assist Ashley's corners for a a piece of property that was dilapidated. The total project cost of that was approximately five hundred thousand dollars. In addition to that recently in January and June of twenty sixteen of city council approved a hundred thousand dollar grant to migrant bob progments to post a restaurant along this corridor. The reason why I brought all those commitments up there is because all these were strategic commitments made by this council and commitments that were supported by the community at large that work that was outlined in a report back in two thousand five R. K. G. of assessment report. Before you now self help has applied to the office of economic development for a neighborhood revitalization grant incentive in the amount of seven hundred thousand dollars. To support his proposed redevelopment project in the historic Andrew driver business district in northeast central Durham within a community development area but outside the downtown development tier. The pros of consist of a ten point two million dollar economic project which consists of renovating five underutilized building totaling forty three thousand square feet. Located at twenty one oh one and your twenty one sixteen Andrew Avenue three oh six and three oh eight self driver street. The restoration redevelopment of these properties will help the continue revitalization of a northeast central Durham targeted commercial door corridor anticipated new jobs created by the Andrew and children's and children's center the ABC center we call it will consist of as many as a hundred permanent jobs created by tenants and as many as a hundred and twenty five temporary con construction jobs city staff recommends a contribution of seven hundred thousand dollars. Approver will require an exception to our economic development policy resolution ninety seven sixty five which was adopted by council in April four twenty fourteen the maximum normally of all for a neighborhood revitalization grant is about a half a million dollars. The public commitment of the seven hundred thousand sends a strong message to potential investors that would buy new new new market and historic tactics that the city is invested in the deal. Typically public commitments drive investor confidence therefore the seven hundred thousand is a stabilizing influence in determining whether the two key sources will be viable for the project. The thrust of the neighborhood revitalization grant incentive is to redevelop commercial buildings that will have a substantial impact on the physical economic viability of affected neighborhood which will ultimately over the year strengthen the city of Durham tax based in that area. All major systems such as electrical plumbing HVAC will be replaced and extensive improvements will be made to the interior and exterior each of the following buildings twenty one sixteen Andrew Avenue will provide approximately twenty public parking spaces for business located in the Andrew driver business drift redevelopment of two thousand four hundred eighty five square foot of retail space for employment opportunities for neighborhood residents the building on twenty one ten Andrew Avenue the total redevelopment is thirty six thousand seven hundred eleven square feet of the Andrew Avenue Baptist Church redeveloped would be seven thousand one hundred square feet of renovated space for a permanent home for the East Durham Children's Initiative redevelopment of another additional eight thousand eight hundred ninety square foot of renovated space for high quality but mostly price space for local nonprofits small businesses and entrepreneurs and renovated space for a licensed daycare for up to a hundred children three oh eight and three oh self driver said there would be is a total redevelopment of four thousand three hundred fifty nine square feet of retail space for employment opportunities for neighborhood residents that is the bulk of what our office is asking support again it supports the the principles of the RKG report that was supported although it's an old report it's still a report that has some viability I'm here to entertain any question. Thank you Chris let me first ask other questions by members of the council this is a public hearing item I have several persons have signed up to speak but I want to know if there are questions first by members of the council. That being the case I'm going to call the names and if you could limit your comments to three minutes on this item and you can line up to the podium to the right as I call your name and state your name and address appreciate Stephen Hopkins Barker French Dan Hill James Chavis Donna Frederick and Ed Swann Swain Dan Levine said Donna Reese either on a Freedman Freedman Ron borough and Cameron Smith in that order now is anyone who wanted to speak whose name I did not call if so if you would go to the clerk's desk to my left and sign one of the yellow cards recognize Steve. Thank you Mr. Mayor. My name is Steve Hopkins I live at 609 East Main State and the PAC one co-facilitator PAC one chose not to take issue on this. So they do not support this but me personally I do thank you. Parker French. Good evening. My name is Parker French I live at one zero zero five Monmouth Avenue in Durham. I'm here just to thank you for your support on this project. EDCI has been in East Durham now for five years and the results of our work are beginning to show real impact on the community and we appreciate the support and getting us a permanent home in our neighborhood. Daniel. I'm Dan Hill and my address is forty five nineteen chickpea trail. I'm here to support the application from self help for the seven hundred thousand dollar grant. This city and self help have been the two major catalysts for the positive growth that's occurring along the Anger driver corridor there and I encourage you to approve this so we can move forward and keep that momentum that you've been so gracious and helping with. So thank you very much and I hope that you will approve it. James Chavis. Good afternoon I'm James Chavis twenty eight thirteen Ashford apartment B. I was at that Pat meeting when we did not support it and one reason that I'm not supporting so many of we do not want our every looking like south side. We do not want you all to give them money to push us out. Now you're saying it's OK to redevelop but are you going to make it easier for those to stay there without their property tax going up and they are there you know about that because we already had one person come in the paper saying what happened to their tax it went sky high. Now to improve something you got to make these people more accountable to the people so that they can come and live there and also use their business but if we can buy from them then what do you expect for us. You all to do help push us away. We're actually not to support this at this time. Thank you. You're welcome. Donna Frederick. Donna Frederick. And I have Ed Swain. Did you all sign up together. Good evening I'm Donna Frederick I'm six oh three's club of art Durham North Carolina. I'm here because I think the community in support of this project needs more information. I agree that developers come in a lot of the minority business do not get a chance to bid for these business that are going in these new buildings and I think there needs to be more import information to the community before these projects go through. I know self help is a great organization and Easter initiative but I think we need more community awareness when this goes on. Thank you. Ed Swain signed up on this card. Is it present. If not Dan Levine. Good evening Mayor Bell members of Council I'm Dan Levine with self help at 301 West Main Street. Just wanted to take the opportunity first of all to let you know that I'm here if you have any project questions as is my colleague Michael Palmer who's been involved in community outreach for this project for going on two years now. We have worked over the last couple years with an advisory group of Eastern residents business owners and other stakeholders to try to get input on this project and try to make sure it fulfills wishes from community members as well as some of the initiatives that the city has taken over the years as Chris alluded to. And so I just want to make sure that was clear and obviously it's an ongoing battle to make sure that we're communicating as best we can and I'll be happy to talk to anybody here council or otherwise to hear any feedback. I did also just want to say thanks for all the kind of fundamental investments that the city has made over the years. Both the physical investments like the Holton Center and the streetscape and also initiatives like the poverty reduction initiative really trying to help boost those efforts and boost efforts from the grassroots community members that we've been working with. Finally I think I just wanted to say you know that this project really means a lot to us as an organization we've invested in Eastern in different ways both as a real estate developer as a home lender for first time home buyers and as a small business lender over the years. Most recently we actually made a large investment to a nonprofit organization to buy and preserve fifty four units of affordable rental housing in Northeast Central Durham and so we see this commercial real estate revitalization investment in East Durham as really following on those other investments and it's a piece of our work and we're looking forward to continue to try to help address community needs and meet community interests going forward. So thanks so much and let me know if you have any questions. Could you just share what is going into this development because there might be some misunderstanding. Sure thanks for the question. So this is as Chris Dickie alluded to this is forty three thousand square feet. It is a former church building and then vacant storefronts. It was the old Wachovia branch bank building on Angier and then three storefronts Midbrock and Driver Street. This is not a housing related investment. What it will provide is child care spaces that are going to prioritize residents in Northeast Central Durham both for access to those spaces as well as hiring the East Durham Children's Initiative which I think a lot of people know does work with I think around eleven hundred or so neighborhood children right now I know David Reese will be speaking soon. And then we're also looking for opportunities to provide small business space nonprofit space and entrepreneurship space again with emphasis on Northeast Central Durham. So we're going to do that as best we can in this space. Thank you. The next is David Reese. Good evening David Reese twenty one on one Angier Avenue. On behalf of the thirteen hundred children of the E.D.C. I had the wonderful opportunity to work with over the last five years I want to just say thank you thank you only to you counsel Mr. Mayor but also thank you to folks in Durham who have continuously supported the children in the work that happens back within our East Durham community. We're very excited about the redevelopment that continues to happen back within this community. You know we as we started this process we started with a thought a thought that we actually could create a process in which children could have success and move along this continuum from birth to college or career. Ninety three percent of the kids who come through this the preschool that we run back in the zone our kindergarten ready. You know we did a count last week of last month of the number of folks that came past our building for services there were one hundred thirty two. We've only been there several months and so we anticipate that number to continue to grow. You know this investment is I think even more important because what it does for us is allows us to continue to provide I think some economic stability as well as the educational and social supports that are necessary back within our community as we think about our children and families. We've grown from a staff of one to a staff of thirty four. Many of those folks that work with E.D.C.I. actually live back within this community in addition to the children. That we then provide summer. Not only summer lunch to but then we also employ. So I want to thank you for just taking the time to hear and to think in. For your continued support for our work. Welcome DeDriana Freeman. Hello my name is DeDriana Freeman and I live at one thousand five Wharf Street. And I actually am here as a citizen. I am the chair of the Northeast Syndrome Leadership Council and they also chose to. Not take a stance on this. And I just want to note that based on. Some of the comments that Mr. Chavis made there are a lot of fears in the community around self help coming East. And they're valid. But I think that these fears could be mitigated if we had community benefits agreements in place to make sure that we understand what each. What each could bring to or what each side of what the community could bring to the table and what self help is bringing to the table. In a more formal way. And I know that in most organizations you have memorandums of agreement. I also serve on the advisory council that they've been talking about and we've been pushing to make sure that those those community benefit agreements are in place they haven't been done yet. It's important that we also make sure that those those benefits agreements include a racial equity analysis addressing some of the historically distant disenfranchised people that often are left out of the process often left out of the economic. Advantage and just making sure that those concerns are are held up. But I do think that this project is a good project and I think it should move forward. Thank you. Next is Ron Barrow. Good evening. My name is Ron Barrow. I'm calling to get six so five primitive street within 10 days hopefully if I can get back to packing to await North driver. So we'll be located just four blocks north of this development. I'm here to strongly support this proposal. My wife and I are have been in Durham for about 13 and a half years now. I have my wife for four and a half. We bought this property in Driver Street and have been renovating it for the past year and we intend to start a family and raise it in Eastern. So we're going to start a family. We'd like to have a daycare prioritizing the neighborhood in our family. We'd also like to go from that daycare around the corner to the soon to open Eastern pie company started by a resident of the neighborhood. I think that's bringing this development to the earlier will help the community. It will help a community have daycare. It will expand the Eastern Children's Initiative ability to act in Eastern. And it will further fulfill self-help historical in Eastern as well as throughout our city. I look forward to this development. I agree with Adriana certainly that we need community agreements on this. However, I anticipate that those will come and don't see that as a barrier to approving this proposal tonight. Thank you. Cameron Smith. Yes. I am Cameron Smith at eight oh nine Park Avenue. I'm also the PAC One co-facilitator with Stephen Hopkins. I'm also currently the director of communities in partnership which is a grassroots organization led by people of color that currently reside in Eastern largely made up of people that are basically currently in material poverty. And I'm also a member of the Northeast Central Durham Leadership Council and also the advisory team that's been working with self-help. I would like to state that I have there's a conditional. I am not 100% behind this as of yet. There's been some reticence. My concern is the redevelopment and the redevelopment for whom. So African American and Latino communities not only want to work for people. We also want to have ownership. I am very concerned about the redevelopment and the Andrew driver corridor because from what I'm hearing from many developers in the community in the greater Durham community. That there is kind of a outlook of our community becoming like Geer Street. I'm sorry. I do not want that to happen. I want people to be able to maintain the viability and the resonance they currently have within the Northeast Central Durham community. I don't want them to be profiled. I want them to have accessibility to low income and yes even no income housing for people. I would like for there to be business ownership that's highly reflective of the demographics that currently reside in my community. The downtown business district is over 90% occupancy rate and I think we have four minority owned businesses within that highly concentrated downtown corridor. We have a couple of businesses in the Geer Street area. We have a couple of businesses in the western community. I think it's time for the city council to make some really good decisions about how they're going to build equity in terms of not just taking racial equity training and not just sending city and council members and city and city council and county employees to the racial equity training but actually have this infused in some of the policies that are actually affecting the people in this community. Right now we have a large wealth gap within the city of Durham and it's highly, highly delineated by race. And so I would like for there to be some sort of conversation and also transparency more on self-helps perspective of long term plans for our community in terms of their investment and also how they're going to lay down and adhere to the very policies and missions that they were founded upon which is actually leveraging their assets. Economic and also institutional assets for people groups of color who have been largely disenfranchised by institutional systemic racism. So I would like to have a continued conversation and not only have a conversation but action to follow that before I give my 100% go ahead and from a community in partnership perspective we do not support this simply because of that. Thank you. Is this Tamara Howes? Is that correct? Tamara Howes, sorry about that. Good evening, council and mayor. I don't have that much information about the self-help plan but what I will say is that I believe that it should be inclusive of the churches and by the way name is Tamara Your House. I work with an organization called Durham Cares which is a church mobilization organization and I'm also a Duke Divinity student. So I believe that this initiative should involve the churches that's in that area. You have Avenue Baptist Church which had to close because some of the self-help initiatives. You have Hillen and Divine which is a lone driver street. You have I think by the name of Progressive that's over there. So I believe not only those churches but the Antiochs, the Hopes International, the churches that's in North East Central Durham should have some type of authority of what's going on over there. So my personal stance, like I say, I don't know too much about the initiative in its entirety but I do believe the church is the place that brings community together and any initiative in any community, the stress community should involve church leadership. Yeah, pardon me, Mr. House. DeMar, you have a question from City Council person. Hi. Are you Reverend House or getting ready to be a Reverend? One day. One day, OK. I just want to give you proper due. You mentioned self-help was responsible for an institution, a facility closing. Could you tell me more about that? Well, so this past summer, I had an opportunity to interview and visit majority of the churches in North East Central Durham. And one of those churches was Angie Avenue Baptist Church. And I don't have my notes. I forgot to pass her name, excuse me. But I sat down with him and he was telling me that they had to be out the building because they, you know, currently in the self-help building because they couldn't afford the mortgage. And it was probably a group of, his congregation is probably no more than 10. But over the years, you know, it's older people. So over the years, you know, membership went down. So he was telling me that, you know, they was currently in a position of finding another church. But they had to leave that particular building. And so like I said, I'm not trying to say self-help is a bad organization because I grew up in Feville Street, which is now a fair place. And they are actually, Mr. Ease was actually one of the ones that's willing to invest in that particular plot of land. So I'm not saying that they're a bad place. But what I'm saying is I believe that the church need to be involved in anything that's going on in these communities. And so that's my stance. And it's a lot of churches in that area. And the organization that I'm part of, which is Durham Cares, is looking towards the mobilization so they can look towards at least one focal area to help the community. And I believe a partnership with an organization like Self-Help will be beneficial to the church. Could I ask another question? Have you had a dialogue with self-help around your aspirations? Well, the last person I spoke with was Amir. We spoke briefly about some things to collaborate with in Northeast Central Durham, but it was not to the detail of what's mentioning here today. It was more so around like housing, affordable housing. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Thank you. Just a minute. I want to add something to the question. Dan, let me... Could you give me some more insight on the community benefits agreements that the young ladies have alluded to? And how you plan to bring some resolution to that. Sure. And if you don't mind, I just wanted to address the... Sounds like there's a misconception about Anjir Avenue Baptist Church. If I could have just a quick second on that. Okay. I guess you're... And I'll definitely be happy to catch up with you directly, but so that the church congregation actually willingly sold the church building to us about two years ago. They were a congregation that historically had been 2000 plus members. They had dropped down to about 20 or 25 members. And so they actually talked to us and what they wanted and what we were able to provide was the option to stay in that facility for a couple of years after we purchased it in order to take the money that they're able to take from the purchase of the church and go find a home that was suitable for a smaller congregation of folks mostly in their 70s and 80s and up. And so we really were essentially trying to give them an opportunity to age gracefully in the church that they were raised up in and find a new place after that. So that was something that was really their wish and how that building would go. In terms of community benefits agreements, I think Cameron and Deidreina and others are correct that we are working on that. It's been a topic over the last few months in our advisory committee. And we're gonna figure out exactly what that means in the day to day. There's a lot of community benefits that we've been trying to have this project create, including the job opportunities, childcare opportunities, priority for Northeast Central Durham residents. And so I think where we've been having the ongoing dialogue is what does that look like in the sense of our advisory group and what is the format of that agreement? We're definitely open to the idea and we're hoping that we're all moving together in that direction and really trying to get into the weeds of, all right, what does a community benefit agreement mean in the context of neighborhood residents and the development and multiple tenants like the Child Care Center and EDCI and others who kind of in and of their work are providing community benefits? So I assume then that there will be job opportunities for people in the community now. That's definitely the intent. And I think David from EDCI can speak to their track record of already hiring people from the community. Ms. Muhammad who runs the childcare center is called All My Children Child Care, which has a current location kind of off of Academy on the other side of town. Previously had been on the West End. They've done a great job of hiring from the community and it's actually in their proposal to us when they came to us to lease the space that they really wanna emphasize first look at hiring for people who live in Northeast Central Durham and first priority for people who are from Northeast Central Durham to enroll their children in the center. Michael wanted to say something. Yeah. And Michael's well familiar with the Child Care Center. Michael Palmer, 2804 Tavislock Drive. What I wanted to say with regards to working with community is we're committed to going forward with the advisory committee. So we will, we've been meeting quarterly. We'll continue that. And one of the things that we have been committed to is for new perspective tenants that are considering that space that we vet them through the advisory committee. Now, so the EDCI obviously was already in the community. So I guess they, you know, bringing them on was just a continuation of their work in the community. But with the Child Care Center and others as our real estate folks identify perspective tenants, it is our intent and practice that we will run that through the advisory committee before we make commitments. And then again, go ahead. Go on. And I said, there is work, more work to do with regards to developing the benefits agreement, you know, with respect to, but we clearly hear the issues, you know, we've got, it's gonna take more work as Dan mentioned to get to a document, but we're open to proceeding with that in our continuing relationship with the advisory committee. So I assume there will be an ongoing dialogue, too, with the organization that Cameron is open to and her. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, that's very important. And for what I'm hearing here, there may be some other organizations who will have to go out and introduce ourselves to and invite their input. Yeah, that buy-in from the community is essential, I think, to the success of the project. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And that's our practice with all our projects. And I know you will do that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Victor, Peterson. Here's my concern. I'm listening to some of the persons who live in these communities and who have organizations. Chris, can you tell us in the contract that you have now or whatever plans you have, is there anything in there now in writing to state how many minorities, I even hate using the word minorities, but how many African-Americans, how many Hispanics, businesses, they have agreed to bring into that area, not those businesses that are already there. But I think they're asking for how many dollars? 700,000 dollars. All right, 700,000 dollars, of tax dollars, okay? This isn't welfare monies. These are taxpayer dollars, people in this community, African-Americans, whites, Hispanics, who pay taxes, okay? Because of that, there should be something now if the city is going to sign off on this project, there should be something in writing now of how many minorities, how many African-American businesses that they have agreed to bring into this area. Now, if there's going to be housing and there's going to be living quarters in there, a percentage of that should also be for low to moderate income housing. Also, I think somebody mentioned about jobs. I'm sure somebody's got to go into these buildings and fix them up. We've got to do something, we have to continue to make sure that our young men and women in this community, and I know you know this, Chris, I know you know this, but we need to make sure that our young men are working in this community. Some of us have property over in that area, and we are tired of individuals breaking into our property and stealing, okay? And we pay taxes. So I'm asking you if you can share with us tonight, I have a few minutes if somebody will put my time on hold, share with us what's in the contract to make sure that these folks are going to make sure that minorities are going to get employment. I'm going to give you a good example, Chris. I'm in this community for years. We give money every year to the American tobacco, every year, and I don't want to embarrass anybody on that city council, but tell me how many African American businesses are housed over there at the American Tobacco Project? Tell me one, because the last time I heard about it, there was one, finally they got one in there, but that individual's no longer there either. So here's a company, the second richest man in the state of North Carolina, comes to Durham, gets money, but he does not have not one black business over there on that property. Okay, you've asked quite a bit of questions, but I'm going to try the, I'm going to answer the questions that are connected to this proposal and the purpose of the neighborhood revitalization plan that I communicated to you a little bit earlier. Our office is the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, so our focus is on commercial development. We've been, this office and this council has been in that community for quite a bit of time and we have driven strategic investments in that particular area and I think on the onset I've communicated that to you. Now specifically as it relates to this contract, which is a very extensive contract, okay. Number one, in reference to community benefits, there's going to be 43,000 square foot of commercial space that's going to be renovated on this particular area here. That's the church space, the Wacovia building, and the three buildings along the Andrew Driver corridor. All those, all that encompasses and what self-help said they would potentially do is create approximately 100 jobs and about 125 temporary construction jobs, that's there. And the way we go through that is that they have to as a part of a quarterly report they submit to us. Four times a year when they begin construction they basically tell you who they're hiring, what construction jobs are going there, what businesses in Durham are actually getting the contracts. And then we review that in reference to our office there. Now again, if you look at all those buildings there most of those buildings are void right now so we don't know exactly what's going in those particular buildings but what self-help has agreed to do is they said they would work with whoever the tenant is going to go in that office to try to do some neighborhood outreach in that particular area there. One of the other outstanding aspects of this deal that I felt like was not stated in reference to Dan and myself here was that in the back of the wild COVID building there's currently 50 parking spaces that are back there. And one of the things in the community we have heard from the business community is that there's not enough business parking in that community. So what we negotiated the Office of Economic Development on behalf of this community is we negotiated approximately 20 parking spaces that will be open 24-7 for approximately 20 years. So that means businesses such as Ashley Corners who basically doesn't have a lot of commercial park in that area who the city gave a commitment to at this point can allow some of his customers or his tenants will allow to be parked in back of Ashley Corners in reference to all the other ones that are behind there. So this is a pretty good deal. I think what I've heard and what council has heard from the community this is not the perfect deal but this is a very good deal. This is $10.2 million that is coming into Northeast Central Durham. That is unheard of. The only other commitment that came this way in this community was in reference to Y.E. Smith. Now if we look at the Y.E. Smith project and see the beneficiaries of that project what we do is we see a lot of minority children in there. We see a great deal of diversity in that school and if we look at the people that are higher we see a lot of diversity and the new jobs that came into the area there's a great deal of diversity. So basically in Northeast Central Durham I felt like self-help ventures fund has committed in reference to what they're doing. In addition to Y.E. Smith and what they're gonna be doing at the church is that there's gonna be some community space. What they've agreed to is to commit. If you have a community organization and you want to use the space what you can do is you can call self-help within a reasonable amount of time and have access to that space as well as Y.E. Smith. So I felt like our office in the city has done a very good job in sticking to this disagreement that we have in front of self-help. So we feel like it's a good agreement and self-help we've worked with them on plenty of projects. One thing I can say about this organization that they say they're gonna do something they have delivered which is the reason why we've done the things we've done or why I feel while our office feel comfortable in making this recommendation to our city council to move forward. I wanna thank Victoria for the question. I wanna thank Chris for your response. Let me ask is there anyone else in the audience that wants to speak on this item? This being a public hearing that's not had a chance to speak. Ms. Faus. I'm Anita Keith Faus, 323 West Trinity Avenue. Thank you Mayor Beall and city council members. I wasn't gonna speak on this issue. Someone who lived in the community had gotten our attention before the meeting started. And had some things to say about number eight. And as I sit here listening to them and I listened to Mr. Dinky, we're talking about buildings, not the people. That's important to me. That you all are sitting up here gonna probably vote for this project. We have our typical person that they always hire to come up here and do the snow job on black folk to make us think it's okay. And we are aware of what that person's job is. But we have heard Mr. Chavis come up here and several other folks talking about they don't wanna be done like south side. And Mr. Dinky has not addressed that. All he wants to talk about is the wonderful relationship he's had with self-help. And we look at that wonderful relationship Mr. Dinky has had with them where they have run people out of their homes, have made the taxes go up but nobody's addressing that. And I'm sure once I sit down someone is gonna call the gentleman who self-help up to contradict me. But the proof is in the pudding. You look at south side and you see the people displaced. Homes costing $300,000 in a low income neighborhood where they have gone over to Wittitt School and the Durham Public School system is helping them out by making a private school with our public dollars at Wittitt Junior High School which Cora went to. And they are making it so that you have to have a $30,000 income which that means the people who live in the $300,000 homes are the ones they're looking out for. So you can talk all that good talk and people can call people up after me to contradict me but this is a bad deal for the people who actually live over there. And you should be ashamed of yourself to repeat that same problem. Again, I'm so upset with y'all. I'm gonna tear y'all up on Facebook tonight. Again, let me ask is anyone else who wants to speak on this item that hasn't spoken? This gentleman has his name hand up and I see someone else coming. Before you come, is there anyone else? And I'm gonna close the public hearing after the person's had a chance to speak. This gentleman here if you state your name and address and are you coming forth? Does anyone else who wants to come forth? If not, you can come on up, sir and state your name and address. It's ma'am, not sir. I'm sorry, I'm getting old, I can't see someone. I'm E. Clement Swan. And I live in New York. Oh, I called your name. But you said Swain. You're right, I screwed up. I'm E. Clement Swan and I've just been listening. I didn't come up initially because I wanted to hear the platform. And I agree with Anita. The platform is not for the people. The proof is in the pudding. We have to look and see what's happening here in Durham and the people of color in Durham are being erased. And I believe that the city council should look out more for the citizens than for the buildings and the developers. Now you talked about a school for 100 children. We need to break down what is it gonna cost those parents to send those children to these schools and the daycare that you have planned. What about the seniors? What about the homeless people in these areas? We're not looking out for the community. We must always look out for the indigenous people of the community and that's not what's happening here in Durham. And I think we should take a closer look and in listening, what it seems like is that you haven't even talked to the community. When you asked the gentleman what he said was we're going to talk to the community. From what I've heard tonight, this plan was started 10 years ago. So in 10 years, the people are now hearing about this, the people are being displaced. I think the community needs a little more involvement. Thank you. As the gentleman behind, are you going to speak? Can you come up before us? Is there anyone else that wants to speak out to this gentleman here? Anyone? Okay, you'll be the last one to speak. Yes, sir, is that your name and address? Good evening, Mr. Mayor and ladies and gentlemen of the council, my name is James Rogers and my address is 5920 South Miami Boulevard. And I would like to present a slightly different perspective. I am the owner of A&J Capital and I'm doing the Ashley's Corner Project over in Northeast Central Durham. Some people might say that I'm here to speak and I didn't sign up to speak and I did that intentionally, but some might say that I'm here to speak because self-help has agreed to help me with my project. But that's not really true because I started my project before self-help bought any of their property over in Northeast Central Durham and I'd like to say something about Northeast Central Durham. One thing I like about it, now you say that there, and I don't know what the stats are, but I'm just hearing stats thrown out there that there are only a couple of black businesses downtown, well over in Northeast Central Durham, right on my street, I have Mr. Willie Austin, who has an auto body shop. I have Tony, and I don't know Tony's last name. He has a minimart, these are all minorities. We have Jeff Warren, who has signature cuts, Barbershop. You got me, I'm doing a virtual office that's right next to the Barbershop. You got Joe, and all of these are minority business owners. You got Mr. Rose, who owns the Barbershop, right down the street, and there are some others. I don't know them all, but those, all of these minorities, as a matter of fact, I'm trying to think to see if any business owners over in that area are non-minorities. I mean, can you think of any? Right, I mean, there's maybe one or two, but in those, many of those business has been there for years, and I think they will continue to thrive, and they will continue to be there. I know the city has a difficult task of trying to balance the growth of the city. Everybody wants the city to grow, and when your city grows, that means that businesses come in, that means that property values go up, but at the same time, you don't want to displace, and we've heard valid concerns from people here. You don't want to displace people in the community. Now, I've been on the Northeast Central Durham Advisory Committee for about a year, and we've had meetings, numerous meetings, to come together to talk about how best to grow the neighborhood and be inclusive. And I think there are great ideas about the agreements, but as a businessman, I see probably about 30% complete with my project. I have a black contractor, a local contractor, black architect, and I'm just saying, I have a minority of laborers. I have people from the community. Chris Hall, you may know Chris. Chris is a young man who lives in a couple of blocks from my site, and he comes, he wanted to do some work, so we put Chris to work. And Chris, over the months that he's been there, he's going from having almost zero skills to being able to do something that he can take and use even after my project closed down. And you gotta balance the city's potential for growth. The city's potential for growth. Mayor Bells did a great job with the City of Durham with the needs of the people who are already here. And I think to thank him. Thank you. Gentlemen, if you can just state your name and address, please. Yes, sir. I'm John McDonald. My address is 3205 Ivywood Lane in Durham, North Carolina. Basically, I just want to, I hear all the grievances I hear people talking. I see the development that is going on in Durham. In that community, I don't live far from there. I do see that there is great potential. But at the same time, being a New York boy, I've seen the good and the bad of reunification. I've seen people getting this place. I've seen people not being able to open businesses and things like that. But I believe that this council, and I believe that this mayor, I believe that you have the capabilities to do more. And I feel like if me, even as a small business man, I have a barbecue sauce company, small, but I work hard at it. Not anything to be like, oh, well, hey, there are people that can do in this community. I do feel like it is the community's opportunity and obligation as Black, white, green, blue to be in these council meetings. I believe that it is the obligation of every citizen of Durham to do more than what they are doing. It is not in this council's power or in their position to do for you. It is their obligation and their right to do their jobs. And I believe they're doing their jobs as honest as they can. I do understand that I have not been here long. But the time I have been here, I have been embraced by Durham. And I do appreciate Durham, the melting pot. I feel like Durham is the melting pot of North Carolina. I see Asian, I see black, I see white here. So I don't believe that it is a color or ethnicity thing. I believe that it is a human vernacular that we need to do more as a community. And I believe that if I can do more, then you can do more. And I believe that if you can do more in this community, I believe that there can be things done. But I do believe that the small businesses do need to do more in that community. Because if they do, then the people that are there, they can't stay there. Now, yes, most small businesses cannot pay $30,000 a year. But the ones that can, I believe that they should do more. And I believe that there are organizations and things to do to be able to do more in these communities. That concludes the persons who asked to speak and were allowed to speak during the public hearing. I'm going to close the public hearing. And it matters back for the council and recognize the council person that may want to speak, recognize Councilwoman Johnson, Councilman Schuhl, the Mayor Pro Tem, and that order. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, I want to tell everyone I'm really excited that we're having this conversation about community benefits agreements right now in the context of this development and what's happening in East Durham. I think that they're a really exciting and really critical way to get communities engaged with development projects. And I also want to acknowledge that the fear of displacement and gentrification that's happening right now in East Durham is very valid and very real. And the comparison to Gear Street I found particularly evocative, because I think that we have seen with the redevelopment of Gear Street a significant amount of displacement of people who live in the surrounding community. But I also want to, I want us to focus on what the city has the capacity to influence and what we can actually control. Development is moving east. It's moving into East Durham. There's not much that we can do about that. What I feel about this project is that it's a way to get some of this property into the hands of a nonprofit organization that has much more, that has much more of a motivation to be accountable to the community than for-profit developers generally do. And I imagine what Gear Street would look like if we had more property that was owned by nonprofits that could offer lower rents to other nonprofit organizations or to organizations that were serving the community in different ways that had more of a community advisory role regarding who gets to lease those properties, so that the property, so that the businesses there actually do provide services to the people that live in the community. So when I'm thinking about whether we should approve a project like this, for me the question is, is not how can the city prevent gentrification? Because I think that all we can really do is mitigate. We have an economic system that just allows for this sort of process, for this very little concern for community to be accepted within the context of economic development. That's the system that we exist in. And so how can we as a city do whatever we can to mitigate the impacts of that system on residents and on people who live in the community? And for me having property owned by nonprofits and run by nonprofits, ideally with community benefits agreements, is a way to mitigate against the damaging effects of gentrification and displacement. I think that we've heard a lot of really important concerns, particularly around people of color ownership and access to the businesses and commercial space that's going to be built in that corridor. And so I'd like to ask folks from self help to respond to those concerns with regard to what do y'all have plans in place to make sure that some of those spaces are both able to be accessed by businesses owned by people of color and that the services there will be accessible to residents of the community and also to respond to the idea of having a community benefits agreement in place for this development. Thanks. Thanks, Councilwoman Johnson. So I think let me take that one at a time. So in terms of the community benefits agreement, I think as we said, we're eager to keep working on this. It's been an ongoing discussion over advisory group meetings. And I think, as Michael said before, the question has really been about how do we articulate that in a kind of MOU format and what are those specific benefits that community members want. What we've tried to do throughout the process is to really hone in on the types of uses of the space that our advisory group has looked for. That's where the child care idea came up. That's where the business entrepreneurship idea came up. That's where providing access to community groups, for example, PAC meetings, small grassroots groups that need a meeting space in the building. We've made that commitment through our legal agreement for this grant. And so we've been trying to address those as best we can throughout the process. And we're eager to keep trying to figure out what's the next step with the community for really trying to kind of encapsulate that in a more formalized community benefits agreement. Does that address? Yes, thank you. Sorry, before you move on, can you describe the advisory council? I don't think I know what that is exactly. So this was self-help's attempt, but because we know there are a lot of groups active in East Durham. We really wanted to, and we know that people are busy attending PAC meetings, attending Northeast Central Durham leadership council meetings, et cetera. What we did was reach out and Michael, if you have anything to add, you can join me, he spearheaded this effort, but we tried to reach out to people who are really active in the community, leadership of those organizations like the PAC, like the leadership council, like communities and partnership, and invite them to join us in a process. Again, it's been almost two years now where we've been trying to lay out what's happened in the past in the community, what's worked, what hasn't worked, what elements of city and community plans resonate with people in the community, and really trying to get some barometer for all the kind of complexities of how do you create positive investment without sparking the side effects of gentrification and displacement. So we've been wrestling with that, I'm not saying we've done it perfectly, but that's, I think our heart's in the same place, it's trying to make sure we get as much positive as we can and try to avoid the pitfalls. And then let's see, I'm sorry, remind me of your other question was about access to services and. Yeah, how do you plan to engage people of color in the community and also make sure that the space is accessible to the community? Sure. Yeah, sure. One of the things I'd like to reiterate is the fact that we do that, because in these projects that we own the building, it's about what our tenants bring in terms of value add to the community. That's why we take the perspective tenants through the process of meeting. Again, our advisory committee is a, I would say a small representative sample of the community to get that basically advises us in terms of whether it is a good fit or not. I mean, there are some, we've actually made some decisions not to bring perspective tenants to the advisory committee, because again, so in our, what we've learned from the community and what their interests are, if we see something that's just not, it's obviously not a fit based on what we've heard today through the advisory committee, we stop things at that point. So again, that's the insurance, if you will, that we get tenants that bring value because there is that vetting process, though informal at this point, but when we solidify this document, an MOU or whatever, that's the kind of thing that we would reduce the writing. And just to directly address the question that you asked, so so far we've rented out or pre-leased about one third of the space that's divided half and half between Eastern Children's Initiative, which is obviously was formed specifically to serve the zone, which is I think 120 blocks within Northeast Central Durham. That's diverse leadership of that organization. It's a non-profit, so I don't know how you want to count it as whether it's a run by people of color, I don't know how to characterize a non-profit in that way. The Child Care Center is an African-American woman-owned business that again has a successful track record. This will be their second location in Durham and they've committed to us and they said the same thing to the advisory group when we introduced them to them, that their goal really is to hire from within the community to make spots available with priority to the community and importantly, which I forgot to say before, to accept childcare vouchers and subsidies so that whether you earn $100,000 a year or you earn $10,000 a year, you're able to access that service and access that high quality childcare. And then our hope is to continue that success as we go forward. Obviously it's, like Michael said, it's a work in progress and we're gonna keep introducing prospective tenants to the advisory group. They've given us specific leads and we're trying to deliver as best we can on the local businesses, businesses run by people of color and other MWEs and also businesses that offer goods and services that really are needed and wanted in the community. Thank you, that's really helpful. Can I ask, Cameron, you're on the advisory committee? Would you mind speaking briefly about what that group is doing and how that's going, that process? So I've been on the advisory committee since the inception and the process. Has been one that has brought up more questions for me in terms of just clear transparency of what the long-term plans are from self-help and other interested parties of their community development. My concern also has been as a nonprofit community in partnership has partnered with the Department of Urban Planning at UNC and so we were able to look at some of their lending rates and I have to say that I'm greatly concerned. Because of the threshold for household in terms of housing, loans is much lower than commercial. That there was almost, it was very few people of color that were actually given commercial loans. And so my question has been, is there any way that they can work with the community to have some sort of support systems in place so they can lower the threshold for people groups of color who come from low-wealth communities specifically and I'm also concerned about the lack of access for justice-involved individuals and we've talked about this in the meetings of how we can kind of even the playing field as Victoria was speaking, we would like, we have people that are right now trying to make ends meet in alternative economy processes and we have young men who have been justice-involved who actually can run a major corporation if you gave them the chance to do it. So why can't we give them the access to have a formal economy business where they would hire people from our own community that have never been given a chance because they know people and they'll take a chance on people that the traditional business owner currently in Durham would not. And so we have to stop thinking that people are gonna disappear because they're not. They're gonna find a way to survive and why don't we make opportunity, especially from an organization like Self-Help whose home charter was to basically help develop access for black and brown communities and so I would like more transparency yet again from Self-Help concerning the processes moving forward and how they're gonna leverage their assets and their resources for communities of color, which is why they were founded to help materially poor communities, specifically communities of color and that's what I've been asking the whole time. And I would just like transparency. Again, the other three buildings that Mr. Dickey had referenced that were in the Andrew corridor only was told about one of them. I didn't know about the other two. I would like to also know their long-term plans in detail and how are they gonna leverage those assets for the people that are currently living in the community, specifically people that aren't traditionally the people that they lend their commercial products to. Do you, Cameron, do you feel like the advisory council is in a good position to address those concerns going forward? I think that we are considering that we, either we have people in that space who actually can lend a hand to some of the gaps or we have connections to that. And so I think that there are assets and resources. I know because I'm the co-chair of the Ford Cities Committee, so I have connections with LaShawn at Durham Tech, the small business, Helios, which George Staton is over, which his whole total focus is to help black and brown entrepreneurs. And so there's resources that we have, but what those organizations don't have is the power to lend or to give startup money or to give capital for startup businesses. And so since the window has closed in a lot of the community's perspective, to come into downtown, we have to look at the last couple of city center neighborhoods that are left, which is our community and then Haytai area, which we hope can be filled with majority black and brown businesses. Thank you, and thank you, Dan. I wanna say I share all of these concerns. I'm deeply worried about the displacement that we're seeing in a lot of areas of Durham as a result of both residential and commercial development and given the options in terms of what the city can do and where we can have an impact, I am supportive of this proposal and I'm hopeful that moving forward that there will be a community benefits agreement that's negotiated with the community to address some of these concerns around making sure that people of color have access and are at the table. And I think that there are some really good resources out there on developing CBAs that if folks don't have, I'd be happy to direct people to some organizations nationally that have done this work in other cities and have come up with solutions that I think have created really exciting assets for communities and have prevented and limited the displacement that we see in some other development. Thank you. Welcome to recognize Councilman Schumann. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to first, Chris, appreciate your work on this and also all the work you've done over the years in your office that you particularly in this quarter, it's made a big difference and I think we've made a lot of, the city's made a lot of good investments there and I wanna appreciate your really moving all that along over the years. I also just wanna mention one of the features of this agreement which is fairly new in our incentive agreements, Mr. Attorney, which I also wanna appreciate is the insertion into our incentive contracts, the assurances of appropriate treatment of subcontractors which we added maybe a year ago or something like that and I'm glad to see that is now routine and wanna appreciate that. We've had some difficulty in some of our subcontractors getting paid and I think this is a real good step forward. Most of my questions and comments have been already asked by others. I appreciate the questions about the employment of people of color and people from East Durham that my colleagues have asked and also the comments about the community benefits agreements and appreciate those of you all in the, who've made comments today about them. It's been valuable and good to hear and I am very hopeful that a good community benefits agreement can be consummated for this development. I do wanna also though mention a couple of other things that I think are important that I think you've gone unmentioned. One of them is, one of the things this is gonna do is provide a permanent, as permanent buildings are, home for Eastern Children's Initiative which is an incredible asset in our community in East Durham and so many of the children in East Durham are benefiting from the work of Eastern Children's Initiative and to be able to have them have a stable home on the key corner is great and the other thing is and Jillian already alluded to this one of the things that we can do is we can in this situation help influence who's developing this corner. This is a corner that is going to get developed and here we have an opportunity to subsidize the development by a nonprofit developer with an absolutely great track work record of doing developments which are very, very beneficial to our community in a way that a for-profit developer is quite unlikely to do there and I think that's, I can't think of a better developer for this corner. I think it's a great opportunity. There's a lot of work clearly it still needs to be done that needs to continue to be done in terms of outreach and in terms of employment. These have been discussed tonight I think in a way that's really been useful and I appreciate it but I'm very supportive of this looking forward to voting for it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You're welcome. I'd love to comments by the Mayor Pro Tem and Councilman Rees. What we need to do is to incentivize more black businesses. I understand that. So we need to establish a program to do that but I'd like to know too if there has been dialogue with the greater black chamber of commerce. Is it the greater Durham black chamber of commerce or around opportunities in that corridor? To your knowledge. Well actually CJ Broderick initially was on the advisory committee. So I said CJ Broderick who was a black business chamber he's been on the committee so we, and also we've had representation from Durham Tech and a couple of folks that are in your small business advisory committee actually also are participants in this project in terms of CISO and advisory committee. So we're very conscious of that and I think what I'm hearing tonight is your interest which will obviously help push us in that direction. So I clearly understand the intent and I think your your expression of that support for that it actually helps me do my work too. Okay well I appreciate that. So I need to ask a question about community land trustees and how the work they're doing impacts the community as well because I know they did announced they announced the purchase of how many units? 54 units recently? That's right. So is that gonna cause problems or? So the motivation I almost should ask did you wanna address this or I don't wanna put you on the spot but you've been more involved than I have in this. Well I'm just interested in all the impacts. Self-help has been a lender to help them acquire the properties but did your honor knows the details. Okay. Specifically around the properties in Eastern so self-help was instrumental in helping a Durham Community Land Trustees acquire the 31 properties, 54 units within Eastern which is now named the East Point Properties and that project is moving forward and you should be seeing a request for home funds I believe for $240,000 to cover some renovations on the houses that are there. There is a lot of complex layers to this and that the way the homes are right now are not where a Durham Community Land Trustees normally has the property so there's a lot of work to be done. Are they all in one area or they are scattered? They are scattered throughout and mainly they're on ash and there's some on park and some on a few other blocks throughout but Briggs and Guthrie and they're throughout Eastern though. Okay, thank you. Okay Dan, these are my last words. Sure, may I just to add a point to that. I mean so the reason I think that Deidreana and others from the community got involved and got the land trust involved was specifically to try to keep these properties affordable and to keep from displacing existing residents. Is that right? Okay, that's good to know. Self-help has been very successful I think and I think that it is not asking too much for you to bring some other people along with you, people of color and try to do more to be inclusive. I think that if you can promise and Michael I think you did it because you know where I'm going. Yeah, you do understand. And so I would, my expectation is that creativity would be the order of the day creating some initiatives that will help in that community even from the point, even if you could start a skills bank in that area so you'll know what is available there and what businesses, what business opportunities exist among people in the area. Just create some sort of initiative that will directly impact the residents of that community. As a matter of fact, I asked the housing task force to do a skill survey, skill set survey in the area so that we see what we have to work with. And if there's some sort of training program that you can work with our workforce development office on, I think you should look at creating that. And if you promise to do that, I wish we could have committed elements on projects like this too. Then I will probably support you. But I'm looking for something for you to make something happen. And you can do it. Agilis. Thank you. I ask Councilman Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I wanted to say how much I appreciated all the public comments that came with the public hearing today, especially grateful for the leadership and the hard work of folks like Cameron Smith and Deidre Anna Freeman, who are real leaders in the community and help us understand the legitimate concerns and anxieties of people that live in these neighborhoods. I'm not a person who believes that the long-term economic development strategy that's gonna uplift East Durham involves a non-profit buying an old church and renovating the offices to make them useful to the community, but it's a good first step in many ways. And as Councilmember Johnson said, it keeps private developers from getting ahold of that, a piece of property, which is a useful goal. Dan, did you tell me who the church very nearly got under contract with to sell this property to before self-help was involved? I can't remember if that was the store you told me or... No, no, no, I wanted to mention this specific company, but essentially a discount store had made an offer to the members of the church and they were upfront that their plan was to tear the church down and build a kind of strip mall style discount store. So I think that's the risk you have without a group like self-help stepping in. Having said that, I really appreciate the committee working to push self-help to be more responsive to the needs of the community. I think we need more of that in this city and in this area, this part of town. I will be supporting the proposal tonight to move it to support it, but I did wanna say, I think the conversation we've had tonight really points to the need to refocus our economic development incentives in Durham. I think for a long time, the city of Durham has had not an exclusive focus, but certainly a strong focus on the kind of economic incentive packages that happen in every city and town across the country. Large company proposes to build a facility in that community. They request an economic incentive package that is such and such dollars for such and such jobs for such and such period of time in return for a capital investment of X million dollars paid out over a certain amount of time. There's a formula to these things. Every community will get these proposals and we either agree to it and get the investment in the jobs or we disagree with it, we refuse. And another city or town, either in this state or some other state will say yes and that investment will go there. It's a losing game for communities across the country and unfortunately it's one that I personally and many of my colleagues have felt we had to play. But I think long term for the city of Durham we need an economic investment strategy much more like what Cameron talked about. We need to start investing not so much in large corporations who want to put operations in Durham but in the entrepreneurial spirit of the people that live in this city. And as Cameron said, there are justice-involved folks who could very easily walk into a major corporation and do very, very well. They were given that opportunity. But I think for whatever reason well for a lot of reasons that's not likely to happen. And so I think we are, I think it's our responsibility to find ways to support the entrepreneurship that folks have, the ideas they have, the drive they have and not just with congratulatory letters but with economic investments like the one we're making in self-help today but in a smaller scale to scale up an individual business, an individual entrepreneur that certainly stretches the resources of the city both in terms of evaluating these proposals and in terms of the number of these types of investments we can make. But I think it also means that each individual bet is less risky overall because they aren't as big as $700,000 which I think, which I'm willing to vote for tonight, I think it's a good idea. So I think that's, as we move forward especially through the budget cycle as we enter the next fiscal year I think it's a great opportunity for us to think about how we really want to encourage economic development in parts of the city that have been disinvested in for generations and I think that is one way that we can do it that doesn't involve kowtowing to large corporations who will get this deal from any city in America and we're just happy to be glad that it's in Durham but instead offer resources and support and economic assistance and technical assistance to folks who, but for the city's involvement might not have the opportunity to realize their entrepreneurial dreams and start their own businesses and I think that's the way to success the city of Durham and I hope we can get there. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Anyone else that has a comment? Let me, first of all, appreciate again the comments that have been made. I understand some of the comments, I understand some of the concerns whether they're real or not. If you made them, they're real to you and I appreciate that. And I won't repeat what has been said by members of council much of what I agree with, some I don't agree with but when I look at this proposal which I will be supporting also, again, it reminds me of the history of redevelopment in Durham at least since I've been mayor and I've said consistently that it's a lot easier to revitalize downtown than it is neighborhoods. And I think people tend somehow forget that Barnes Avenue, the struggles went through Barnes Avenue, one of the first projects that I was done when I became mayor and trying to transform that neighborhood from what it was into what it is now and I would dare say that there were a lot of people that said don't do it for all the reasons that they felt but I think it's a much better neighborhood because of what was done. And you look over at the south side, Rowland Hills in particular, again, a lot of pushback on that neighborhood in terms of what you should do and what you shouldn't do and the difficulty in revitalizing neighborhoods versus doing what we did downtown is when you're talking about revitalizing neighborhoods you're talking about people, you're talking about people you're talking about their homes you're talking about what might seem to be a council or a limb this seem to be something else or someone else and I appreciate that but it's part of the struggle that we have to go through to get to where we are. I don't live in North East Central Durham I don't live in Southside but I can tell you I have a strong interest in the revitalization of those neighborhoods as I had in downtown Durham and I probably spend more time over in those neighborhoods you might not see me but I'm there simply to see what happened, the poverty initiatives going over in North East Central Durham so I'm constantly writing that community I was just over there Thursday at White Smith School coming back which struck me along the Andrew Driver corridor was how bleak it was, how bleak it was and I remember we had great hope for that area when we did the infrastructure development when we invested in some minority businesses but to see where it is now I can't help but for my opinion say we've got to do something different and I think this proposal goes a long ways in making that happen. I think the community considerations the community outreach that has been mentioned it's got to be done but you've got to start somewhere and I think this is as good a start as any and I would just hope that those that have come here tonight will stay involved and raise the questions that you raise I think we have to hold the developers feet to the fire in terms of what they say they're gonna do to make sure it's done that's what the staff will be doing but I think it's a worthwhile project and I think we couldn't do less by I think we couldn't do more if we we don't, let me say this I've heard a lot about the non-profit side and the profit side the bottom line is you can't make people invest you can't make people invest as much as you want you can't make people invest and so we have to look very closely at those that do especially when they're talking about asking for city dollars to help them with their investment and I think that's what we've done in this particular case and we'll continue to do but we can yield for it not to take this step if we're really about the business of trying to revitalize neighborhoods and this is as good a start as any and I'm just hopeful that after this council approves it which is for us certain that's gonna happen that we'll be about the business so we're getting the work done so having said that I'm gonna entertain a motion on the item that's before us it's been probably moved in the second Madam Clerk will you open the vote? You close the vote? Passes seven, a zero. Thank you, let's move to the next item please. Mr. Mayor, members of council, are we on number nine? Yes. Okay, this is a continuation of a public hearing that was at your, started at your last council meeting just as a reminder to council and community members that may wish to speak on the item, excuse me. What we're doing tonight is a public hearing no decisions will be made about the electoral process in Durham but by statute you're required to hold a public hearing and receive public comment. At some point in time if you want to make some sort of affirmative decision you would direct me to bring an item back to the council in whatever form you direct me to bring it back but without an affirmative future decision the item would essentially go away on its own. You wouldn't have to make a decision particularly if you decided you wanted to keep the process as it is. What I've done as in years past is I've provided you with a memo, it's an updated memo on what we're doing and the factual distinctions between the various municipal election processes and again this memo was just a fact memo it's not an advocacy memo of any sort but I am here to answer questions to the extent that there are some facts that you need otherwise just as a resource for you tonight. I haven't heard the city attorney's remark this is continuation of the public hearing I'm gonna recognize first the mayor pro term who says you had a question and then councilman Moffett. I was gonna ask for the definition of voter suppression from them. What is the definition for voter suppression? Legally, is there a legal? I'm not aware that there's a legal definition specific legal definition. Okay. Recognize councilman Moffett. Thank you this is somewhat related. I have a this year 2017 there's a large unknown factor in elections which is that there's a federal case regarding redistricting legislatures. If all of that developed in the legislature let's say that we wound up having a primary for our legislative districts in June would our charter allow us to be able to hold council elections at the same time council primary at the same time or would we have to make it come back again and reconsider that? I don't have the charter in front of me but I'm almost positive that in the nonpartisan primary and election there is a date set in the charter for the primary that's one of the Tuesdays in October or September. It's the fourth Tuesday before the first before the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Yes. It's four weeks before election day November. Right. Let's say that really fast. But the point is that it is set in the charter so the idea of a June primary to take advantage of an election already going forward now you're talking about a charter amendment which would require a general council a general assembly approval. So we would have to change we would have to change our charter because the time for the primary election is set by the charter. So there's a possibility that this year will wind up but with a confusing election regardless of what we do just a possibility because we don't know the outcome yet it's in front of the Supreme Court. Yeah there could be multiple primaries multiple days depending on whether it's a state election or a local election yes. Okay. Well I because we know we're only taking public comment we haven't really started talking about what we might do or could do but certainly for me and I feel like this year so it's upon us already with those unknowns that any changes we might contemplate you know I would urge us to if we did contemplate any changes whatsoever that we not contemplate implementing those changes until 2019. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Recognize Councilor Reese. Thank you. I could ask the city attorney is it possible for the council to decide not to take direct action ourselves on to approve or disprove a particular resolution but instead to place the proposition on the ballot in November of this year for the voters to decide. I don't know if it could be done in November of this year and I'm not saying that I can or can't I just haven't looked at that issue but there is a statutory provision that allows you to push this to a voter referendum should council decide to do that. Are the other questions by members of the council? If not then we will continue the public hearing. I'd like to call Steve Hopkins, Chris Tiffany, Victoria Peterson, Anita Keith Faust, Jackie Wackstaff, and E.L. Allison in that order. Again Stephen Hopkins and thank you Mr. Reese that was one of the concerns that I had, you know and to be more specific I feel enduring that wards don't have the representation that it has had and if we are going to have any kind of discussion about elections I think that's the discussion that we should be have whether or not to be a ward system complete district, I mean I guess that district system. When I first got back to Durham we had wards in fact Ms. McFadden you was about the third person that we elected to serve as the ward one person but now everybody, all right. All right well now everybody votes for you and I'm so sick and tired of you telling me you represent all of Durham when northeast don't get represented, you know so you know that's my concern, that's my concern. The other thing, the other concern that I have is that it's Black History Month and I haven't heard any resolution about Black History Month yet from this body, thank you. Ms. Tiffany. Gentry Durham is anti-democratic small D oppressing local minorities in many ways voter registration is geared toward DMV car and home owners and turnout for local elections is usually low, primary is typically not more than 10% and local elections are held in off years as one of many tried and true ways to suppress the vote to help incumbents. Like at large, sort of at large voting as he indicated a tactic designed to help incumbents and to suppress representation of local minorities like having Woodcroft and Parkview choosing who represents these Durham target areas or Russians choosing who represent us or Fayetteville deciding who represents Durham and Congress and now you want to eliminate primaries which threaten incumbents supposedly because it's cheaper, you could save money on elections by not holding off year elections at all and every single election cycle for many years, local cops, your enforcers have threatened people engaged in voter registration activities wasting public safety dollars to suppress the votes of those you call RIFRAF, those who depend on public transportation, threatening arrest on some trumped up charges for trying to get people registered to vote, running off people at the bus terminal with voter registration forms for flyers showing the location of the board of elections, selective voter suppression like the FBI abusing its authority to influence last year's elections but even worse than the power of Russia and the FBI exercising clandestine political influence or law enforcement organizations honestly making political endorsements, cops should be forced to quit abusing their authority by threatening people engaged in important democratic processes. Now if you all truly want to facilitate support and defend democracy, you will oppose all forms of voter suppression including persistent, blatant threats to democracy by armed enforcers who say their job is not law enforcement but social control and a sort of at large election which minimizes the representation of local minorities and off-year elections instead holds local elections and primaries at the same time as statewide elections and primaries instead of holding expensive, separate elections to suppress the vote. Durham has spent a large chunk of a billion dollars oppressing people, save money, save democracy. Victoria Peterson. I'm hoping that the African-American community will step up to the plate this year. There's gonna be a change in the guards in this community. The city council, we have three at large seats up for reelection. What, four? I'm sorry, the wards, I'm sorry, the ward seats. Three ward seats and one mayor seat because the mayor has promised us that he's not gonna be running. We thank God for the job that he has done but this community needs some new leadership, some young blood. Seriously, I'm not joking. We need some new leadership in this community and we need some young men and women, particularly African-American young men who can step up to the plate. We've sent many of you to college and you have master's degrees and doctor's degrees. Where are you? This community needs you. This community needs you. Now I have a concern about not having a primary. I also have a concern that this council only has a few members. This community has been growing. We need to add some new seats to the city council. We need some more seats to this council. On the state level, on the federal level, when the state grows, we get more seats for the house and for the senate. On the federal level, it does the same thing. And Mr. Baker, I'm learning some different things about the law. I need to get up with you to find out what is it that we need to put in place to see. This community is growing. How come we are not expanding the seats? We need some more seats. One or two, I would love to see a good Hispanic leader person in this community sitting on this city council. We need a good Hispanic. We also have a growing Asian community in this community. Also about the ward situation. This community needs a serious ward. If you're saying that you live in one's ward but everybody in the city votes for you, that's not a true ward. That is not a true ward, people. I'm from the north. A true ward is where you live at, only those persons who live in that ward can vote for you. If I'm over here at Central, people over there in Parkwood and Tin Buck too and in Crosstown, they have no right. Only the people in my ward should vote for me. And for whoever else, these various wards. So if we're gonna start having some discussion, I'm Mr. Davis, you're head of my ward. We need to, I think we need to open it up and have a real true discussion about it. Thank you, Mr. Mason, thank you. And thank you, Mr. Mayer. You're welcome. I need a chief spouse. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and city manager, city council city manager, city attorney, city clerk. I came last time when they postponed it till the night and I said just about everything I need to say, but I wanted to be on the record that I'm against you all changing this. And that's why I signed up. I don't have any additional things to say. I already sent my emails out, only y'all probably got them by now. And I just wanted to be on the record so when my children's children ask, how did it happen? They'll know that grandma stood up against it. Thank you. Jackie Waxoff. Most of y'all got this, I hope you read it. But it'll be in the Hurl Sun on next Sunday if you didn't read it tonight. You can read it then. But just want to take some parts out of it. They give it to me, you know how that is. Sell some papers. But this, when this idea came up, it was like, it just dawned on me that there had to be a motive behind this. And I guess the attempt to save money, it just basically manifests as this attempt that has been this attack on voters' rights for the last all of 2016. We've had this major attack on voters' right, especially minority voters' right. And then to come in here and hear this council say, we're considering moving from a primary to a general election where you have to get at least 41% or go into a runoff, 51% or go into a runoff. Well, we know African-Americans, once you go through the primary, all of our funds, what little we have, have been exhausted, all our resources have been exhausted. So to go to another runoff, which is four to five weeks after the general election, we could never compete. And the ward system that you have now, and I've heard this said through many people, that you need to be considering this ward system that's not a ward system. This is only a ward system as it relates to the person that's running. This is an at-large system. This is like California people voting to tell us who the North Carolina governor's gonna be. You wouldn't have that happen that way, so why should we have that here? If you're gonna have three seats that are designated for war, they need to be truly war seats. This council need to allow us to have a referendum this fall, this coming up November general election, that we should let the voters decide if they would like to see two more members added to this council, because there needs to be a nine-member council for at-large seats, for ward seats, true ward seats where you have to live in it and only the designated people from that ward can vote for you. Because right now as it stands, a certain political group that garners most of the power in Durham right now can run anybody they want in any ward and outvote us, because it's a known fact, and these numbers don't lie, that black people do not vote in off year elections in Durham. So, say if you want to run in ward one, Cora, or you're already there, and say that a certain group don't like you, they just outvote the people in ward one and put their representation there, and we don't have representation. This is not a fair process. So, if you want to be conscious of something, you want to consider something, consider a referendum and letting the voters decide if they like to see this council enlarged by two members and actually have ward-designated seats. So, it improves our chances as a minority of being able to get elected. Thank you. E.L. Allison, if there's anyone else who wants to speak out for Ms. Allison, Dr. Allison, anyone else that hasn't spoken? Good afternoon. Thank you. I was so glad that I was able to read this article in the paper, and I decided whatever was going on, I was coming here tonight to strongly, aggressively say I am totally opposed. And I want to know why in the world in this article did we find out who brought it up and what's the reason behind it? I really would like to know that. We are talking about eliminating the possibility for participatory democracy. What we are doing is going to cut down the opportunity. And I looked at some data and do you know that, I don't want to say people of color, I'm talking about African-American or black people who used to call us Negroes or colored folk, whatever. But the situation, 85,000 black folks on the books, of that number, 70,000 are Democrats, 13,619 are un-affiliated, 1,065 Republicans. What we have, and I didn't talk to anybody, what we really, really need to be doing is talking about a true democratic process for electing the persons who are going to in fact, improve the quality of life for all citizens. Everybody sitting on that city council, whether you're there as an employee or a person who's been elected. Black folk are at the bottom of everything that improves the quality of life. Start with economics, that's the first E. And you can get there by 10 different things that we're gonna say about economics. The next one is education. The next one is housing. The next one is health. The next one is justice. And at the bottom is that big P, politics. And any time you're dealing with politics, R-A-C-E is in it. Everything you all talked about tonight. Anything you make a decision. Some people want you to need to understand, sometimes it's not a commission, a sin of commission, but it's a sin of what, omission. When I listened tonight, I really wanted to come up and say something, but I really didn't want to really get up here because it is frustrating for those of us who have grown up in Durham to see how we are retrogressing. We are worse off than we were 30 years ago in terms of the racial gaps. All you have to do is look at the report that comes out from several different reports. And I beg you all, be more progressive. Talk about figuring out how we're gonna get a true war system. Non-Protestant cuts us out all the time. 35,000. No, it's 40,000 unaffiliated white folk. And they play games on us. Thank you, plus do better. Please, let's do better. We deserve more. That concludes the, James, did you want to speak on the side? Okay, I didn't see you come on. James will be the last person. Is anyone else who wants to speak? James Chaves is the last speaker. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. My question is like Livonia just asked. Which one of y'all started this? And why? That is a reason. And we know what it is. But I'm asking each one of you all tonight to make a decision to put it in the hands of the people about these wards. And wards only vote for that person. And they have to live in it. If you want to clear this up. Because we know what's going on when y'all don't think we know. So please, think consciousness and think right. If you want to clear up this mess and you want the ones started, vote for the people to be able to vote for what they want. Thank you. That concludes persons who had asked to speak on this item. I'm going to close the public hearing as the city attorney explained from the outset we weren't taking any action on this item. I'll just say for the record, I would never vote to make a change about our elections to save money. Never. If there's one thing that I think we ought to be willing to do is spend money to allow people to have the opportunity to vote or not vote. That's what's a good thing about our system. Nobody makes you vote, but you've got the choice. And I wouldn't talk about changing the system because it's going to save money. At the appropriate time, I guess I will comment on what's being proposed, but now it's not tonight to do it. So recognize Councilman Davis. I thank Mr. Mayor. I sincerely appreciate the residents who have shared their comments about the proposal to eliminate the primary election for members of the Durham City Council. Several individuals have offered opinions at the public hearings and in writing and during informal conversation. The Durham City Council, like most municipalities across North Carolina, is elected during odd number years. The council is elected during odd number years. Normally there are no other positions on the ballot when these municipal elections are held. National, state, and county elections are held on even numbered years. Thus, for the most part, four seats. The mayor and three council positions are the only offices on the ballot during these odd numbered years. Our neighbors in the research triangle cities of Raleigh and Chapel Hill do not have primaries and thus hold one election during these same odd numbered years. Both of these cities allow for run-offs to occur if candidates do not receive outright mathematical majorities of the votes cast for individuals or at large positions. The voters in these municipalities understand this electoral process and very seldom is there a need for a run-off in Raleigh and or Chapel Hill. This process appears to work without charges of voter suppression, without charges of racial and ethnic disenfranchisement, without charges of elderly disenfranchisement, and without charges of geographic disenfranchisement. By using this process of one election with the possibility of a non-majority run-off, taxpayers in Raleigh and Chapel Hill are able to save valuable funds without sacrificing the cherished principles of inclusionary voting and without sacrificing elections that are free, fair, and open to every registered voter. I would venture to say that very few people in Durham could offer justifiable accusations that officials in Raleigh and Chapel Hill discriminate against their voters. Despite some comments that have been offered, if Durham were to change its election process and adopt a system similar to the ones used by our colleagues in Raleigh and in Chapel Hill, it is estimated that during most election cycles, we would save well over $100,000 in precious taxpayer money. Without doing so, I'm sorry, while doing so, guarantees would be in place to ensure that candidates who do not receive an outright mathematical majority would face a run-off. According to statistics provided by the Durham County Board of Elections, that covers the last 30 years on just two occasions during the 13-member council era and on only two occasions during the seven-member council era have the primary leaders, primary leaders not going on to victory. During the seven-member era, two examples of primary leaders who did not go on to victory, the incumbents were defeated. In one case, it was a mayor, and in the other case, it was a council member. Therefore, clearly, past examples show that the current proposal would not protect an incumbent who is headed for defeat. It is not, as some have alleged, an incumbent protection plan. I encourage the council to respect the intellect, the integrity, and the pocketbooks of Durham voters by taking the next step in this process. I urge the council at the appropriate time to ask the administration to prepare the necessary documents that can be studied, deliberated upon, and debated by the council and by the citizens of our great city. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Councilman Davis. Recognize, I got one on the right and one on the left. Let me go with Marfa and then Reese. Councilman Marfa and Councilman Reese. Councilman Davis, thank you for your remarks. For the people who asked, well, whose idea was this? I will say that only since I've been on council, I can't speak before that. But every new council member who's been elected, every new council member who's elected first successfully navigated the current system. And then one of the first things that happened after that was we were presented with a bill. That is, as a council member, the Board of Elections came and said, here is your final bill for the election. And those new council members went, how much? Did we just spend? And when the results were typically, typically, not always, but typically, pretty clear after the primary. So you can figure out how many people have spoken about this, how many people have brought this issue up, and Councilmember Davis is simply one of those people. So thank you for making your remarks and speaking out for the rest of us who also had the same questions. I just have to say one thing. I've been on this council, I've never raised a question about changing the election because I know your remarks, you said since you've been on there, but I just went for the record. I've been on this council, and I've never raised a question about changing the election because of the cost of the election. I still maintain that's not an issue for me and never will be as long as I'm here, but I'm recognized as Councilman Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. During the remarks by the residents at the public hearing just now, I heard two additional recommendations that folks wanted to talk about. And I was wondering if our city attorney could weigh in on whether or not those two suggestions were actions that the city itself could take either by action by this council or by referendum of the voters, or if it would need a local bill through the General Assembly and knowing how much they really want to help the people of Durham. I'm sure that would probably not be forthcoming. The first is one that you and I have talked about, and that is converting our current ward election system to what many of the speakers here tonight are referred to as a true ward system where the ward representatives are elected only from registered voters in their specific wards. And I think you and I are still reviewing whether or not that can be done by a city itself, by Durham itself, or whether it would need to go to the General Assembly, so that's correct. That's correct. And just for the benefit of the council and the public, in our charter, we actually have an amendment to the current state law. The state law does say that a ward system is what you would expect, which is you have a ward delegate and people in the ward vote for that particular position. And in our charter, we actually have amended the state law. So the idea, I mean, typically if you go back to the default of what the state law is, I think it's less of an issue, but I'm just, because I haven't seen it, I'm still trying to get an answer to the question as to whether or not we can just unilaterally, if council wanted to, strike it from our charter and revert back to state law, or whether we have to get permission from the body that gave it to us in the first place to revoke it so we could be back in the default position. Thank you. The other possibility was expanding the size of this body to include an additional at-large member and an additional ward representative, aside from the fact that we'd have to obviously redraw the wards. Is that something that is contemplated by the statute? Is that one of the options that the city can do itself or would that require a local bill? I think that's gonna require a local bill, but I would need to find that out. I was around when we went from 13 to seven and I don't recall that there was a local bill that was done by referendum that was allowed within our charter. So you had the specific authority to do what was done to reduce the size of the city council. But in terms of adding, I'm not sure, but I can get an answer for the council quickly on that. Great, I certainly appreciate that. Thank you. I guess the only other thing I wanted to say is that I think those are two really interesting things to talk about. I wasn't involved in city government when we had 13 members, so I don't have any personal experience with it. I don't personally, I guess I don't really understand yet what shortcomings are of the way the council operates now would be corrected by two additional members, but if we find out that that's something we can do ourselves as opposed to going hat in hand at the General Assembly, I would certainly support us considering it and having a public hearing to talk about that option. With respect to the ward system, I've heard a lot of people say a lot of things about why it's a bad idea to move to a true ward system. The idea that somehow ward members who are elected only from registered voters in their ward would be parochial, I guess, or too concerned with the issues of their own ward. To my mind, that is a feature of a true ward system and not a bug. That's something to be applauded and not to be concerned about, but obviously that's not before us today and I probably should have kept my mouth shut about it, but again, if the city attorney tells us that that is an option, that the city can undertake on its own, either by action by this council or referendum for the voters, I certainly think that's something we should have an additional public hearing on when the time comes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Recognize, Mayor Proton. Mr. Attorney, could you just look at how the school board's elections are held and how they drew their districts? That should be a good guy. You'd help, I can help you on that. And I know Steve gets upset with me. I live all the way in Northern Durham and the only requirement for a ward representative is that you live there and that, so you could have three people on the city council from one community and that's not fair either, so. That's the way county commissions are. Recognize Councilman Johnson and then Councilman Schuhl. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to admit for the record that I did in fact bring up the question of how much money we spend on primaries after getting that bill from the county elections office because it did seem a little bit problematic to be spending money on an election that didn't actually affect the outcome of the races and the majority of circumstances. However, I don't see a strong need to move forward with this change to the election procedure right now and I would support putting it to a referendum to the voters and seeing what the community feels. I don't think we have good evidence either way as to whether this would reduce or increase turnout and I know there are people who feel both ways. There are cities in North Carolina that do it both ways and so folks in Durham are particularly attached to a primary general system and I think that that's something we should respect and that's something that we should continue doing. I think also the confusion around whether we're gonna have a statewide election this year also complicates things and so that this just isn't a good time to make a change in our system. If we were to have a statewide election this year, we would save money actually by being able to just piggyback off of the state primary and general election this fall. But I also want to use this opportunity as I always do to stump a little bit for instant runoff voting, which is my personal favorite method of deciding elections and which is currently not allowed by the general assembly but could be allowed if we were to get a local bill or if the general assembly was to allow it throughout the state. I recently learned that the state of Maine has decided to use instant runoff voting to choose most of their statewide offices and so we'll soon have some really good data on how that works for larger elections. Currently there is only, it's only in small cities around the country, several in California that use instant runoff voting, a number that are larger than Durham. But I think it'll be exciting to have some statewide data from Maine to really see what are the concerns, what are the costs and benefits. I continue looking at that as something that we could pursue in the future. I think that it's a much fairer way to decide elections. It does take a little bit more voter education but I think that that is worth it to have a system that really more effectively expresses the will of the people in the community. Thank you. You're welcome. Working on this Councilman Schuhl. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I guess my concern about a change is that I do think that a change to a runoff system is likely to reduce turnout. If we, let's say we have the election in October and the runoff in November, I think we'd be in danger of reducing turnout because of the experience of Raleigh. So let me just talk about that a little bit. It's just very true that runoffs would be needed only occasionally, but I do think on those occasions, I look at Raleigh's experience. This is, they've had a few in the last few years, last decade, so I looked at several of them. This is pretty typical. This is in 2003, Raleigh had runoffs in two district city council races. So one of their districts in October, the election itself they have in October, district B had 8,000 voters, but there were only 3,000 voters in district B in the runoff the time that the election was actually decided. In district D that year, there were 6,500 voters in the election in October, but only 4,000 in November. And the others, few experienced, a few times that I could find other runoffs in Raleigh, which has the system we're talking about. The results were very similar. So I think in my mind, our highest goal ought to be maximizing turnout, especially I think in the general election when the final decisions are made or in a runoff when the final decisions are made. And I think that what we have now in terms of what we're, as opposed to what we're considering, what we have now is the best way to maximize turnout. It's true that it only happens occasionally that you would need to have a runoff, but I don't think that sacrificing turnout for that outweighs the advantage. I would say, let me put it another way. We shouldn't be sacrificing turnout to be saving the money. And I think that there is evidence that we would be sacrificing turnout and that evidence is from Raleigh, which has the system. And so I think there are good reasons to consider this alternative, but on balance I think that maximizing turnout ought to be our top goal and I think that our current system is the best way to do it. You're recognized, Councilor Davis. Can I ask Mr. Schuler a question? The examples that you gave with a lower amount of number of people who voted in the runoff could that possibly be because only one seat was up and that the other areas did not feel like they had to vote since it was only that one area that had to have a runoff. Yes, I mean, I don't know the answer, but it's certainly possible. I mean, in this case, this year, there were two, the other years, it's been, sometimes there's just been one and I think it is entirely possible that there's less knowledge community wide about the election because it's only, in this case, these are district seats and so yes, I think that's certainly possible. That could be the reason, yeah. Councilor Moffett and the Mayor Pro Tem. I was thinking about that too and I was thinking that given Raleigh's results, I was thinking that a primary system might result in having more races in the primary than you would have in a runoff given the results that we see in Durham if there was a runoff, it might be in one. Like I said, we had the three ward seats in the mayor. There may only be one ward seat that was in a runoff whereas four years ago there were, I guess we had the Mayor's race in one ward seat that was in the primary. But I was thinking that might affect turnout, right? If there's only one race, the fewer the races, the lower the turnout. But for me, the most critical requirement of an election is that the voters have faith and trust that the election itself was fair and the outcome represented the will of the voters. So I mean, I think one way we can get to that is by putting something on the ballot but I'm also not, I don't have an extreme need to change the election process if it's going to, if it's gonna erode the faith and trust that voters have in the system that we have. So I appreciate everybody who came out tonight. I appreciate the people who are interested in passions about this issue. And I appreciate, well, of course it was my issue too, four years ago, so I appreciate people who have raised this issue on council. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I must admit that this is not, oh, I'm sorry. You did want to speak. This is not my issue. And I found the definition for voter suppression. And I will not be a part of that strategy. But I am willing to, as I said before, to look at some research on a true ward system. When we did have six wards at one time and work must have been a lot easier at that time, rather than having to look at everybody all over the city, having worked at this reduced council, there's some validity to trying to get some more help up here. That's true. But one other thing that we have going in Durham is, I know I told someone I was gonna run for a certain seat. And he said, other people have more money than you do. And so that's exactly a part that we have to, that we have to, but you have to make sure that you, there are other kinds of considerations. Durham is not the kind of place. Money should not be a part of what we do. Do we have other comments? If not, any other items coming forward to council? If not, we adjourn at 9.51 p.m., thank you.