 Monica, do we have a quorum? Yes, Chair Howerton. For the county, we have Vice Chair Jacobs, commissioners, alum, Burns, and Carter. We also have interim manager Claudia Hager. And for the city, I am showing Mayor Pro Temp Johnson, city manager Paige, council member Reese, Mayor Schwell, and council member Middleton. I do believe I've called everyone that I have seen on the line. Oh, I'm sorry, council member Freeman. OK, so it does look like we have a quorum. So, Chris, are we starting? So it's 6.02. Good evening, everyone. And I will call this meeting to order. Today, we're having a public hearing on the comprehensive goals and objectives for our plan for the city and the county. I am Brenda Howerton, chair of the Board of County Commissioner. And in a little while, you will hear from the mayor, we're doing double duty here today. So I'll get kick it off. And I think the role has already been called. Or do you need to call it again, Monica, and for the city? Do we need to call the roles again? I think we're OK. I've acknowledged everyone that is on the call. OK, thank you. So I'm going to call the names of individuals signed up to get started with the public hearing. And I'll call one name at a time. Chair Howerton, before you begin, I would just like to acknowledge council member Freelon, who has joined the call as well. OK, great. Thank you. So our first speaker is Lynn Richardson. Excuse me, Chair Howerton. If I might interrupt briefly, staff is prepared to give a little overview. Oh, that's right. You're going to do a presentation. OK, so if we could do that first, and then we'll get right to our speakers. Yes, this is for the public. This is the first time we've done this. So we are feeling our way through it. So the staff will do a presentation first. All right, thank you all. Good evening. I think we can get our presentation up just a second. Awesome. OK, good evening, everyone. My name is Kayla Seibel. I'm a member of the Durham City County Planning Department team working on the Comprehensive Plan. I'd like to say on behalf of our team that we are very excited to be bringing the revised community goals and objectives for the Comprehensive Plan to you for a public hearing and discussion tonight. These goals and objectives are the culmination of a lot of work and input. Before we start, we want to again acknowledge the tremendous contributions from so many members of the Durham community to make these goals and objectives what they are. And thank all of the engagement ambassadors, members of the outreach team, members of a multitude of boards, commissions, and committees, including the Planning Commission, Joint City County Planning Committee, staff from a variety of city and county departments, Durham Public Schools, and many others for their contributions and collaboration. Here's a brief overview of what we're planning to cover this evening. We understand that most of you on the Commission and the Council have heard this information. But today, we're planning to share the full process to date to get to these community goals and objectives for the benefit of any residents who have not heard this information yet. And we'll be glad to answer questions and hear feedback or concerns about any and all of this work. Next slide. As their work on a new Comprehensive Plan began, the city's equitable community engagement blueprint was being developed, and the city and county both were beginning to work towards more equitable engagement. Through early conversations with our colleagues in the Neighborhood Improvement Services Department, we identified specific aspects of engagement we would work to incorporate into our engagement for this plan based on the blueprint. These have included working to provide information and engagement opportunities in accessible language in both English and Spanish, asking demographic questions as we engage to understand who we are hearing from through different engagement methods, letting the data guide where we invest resources and reaching folks to move towards more equitable engagement, compensating residents for engagement and for engaging folks within their own communities, particularly through the creation of an engagement ambassador program and improving coordination across multiple projects and engagement efforts. We have learned a lot about engagement and working towards equitable engagement in our work on this project, but we also know we still have a lot to learn and much more work to improve how we work with residents and build trust and relationships within the community. This work has allowed us to hear from many residents who have been excluded from our work in the past and the voices have significantly shaped the work we're bringing to you today. We're excited to share these goals and objectives that we believe accurately and equitably reflect the needs and priorities of the Durham community. So we began this work on the new comprehensive plan in summer of 2019, beginning with the recruitment for our resident outreach team and raising awareness of the upcoming work to create a new comprehensive plan for Durham. Engagement on this plan began in November of 2019 with a listening and learning phase of engagement. We began this project by asking big picture, open-ended questions that were intended to both find out what residents care about most and what they wanted to see in our community in the future. Next slide. Through the listening and learning phase of engagement, over 1,000 residents shared their needs and priorities for life in Durham, now and into the future. Approximately 400 residents came to one of the five community workshops. More than 600 residents participated in a mini listening session hosted by one of 40 engagement ambassadors and 169 residents shared their perspectives through the online survey. The summary of this engagement is provided in attachment one of this agenda item beginning on page 10. Next slide. With all of that input from residents, our work started by organizing it all. Our first step was to assign topics to each comment in order to get a big picture understanding of the topics that came up the most. This was an imperfect system, but a good way to get a general sense before diving into more detailed data analysis. These are the top 10 topics that were in the top 20 across all three engagement methods. All of these topics are reflected through specific topical objectives or incorporated into multiple objectives. We will share them on this later in the presentation. Because we began with big open-ended questions, we heard input both on things directly impacted by land use planning and decisions and other input not as closely tied to land use planning. The vast amount of input we received shows the ways in which planning and decision-making are completely intertwined with virtually all aspects of community life in Durham. This directly informed our approach to drafting goals and objectives for this plant. Next slide. So in August through December of 2020, we drafted 33 different objectives, reflecting the needs and priorities we heard from residents through engagement. We wanna take a few minutes to share our process for drafting these objectives and perish from the Office of Performance and Innovation shepherded us through this work by sharing her expertise and grounding us in an approach and perspective centered on residents. In addition, Mickey McDonald, our first engaged Durham program assistant was invaluable in this work, bringing her lived and community organizing experience, helping us stay true to resident perspectives, experiences and voices. The graphic created by staff to share this process with the community is part of Attachment 2 beginning on page 46. Next slide. We started with the large, rich, listening and learning data set that allowed us to elevate lived experience of residents listening to, respecting and honoring the voice of residents who have been disinvested in and actively harmed by planning in the past. We did this by filtering according to the kind of engagement that occurred and the demographics of the people who participated in that kind of engagement. And then we started by sorting every quote from every resident, that every resident had said into coded topics. There were about 70 different topics in total. So we created umbrella topics like housing, transit and the environment. For example, there were about 15 or 20 different topics that fit under housing, like belonging, gentrification and displacement, growth and development, homelessness and McDougal terrace. We took all the quotes and observations coded under a larger universe of housing related topics to find patterns and stories emerging from these voices, beginning with what we heard from the engagement ambassador sessions. And next, we worked towards clarity and iterations. We moved back and forth between the quotes and what was drafted to understand what people were saying. We answered a series of structured questions. What are these residents saying and why is it important? We then took an equity lens, asked who benefits and who's burdened by what we're seeing here. And finally we asked, how does this fit in a comp plan? Can we make policies about this? Once we answered all of those questions, we were pretty close to maintaining the source material and resident quotes in a draft objective. Then we wrote the draft objectives. We wrote all of these draft objectives in the voice of residents who we heard from through our engagement efforts. So every draft objective starts with we need. And alas, we revised the drafts to be sure we were saying what we mean and compared the drafts back with resident quotes. The objectives that came out of this process are stories for the kind of future that we want to build for Durham. We believe these objectives and goals reflect our shared values as a community. We want those values to come through in what we're doing in this comprehensive plan and how we're guiding our future together. Next slide. The community goals and objectives created through this process, they touch on all the top 20 topics from each engagement method, engagement ambassadors, the workshops, and the online survey. Many of these top topics led directly to a goal and group of objectives or to specified objectives. Next slide. The only topic from the top 10 list that didn't result in a topic specific goal or objective was infrastructure. Resident perspectives under the infrastructure topic were heavily focused on aspects of our streets and those needs haven't brought into the transportation goal and objectives as well as brought into other objectives as relevant. We expect infrastructure topics to come through in our policy work in more detail as well. Next slide. Once we had draft objectives that we felt were really focused on reflecting back what we heard as needs and priorities of residents, we brought these drafts back out to residents to grant truth them to see how well they reflect residents' perspectives and hear how to improve them. Before beginning to share these more publicly, we worked closely with the outreach team over a series of full meetings to talk in detail about each of the drafted objectives. Their early feedback gave us an opportunity to make some edits to provide clearer drafts for the community to review. The outreach team members have been great collaborators and their perspectives and experiences have been essential in this work. Early on, we also shared out groups of objectives with relevant staff to hear concerns, questions or feedback before the objectives were shared with the community. So as with the listening learning phase of engagement, our focus and engagement was making sure to hear from folks who've been left out or excluded from these processes in the past. We also continued to focus on reaching young people, Hispanic, Latino residents and rural residents since we know we still need to do better job at reaching these community members. Our second Engaged Durham program assistant, Ami Mejia, has been hugely helpful in connecting with both Hispanic and Latino residents and young people, particularly through focus group discussions. We are really excited to continue to improve our connections with these residents with Ami's guidance and assistance. Next slide. So through our engagement efforts from November of last year to February, approximately 850 residents provided input on the draft community goals and objectives. We were able to have an in-depth discussion on objectives with eight focus groups, including about 55 residents. We heard from a total of 174 residents during the fall engagement ambassador sessions for the nine housing and transportation objectives and 469 residents during the winter sessions to review the remaining 24 objectives that included topics on the environment, schools, jobs, sense of place, community relationships and health and well-being. We had great leadership by ideal or tease for the engagement ambassador program during this time who managed this program for both the transit plan and the comprehensive plan. And through our online engagement social pinpoint, we engaged 152 residents of all 33 draft objectives. The summary of engagement on the draft community goals and objectives provides additional information on how we engaged, what we heard and the demographic details of those we heard from. This summary is in English and attachment three and Spanish and attachment 10 to this agenda item. Next slide. We wanted to share some high level information about what residents said about the objectives in the space of engagement. Across all the objectives, we received a lot of positive feedback with at least 77% of respondents noting that they agree or strongly agree when asked, does this objective feel true for you and your community? The combined disagree to strongly disagree response this was about 8% or less for each objective. We use this information and an understanding of the kind of open-ended input on each objective to prioritize which objectives needed the most revision work as we set out to incorporate what we heard. Next slide. So through the various ways we've engaged residents on the draft goals and objectives, we heard where the drafts resonated with folks and also where we needed to make changes to better align with resident needs and to clarify the language that we used. This input came from the fall and winter engagement ambassador sessions, focus group discussions, online engagement, along with input from the outreach team, staff technical team and other community or neighborhood groups who sent comments by email. These included the inter-neighborhood council, environmental affairs board, preservation drum, appearance commission, people's alliance. So as the engagement period is coming to a close, we focused on organizing all this input to be able to work through revisions. Engagement ambassador sessions and the small group engagement input was prioritized as we began revising the draft community goals and objectives. Staff developed insight statements for all the input focusing on recommended changes for each objective. The insight statements of resident quotes informed changes to clarify the intent and update the language of the objectives. We worked to make revisions without significantly changing the content across each of the objectives since so much of the feedback on the drafts was supportive. Next slide. So we have provided several ways to review the revised objectives in advance of this hearing. We've included a marked up copy in the agenda as attachment four, where words removed are struck through and new words are underlined. In English in attachment five and in Spanish in attachment 11, we provided a clean copy of the revised document that was shared for the Planning Commission public hearing on April 27th. We also drafted a few edits to this document specifically based on feedback heard at the public hearing which can be viewed in attachment seven with Planning Commissioner comments themselves in attachment six. We've posted all this on the Engaged Air website in English and Spanish PDFs showing the initial drafts alongside the version considered at the April public hearing to easily compare the two hoping that is more accessible to residents. We want to note some high level changes we made from the initial drafts to those shared at the public hearing in April. We worked to revise our goal statements to better reflect that these are aspirational and describe a desired future state in Durham reflecting the feedback we heard from outreach team and engagement ambassadors. For all the objectives, staff clarified language and wording to try and improve accessibility and consistency. We included language emphasizing the need for better land use and transportation coordination within the mixed use neighborhoods resources for thriving lives and the intentional and coordinated transportation and land use objectives as these are important planning tools to manage how our community changes. We focused the innovative housing objective and providing affordable housing to residents. This is now called the creative and varied housing solutions. We adjust the contradiction between the formerly titled integrated housing objective which is now called multi-generational diverse resilient and inclusive neighborhoods and the rooted and connected communities and remove language from the latter objective that caused concern for residents that integration of neighborhoods might be forced or lead to displacement. We also worked to highlight the need for a growth management strategy and the need for sustainability and resiliency across these objectives. Next slide. In addition, we wanna highlight some of the edits that we drafted in response to the comments at the April public hearing. This is an attachment seven. In addition to minor wordsmithing, spelling and punctuation corrections, we addressed these items. On page one, we added the names of each objective nested under each goal in the table of contents to allow an at-a-glance understanding of everything included in the full goals and objectives. On page three, we edited the guiding value statement to address two concerns raised by the commission. First, that our statement around equity was not specific or strong enough. And second, to clearly indicate the needed shift towards residents having a greater say in what development happens in our community. On page seven, in the sense of place goal, we have reworded to more accurately state our goal around telling our history, acknowledging that we are never done telling that story and that there is no single definitive version of history. After reviewing the document for direction around growth management, we added some language on page 13 under the intentional planning and decision-making, the current lack of growth management to make that clearer. We also identified places where growth management is discussed and under the harmonious and respectful development and resilient, urban-neutral and generationally-oriented objectives. On page 14, we revised the name from mixed-use neighborhoods resources for diving lives to complete neighborhoods resources for diving lives. We heard feedback that mixed-use was not an accessible term and could mean something different than what the objective was describing. On page 16, under creative and varied housing solutions, we added back an explicit reference to changing development regulations while not limiting our solutions to regulation changes and adding cooperative housing to the list of options mentioned. On page 18, we called attention specifically to the combined cost of housing and transportation in addressing affordability. On page 22, the intentional and equitable transportation investment objective, we made an explicit reference to transportation not only within Durham, but also the surrounding communities. On page 26, making that same edit about transportation to the surrounding communities to the connectivity objective. In addition to calling out block links as a barrier to connectivity, particularly for non-driving modes of transportation. And finally, on page 50, added complete neighborhoods to the glossary after revising the objective to include this term. So with that, I'll now hand it over to Lisa Miller to close out the presentation. Great, thank you, Kayla, and good evening, everyone. I'd like to start by talking about the overall contents of the community goals and objectives document. It starts with an introductory what is a comprehensive plan section followed by the guiding values section that talks about our local government commitment to uphold the values that we heard our residents care most about, including equity, accountability, and well-being of our residents. It then includes an introduction to the goals and objectives. And the next section of the document contains the goals and objectives themselves. Within that section, each topical goal statement is followed by corresponding objectives. The objective, which you can see an example of on the right of this slide includes multiple parts, beginning with a title identifying the overall topic and values, an initial objective paragraph, a supporting background paragraph that provides context based on residents' current experience that we heard through engagement, a final objective paragraph, and then a group of resident quotes, again, heard through engagement that were used to help draft the objective. All of these parts make up the overall objective and are important for understanding it in its entirety. We do not yet have the revised objectives that are in the form shown on this slide, but we'll do so once we have adopted goals and objectives. The final section of this document contains the glossary of terms found within the goals and objectives. And while we worked to use accessible language, we also noted that where there were terms, residents might find unfamiliar. We provided a short description of their meaning in that section. So the revised goals and objectives reflect what we heard were important needs and priorities for Durham residents. Next slide. So we can make sure that these, we want to make sure that these needs and priorities are addressed. While some of the topics have direct land use connections and are typically found in a comprehensive plan, other objectives have not as clear ties to land use. To think through the implementation of the objectives which have that less direct connection to land use, we've created three classifications to help us categorize the objectives. The first icon, which looks like a gear, indicates that the objective can be directly impacted by work in the planning department and tools we have. The second icon with the circle of people indicates that the planning department needs partnerships and coordination and collaboration with other city and county departments and agencies to implement this objective. And lastly, the communication bubbles icon indicates that the planning department will share the goals and objectives and the engagement data around those with agencies who have the greatest impact on those objectives and discuss ways to support and share out their work. Since our initial draft of these, we've revised the classifications primarily to better reflect the importance of collaboration across many of these objectives. And we also want to note that each objective is important to Durham residents and the icon listed next to it doesn't determine its level of importance, but just how we plan to go about implementing it. Next slide. So we're going to go pretty quickly through the following slides listing the objectives and showing their classifications just to give you a clear understanding of how we're sorting them and what additional coordination we think will be necessary for their implementation. It will be important to maintain strong partnerships and coordination with other city and county departments to implement many of these objectives. And on this slide, our teams identified that all of the objectives under these three goals, sense of place, community relationships and housing and neighborhoods will require significant interdepartmental coordination. Next slide. The objectives here will depend on coordination with the city and county transportation staff with GoTriangle, with the Metropolitan Planning Organization and then as well with the city and county sustainability and open space staffs. Next slide. The jobs and training objectives will require coordination with the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the county's Economic Development Office, local employers and institutions and the public spaces and recreation objectives will require continued coordination with Durham Parks and Recreation Department and with cultural institutions in Durham. Next slide. Finally, the education goal and objectives will require coordination with Durham Public Schools and the groups and institutions that support our school communities and the health and wellbeing goal and objectives will require coordination with the Durham County Department of Public Health, the staff responsible for the county's master aging plan and with the Office on Youth Listening Project. Next slide. So we wanted to share with everyone the two primary ways that the community goals and objectives will be used once they're adopted. The goals and objectives will be used as the foundation for the remaining work to develop our new comprehensive plan, particularly around forming policy recommendations and a new future land use map that work to help us achieve these goals and objectives. In addition, the goals and objectives will begin being used to review land use cases like zoning map changes and annexation requests as soon as they're adopted. We're currently working with our colleagues on the land use team in our department to determine the processes for this review in order to make sure the goals and objectives are reflected in the staff reports created for new cases. Next slide. So with the next couple of slides, we wanted to give a brief overview of the continued work towards our new comprehensive plan that is going on now and will continue over the next year. So we'll be developing a place type guide that will replace our current future land use categories that we've been using as part of the 2005 comprehensive plan. These place types will include more information than our current land use designation that describe attributes of our desired land use around building character, placement, parking, street design and open spaces and we'll then be creating a new future land use plan that will be a map that assigns each of those future place types to parcels within the city and county. The policies and implementation strategies will be ways to implement the objectives through legislative processes, procedures and unified development ordinance text amendments. Through our engagement so far, we've received a lot of input on policy recommendations and our work on policy development will start with that input. This work will be focused on how we achieve the community goals and objectives that are adopted and finally we'll need measures for how Durham is doing at implementing those goals and objectives through the report card. The adoption process for the community goals and objectives began with the first public hearing on April 27th before the planning commission. We then provided informational presentations to both the city and county elected officials at their work sessions last week and tonight is the joint board of county commissioners and city council public hearing for consideration of this work. Finally, the community goals and objectives are on the agenda for adoption by the city council at their June 21st meeting and by the county commissioners at their June 28th meeting. Tonight we're asking you all to hold this joint public hearing. This is an opportunity to hear comments from residents and for the two elected boards to jointly discuss this work and try to come to consensus around adoption of new community goals and objectives for our comprehensive plan. The planning staff recommends approval of this work. The planning commission recommended approval at their public hearing voting 10 to one. And finally, before closing out the presentation, I'd like to provide a quick update on concerns that were shared with you all from the New Hope Audubon Bird Friendly Durham committee by email. We've reviewed their concerns and proposed edits and been in conversation with them on opportunities to address those concerns to include biodiversity in these goals and objectives. We've worked together to draft edits to a few of the objectives and one goal to reflect this additional priority. We're ready to walk through the details of those potential edits with you all this evening after the public comments for your consideration in the final adopted community goals and objectives document. So with that, our team is available to answer any questions on this work either now or after the public comments have been received. We know that was a lot of information that many of you have heard before. So thank you for your patience as we made sure residents participating this evening got to hear everything. So thank you so much. Thank you so much, Kayla and Lisa for this excellent presentation. Before we get started, I'd like to ask if the Mayor, Mayor Schultz, Assistant County Manager, our interim city county manager, the city county stuff going on right now, council, city council persons or county commissioners, have any questions or comments before I open the public hearing have any questions for staff? Okay, I don't see any hands. So I will declare the public hearing, open public hearing at this time. And as I open public hearing, there are a couple of housekeeping things I want to just mention. So for the public, for people that are speak individuals that are speaking two to three minutes for our speakers, there are individuals that, if you did not sign up, raise your hand and your name can be captured to speak. If you're calling in do star nine so that we can get your name and add you to the list of speakers. I don't think I've missed anything. So I will call the first four names as individuals lined up to speak. Lynn Regison, Stephen Cale, Bob Fritley, and Nancy Habbatel. I just know I just messed up your name, but those are the first four people that signed up. Craig, you are able to speak if you wish to leave a comment. I'm receiving your response from Tania. We'll come back to Tania. Next is Lynn Richardson. Can you hear me? We can. Oh, good. Always a good sign. Nice to see y'all. I'm here representing the local Audubon chapter, both as a board member and as co-chair of the Board of Friendly Durham Committee. And first of all, I just want to thank the planning department for all the hard work they've done to put these goals and objectives together. And also to thank all of you on the Council and Commission for your unanimous approval of the Board of Friendly Durham Resolution that was passed month or so in honor of Earth Day. And the importance of preserving biodiversity, which is the variety of plants and animals on Earth and the ecosystems that support them was the key theme of that resolution. Loss of biodiversity is right up there with climate change as a threat to the planet and to those of us who inhabit the planet. We have to have native plants and pollinator insects and other components of a biodiversity environment for nature to function properly and sustain life. Many members of the Audubon Society and other local environmental organizations attended these meetings, completed surveys, sent emails, all the things that the presentation just talked about to register comments on the importance of various aspects of biodiversity to the comprehensive plan. And although a lot of these ideas were incorporated, were implied in the plan, the actual concept of biodiversity and its crucial importance weren't explicitly mentioned. And Audubon felt strongly that a concept as central to the health and wellbeing of the community should be explicitly included. So I talked with Lisa Miller about my concerns and I believe that the several additions she and her team have made that she mentioned will be presented to y'all later to the existing goals and objectives, completely address Audubon's concerns. So I would just ask y'all to approve those changes to make what already looks like a great plan even better. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. By the way, Nancy Habutsel, you are able to speak now. Thank you very much. Yes, I'm Nancy Habutsel, a refugee from Chicago. And I should say one of the things that frightens me sometimes is what I see what that's happening in Durham that reminds me of how Chicago has evolved, which is not good. A true comprehensive plan for Durham, which I hope you will adopt, would incorporate housing, education, jobs, opportunity, economic opportunity, transportation and community safety. And I stress community safety, which I frankly would link to education because I think children, and I include children up to the age of 18 in school and doing well, are not gonna be out committing crimes. All of these elements are siloed in a way here and that makes the future of Durham tenuous at best. I'd like to see consideration giving to bring in experts from all of these fields, individually and together, including those from our local renowned university, so we certainly have enough here to advise in building an all-inclusive plan for all citizens. I think we need to take advice from people who actually have studied some of these issues beyond just in Durham and let them advise us a little bit on perhaps things that they have seen work elsewhere. And I stress the importance of having the education work with the families, the communities and with job providers so that we can cut down on crime in our community. And I'd also like to thank all of you for the work that you're doing. I think it's great that attention is being paid to all of this. Thank you. Okay, do we have another? Moving forward, as Stephen Nell was on our first list. On the list, you can. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you, as Stephen Nell with the Leesville Road Coalition. Durham City Crossroads, longtime residents can't really expect to maintain the way of life they've had for decades, no matter which neighborhood they live in. Most would agree that we need to protect the fabric of our city while celebrating growth and serves to drive the engines of equality and opportunity. Looking through this program, we think that so far it's missed its mark in its credibility to set policies and standards for the future due to the biased approach taken and only including a specific segment of the Durham population's input at the outset. For the future state of Durham, which you've talked about, old and new neighborhoods have very different needs. Yet it seems that this study is attempting to be one size fits all. Gentrification is being made worse by allowing developers to lead rather than city and county leadership setting the plan. Residential development should be paused until such time that a truly comprehensive plan is completed and approved that assures equity for all, including those who weren't sent ambassadors or outreach teams. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. Okay. Now this has Bob spoken. That's what you did on the return points. They may not be in attendance at the moment. Okay. We can go to the next list. Nancy Cox. Nancy Collins and Herman Spurling. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you so much. Again, thank you to everyone for the work that you've done in the wonderful presentation. I do, there are a couple of things I wanna talk about. We'll see if I just address one or not. So in element 11 related to public schools, I just wanna say out loud and on the record that there's nothing in there about charter schools. So as we think about our comprehensive plan and wonderful things that you've included, like ensuring that buildings are maximized in their use but not overuse, that they're cited so that they become centers of community so that their bike and walk friendly, none of that is gonna apply to charter schools, I assume. And I think that that's a really important issue that my fellow taxpayers need to understand. The charter schools are supported by your local tax dollars. And yet it's again, here's another example of where citizens unfortunately don't have the level of oversight to hold charter schools accountable in the same way that our elected officials and citizens are able to have with their own public schools. So I think that just needs to be acknowledged because I'm afraid that's gonna continue to be a problem as we try to plan in a comprehensive way, especially around natural resources. And the other thing that I'd like to talk about is just an example of what it looks like when a government agency works cooperatively with environmental, with folks who are focused on issues like biodiversity. So recently Durham Public Schools collaborated with several environmental groups to allow us to go to the new Northern high school site on Roxborough Road and identify and lift native plants and rescue living creatures. So in, for example, box turtles, unfortunately anything that can't fly, run, scamper is going to be killed when a site is developed. And that's kind of where I'm getting out. I want us to be really clear and be bold in embracing language that really explains what it is we're doing when we make decisions about development. We destroy habitat, we degrade land, we kill creatures, and I know this is harsh, but those of us in the environmental world cannot shoulder the heaviness of that and the reality of that by ourselves. If we're gonna think more strategically, we all have to get real about what it is we do when we make these difficult decisions. And please note, I am not anti-Northern high school new site, I understand that has to happen, but I think that with this lens of real, with a realistic view that our young people certainly have, we can make better decisions. Thank you. Thank you Nancy. Okay. Nancy, please. Mrs. Sparlin. Can you hear me? Yes. I wanna thank everybody for giving me this time to voice my opinion. For 50 years, I have lived in Wake County and Johnston County communities. Seven years ago, I moved to Durham County against my better judgment, I have to say, because Durham County has always had a reputation of being a high crime city. Always this reputation precedes you. Now the city council and the county commissioners in the planning department have presented their new comprehensive plan for frankly, a utopia, Durham, with greenways, green areas, safe bus stops, safe public transportation, safe schools and so forth. None of this can become a reality until something is done about the gangs, the shootings, the drive-by shootings, the car racing and all the other crime in Durham. This can be done through proper number of law enforcement and proper coverage by law enforcement. A safe community should be a priority. Durham's crime reputation will continue and Utopia will never become a reality until crime is addressed. However, you will continue to collect our taxes for this plan where I believe this plan should go back to the planning department and law enforcement should be a major part of putting this plan together. Thank you very much for letting me speak. And I just wanna say, Kayla, you did a great job. I know that was probably tough. Thank you, Kayla. You did. She really did, she did a great job. Thank you. Okay, our next speaker. This is Pat Carstensen. And I really appreciate the level of community involvement in this. And I hope that as we get to the details, we will be doing the same level of community involvement. One of the things I'd like to see when we get to the details is the governor's climate change committee had a subcommittee looking at how working and natural lands can help to change the climate crisis. And I hope that we will look at some of those recommendations they make. Okay, thank you. I think the next person was Herman Sparling. Thank you, Brenda and little Steve. And thank you to all of our commissioners and city council. I think it's terrific that you're going through this process, starting with the grassroots involvement of the citizenry, but I have some process challenges. First of all, I'm from representing the Leesville Road Coalition, which represents about 4,000 people in Southeast Durham. And before I share my comments, let me say that I have half a century of experience with Fortune 500's doing market research and all other forms of marketing as a chief marketing officer. And it's in that process of the research where I have challenges to what we've done. Good decisions have to be based on good data. And the problem with this study is, this study is biased. The study concentrated its outreach efforts into specific communities, not all of Durham. One focus area study was provided extra funding for consultants and ambassadors beyond internal staffing. Others have not. Budgeting should be arranged for all small area studies to capture the needs of the citizens. In the case of Southeast Durham, only 15% of those directly engaged live in the area of being studied. This creates bias and flawed data and making decisions based on flawed data is just not a very good idea. So thank you very much for the opportunity to share my comments. Thank you. So now we have some hands raised here. James Shackleford. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, yes. I think you guys are doing an excellent job. I think the underlying issue with today's youth in our community not only lives with gangs and guns and violence, I think spending should be more focused more or less on the infrastructures of foundations for the kids. You know, I propose the M.A. Uber program where we can unite low income families with those incarcerated individuals to have no connection with their kids. I think another underlying issue is the media platform that instigates the violence that takes place in our community. And not only that, the guns that are easily, what causes are direct, I direct the flow of violence that takes place. So these guns are easily accessible because one, in my opinion, the funding to the police infrastructure is being cut. And I think that's an underlying issue and a problem in our community. Not only that, in order to further boost infrastructure spending, I think the Innovations Lab and they're working extremely hard to find more creative ways to boost infrastructure funding. I've also proposed an online Wall Street app where local citizens, ordinary citizens like myself can invest in the businesses and not only in Durham, but the RTP area and surrounding areas so that the infrastructure spending can also be boosting in order to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. So I think you guys are doing an excellent job and congratulations on your next retirement, Mr. Scholl. And yeah, great job to the trifecta. That's Mr. Charlie Rees and the other ones, Jillian. Thank you guys for letting me share. Thank you for sharing. Yes, ma'am. Oh, let's see, we have another hand. Tony McCray. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you so much for having me. And I apologize that earlier, I was unable to unmute. So my apologies when you called on me earlier. Thank you all so much for your tireless efforts on this committee and this council. I am a 100% permanent and total disabled veteran and recently, Durham raised the property taxes due to the fact that my disability, of my disability, I receive a tax benefit. I have not received that tax benefit yet because until recently, I was unable to receive that benefit because although I am 100% disabled, I was not considered permanently, permanent and totally disabled. I would like to ask when was the last time the benefit was reviewed? The taxes are steadily increasing however the tax benefit which allows the first $45,000 of that tax benefit to be exempt or permanent and total disabled veterans to be exempt. There are other states that have a similar program, however, they do allow a tier-like program for all of their veterans and not just permanent and total veterans. I feel like that's a better program or a better system because it doesn't exclude veterans based on the fact that they're 100%. All of us have served and I believe that all of us should be entitled to some type of benefit, some type of tax benefit for our property taxes to exclude some veterans because they aren't considered permanent and total disabled veterans is really like a slap in the face. I was 100% as I said, disabled veteran but that quote unquote permanent and total, it was just recently given to me and that really was a hardship for me because again, as I said, the property taxes increasing every single year over time. I'm appreciative of the fact that I do now get it but it just caused me to wonder, why is it that I have to be permanent and total to get a benefit like that? And to my other veteran sisters and brothers, I'm sure they feel the same way. So I just wanted to ask again, when was the last time that tax benefit was reviewed and is there some way that all veterans that served our country could receive some type of tax benefit, maybe like a tier system, I don't know other states do the same thing. Thank you for your time and I yield my time. Thank you so much Ms. Kray and I think one of the city council, I'm sure the county commissioners as well will take your information and get back with you. Are there others that have not signed up that would like to speak? I see quite a few names here at attendees that are not signed up to speak or are there any others that would like to speak? If there are, just raise your hand. Okay, I see two hands. Matt Kopak. Yes, good evening, Chair Horatyn and other elected officials and staff. I had signed up and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you this evening. Just by way of introduction, I'm going to point to the Durham Environmental Affairs Board, a member of the Durham People's Alliance Environmental and Climate Justice Action Team, which has provided comment and a representative of the Burt's Bees Foundation, a philanthropic funder of environmental nonprofits, Durham County Government and the Durham Public Schools, focus on protecting nature and reconnecting people to nature. I first want to thank and compliment Durham Planning Department for this process and getting to this list of resident led goals and objectives, which is so important to help Durham be a more equitable, just community and for residents to be healthier over the long term. I'm here this evening to offer two comments on the environmental goal area, which is so important to the health and wellbeing of our community. First, I want to lend voice to the recommendations you've already heard that we give more explicit attention to native landscapes and biodiversity in our community in this plan. I have not seen the edits mentioned by Ms. Miller, but I appreciate the funding department is already giving this attention and I look forward to seeing the draft from Ms. Richardson's comments. It sounds like you should be addressed. And so I'll just say thank you for taking this up and incorporating it into the plan thus far. Second, I'd like to suggest some revised language and the environmental goal to make it simpler and more focused on what matters most. It's not my intention to wordsmith this late in the process, but I would share something in the chat if the chat were available or I can email the intention of the revised language would be to put health and wellbeing first rather than putting carbon neutral front and center. Carbon neutral like all the other interventions mentioned is a means, but not an end. And I don't see necessarily the apex of all our environmental efforts. And next, the language would put the focus squarely on the environment without needing to explicitly center development in the environmental goal, which I think while sustainable development and growth is part of the environmental work we will do in all areas that we will do as a community. I just feel like it's not a necessary element to have included in this goal area. So if the chat is available, I'll submit the suggestion there. Otherwise, I'll send it by email if that won't be too late to include it in this process. Thanks so much for the opportunity to speak and for all of your hard work on this comprehensive planning process. Thank you, Matt. Next raise hand is Lisa Brunch. It's Brock, that's okay. Everybody wants to make me a part of a tree. Not unusual. Thanks, Lisa. I just want to give you the opportunity to speak tonight. And I really want to give a great big thanks to the whole team that worked on formulating this. This represents a lot of hours and a lot of work beyond what you saw tonight as far as involving all of us, all of the members of the community that were part of these groups that worked on this. So I really want to give them a great big thank you. And I thank you for asking them to do this and truly listening to what we all had to say. I think that's the important part to move forward in building trust between citizens and the city council and the planning committee is to feel like we're being listened to, but not only listened to, but heard. I submitted two questions. I don't know whether you received them or not. I did submit them until five o'clock, but it asked about including specifics which will promote neighbors and neighborhoods of future developments being involved in the process before it becomes too late for them to have any meaningful input. And as far as the weight that is given to surrounding neighborhoods of future developments, as opposed to the majority of the weight being given to the developers who are coming in and will build their developments and then make their money and then leave. And I just feel like as being part of this process, we've learned a lot about how it's impossible for each of you to know every part of Durham. That's just not physically possible for you guys. I mean, you have jobs, you have this, you're serving the city of Durham, and that's a lot. That's a lot to have to handle. So use the neighborhood involvement that you have to do the right thing and to form developments that will not detract from the quality of life that is desperately needed in the city of Durham. And I thank you. Thank you. I don't see any other hands. Chair Halton, this is Chris Pearson, planning department. May we call on four more individuals to may have registered speak with Carol Cozer, Larry, Daniels, Lynn Thorpe and Jenny Brown. Okay, they are. Okay, I didn't see those on my list. My apologies. We put some in the chat recently. Oh, they're in the chat. Okay, go right ahead. And I think we have some others coming in as well. Okay. First of all, we'll call here. We'll call. Well, actually, the finalist, I think the only one is Jenny Brown in attendance. So the only ones in attendance is Ms. Brown? I believe so. Well, I'll request her to unmute. Okay. Okay. Well, first of all, I too want to thank you all for this comprehensive plan and how you've gone about involving the community. I think you're taking the right steps. I apologize because I haven't been able to read the entire comprehensive plan, but I just wanted to voice concerns that I want to make sure get taken care of. We have a lot of rental properties in Durham, both in the city and in the county. And I'm concerned for those who are in those properties as our land values go up and people start building in those communities where there are rentals and the values go up. Their rent is going up and some people are being displaced. And I hope and pray there is a plan in your comprehensive plan for helping people stay in their homes that they've been renting. Also, I'm sorry, I didn't write ahead of time. So I just lost my other point. I guess communities, I'm concerned about community residents also being displaced because of taxes increasing and their inability to pay, their taxes. These are residents that are elderly and on fixed incomes, maybe disabled. I hope that is included in your plan. As you, I realized Durham as much as I hate to see, I loved the County of Durham and the spread outness for lack of a better word. And I realized that Durham is going for density now. And my son is a real estate agent and we have argued back and forth over this. And he said, mom, what you're worried about is not, it's not the development as much as it is the policies that have been put in place that are allowing those who are poor to continue to be disregarded. And so, I wanna make sure that our policies and our plan is not continuing the inequity that our black and brown and poor constituents are suffering at this point. So thank you for letting me speak. Thank you. We did have Carol Cozer, they were on our list. We missed them. Okay. Kai, this is Carol Cozer. I'm on the phone, but I don't have anything to add at this point. Okay. Thank you, Carol. Being here. Any of the others? Larry Daniels or Throb. I think the last two we have are Ashley Robbins and James Schuckelford. Okay. Did James speak? Actually, I believe they did. Yes. He spoke earlier. Ashley Robbins. How are y'all doing? Fine. How are you? Good. I just wanted to make a couple of brief comments. I'm an engagement ambassador. And so I've appreciated this process and getting to get feedback from people in the community about their needs. And I think that's a good point. I think it's a good point to get feedback from people in the community about their needs and where they want the city to go. It's not an exclusive process. And the goal is, even though the goal is to kind of centers more marginalized voices, nobody is excluded from the process. So if you feel like your community is not being represented, you're welcome to come and join us as an engagement ambassador. and get the needs of your community on the record, particularly if you have the privilege and the resources that you have the time to do that, because it wasn't about going to particular communities more so than it was the people who signed up interacting with people we're in community with. So if nobody may be reached out to you, maybe you're not in a community with us. And that needs to change. Thank you, Ashley. Are there others that would like to make comments? Are there others that would like to make comments? I believe that's everybody, Chair Halvrigan, that has already spoke. Okay, if there are not others, then we will close the public hearing and bring it back to the city council, mayor and commissioners. And I will turn it over to the mayor. Thank you very much, Chair Halvrigan. It's fun to co-chair with you and appreciate that very much. Colleagues, we have this part of the meeting is for any comments that you all might have about what you've heard tonight or also anything that you want to say, any guidance that you want to give staff or any comments that you have about this process and the product that it's produced. And I think that just in order to honor our joint collegiality, I'll ask first if any of our county commissioners would like to start us off and any comments that you all would like to offer tonight. Commissioner Jacobs. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I first want to thank the planning staff, Kayla, Lisa, engagement ambassadors, everybody who has been involved with this plan and this process. I've heard this presentation now several times and every time I hear it, I'm still blown away about just the intentionality, the thoughtfulness, the depth of it all. So I just want to first say thank you. I also just want to thank all of the residents who participated tonight in the public hearing. It just reminded me of why we have such an amazing wonderful community of residents who are so engaged and caring and who care so much about our community. So I just want to thank everybody who shared their comments and input tonight. I think what I would just like to hear is from the staff about the plan to address the issue around including biodiversity. So I would love to hear that. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Jacobs, absolutely. Scott, could you bring up the slides again? Okay, so thank you. As Lynn Richardson mentioned in her comments and we mentioned at the end of the presentation, we've received a lot of suggestions from and spoken with the New Hope Audubon Bird Friendly Derm Committee and drafted edits for your consideration to address concerns around incorporating biodiversity more explicitly and clearly in the goals and objectives. Our team is in agreement with the Audubon Committee folks that and understand that biodiversity is important to protect in Durham and should be highlighted in the objectives. Though to ensure we're not significantly changing any of the objectives that have been vetted through the community, these ideas were incorporated through additions to the current objectives rather than suggested separate objectives. The drafted updates include sections of the environmental objectives, two in particular, also include changes to the public spaces, equitable, safe and well-maintained objective, as well as two neighborhood objectives around complete neighborhoods and healthy, dignified and welcoming neighborhoods, as well as one addition in the innovative and accessible community-oriented schools objective. So with that run through, we back up a couple slides. I think we're a little too far ahead. Excellent, one more, there we go, great. Okay, so we just wanted to lay out the language for you all here, showing the underlined information is what was added. So under the complete neighborhoods resources for thriving lives, where we're talking about neighborhoods that promote health and economic stability through the presence of quality community resources adding natural and naturally landscaped areas to that list. The next addition under the healthy, dignified and welcoming neighborhoods objective, where we're talking about meeting homes that are safe and clean inside with walkable surroundings, adding natural walkable and natural surroundings to that. Under the environment goal, adding biodiverse to Durham will be a carbon neutral biodiverse community that balances preservation and restoration of the natural environment with sustainable and harmonious development. And in addition, at the end of this goal, where we currently say Durham will prioritize the health and wellbeing of residents by correcting environmental racism, connecting people to nature and ensuring access to healthy food, adding and prioritizing the health of the environment as it has a direct impact on the health of residents. Under the harmonious and respectable development objective, this is where the majority of the additions are included, adding the word native to plants and animals in the first sentence of the first paragraph of this objective and adding the following language, we need to stop development practices that contribute to loss of biodiversity and manage the landscape in ways that promote a healthy environment. We need to protect the plants, animals, insects and insects that are native to Durham and essential for all life and restore them when possible. And also in the harmonious and respectable development objective within the background paragraph, which is the second paragraph, adding, leaving only small pockets of non-biodiverse nature is a result of development and adding in the language native plants have been increasingly replaced with those not native to Piedmont, North Carolina. And in many cases, these non-native plants are invasive and displaced native plants over time. In the resilient, carbon neutral and generational oriented objective, adding biodiverse to the name of the objective and in the second paragraph that is the background paragraph, this sentence to say these patterns lead to increased automobile emissions, high energy use, unsustainable land development and disruption or outright destruction of native ecosystems that support all life. On the equitable, safe and well-maintained public spaces objective, adding in we need publicly available parks, natural and naturally landscape areas along with community centers, libraries and outdoor recreation facilities that are safe, easy to use. Well-maintained design for everyone inequitably located. And in the final objective addition under innovative and accessible community oriented schools, adding in publicly owned schools have opportunities to demonstrate sustainable land practices, biodiverse, natural and naturally landscape areas provide space for community resources and bring communities together. And then the final addition is ensuring that we have an entry for biodiversity in the glossary of terms, which reads the term biological diversity or biodiversity means the diversity of life forms on earth, including plants, animals and fungi. This includes not only the vast number of different species, but also the variation in the genes of individual species and the diversity within species populations. Biodiversity is an important way to understand health of an environment or ecosystem. Areas with very little biodiversity are less healthy overall and less resilient and adaptable to changes. A mature forest with many different kinds of plants, animals and fungi is much more biodiverse than a lawn in front of a house with just a single species of grass. And those are the recommendations to address the concerns that we heard that we had proposed. Awesome. Thank you all so much for your great work on that. Thank you. I think it's worth noting too, and I'm not an expert on this, that the Piedmar, we are fortunate to live in one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. So that's another reason to celebrate biodiversity. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Jacobs. Commissioner Burns. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Like Commissioner Jacobs, I have heard this for a few times, so it was good to hear what the public had to say tonight and trying to aggregate some of the statements I heard. I'll work first before I do that again. Thank you to the staff. Lisa, you all worked so very hard on this. Kayla, this is an important service that we provide, right? It's one of the big functions that kind of stands out. It stands apart and what we do because it impacts generations and that's the authority to engage our communities and plant them in some of them. And so through this exercise, I'm going to give the opportunity to not just ensure that both makes the community better. I mean, it makes it better, not just bigger. And we have to create the opportunity for listeners to participate in guiding, you know, what the community seems to look like. I'm sorry. I'll leave the answer up to you, but really I'm trying to hear what you're saying. Commissioner Burns, I can understand you, but your microphone, it kind of makes your voice sort of breaks up some. I'll do it in here now. No, it's fine. I will let somebody else go and then I will bring the station here like absolutely not. So when I do that, I'll let somebody else go. Lisa, I'll show them to you all the athletes and then I'll come back. Is that okay, Mr. Mayor? Absolutely, Mr. Commissioner. Yep, no problem. Other commissioners that would like to go tonight, any comments from any of our other commissioners? Commissioner Carter. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also just want to add my deep appreciation to the planning team and the amazing amount of outreach and equitable community engagement efforts that you all have made. I think it's a model for us going forward as we try to do a better job of working with the community. And really want to also appreciate all the people who spoke tonight. This was a good public hearing. It's great to have input and have people show up and I really appreciate those who provided comments for us tonight. I wanted to respond to just a few in general. It felt like a number of people were encouraging us to think about basically policies. I think some people were thinking about this document and wanting us to talk more about, well, how are we gonna achieve some of these things? And I think that will be probably within the next steps. What will the policy actions be to help us achieve this beautiful vision for Durham? So we will be relying on you to help us with the policy development as well. And a number of people mentioned public safety and I wanted to ask Lisa and Kayla, if you all think that public safety is woven within these goals and objectives in a strong enough way. That's a great question, Commissioner Carter. We heard a lot, as you can imagine, as you all hear perspectives about public safety and we heard a lot of, we didn't hear clear consensus around what our goals are as a community. I think there's a larger conversation that is happening and larger effort that is happening around thinking about how we address public safety as a community and what those solutions look like. And we didn't wanna get in the way of that. So we do talk about community safety, public safety and a couple of the objectives in particular. There's one around safe and protected neighborhoods. We've really wanted to make sure the comprehensive plan deals with neighborhoods. Let's make sure we're talking about community safety there. And we also heard a lot in our coordination with the office on youth and what they'd heard through their youth listening projects. A lot of concerns around safety with things like the ways that our streets are set up or the way that our bus system works that young people were raising that felt like opportunities for us to clearly talk about safety while not getting in the way of this larger conversation. So that's been our approach for this work. I see what you're saying, Lisa. And that makes good sense to me. I think I have one more question, but it's slipping my mind and I will turn it back over to you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Commissioner. If you think of it, now you'll get another chance. Thank you. Commissioner Burns, are you back with us? I think so. Do I sound like Darth Vader? You sound, no you don't. That sounds much better. Hey, there we go. Me and James Earl Jones are now separated. Okay, so what I would throw out there, I'll make it quick. I did hear, I'm trying to aggregate some of the things that I heard. So one of the things I heard was it's a little late in the process to try to work Smith or to add a few things. But I can appreciate that we went to communities that a lot of other communities don't normally go to and that we did have ambassadors. But when I sit back and I think that there might have been some seniors, especially during COVID or beforehand, when we think about internet access and the ability to actually go and to take part in some of these settings and then some of the comments that I actually heard, can somebody just speak to me or lift up to me two things, you know? What steps we took, and I know some of them, but just so the public will know that you all did your due diligence, then we take to make sure that we hit seniors. And even though we are much further down in this process, what options do people have to engage at this point if they feel left out or to become an ambassador as the young lady said at the end or perhaps just participate next time. So that's what I'm trying, it's got a holistic approach. And I'll stop there. Absolutely, thank you, Commissioner Burns. I can respond to that. So I think there were some misconceptions that one of our engagement ambassadors tried to clear up a bit that came out from some of the previous speakers. I will note that the engagement ambassadors, we did have a number of older folks in the community who participated in that, as well as one of the things that working with Ideal and her work with the engagement ambassadors allowed was the opportunity for the engagement ambassadors to think about how do they best reach the folks in their communities. So there were printed surveys that were taken and distributed to people that engagement ambassadors walked through with residents. There were phone calls of talking through surveys with residents. So really trying to make sure that whatever the need was in connecting to residents in their community that the ambassadors had the tools that they needed to do that. And that's something that has occurred and we're always listening, trying to improve what we hear from the ambassadors about how we can give them better tools to engage folks. And I will say to the second question about kind of what opportunities folks have to engage now. Certainly if folks are interested either in more information to better understand the engagement ambassadors program, we're interested in hearing from folks, folks can reach out to me and I can drop my, Lisa.miller at durhamnc.gov as well as we are planning now in greater detail what our work around engagement for the remainder of the comprehensive plan where we're getting into developing policies and mapping out place types. And that is actually going to be a much more geographic focused work. So we're looking to connect with to have engagement ambassadors in different geographies throughout the community so that we can get a better sense talking to residents in different neighborhoods and different geographies, what they're looking for and have that as part of our overall consideration of how we meet the needs of our community as a whole. Thank you, Ms. Miller and thank you, Commissioner Burns. Commissioner Burns, any further comments? No, sir, thank you for letting me come back on. I appreciate you. Thank you. Commissioner Carter, do you have your question in mind yet? You're so nice to ask. Commissioner Burns covered it. Okay, great. Thank you. Any further questions? Chair Howerton. Thank you, Ms. Mayer. Couple of things I just want to say that not so much a question. Just want to, it's been an honor just to moderate with you this evening. And I want to thank the citizens for their participation. It's always important for our citizens to be a part of all of our decision-making processes. And the staff, I want to again, extend my congratulations and acknowledgement for all the work that they've done around this. This is a lot and I'm just, I've just been going through this document that they sent me so that I could, I like to document this large. I like to go through and highlight so that I can go through it again. So thank you so much for doing that. And we've seen this presentation a couple of times. So I don't have questions. But it's all, I'm always interested in how we're going to make it happen. So it's a lot that there are a lot of goals and objectives. And I'm always interested in how and when, that the citizens will see some of these things happening. And I know that it takes time and there's a process. But again, thank you for this evening. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. Commissioner, allow me any comments before we go to the council members? Thank you, Mayor Schuyl. No, I think my colleagues covered all of the questions I would have come up with, just extending my gratitude to the team and to all of the engagement coordinators and constituents of Durham for participating. Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much. All right, now I'll turn to my city council colleagues for any comments that you might have. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to echo the appreciation for the residents who came tonight and participate. We really appreciate your engagement on this really important and critical plan for the future of our community. And I want to thank our staff for making this event happen and for all of the work that has been done so far and that I know will continue to be done on this process. This feels like the biggest thing that has happened since I've been on city council, redoing the comp plan is a massive undertaking. And yeah, I just really appreciate all the work that's been done and all the resident engagement so far. I just wanted to take a moment to really defend the goal around equity that we have in creating this plan that I think the staff has really put into place and focused on at our direction from both the city council and the county commissioners that we want to put equity at the front of this process. And it's really about the recognition that government policy and land use policy specifically have explicitly disadvantaged black communities in Durham historically and that we're trying to repair that harm. And so we are not actually trying to be equal in terms of how people access the process and how resources are distributed. We're trying to repair the unequal distributions of the past. Also we know from experience that white communities and middle class higher income communities have an easier time engaging than communities of color and lower income communities because even when we put all of our engagement efforts all of our staff time focusing on communities of color and working class communities, we still hear quite a lot from white middle class residents. We don't ever have a survey or an engagement process that excludes white or middle class residents even when all of our engagement energy goes into ensuring that black folks and lower income residents have the opportunity to participate. So I just wanted to reiterate that I think this is the correct approach and then I appreciate the staff really taking that to heart and the way that you're moving forward with the process and also wanted to appreciate the engagement ambassador who spoke to defend the process and make it clear that no one is being excluded. We do want to hear from all residents but that equity is at the center of the process and that we, you know, that's something that I strongly believe in and I think that we all strongly believe in. The other thing I wanted to just mention is that while, I think the data that we've had from this engagement around issues that don't specifically relate to land use and the COMP plan is gonna be really useful for other kinds of city goals. I just want us to figure out how to set reasonable expectations for what the COMP plan is and what it can and can't do. I don't want to set folks in the community up to think that, you know, we are going to, that we are going to solve all of our public safety problems through a land use document. You know, like we just need to be very clear about what's in the scope of this particular plan and comprehensive plan is such a broad and vague term too. Like when I, you know, when I first learned about it I was not sure what it was. So I think we just need to be clear that, you know, this is a land use planning document. It is not, it is not like a master plan for the entire city and our entire future. Like we're focusing on one specific piece which has impacts on lots of other things. But, you know, as in the document where there are the little, you know, icons that say like, oh, this is something the planning department can do and this is something we're going to need help with. We just need to continue to make it clear to residents that there are limitations to what a land use plan can do and that some of these issues we're going to be following up with in other ways and other forums and other types of policies. So thanks y'all, really appreciate your work and look forward to continuing this process. Thanks. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Other colleagues, Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to echo Mayor Pro Tem Johnson's comments and acknowledging how much the equity aspect has to be highlighted and just give a very simple, clear, like direct note in that this is not about a pie. And I think if we look at it as a pie, it kind of looks like it's shrinking or you have a shrinking percentage in it. It's really open access and making sure that more folks are involved in the conversations and not. And so to that point, I do want to stress back to Commissioner Jacobs' commentary around the biodiversity and acknowledging that that biodiversity is extending beyond just race and class. It's also into our environment and how we're making our community sustainable. And so noting that if we don't do something about our climate and how it's changing, all of the things that we're planning for, all the things we're trying to put forward are not going to matter because the sun is going to burn through this earth and none of us will be here. So I do want to make sure to give context in noting that that equity piece doesn't just extend to people. It is also to our environment and making sure that we're clear that I really, really appreciate all the work that's gone into this. I really appreciate all the people that have been involved in the conversations. And even those who have challenged us on areas where they feel like they're being left out of it, it's important that those voices are all heard. And I do want to note that there's no, this is not a fight. This is like, how do you make this better? How do we make this land use that we are, we have in our city better and our county better. And so I really think that each voice adds value and I want to continue to hear those voices. And so I'm hoping that you'll continue to speak out as loud as possible, whether it's on these special meetings, on social media and email, wherever you're speaking, just keep speaking, because I think these are not issues that are going to go away. And then it's not something that's going to be solved in the next year or two. We have a lot of work to do to repair the harms of the past and we have a lot of work to do to repair our earth. And so I'm looking forward to what comes next. And I thank you all. Thank you, council member. Spoken like someone whose husband is an environmental professional. Thank you. Yes, yes, environmental technician. I also wanna say that just because Commissioner Jacobs cat is here does not mean she gets two votes. I just wanna be clear about that. All right, other council colleagues, council member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I just wanna thank Chair Howerton and my men, our counterparts on the County Commission. Y'all can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember another, a previous joint meeting in a long time of our boards. We should change that. We should, I know we have various mechanisms for representatives from the city and the county to come together, but I think all of us coming to get together on big stuff is really fantastic because I've certainly benefited from hearing my County Commission counterparts tonight. And I wanna thank you all for the, and it's hilarious, for sharing your concerns and your responses to the subjectives document. So I'd like to try to do that some more, but mostly I just wanna, first of all, thank our staff, including you, Lisa, Kayla, Sarah Young, who's our planning director and all of the engagement ambassadors, especially Ashley, who was here with us earlier. You know, I have seen a lot of deliverables in my time as a member of the Durham City Council, but I honestly can't remember one that I thought was better than this particular document. This is 52 pages of just pure distilled love and passion for the city and county of Durham, collected from the people of the city in an incredibly equitable and intentional way, and then guided through the process of distillation and the writing that went into this to get us into this document today. And it's extraordinary. I went on at some length of our last work session about how much I liked it, and I'll not repeat all of that tonight. What I will say is just to draw a bright line around the remarks made by the Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Freeman to some of the edits that I really appreciated in response to the planning commission's suggestions come at the very beginning of the document, page three, the, in the equity section, staff inserted, we must equitably invest in our community by shifting resources to parts of the community that we have neglected in the past, and it goes on to talk about the particular needs of our black and brown neighbors, especially our low-wealth neighbors. And the next paragraph, accountability, we must involve and empower residents in the planning and development process, which is critically important, because this is a plan for the people of Durham. It's used by developers. It's relied on by our staff to interpret plans that come to them, but it is created by and for the people of the city. And that's underscored. And the last edit I want to talk about in the accessibility section at the bottom of page three, it specifically identifies the need to shift influence and power to the community. As my colleague, Council Member Middleton, likes to remind us, the authority that we have as elected officials doesn't come from on high. It doesn't come from documents or our sterling personalities. It comes from the people who elect us to these jobs. This is their power. We are simply borrowing for a time. And so centering this document on the fact that it exists for the people of Durham is critically important. And I just want to thank our staff for, for responding to that from the planning commission. Another thing I wanted to say, this will get me in trouble with some of my colleagues and the Mayor Pro Tem touched on this a bit. I actually like the fact that this document addresses itself squarely to the needs of our community without regard to the limitations that we all operate under. One of the things that's most frustrating about being in local government is that so many limitations are placed on us by a state and federal law. And the way that this document is written does not address itself to the limitations, but simply and squarely the problems and that we have as a community and the things that we have to do to make our community better. It's our job as elected officials and guided by our staffs to find solutions to those problems in the context of all the limitations we have. We can't do that. We have to find what the Mayor likes to call Durham workarounds to make the system work better for the people of the city and county of Durham. We can't do that. Then we have to show up at the General Assembly and lobby both our legislators and other legislators to make sure that we can get the changes that we need to meet the needs of our folks. And so I know that that puts that the way the document is written because it's written without regard to limitation. The Mayor Puritan is exactly right. We have to be able to communicate as elected officials with our constituents the limitations that exist and the ways that we are trying to be creative about overcoming, working around, burrowing under or destroying those limitations to try to meet the needs of our community. But it does pose a challenge. But the bottom line is it is a hard thing to do but we can do hard things. We are called to do hard things by virtue of our office and the needs of the people we serve. And so I really like that about it. It's Mayor Puritan's right. It's gonna make it hard but let's do what's hard. The last thing I wanted to say tonight and then I'll let some other folks talk. I'm just so grateful to the folks who logged in to a Zoom at six o'clock on a weeknight when they could be having dinner with their families or doing something much more fun and relaxing than logging in and listening to a bunch of politicians talk. Your input and commentary tonight makes a difference. Your input and commentary helps us understand better not only what needs to go in the comprehensive plan goals and objectives but also how the document is gonna be read by folks who don't have the same context that we do. And so that is extremely helpful. And so if you logged on, if you wrote us, emailed us a comment, which a lot of folks have, if you spoke tonight, please understand that even if you have not great things to say about, I don't know, me personally, the policies I advocate as a member of the Durham City Council, the City Council, the County Commission, if you don't like any of us, you still have helped us do the job that we are elected to do and we'll make this a better document and a better comprehensive plan once it's finished. So thank you for that. And, oh, Tony McCray, if you are still on the call, I hope you will email me about that one issue with the state tax, property tax system because I think we can work with our legislative delegation to try to change that. That's all I have, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for your time and again, it's so great to be on the same call with all of you amazing folks. Let's try to find more opportunities to do that together. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. Other colleagues, Council Member Middleton. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, Madam Chair, Mr. Mayor, friends and everybody watching. I'm excited about tonight. This is probably Durham's closest, will ever come to a joint session of our Congress. So it's pretty cool to be with all of you tonight. So I'm gonna salute all of my colleagues and again, I'll echo what so many have said. This is not my first time hearing this presentation. It is my first time hearing it in such a grand context. So let me, again, Lisa, to you and the team, to all of the ambassadors, to all who worked on this, just congratulate you on a magnificent, magnificent piece of work. I'm more excited about what this document will become, not what it is right now. By definition, whenever you use the word comprehensive, I hear everything that Mayor Proutem said and I'm gonna associate myself with everything she said. By definition, when you use the word comprehensive, you're inviting a cacophony more so than a symptom. You have to embrace the dissonance when you talk about a comprehensive plan. And if there's anything, if there's any genius in the American democratic experiment, aside from all of the blood, aside from all of the heart, if there's anything genius about it, it's that we've declared that it ain't finished yet. It's ongoing, more perfect, a constant struggle to define it and substitute the variables. So this document for me is more Declaration of Independence than it is Constitution. It's not law, it's an aspirational statement. The Declaration of Independence isn't a law of the land, it's a creed statement. We hope that it informs our Constitution. We pray that it informs the way we make policy and we grapple and we vote for it. And this document is, that's what it is for me. It's a statement of value and aspiration. And by definition, equity means that you are constantly substituting variables. You are constantly checking yourself and recalibrating as you go forward. So the excitement for me is what the policies that will flow from this spiritual doctrinal declaration, if you will, in this comprehensive plan. And I hope we do well with that. I do however want to, and we haven't done it here, but land, this being a land document is very much about how we've parsed out wealth and rights in our country. It's about the land. It's about the soil. Haytai was not just a concept. Haytai was a zip code, the neighborhood. Our legacy black communities that are disappearing were linked to the land, not just personalities. Chattel slavery in America was to break the land. Manifest destiny as we moved west was about land. The Tulsa race massacre was a land grab. Your ability to vote was tied to the land, it's wealth. So our plan on the way we use land moving forward as a city is very much tied to wealth, the retention of character in neighborhoods, upward mobility, place setting and making and establishment. So I will never look at the comprehensive plan as just a land document with pretty words on it. This goes right to issues of equity and justice. Historic redlining is what created the economic conditions for gentrification, the devaluing of land, making it cheap. That's the land now that folk are coming in buying houses and flipping because of redlining. So it's all about land, it's all of the wealth and rights. Folk who could vote weren't just white men, they were white male landowners in our country. So this is intimately tied to issues of justice and issues of equity. Land is sacred, our native brothers and sisters taught us that and this document, insofar as it's tied to land, it's tied to some really important historical markers for us as a city. So I just wanna celebrate tonight the remarkable work. This, I said to you, I think Lisa before, I know you've got a lot of years left in your career, but this will certainly probably rank as one of your, at least, magnum opuses, opi, opuses. It'll be one of your greatest works as your career goes forward. So I just wanna thank you on behalf of a whole bunch of folk in this city, we've heard from some of them tonight who love it, but also know that we can be more perfect and we can be better. And may we commit ourselves to that great work as we go forward. Thanks again to all of you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council Member, for honestly, some fabulous, fabulous history. Thank you so much. Other colleagues? Council Member Freelon. Yes, Mayor, I wanna thank my colleague, me, Machina Burns, for clarifying the plural of opuses. That's some good UNC Chapel Hill graduate action right there. And then really too, just to associate myself with everything that everyone said, it's easy to go last because everybody said the important things. Mostly just wanted to express gratitude to staff and community members and for our colleagues for being here in your presence, not just your being here, but your presence this evening. I really felt that folks really brought it, shared some thoughtful insights and the feedback that I've heard from my colleagues has really been inspiring and insightful as well on the city and county side. So I'm feeling good about that. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. All right, I think we've made the rounds. I just have a couple of brief comments. One's a question, Ms. Miller. This is a public hearing and I know that we're not being asked to vote tonight. We're both both bodies will be voting separately at our next meetings. But usually the public hearing if we get some specific feedback around language such as we did from Mr. Kopak, I don't wanna let that go by unnoticed. I mean, we had general comments but that was a specific recommendation on wording. How will you all plan to handle that that recommendation? That is a great question, Mr. Mayor. And we did, I know one of his comments was being interested in how biodiversity was being highlighted. So hopefully hearing how we've looked at incorporating that and working with the new Hope Audubon folks in the Bird Friendly Derm Committee has been helpful on that front. His comments around what is included in the environmental goal are retractive as opposed to additive. And so our approach to looking at how we're potentially modifying this work at this point in the process has really been trying to focus on making sure that the voices that have been reflected in this work so far that are highlighted that are throughout this document, throughout this work that we're not allowing that to be removed late in the process. And so if there are ways that we can clarify language that is not removing things that have come out as clear priorities from the community, that may be different. But I think the couple of things in particular about removing the reference to development within the goal around the environment. And let's see. I think the other one was so where health and wellbeing was put within the objective, so rearranging so that health and wellbeing is at the forefront of that, which is a little bit of a shift from the values. And we titled these around the values that we were hearing from folks. We do have consistently throughout the document where we talk about environment and health in a multitude of different objectives and the way that this was constructed was intended to really get at the goal, the aspirational future that these objectives were getting at. So I'm not sure how helpful that is, but those are some of my thoughts around what Mr. Kofak shared. Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate that. I'm not, I mean, I'm not so much asking about the content, you know, what your decisions might be about that. I'm really more interested in between now and when we cast our votes. If you were to make a change, how would that, that would be just communicated to us? I assume, you know, through our agendas, through our agenda packets. Is that the way you would see that happening? Okay, great question. So I think that what we would like to come out of this evening's discussion with is a clear understanding. You know, we brought everyone together so that we could hear the concerns and if there were outstanding issues that need to be resolved to have a clear direction from you all. So if we hear from you all, we want you to somehow address those concerns within this. We can provide language to you all because those were not provided to us until during the public hearing tonight. We didn't have the chance to try and put something together for you all to look at tonight. But we could put something in an attachment which we'll be updating with the language that was discussed. If you all are giving us the direction to go ahead and include the things around biodiversity, we'll be needing to add an attachment there so it could be incorporated into that if that's the direction we hear from you all. Thank you. Well, I'll just ask my colleagues. I believe that we were, my belief is that we were all subtly behind the recommendations that you all made about biodiversity and perhaps I'll just ask for a thumbs up on that, colleagues, if you are supportive of the biodiversity language, I'm seeing a lot of thumbs, Ms. Miller. So I think yes is the answer. And then I would just say in terms of, I don't hear any other direction from the group. I've heard everyone speak and everyone has been very favorable. If there are council members or commissioners that have any other additional direction that they think that we should give staff, I think this is the time to speak. Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I think just based on Ms. Miller's comments, I would like to get a round of approval or some form of approval support, acknowledging that the process that they used was what built this plan and the comments that might come in last minute, acknowledging how many of them would be very counterintuitive to what the process was. I wanna make sure that they don't make the changes based on last minute comments that they actually, like there has to be some type of process in place to make sure that they're not, that one person is not out voting a whole process. Great point, Council Member. All right, colleagues, I'm gonna ask now, are there any further comments for staff? All right, I'll just end by Ms. Miller, Ms. Seibel, Mr. Colosna, Ms. Smith, Mr. Whiteman, all the members of our planning staff are here and I just wanna say Ms. Young, our planning director is just an absolute beast and we are just so fortunate to have you all doing this work. Fantastic job, looking forward to what's next. Any further, any final comments, Ms. Miller, you have what you need from us? Thank you all so much, we really appreciate you all coming together like this for this account. Thank you. I'm gonna turn it back over to Chair Howerton for any final words she might have and she can adjourn us. Chas, thank you, thank you, thank you. It's been a fabulous evening. And I say we are adjourned. Let's do it again soon.