 All the road and we'll turn it over to good morning. Happy Friday, everyone. Here's the role. Mayor O'Neill, your pro tem Middleton morning. I'm here. Council Member Caballero has an excused absence. Council Member Freeman and present. Council Member Johnson here. Council Member Reese. I am here at my last budget retreat as a member of the Durham City Council and Council Member Williams. Here. Thank you. Very good. Well, good morning, everyone. John Allure, Director of Budget and Management Services for the great city of Durham, and we made it. We are here a day for our final retreat on the FY23 budget process. I'll have the agenda pulled up just so we can go over briefly. We hope to accomplish today. We've had the call to order. We're welcome. I have some opening remarks from City Manager Page and we'll have a presentation on the head of infrastructure funding from Bertha Johnson and Trinay Schneider, followed by Sean Egan. We'll be returning to talk a little bit about the transit fund overview and discussion. We'll take a short break and then we'll conclude with the budget guidelines. And other than that, I think anything to say this morning other than to remind everybody that we are streaming on YouTube and that all of the presentations from today and from the previous three budget retreats are available on the city's website on the Budget and Management Services homepage. And with that, I'll turn it over to City Manager for any opening remarks. Thank you very much, John. Good morning, Mayor O'Neill, Mayor Pro Tem Middleton, City Council members, City staff and residents. My remarks will be brief this morning. As you can see, we're here for the final for now of this series of budget retreats, as John has mentioned. It is really, we've been enlightened by what we've heard so far. As I've mentioned, every day we go back and we incorporate those reflections, those comments and that guidance and direction in our work. As John has previewed, we are winding up our conversations today with three main topics. And one of them really is a new topic. It's not new to us to be involved in competitive grants. We remain competitive in a lot of spaces, but what really is new is the availability of funding because of some federal legislation that has sort of filled some of those buckets much higher than they have been filled in the recent past. And we want to be able to show you how we are approaching our access to some of this funding. And certainly the Transit Fund discussion and update is key to the quality of life that we provide in this community. I appreciate Director Sean Egan being here and leading in this effort with partners across the triangle as we try to make the best decisions based on analysis of needs and funding that is available to be able to transport our residents to the places that they live, the places that they work and the places that they play. I would like to thank John and Laura and Christina Reardon again, our budget staff for developing and coordinating these retreat sessions is not easy to pull together what you see us when we come to present it to you. A lot of work has gone on in the background proud to that time. Deputy city managers who are here and department directors who are watching on or streaming. Thank you for also being here again this morning for this final session. As you will be the leaders that have the power, have the authority, have the resources the resources to make these ideas and plans that we're discussing here today and others become successful projects, successful initiatives for our organization and for our community. As we wind up and hopefully it will be before the time that is on the schedule but we built in plenty of time for conversation but John and Laura will be facilitating our budget guideline process. We look forward to that time every year because when we leave this final meeting, doesn't mean they're not gonna be any changes or additional conversation but we actually have some guide posts or some parameters for which to begin to put the budget together to bring before you for additional deliberation as well as final approval. So at this time, I will pass the microphone to Bertha Johnson, Deputy City Manager Bertha Johnson to introduce us to our first topic. Take your way Bertha. Thank you. Good morning, Mayor Protenmedos on the City Council. Members, it's great to be with you all this morning. Bertha Johnson, Deputy City Manager for Operations. The City Manager's Office is excited to share with you the unprecedented opportunities available through the bipartisan infrastructure law and more importantly how the City of Durham is positioning itself to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible. As you may know, information related to the funding opportunities is evolving daily and some grant applications are already open but not all of our city departments have the capacity to track all of the opportunities or the expertise in the department to apply for the grants. So to ensure the city takes advantage of this once in a generation investment in infrastructure, we decided to essentially coordinate reviewing the hundreds of opportunities, determining which opportunities we may be eligible to apply to and coordinating with the appropriate departments and resources to submit the applications. I want to introduce you all to Trinay Snyder, Business Services Analyst for the City Manager's Office who will serve as a coordinator for this project. You may know Trinay since she is temporarily serving as our agenda coordinator as you all know is no small task. As a matter of fact, Trinay will be leaving after this presentation so that she can get back on your agenda process. Trinay has done an excellent job in a short period of time on this project. So I will turn the presentation over to Trinay to share her work with you at this time. All right, thank you Bertha. I'm gonna be sharing my screen here. All right, so good morning Mayor O'Neill, Mayor Potem and members of the City Council as Bertha mentioned, my name is Trinay Snyder and I'm the Business Services Analyst here with the City Manager's Office. Today I am presenting an overview of the city strategy and planning activities for applying to and receiving funding made available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. So with the signing of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November of 2021, funding was allocated to over 350 distinct programs across more than a dozen federal departments and agencies to take full advantage of the opportunity. This new funding presents the City Manager's Office has begun coordinating with the other city departments to create a process for tracking and reporting the opportunities that we apply to. Some of the goals of the law are to reveal roads, bridges and rails, expand access to clean drinking water, broadband equity access and security, address the climate crisis, advance environmental justice and invest in historically underfunded or disadvantaged communities. In this presentation I will be sharing some of the funding opportunities that we have prioritized, how we are getting ready to apply and the challenges that we anticipate that we will face. So introduced by the White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in January 2022 in detail provided through the Building a Better America fact sheet, 25 competitive infrastructure funding opportunities were highlighted for local governments. These 25 opportunities are available for cities to apply to directly compared to other opportunities which may require collaboration to apply or where funding may trickle down from the state. Of the 25 opportunities there are 16 that we believe a city of Durham will qualify for. I will discuss more about those opportunities in a few slides. So beyond the 25 opportunities highlighted for local governments, a comprehensive guidebook of all of the funding opportunities under the bipartisan infrastructure law was released. In a preliminary review of the guidebook, we found that the city may qualify for approximately 150 of the total 380 funding opportunities. The city plans to prioritize applying first to the 16 out of the 25 funding opportunities as they open this calendar year in early 2023. We plan to continue to collaborate with departments to strategize applying to the additional 150 opportunities as more information specifically on the application timeline become available. Given the number of funding opportunities available, we are currently in the process of developing a dashboard to be shared with city departments so that we have an organized and transparent process of tracking funds and reporting our progress in applying for the funds. Funding categories, transportation. So the bipartisan infrastructure law will repair and rebuild our roads and bridges with a focus on climate change mitigation, resilience, equity and safety for all users including cyclists and pedestrians. We in the city manager's office have begun communicating with our transportation department and a point person has been designated on their team to coordinate with and communicate their progress with the designated staff in the city manager's office. Climate energy and environment. Funding will help to protect communities against the impact of climate changes such as droughts, heat, floods, wildfires and it is also the largest investment in clean energy infrastructure in American history. The funding provided under the law will modernize our power grid, weatherize and upgrade homes, schools, businesses and communities to make them cleaner and more affordable and fund new programs to support the development, demonstration and deployment of cutting edge clean energy technologies. As in the city manager's office have began communicating with our general services department and a point person has been designated on their team to coordinate with and communicate their progress with designated staff in the city manager's office. Broadband, cyber and other programs. So the main objectives of the broadband and cyber programs are to help ensure that every American has access to reliable high speed internet through a historic investment in broadband infrastructure deployment. The legislation will also help lower prices for internet service and help close the digital divide so that more people can make full use of internet access. There is also funding opportunities available for building cybersecurity, which is a main priority for our technology solutions department. We have begun communicating with TS, our technology solutions, a point person has been designated on their staff to coordinate and communicate their progress with designated CMO staff. Other programs, we have engaged our department of water management and are in the process of determining which other departments to engage and establish designated point persons to start the collaborative process. As noted earlier, we reviewed the 25 competitive infrastructure funding opportunities for local government and of the 25 we believe we may qualify for 16 of them. In this slide and the following slides, I have listed the funding opportunities, the 16 funding opportunities to include the department or agency, the purpose of the program, the total amount of funding available in the program and tentatively when applications will open. So a quick review of the list, the first in the transportation category, rebuilding American infrastructure sustainably and equitably raised grants by the Department of Transportation. The purpose is road, rail, transit and other surface transportation of local and or regional significance. The total amount in the program available is $7.5 billion and applications are currently open and submissions are due April 14th. Two, bus and bus facilities competitive grants, Department of Transportation. The purpose is to replace, rehabilitate, purchase or lease buses and bus related equipment and to rehabilitate, purchase, construct or lease bus related facilities as well as capital funding for low or no emissions bus projects. The total amount in the program is $2 billion that applications will open by the end of this month. National Infrastructure Project Assistance also known as mega projects or mega by the Department of Transportation. The purpose is multimodal, multi-jurisdictional projects of national or regional significance that support overarching priorities like safety and economic competitiveness. The amount in the program is $5 billion. The application open date is to be determined. However, the requirements criteria and ratings for the mega projects program has been published and will be shared with our transportation department to determine if we will meet the criteria as outlined by the Federal Department of Transportation. Four, infrastructure for rebuilding America in front grants, Department of Transportation. Purpose, highway and rail projects of regional and economic significance, the total amount in the program is $8 billion that applications open by the end of this month. Five, safe streets and roads for all Department of Transportation. So the purpose is vision zero plans and other complete street improvements to reduce crashes and fatalities, especially for cyclists and pedestrians. The total amount in the program is $5 billion and applications open May, 2022. Six, charging and fueling infrastructure grants, Department of Transportation. Strategic deployment of publicly accessible electric vehicle charging infrastructure as well as hydrogen propane and natural gas fueling infrastructure along designated alternative fuel corridors and in communities. The total amount is 2.5 billion applications open at a to be determined date. They are currently seeking comments on the program design. Seven, reconnecting communities, Department of Transportation. The purpose is to reconnect communities divided by transportation infrastructure, particularly historically disadvantaged communities too often nearly destroyed or cut in half by a highway. The amount is $1 billion and applications open by June, 2022. Number eight, rule surface transportation grant, the Department of Transportation. The purpose is to improve and expand surface transportation infrastructure in rural areas, increasing connectivity, improving safety and reliability of the movement of people and freight and generate regional economic growth. The total amount of the program is $2 billion and applications open by the end of this month. So applications submitted. Some of the funding opportunities are new programs and some of them are from programs that have been expanded under the bipartisan infrastructure law. Our transportation department has applied for a raised grant funding during the 2021 fiscal year opening. We were awarded $9 million for a rail trail project in November of 2021. And under the bipartisan infrastructure law, we plan to apply for approximately $20 million for a Holloway transit and pedestrian safety and the applications are due April, 2022. The transportation department has also applied to the bus and bus facilities competitive grant during the fiscal year 2021 opening for $10.8 million in April of 2021. And selections will be announced April, 2022. Climate energy and environment opportunities, the first. Building resilient infrastructure and communities program Department of Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA. The purpose is for communities undertaking hazard mitigation projects to reduce the risk they face from disasters and other natural hazards. The total amount available in the program is $1 billion in applications open September of this year. Flood mitigation assistance, FEMA. Projects that reduce or eliminate the risk of repetitive flood damage to buildings insured by the National Flood Insurance Program. The total amount in the program is $3.5 billion in applications open September, 2022. Brownsfield remediation program Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. The purpose is for communities to assess and safely clean up contaminated properties and offer job training programs. The total amount available in the program is $1.2 billion and communities are currently able to request funding for targeted Brownsfield assessments through their regional EPA office. An additional competitive funding opportunities will be announced this spring. Four, energy efficiency and conservation block grants Department of Transportation. The purpose is to reduce energy use, increase energy efficiency and cut pollution. The total amount in the program is $550 million and applications open September, 2022. Number five, Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs Department of Energy. The purpose, the development of at least four regional clean hydrogen hubs to improve clean hydrogen production, processing, delivery, storage and end use. The program has a total amount available of $8 billion in applications open by August of 2022. Broadband cyber and other programs. Middle mile grants program, Department of Commerce. The purpose is the construction, improvement or acquisition of middle mile broadband infrastructure. The total amount in the program is $1 billion and applications open by June, 2022. Two, state and local cybersecurity grant program, Department of Homeland Security. The purpose is to address cybersecurity risks and cybersecurity threats to information systems that we own or operate. The total amount available in the program is $1 billion and the applications open by June, 2022. Water, three, water and ground storage and conveyance, Department of Interior. The purpose of this program is for water storage projects with capacity between 2000 and 30,000 acre feet as well as projects that can convey water to or from surface water or groundwater storage. The total amount available in the program is $1 billion and applications open by May, 2022. Just a note for the water and groundwater storage and conveyance we will coordinate with our Department of Water Management. So getting ready to apply for and receive funding is a shared endeavor no one can do alone and investing federal infrastructure dollars will require significant coordination between cities, states, communities, stakeholders and other key partners. The White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator sends a letter to governors recommending a series of preparatory actions. And as a response to those, we have again, the go coordinating to one, use the bipartisan infrastructure law guidebook to identify federal funding streams to target. So in this process of getting ready, I reviewed the 380 funding opportunities to determine which opportunities we would qualify for by recipient categories. I was able to exclude funds to target by recipients like utilities, national labs, manufacturers and vendors, Army Corps, state, tribe and tribes. This narrowed the funding opportunities to 155 opportunities, which I have begun sharing with department point persons for their review to make further exclusions based on other eligibility factors. We will report how we have narrowed the opportunities down further by exclusion reasons on the dashboard once it becomes available. To ensure all transit railway, road, highway and bridge projects are a part of our NPO's transportation improvement plan. So the city's transportation department is undertaking a review of projects with planning or design funding that could be incorporated into the transportation improvement plan or TIP to make sure that as many of our candidate projects as possible can be incorporated into the TIP. We will continue to work with the DCHC NPO to take advantage of upcoming TIP amendments to add as many of these as possible. Three, begin mapping sites for electric vehicle, EV and alternate fuel charging stations. So general services is hosting recurring EV transition working groups meeting with fleet and other departments such as TS, Park Durham and more to develop a data driven strategy for replacing new EV charging stations, chargers to include high touch locations such as existing fuel stations, DPR recreation system centers and more. Updating current seat, they have also begun updating current CIP projects and working with project management teams to align and layer current and future EV infrastructure needs with current and future CIP projects. They have also secured two EDF environmental defense fund, Climate Corps fellows for summer of 2022 to enhance fleet's existing planning efforts for light and medium duty vehicle electrification via analyzing fleet data, calculating the total cost of ownership, estimating emission reduction potential, estimating additional charging infrastructure needs and identifying and offering solutions to overcome their barriers. General services has also received a preliminary notice of funding to install seven EV charging stations at public locations via Duke Energy's Park and Plug Program and they are also tracking and evaluating additional grant opportunities for EV infrastructure planning and implementation. Four, inventory and map the lead pipes in Durham. So our Department of Water Management staff have attended multiple presentations and webinars about the opportunities for grant funding and low to no interest loans for lead line replacement projects. As recommended in the preparatory actions, the Department of Water Management has reviewed the Biden-Harris lead pipe and paint action plan and the requirements of the lead and copper rules. And the first requirement is to develop a lead service line inventory. The Department of Water Management submitted a request for a proposal for this program element and more services on January 26th of this year. Submittals are due back to the Department of Water Management today, March 4th. The selected consulting firm will provide the following services, development of a service line material inventory, development of a lead service line replacement plan, preparation of a sampling plan for compliance, including sampling at schools and childcare facilities, assistance with public education and outreach, review funding programs and identify funding strategy and other services as required to implement the lead and copper rule revisions. In addition to having a consultant research and pursue funding, staff has participated in conversations with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality staff regarding state fund opportunities that are direct or will be a pass-through to us. By work with the North Carolina's broadband agency to ensure our needs are appropriately mapped in inventory, TS currently provides data where our technology solutions department, TS currently provides data to the state through NC1MAP, which is an open source interactive GIS tool to visualize data collected by the state as well as other resources related to the broadband availability and adoption as well as other related matters. TS will continue to work with the North Carolina's broadband infrastructure office to provide any additional data sets they need necessary to augment their thorough process. Six, connect with the regional offices for key federal agencies who can help direct us to resources and provide technical assistance. The part of my process as the coordinator is to support departments in whatever they need help with. In the next week, I will be providing departments with information about the technical assistance available along with contact information for regional offices of the key federal agencies process. So here is an overview of what our process will look like for applying for funding. City manager's office, business services analyst, which is myself, will serve as the coordinator for this project. I will identify funding opportunities, review eligibility and deadlines and notify the designated department point persons and develop and manage the dashboard. Two, departments are responsible for identifying a point person who will apply to or facilitate the application process within their department. Three, departments will report back to the city manager's office with status updates and those updates will be tracked on our shared dashboard. Challenges. So our first challenge is staff capacity. So federal grant writing can take weeks of coordinated efforts to complete one and may require additional reporting of outcome measures all with strict guidelines. Departments will need to strategize how to manage the workload for the individuals responsible for gathering the necessary data and submitting applications. The competitive grant writing experience. Our staff has varying levels of experience writing competitive grants with consideration to the time and expertise that it can take and may require the need for technical assistance to prepare grant applications and require analysis such as cost benefit analysis. So to address this, our department of water management and our transportation departments are currently soliciting consultant support with awards expected in April of 2022. Our transportation department currently works with a firm called WSP for on-call services but their solicitation is to have a consultant or retainer for two years. I have asked the transportation department to determine if WSP offers grant writing services for other areas than transportation and engineering as a potential option for other city departments. I am in the process of reviewing and sharing with other departments what available resources are available under the bipartisan infrastructure law that we can use to leverage for additional necessary technical assistance. And then lastly, application deadlines. So many applications have a 30 to 60 day window from open to close. This requires for us to do as much work as possible with the information we have available before applications open. Any questions? That was great. You know, Lady, I don't have any questions. I just want to tell you that was impressive and I'll open it up very good. I would say that was a phenomenal presentation as well. And I have quite a few questions. I would just like to start by saying I appreciate that we do have someone focused on the infrastructure bill just acknowledging I know that I've said it at least 500 times. Just acknowledge the work that's been going on with the cog to build up the resiliency and address some of the EBA funding that was available. I've just been really concerned about how we maximize our opportunities with this. I took a lot of notes and I have a lot of questions but I don't want to overwhelm you but I do want to know if there is even a list of all of the partners that we work with kind of within the city just like a whomever we've ever had RFPs and interlocal agreements with just to kind of feel some of the ideas that might be coming in because I do think that we have to think outside the box and that would be a good way to start. And then I would also like to add in addition to the SSP if there's a possibility to create a core ourselves with some of the retired members of the community who've done the grant writing in the past to connect them with of course students at NCCU and recent graduates from any public administration program. I think that would be a phenomenal way to support building capacity. I'm really excited about the opportunities here but I'm really, I'm also excited that it's an opportunity to build in some economic development in these conversations and to focus on our needs and our goals especially around just supporting folks who are returning from being justice involved and supporting their skill building. And so I don't know how those conversations can be built into this but I would love to figure out what that looks like. And then immediately when you started talking about the RFP process or the RFP kind of requests I started thinking about how we get our community health workers involved and trying to make sure that organizations that have staffed up for public health engagement especially around this lead pipe or lead pipe replacement. If there's sampling that needs to be done having those folks involved in that will help keep their engagement going. So that's just a few of the things that I'm top of mind that came up but definitely going to be tapping your shoulder. So thank you, thank you very much. Okay, thank you for those questions. I think those are very good ideas that we can definitely incorporate into our process. We don't have a list on hand of all the people all the partners we've worked with but I will definitely reach out to our departments and we can begin to put a list together and get that back to you all. Thank you, thank you. I see, I see the manager's hand is raised and I think Mayor Pro Tem and I think I actually saw Councilwoman Johnson's hand and they all jumped in. I'll jump in if that's all right, thank you. Thanks so much for the presentation. I've been interested in learning more about what we plan to do to try to get access to some of this funding and as you said, it is really an unprecedented opportunity for our city and for cities around the country to compete for this funding and really appreciate the level of detail in your presentation about how, which opportunities we're gonna pursue. Y'all seem to be thinking really critically about capacity and about what we have the best opportunity for. I know that federal grants can be a lot, probably the most intense grants that I've ever applied for are the federal grants and so bringing in some extra help, some expertise seems like a really good idea. I just wanted to say, I think this is really critical work and that we need to put whatever resources behind it need to be put behind it in order to give ourselves the best chance to get this funding. So if y'all are trying to decide whether or not it's worth it to bring on another consultant or bring on some more technical assistance, if you're asking me the answers, yes, it's absolutely worth it. We need to put all that we can behind getting as much of this funding for our city and our residents and every city in America is probably having the same conversation about trying to get as much as they can too. So I want us to, I mean, and anyway, it's sad that we have to compete. There should just be enough for everyone, but I want us to be in your position ourselves as best as we can to get these resources for Durham. So please don't hesitate to use whatever resources you think are necessary and if that requires coming back to us for more, like please do, I think this is an incredible opportunity for us and we need to go big. Thank you again, really appreciate the information and answered a lot of questions that I'd had about how this bill is actually gonna trickle down to us. When do we get some? So I appreciate it, thanks. Madam manager, I'll yield to you if you wanted to jump in now. Yes, yes, I do. And as you all probably are anticipating, I am really, really so proud of Trenace Schneider who made this presentation this morning. I have popped in from time to time to acknowledge some of our newer staff or staff that are in different roles. Trenace has been a tremendous add to the city manager's office and certainly taking her first opportunity to present under the guidance in a certain sense of deputy manager Johnson. All of us as a team, but Trenace has done excellent work in this space to get us set up to be on a path for success. We always are looking to be successful. As Councilwoman Johnson has said, these are, we know how difficult and how much intensity can happen sometimes in trying to go after competitive grants. The numbers on the screen look big, but the country is big. And there are a lot of people who really are doing, they want the money too. But I would like for this council to know that when we compete, we compete. And some of the work that we do, we're not just doing it to get money. We're doing it because it's the right thing to do, such as engaging our community. And we come to the table with some of this work already in place. So we think that's gonna help us get, you know, a little bit toward the front of the line. And I don't wanna take up all the air, but I did wanna also add that we have had conversations at both universities, Duke University and North Carolina Central in the last few weeks around coordinating grant writing and the expertise that's found in academic settings to help sort of collaborate and partner in some of these areas. So it will be a combination as Councilwoman Freeman has mentioned, you know, they're volunteers in the community, you know, people who have had experience and retired. They're also very, very bright students at our local universities, as well as expert consultants. So we know it's not a one-size-fits-all and we're gonna bring our best, we're gonna bring our A team as the mayor would say our A plus team to some of these spaces. And we already have had success with some of the transportation areas. So we know it can be done. So I just wanted to pop in and say that. Thank you so much, Madam Manager. Trinne, good morning. Good to see you. One of the cool things about this job is that we have access to some of the smartest, brightest, best people in their given fields, whether it's medicine or law or the environment or whatever we get to talk to some folks who are really, really good in one area. And it's impressive, but I'm really impressed with folks who can engage in interdisciplinary conversations who can kind of see globally and connect different disciplines. And I wanna congratulate the manager's office for really putting together a strong team and building on a strong team. And Trinne, you remind me of those folks who kind of can connect things across and across disciplinary kind of way. I mean, you're leaving here to work on our agenda after talking about this stuff. So I just wanna congratulate you on just a magnificent job you're doing and the capital you're building for yourself and your organization, you're well-regarded. This was a great presentation this morning. I also wanna thank you. And I know I echo this for the mayor as well for a great presentation, the primer you gave to the mayor and I maybe a couple of weeks ago along with some of your other teammates where we talked about almost nine million for the belt line and the belt line and also our concerns and hopes for the Holloway Street corridor as well. So a couple of things, because this presentation is and I'm gonna thank council member Johnson because my questions kind of were anticipated or set up by her comments. Because this is within the context of this budget retreat for this budget, is it your, do you have any sense that there may be some concrete ask in this budget process that will impact this budget with respect to increasing staff capacity or consultants or kind of consultants, Nessie Bertha's popped on. There's an interdisciplinary thing. Do you see it impacting? Well, you understand my question, I'll be quiet. Good morning, Bertha. Yes, mayor Pro Tem. No, we do not anticipate any requests during this budget process. We have many opportunities within our departments as well as if we need additional funding, we will find it within the departments. So this was information only just to let you all know where we are, what we're doing and that we're on top of it. And so we don't have any requests and don't anticipate any requests for next year's budget. Excellent, thank you. Thank you for that. And this is indeed a important information. I do wanna say I'm excited about the dashboard and look forward that they're really great to be able to just kind of pop them up when residents and constituents have questions. So we look forward to that. And keep us posted, get that money, get that money. So thank you so much, appreciate it. I yield back, madam mayor. Thank you all so much. I just wanted to add a couple of comments. Then when I came back from the mayor's conference in DC, it was pretty clear that there's a lot of money out there, a lot of opportunities. And when I came back on with the information and welcomed it to an organization that was already set up and ready to go and already going down the road. So I just thank our city employees and workers for all the work they do. It's amazing, just the breadth of knowledge and expertise and how deep it is in the city and Trinay and Bertha and our city manager. I mean, they're just examples of so many, Karmisha, Amber, I could go on and on. You see a lot of them listed here this morning. I feel really good about our opportunities. As you see folks are coming into town from the national level, that's not by happenstance. And believe me, given the opportunities I've been networking, met two secretaries over the last couple of weeks, have gotten their numbers reaching out to them and we're gonna continue to make those connections but to know that you can just come back and say, look, this is what I learned today. And they take it and they run with it. It's an awesome, awesome thing. So I'm hoping to return to the mayor's conference in Reno, I believe it's in April. And it was so much that I'm hoping to be able to take somebody else with me because it was just too much for one person to cover. But I just have to be blunt and say, I just thank God for you all because you all are top notch. You couldn't ask for a better organization. So we're gonna get that money Mark. We're gonna get that money, everybody. We're gonna get that money, I believe it. So thank you all so much. Thank y'all, I do have one last line up to share about our next steps if that's okay, right? All right, so just so that you all know, kind of what to anticipate from us next. Our next steps are to develop the dashboard. So over the next few weeks, our dashboard will be available internally for collaboration with department point persons. Our next step is to assess staff capacity and expertise. So we are currently in the process of assessing staff capacity and expertise. Staff have been sent a list of funding opportunities for their departments to review, to determine how many opportunities we anticipate we will apply for and that will, when they will tentatively open so we can assess the workload and then build staff capacity where needed. So utilizing the bipartisan infrastructure law, technical assistant programs and seeking out additional consultants or interns or community partners as needed. And then lastly, coordinate with departments to begin the application processes. So myself, the business services analysts will continue to track and provide reminders for application deadlines and ensure that we are tracking the process on our shared dashboard. So that is all for us today, from us today. Thank you all very much. Very good, thank you so much Trinay, appreciate it. I think if everyone is in agreement, we will continue. And next we have Sean Egan again. Welcome back Sean from the department of transportation to give us a transit fund overview and have some discussion with council and folk. Great, well, thank you, John. Good to be back. Sean Egan, director of transportation. Good morning, Madam Mayor O'Neill, Mayor Broughton Middleton and members of council. So I have what hopefully will be a brief update for you this morning on where we are with our transit funding picture. If you look at the next slide, you'll see some significant impacts that we face during the COVID-19 pandemic. We've lost fair revenue. We've lost state support in FY 21. We've had increases in expenses related to the pandemic. We've had the pandemic impact our workforce availability and we've had to cut services. We're operating at around 80% of our normally scheduled service right now because of these workforce shortages. And we've also implemented premium pay for frontline transit workers consistent with what was approved by council in the FY 22 budget cycle as well as bonuses for vaccinations consistent with the city's bonus program and retention bonuses as a way to address some of the challenges that we've had retaining bus operations personnel. So if you look at the next slide, this is the good news. We've received unprecedented support from the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic. So there have been three rounds of funding that have come through the federal transit administration, the CARES Act, Chris and then ARPA. And each of these had funding that was dedicated for transit with almost unprecedented flexibility that we could use it for operations. We could use it to cover those cost increases that we're seeing. We could use it to replace some of that revenue that we're losing from the suspension of fare collection. And it's really been critical for us to be able to maintain the essential services that we provide in the Durham community to have this federal relief available to us. So when you look at the next slide, what you see is that because of this federal aid we are even with the loss of state funding last year without fare revenue, which is that passenger revenue, that top line. We're still able to maintain healthy fund balances. Our fund balances are actually going up as we utilize this federal aid. And we used the CARES Act funding last year. We're using the Chris funding this year and we'll be using the ARPA funding over the next two years. We're using this as quickly as the federal eligibility requirements allow, but $42 million is a great deal of funding to work through and we have to make sure that we are attentive to all of those federal requirements as we do that. So we are using it over this period. What you see as you look toward the latter years, however, is that there is a gap between our ongoing revenues and expenditures once that federal relief, once we run through that in fiscal year 24. So in 25 and 26, you see a $6 to $7 million difference between our revenues and expenses. We have fund balance that can cover that in the near term, but additional work will be needed to align revenues with expenditures going forward. So on the last slide, these are some of the considerations for the transit fund, the continuation of the fair free beyond. Right now it's set to expire on June 30th of this year. There are significant benefits to continuing this. We're seeing about, we're at about 70% of our pre-pandemic ridership levels right now about 14,000 trips on an average weekday compared to 20,000 pre-pandemic. So we really wanna see that ridership recover as Durham continues its reopening process. We want transit to be available to our community and to continue to grow ridership and utilization of the service. What we're hearing from our regional peers in Raleigh, Carey, GoTriangle is that they're all very seriously considering extending their fair free into FY23. We also are able to avoid fair collection expenses so these are things like armored car services and personnel to work in the money room. So as well as fair box equipment, maintenance spare parts for the fair boxes themselves. So we avoid about $175,000 in those fair collection expenses. And then from a bus operator safety perspective, there was a study done in the Washington Metro Transit System that found that on their buses, two thirds of their operator assault incidents stemmed from a fair dispute. So we avoid the risk of those fair disputes escalating and potentially putting our bus operators in harm's way. Some of the investments that we've been making are competitive wages and benefits. I talked about the premium pay. We wanna make sure that we are competitive. We're seeing wage increases from our peers. GoTriangle went up to $17 an hour. In FY23, we're still above that, we're about 4% above that, at about 17.70 per hour as our starting wage. But Chapel Hill Transit, for example, last month announced that they're going to $18.50 as a starting wage. And Cary is already at a $20 per hour starting wage. So we're competing with our peers right here in the region for a limited supply of bus operators. And just like we've had to reduce service, our peers across the region have had to reduce service because of that staff availability issue. So we're gonna have to continue to make investments in competitive wages and benefits to attract and retain our bus operation staff. We've also made investments in service quality, looking at on-time performance, the cleanliness of our fleet and facilities and a renewed focus on customer service. We hired a new manager for customer service for Go Durham because we continue to hear concerns from our community and our riders about the quality of customer service on the system. We know we have work to do there. We've also been addressing deferred maintenance, many of our engine repowers where we have to replace an engine and transmission were deferred. And so we're catching up on all of those to make sure that our equipment is reliable, that we don't have buses that are breaking down and leaving our riders stranded by the side of the road. And then our fleet and facility renewal work, we've retired the last of the 2003 and 2005 buses in the fleet. Those are the ones that had the data branding on the side of them. Those buses should have been retired somewhere around five years ago. We retired them in December of last year. So we now have accepted delivery in the last year of 10 new vehicles, two electric vehicles and eight diesel vehicles. And that's really helping us to have a safe and reliable fleet. So when we look at the funding picture at the FY23 cycle that we're discussing here, the federal aid does allow these increased investments to be absorbed. However, there is that gap between revenues and expenses that we're seeing over the next several years. So we'll need a combination of cost containment, we'll be seeking grant funding. Many of the opportunities that Trinay described could be beneficial for our transit system and could provide additional grant revenues and then looking at other revenue sources to support transit in future years. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. None from me. Councilman Reath. Thank you, Mayor Neal. Sean, thank you for a great presentation. I think it's super important and appreciate the administration for highlighting the transit fund and the critical work that you all have done over the pandemic to keep the essential city transit system up and running. Obviously we've had some capacity issues, some staffing issues over this period, but throughout the entire pandemic, Durham has suffered less of a drop in ridership than almost any other city our size in our area. And that is a testament to you, to our amazing operators and all the folks who help keep our buses up and running behind the scenes. But it also points to the absolutely, positively essential nature of Go Durham here in our city. And the facts, the data around our ridership, how many of them don't have cars and rely on Go Durham as their source of transportation is stark and should remind us that if there is an indispensable engine, both of mobility, but also of economic freedom and that our bus system is it. And so all of the investments that we have made over the years in our bus system are returning benefits to us for an excess of the dollar value. That's why I hope and pray that this council will take every measure possible to continue fair free service on Go Durham going forward. It will be a challenge. There will have to be choices. There'll have to be trade-offs and the money's gotta come from somewhere. But I can't, it's hard to imagine a better way to spend that money than to continue to extract it from our primarily low income, black and brown riders. There can't be that many good invest, better investments of that money. Also just wanna say that I hope that our partners at the county who are continue to be hard at work on the Durham County Transit Plan here, some version of this presentation and hear this council's strong voice in making sure that our local transit needs are met. Obviously there are lots of competing factors, competing needs for our county transit funds. And I trust that the leaders of the county who are in the county process that are putting together this plan will do everything possible to fund both our local needs which are significant for the reasons that I've stated but also recognize the importance of regional transit which is one of the purposes for which the voters approve the Durham County Transit Tax. Right now the regional need that has been identified and that is still being worked through feasibility is the commuter rail project. And so I know that lots of smart people work on that. My only point in mentioning that is that the Durham County Transit Fund I can be a major source of future improvements for our local transit system. I know Sean that that's something that you are focused on and every member of this council is focused on. But mostly what I wanted to say, Sean to you is how much I have valued our partnership over the years. It's been about two and a half years I think that you've been with us or thereabouts and I without any disrespect to the amazing staff that we've had in the department of transportation I would just say that your personal involvement has really transformed how our city functions with respect to advocating for increased transit resources improving the experience of our riders but also working hard to accelerate much needed pedestrian and bicycle improvements which are beyond the scope of this presentation but are critically important and making sure that Durham is a safe place for everyone who uses our roads no matter what they how they choose to go about. So Sean, I just wanted to say personally to you thank you, you have made me a better council member and I know that you'll continue to work with the amazing colleagues that have remaining and whatever awesome Durham loving person they choose to succeed me to make sure that our values around these issues are reflected in the brick and the concrete and paving of our streets and sidewalks and trails. That is what I had to say, Mayor Neal, thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lees, anyone else? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just wanted to put a pin in my appreciation of the buses remaining free, something that we talked about for a long time prior to COVID and the pandemic just kind of lit a fire to move towards that policy. And I think it's great that that's what we're planning to continue and it's great that all of the that our regional partners are looking towards that as well. And as you mentioned, a lot of really clear benefits on the operational side to going fair free but of course the biggest benefit is just removing that barrier for the community so I'm excited to have that continue and I'm really appreciative that y'all are forward thinking about making that happen. We need to get everybody on our transit system and the balance between providing for the people that we know that need it and attracting more people to the system is really hard to hit but I think that the fair free buses is both a great equity measure and a great way to encourage people who might just be out and about to hop on a bus. So thank you. Ditto, Ditto, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Good morning, Sean, good to see you. My fellow gamer, I associate myself with everything that my colleagues have said with the wonderful work you're doing with respect to our, well, all the whole portfolio of transportation in our city but particularly transit on today. I've said time and time again, no city can truly consider itself great until it crosses that threshold where folk can navigate it without a car, access to healthcare, all of its cultural centers, entertainment, until a city you can do that without a car, there's still a box you gotta check to be considered a great metropolis. So I also wanna echo, I think it's important and worthwhile pursuing keeping our buses free but you shouldn't be able to tell that they're free. And to make sure, we want them to be free and of high quality as well. Sometimes you can tell when something's free. And we know that that's not our goal in Durham. I'm really excited. And I think Council Member Reese captured wonderfully your personal investment in making sure that it's not just free but that it's high quality. And I was glad to see the list of things under future considerations that things we're investing in and the continuation of fare free beyond 2022 and wages and benefits service quality deferred maintenance, all of that is necessary but you and I've had some communication and I've kind of parlayed some concerns and some of the operators and passengers regarding safety and oh and by the way, we gotta get that village transit hub thing done. That that's something that I think has gotta be a top priority for us. Just say a little bit if you will for those who might be watching operators or customers or potential customers about not only the things that have been listed here but just the concerns they've had in terms of safety and the morale drivers. We know we've had some incidents that involve gunplay on buses and in the transit center downtown as well. Just speak to some of the best practices we're looking to invest in in the future if at all and that that's on the radar as well in addition to these other admirable and necessary list of things that are here in the report today if you would. Certainly. So we had a number of incidents last year, August, September and October where there was harm to our bus operations staff. And that's something that we take very seriously. We looked at different ways to respond to that to improve safety and the environment for our operation staff as we work through that time. So one of them was making sure that we have an effective public safety response. So we as the council knows there, we've been using off-duty Durham police officers at Durham station with the high vacancy rate for officers. It was difficult to get folks to accept those assignments at Durham station. So there were shifts where we didn't have coverage at Durham station. What we've done now is to increase the pay for those off-duty officers at Durham station and we now have all of those shifts covered. We're hopeful that the increases that were authorized by this council earlier this year will help address that larger concern about vacancy. But we're seeing that an increased investment in compensation for off-duty officers at Durham station paying dividends for us. Now those shifts are covered so that if there is an incident, there's someone there who's prepared to address it. We've also brought in support from off-duty police officers on some of the routes where we have experienced incidents. So we have officers who are prepared to respond to an incident on the route. So in addition to the staff that we have at Durham station we have staff who can respond to an incident if an operator needs assistance. We have that. We also have placed an order for retrofitting of the operator cabins. So right now we have about 60 vehicles on the Go Durham bus fleet. Four of them have a secure operator partition. This is something that's grown in prominence in the industry where it provides a safeguard so and protection for the operator. So we have them installed, they were factory installed on four of the vehicles and then we're working on a campaign right now to complete installations across the entire fleet of those secure partitions by the end of June. And so that should also give our operators a better protection, better sense of security in this work. We're seeing better results over the past several months. We have not had an operator assault since October but we need to remain vigilant and make sure that we're doing everything that we can to address the safety of our operation staff. And thank you so much for that, Director Egan. And I know those who are either watching now who will get word of that operators will greatly appreciate that. But also from the rider's point of view as well, I think we should, as the city should be excited that we are increasing our menu of response options. I mean, I've observed folk on our transportation system that who may be interfering with the operation of the bus, but they're not necessarily violent. They're not, they unnecessarily pose a threat where you need to have a one-size-fits-all response. So I'm hoping that as our community state or a new public safety department comes online that they'll be coordinating with you as well to expand our response options to folk. Obviously, done violence is a very specific issue but there are a whole lot of other things. I think that we can respond to it and the more tools we have in our toolbox to respond to them, the better. But I appreciate you speaking to some of the concerns of the operators that have been brought forth and for the work you're doing, heralded and unheralded and I wanna say on record there's a lot of things you're doing that will never make the paper and will never be heralded but are critically important to keeping the nerve center, the nerve system of our city operating. Durham's a great city but as we go to the next level it's gonna be on the backs of things like transportation, an equitable sharing of our prosperity and access to all the great things that make Durham a great city that it is. So thank you so much. Always good to see you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll yield back. Thank you. All right. We'll turn it back over to Mr. John. Quick question, Madam Mayor Vame. Okay, sure. Shawn, great to see you and thanks for the presentation. In regards to access on drivers for accessibility, do we have any plans to in, well, I guess increasing human resource with help but do we have any plans to increase vehicles or specifically add more drivers in that area? And I'm asking because I've personally seen folks wait two or three hours just because of the mere shortage. And I know that the drivers are doing the best they can but I know this is one of those areas that's not talked about often but quite dire. So we're seeing similar workforce shortage issues on the access for people with disabilities service. So we've had a degradation this year in our on-time performance longer wait times as a result of a staff shortage. So in terms of the equipment, we have a sufficient number of vehicles. We need folks behind the wheel of those vehicles. So the budget that we're developing reflects a significant increase in compensation for GoDurham access operators. So it would bring the starting wage from about $15 now up to $17 and 50 cents. So a large increase in that there are recruitment efforts under way right now but that compensation really should be critical in increasing our recruitment levels. We've got a long way to go to get back to full staff on the service so that we can provide timely responsive service, high quality on-time performance to our riders. So from a budget perspective, the budget that we're developing right now reflects that significant compensation increase that we think will address that staffing need. Thank you so much. And I know we have it in no better hands. You already have made my life a lot easier being on this council with understanding anything. I look forward to supporting that and please let me know whatever I can do to even get involved and help recruit drivers or operators. I really appreciate it. Have a fellow CDL holder. Have a good one. We're hiring. So talk to me. I can't work anymore. Thank you. I'm member Williams, you should take up a couple of shifts. Come on, I know we can use your help. Route three, come on. I can take a shift or two, that's about it. All those, show those. Route three. All right, I'm done. Eleanor, you know they drug test, right? And I'm not going to back over to Mr. John Allure. Thank you so much, Mayor O'Neill, council members. With that, I suggest we take a 15 minute break. Let's come back at 10.30 and we'll move right into, at that point, the budget guidelines. Alrighty, thank you. All right, I think we're back. Welcome back, everyone. I see we're live. Again, I'm John Allure and I'm the budget director for the city of Durham. And before we move into the budget guidelines, I think it's going to be my last time to say this. So I would like to once again, acknowledge the budget staff who've done an incredible amount of work. The city manager's assistant, the deputy city manager's council for being so attentive and asking those questions. I can tell you there's a whole, not only the Durham community, there's directors and assistant directors and staff on hand who are listening to this, who very much value this discussion over these four days. As it helps them formulate what they are going to propose to the city manager to make sure, as the manager has said, it aligns with certain guardrails. And there's been people even on the Zoom call who have been standing at the ready. They haven't been, hasn't been required that they step up, but nevertheless, they've been ready to be stepped up. And I know I've valued directors and staff in the last two months planning these retreats and getting the information together, just sitting in on those meetings where decisions are made, where critical questions are asked. I know sometimes budget people can be a pain in the behind with all the questions we ask, but it's really helped us a lot. And for my staff to be at the table, to be sitting at the table and learning at this level with very, very high level conversations on all the topics we've covered, I very, very much appreciated it. That's why I want to acknowledge those staff. And moving into the budget guidelines, this is the last component of today. It's also the last thing as budget director, I've not done before. It's the last part of, I guess, my apprenticeship. I've always watched the former director, Bertha Johnson, do this. So now I'm about to do it. So I'm a little unsettled about it, but that is to say and to finally to acknowledge Bertha Johnson, who was the director and continues to be a great friend and mentor. So with that, what I'll do is I think I'll have Christina pull up the document and it's a short document. And so I propose what we do is I'll read through the entire thing because they're good words to hear here. It won't take long and we can certainly take stops along the way if anyone has a question or a point that they wanna make on this. So these are the fiscal year 2022-23 budget development guidelines, as many of us said, these are principles, tenants, guardrails that help the city craft the budget that we are going to craft before presentation on May 16. It is our intention to have these adopted by council on April 4th, but there is still time between then and April 4th to make adjustments. So to begin with, the development of the budget guidelines is a best practice and supports the city-wide strategic plan, goal, innovative and high-performing organization. One of the objectives of this goal is to promote organizational sustainability, strategic sustainability, realistic vision and goals, program and service sustainability, high-quality services and programs, personnel sustainability, effective and reliable personnel, financial sustainability, reoccurring revenues, equal to reoccurring expenditures, adequate financial reserve and contingency planning. The general fund is the primary fund for the city and supports 24 of the 27 city departments, including 1,696 of the city's 2,378 full-time employees. The city managers show use the following budget development guidelines to prepare the FY22-23 proposed budget. Overall, the budget should prioritize funding based on the city's strategic plan, needs related to accommodate population growth, state and or federal mandates and initiatives consistent with the city council's priorities. So the first section, it's broken up into revenues and then the offset expenditures revenues. For FY21-22, the two largest sources of revenues to support general fund operations were local property taxes, 48.2% and local sales tax, 31.8%, representing 81.1%, $193 million of the fund's $240.7 million budget. Local property taxes also fully support the debt service fund, which accounts for the city's general fund debt service obligations. The property tax appropriation for the debt service fund was $42.6 million for fiscal year 21-22. The city must use a strategic approach to balance the budget by assessing revenue enhancement opportunities and cost control. For the FY22-23 budget, it must support the city's strategic plan and identify funding to enhance priority programs and services while considering potential revenue losses. So within the revenues, the first bullet, an adjustment to the general fund tax rate of 30.95 cents per 100 assessed value may be considered to fund additional structure and salary adjustments. The tax rate for debt service fund will remain at the current rate of 11.50 cents per 100 assessed value as a reminder that 0.50 cents accounts for the set aside for green and equitable infrastructure. The tax rate for solid waste fund will remain at the current rate of 5.59 cents per 100 assessed value. The tax rate for the dedicated housing fund will remain at the current rate of 3.38 cents per $100 of assessed value. Again, a portion of that 1.38 cents is to accommodate the debt service that we anticipate paying for the $95 million bond. The tax rate for the transit operation fund will remain at 3.75 cents per 100 assessed value. The tax rate for the downtown business improvement district bid will remain at seven cents per $100 of assessed value. The allocation for the half penny for parks program will stay, will remain at a half cent of the proposed tax rate that is housed within the general funds portion of the budget. Fund balance in the general fund will not be projected to fall below 12% at the end of fiscal year 2223. And Christina, you'll catch that 23, I'm sure there. Non-recurring funds will not be directed towards reoccurring uses. Proposed water and sewer rate increases will not exceed an average of 4.1% for the average tier three customer and that figure was set in alignment with the Water and Sewer Department of Water Management who are available here for questions. Fee adjustments will be considered as appropriate to align fee revenues with costs of services for better cost recovery. Their proposed increase to storm water rates for typical residential customer tier two shall not exceed 0.94 cents per month. And again, Marvin Williams is here from the public works department to discuss any of that. So moving on to the expenditure side. To balance expenditures against forecasted revenues the city manager will continue to monitor performance data to guide focus discussions with city departments regarding program and service priorities. This includes possible areas for elimination, reduction, reorganization, new partnerships and or alternative service delivery modes that address the performance and efficiency of city programs. First bullet, city employees are at the core of city services. One objective under the city's innovative and high performance organizational goal is to cultivate a diverse, engaged and highly and healthy workforce dedicated to public service. Attracting training and retaining a competent high quality workforce is essential to being a high performing organization. Therefore, we will continue to consider employee compensation adjustments as a priority. The following pay and benefit components will be proposed. Pay plan adjustments will be considered to restore the pay for performance plan, 4.8% average increase and step plan, 4% average increase for general employees. Additional structure and salary adjustment may be considered up to 3%. And that was all part of the presentation you saw yesterday from interim director Scott. Pay plan for sworn police employees, 5% average step plan. Pay plan for sworn fire employees, 5% average step plan. Pay plan for part-time employees, 3.5% average. Supplemental retirement 401K, 5%, no increase over FY21-22 budget. The medical insurance for all employees considered up to 10% average increase for the city. Dental insurance up to 5% average increase for the city. And 12.1% budgeted for employer contribution to the local government employees, retirement systems sometimes referred to as ledgers, which is a 0.75% increase over the FY22 budget of 11.35%. Again, this is a lot of numbers, but all of this align with what you saw not only in the HR presentation yesterday, but also in the budgeting forecast and budget outlook presentation I gave to you two weeks ago. So continuing on the dedicated street resurfacing funding will remain at $6 million for FY22-23 and up to an additional $4 million from fund balance will be considered for the FY22-23 budget. That is consistent with what we did in the previous year. Funding for the maintenance replacement project plan will be considered to increase by $100,000 from $1 million.1 to $1.2 million for FY22-23. So there's a final $100,000 increase for the maintenance plan. Fleet replacement funding for the general fund will be provided in accordance with the fleet department's 10 year recommended plan within the debt model. Again, you saw a preview of the fleet requests on the CIP presentation. Funding for city council budget requests will be considered. We had a discussion yesterday about those and programs may be considered for downsizing or discontinuation. And I believe that is all three pages of the budget guidelines document. And we are happy to answer any questions or flesh out any concerns with the document. Kali, can you just slide back up to the first page? I'm sorry. And John, is it possible for us to get a copy of this? Does it make sense? Certainly, certainly. Madam Mayor, is it all right if we jump in with questions? Just as a clarification, the reason this one document, you don't get it in advance because the idea is everything that has led up to this point we are still discussing and reviewing that's why it's in draft format. But once it's finished, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, John. I just had one question under, I'm sorry, could you go back to the section where you talk about the fund balance? I think it's on the first page and it says it won't go below 12%. Certainly. Is, what's the reason y'all are using 12 instead of our 16.7 policy? It's simply because it's the number traditionally that we've used. We can certainly use the 16.7. We just haven't done so in the past. But if you wanna make it the higher threshold, you certainly can. Because that amount between the 12 and the 16 is in some ways discretionary and can be used for, so if things came up that would be triggered, the idea behind that between the 12 and 16.7 is you can use it, but you need to replenish it within 12 months. So that's really the reasoning. And if falling below 12 is really kind of a red zone. Right, thank you. Okay, yeah, I mean, I know that 12 is the absolute minimum. 16.7 is what we had established as our policy minimum. I mean, it's obviously a small point. I don't think it's that impactful, but wanted to know what the thinking behind that was. Thank you. John, if I could jump in and thank you, Council Member Johnson for that. That's not a small point, at least I was wondering about that as well. So thank you for raising that. John, if you'd go back up to the top, just curious, what is the, and I know I should have the number committed to memory, but what is the adjustment to the general fund? What is the potential percentage increase in the general tax fund for what it is now? What does that represent percentage wise? The adjustment of the general fund. So we ran some numbers on that. And so you had three scenarios yesterday, one at 1%, one at 2%, one at 3%. In fact, during in adjustments at those levels to the step plan, to open range structure, to open range, the 1%, the cost would be approximately three quarters of a million dollars, $779,000. The 2% would be 1.5 million. The 3% would be 2.4 million moving up. So that does not mean we're going to, based on those decisions, propose a tax rate increase. There's still a lot of work to be done here, certainly with closing a gap, we never propose to close a gap solely with that. But we wanna leave, what we're suggesting is to leave that open in case we need that coverage. So but the 30.95 represents the top, if we had to go all the way with an increase to, if we chose, say, the most expensive of the options. The 30.95 is the current tax rate for the general fund. And then we would propose an increase above that, should we need to. Right, okay. That's why Stubborn looks familiar. So we don't know what the potential adjustment might be yet. So you just got you. All right. Okay. And to clarify, so at this time last year, we were in a landscape where we were actually proposing at this point a 2 cent increase. And we had that in here. We're not doing that this time. We're saying, let's leave the tax rate as it is, but allow us some room, should we want to propose something to come back to you with the proposed budget? Does the council need to speak in between now and then as to what our preferences for those options or let you guys work and you'll come back with a recommendation. Let us work and we'll come back with a recommendation. Fair enough. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. I think that's all on this page, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Anyone else? All right, back to you, Mr. John. I'm sorry, one other question. If you'd scroll down to the dedicated, the road surfacing fund, and I think we said up to four million from fund balance, it's kind of maybe a trivia question. Is that additional four million from fund balance? Is that becoming a de facto recurring? I mean, I know linguistically we say we don't use it as a recurring, but it seems to be getting kind of habitual, is it? And this is a knock on you guys. Is this becoming a de facto recurring cause? What I would say about that is, the fact that we keep doing it, it's not a concern. It's just another way of funding it, but it does speak to the fact that it's below the level of needed. I think I spoke to you when we did the CIP and showed you a slide where what public works is actually asked for in paving is a lot greater than this. So we still want to evaluate that. And I mean, we can't provide for all the needs in the CIP because there's so many competing needs, but it is something to be aware of, yes. Absolutely, and again, this is just about the language and the way we frame and package it. I absolutely have no issue with us doing it, but I just keep seeing it and having a day job at the moment when we have these documents. So I think that's it for me as usual. Looks great, congratulations to your first budget guidelines proposal, a great Jedi you will be. Thank you so much, Madam Mayor. Council Member Rees. Thank you, John, I just wanted to say, I really liked the approach that you're taking with the budget guidelines. I think you've outlined the areas where we're gonna need to make, where the council will need to make some difficult choices in the months ahead. And I just wanted to echo what my colleagues have said. I thought this round of budget retreats has been fantastic. You never would have guessed it was your first time around. Certainly want to appreciate your willingness to show vulnerability about your, I guess, the fact that you've never done this particular part before, but I just want to say it never showed. You've done a great job. I want to thank you and your staff and all the folks who presented these four sessions. Obviously, not everything has gone my way, but that's in the nature of local government. What has gone my way is I feel like the members of the public who have been watching or go back and watch will get a really clear vision of how hard our staff works to give us options and then let us make the difficult decisions and also a sense that this council is not afraid of making those decisions. So, John, for the way that you have empowered us over the years, but especially this year, first budget retreat cycle, I just want to say thank you, congratulations. And I know you're gonna keep growing into your exemplary leadership. That's all I had. I met Mayor, thank you. Councilwoman Freeman, I believe has her hand raised as a will. Yes, thank you. I also want to echo Councilman Marisa's comments and saying, what a fabulous job. This looks great. I was ready, I was prepared for the worst when we talked about the deficit. And if this is where we are, I'm ready to make the decisions. I do want to do, I do want to express my concern around what the considerations might be around downsizing or discontinuing programs. And so I do want to just make sure to note that. Other than that, and additionally, I truly appreciate continuing to add to the resurfacing budget, just making sure our streets and roads move above that C grade or D grade to an actual respectable level. And so I'm mindful that that's the work that we're doing and I'm amazed. I have to look at the numbers again. That was all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I believe I don't see any other hands raised. So it's back in your able hands Mr. John. Well, thank you so much. If we could have the presentation taken down. I do not think there is anything else on the agenda for Phil, although city manager may have some other thoughts on that and I'll turn it over to city manager page. Thank you, John. And thank you mayor and council. You know, I say this often, but today has been another good day for us. We have discussed what feels very smooth, very smoothly. We have discussed some very important priorities for our organization and some very important policy matters that will have a great impact on the future of our city and of our organization. Just as a reminder to you all, once our budget season kicks off and it does kick off usually the very end of January or the, excuse me, December or the first week of January this week, this year it was the first week of January for our departments. We are working on and we're thinking about the budget development every day, but that's along with all of the other operations which remain ever changing, very complex, dynamic and I could use a lot of other words, not five letter words because it's too complex for five letter words, but a lot of words, but especially during this COVID recovery period that we're in, there's so many balls that we are juggling on a day to day basis and all throughout the night, I cannot stress, I cannot stress enough how many of our employees work 24, 24, 7, 365 just to keep this organization going and serving and that is a significant asset and a significant outcome of the taxes that we collect from our residents primarily in order to deliver this service. And I can assure you all that we bring our best to all of this work. Every day we're not perfect, but we bring our best and we will continue to do that into the future. As John has said, these last four sessions have provided us much guidance. We got a lot of people listening even though they may not be talking toward a budget proposal for your consideration and it is a proposal. We realize all of the roles that we play, we do the best that we can to inform, analyze, provide you the information you need to make hard decisions and that is our job. That's what we do and we're gonna continue to do that. As we get further and further into the budget you will receive additional details and those who have been on the council before are familiar with how that happens. We will continue to provide notice. I will in my meetings with you when we are going to be discussing other budget related items this season at our upcoming work sessions. That will include our water rate presentation that you have been familiar with. John has included it in the budget guidelines but you'll see a detailed presentation on how we get to that later this cycle. You have requested and we have also been working on inside the organization shared economic prosperity initiatives that are important and they may or may not have new funding or additional funding but they definitely will be coming to you as before or at the same time that you've given additional consideration to the final version of this budget. And certainly our housing and community development priorities we knew that we would not be able to put every single high priority that we have in these budget hearings but we're working on our calendar to bring those items to you during this season. And finally the budget guidelines that you all have just discussed will come back. It won't have draft on it but it will be more informed from some of the additional work that we're doing as well as additional analysis and it will be for your consideration as John has mentioned on the March 24th work session which is not too far away but the way that we work when we leave these meetings we will be ready to bring that budget guideline document back to you for your final approval in the first meeting in April. Again, I would also like to thank the staff here today for the excellent work that they do every day. And certainly I would like to thank the council members and mayor who give us the guidance and the energy and the innovation that you bring to each one of you bring to this space to help us be better administrators, better leaders for this community that we serve. And that is all I have. Thank you city manager. I too want to offer my thanks today as I've entered into this budget season it's been with nerves and nervousness and just a little bit of trepidation but today my heart is settled. You all once again have proven to be an A plus team. You all are the best. And I appreciate you all. I'm gonna ask my colleagues to allow councilman Reese to have the last words today and I just want to say thank you to everybody. Thank you Charlie for everything that you've done. You've helped me so much in the short time that we've known each other and I appreciate you and I want you to be the one to close us out today. So if anyone else has any comments I see Mayor Pro Tem your hand is raised but we'll let councilman Reese have the last words to close us out. Absolutely madam mayor. I think that would be highly appropriate but as is our custom at the end of the budget retreat we usually have an opportunity for each council member to say a few words and I just want to you know we have as we've been working just continue to point out what an incredible job this staff has done and I just want to again underscore that and John just an amazing job during this retreat madam manager you and your team of course continue just to raise the bar higher every time you're before us. Couple of housekeeping matters in a kind of a word of celebration. At the end I know we've got some pending matters to discuss the 1.5 million for the open space trails and the funding for the cooperative, the pilot in our OEWD office. I do want to just transmit to the staff now in anticipation, no broadside that as part of that discussion it would be helpful to me as we consider doing the pilot seated in OEWD to get a brief update on some of the other deliverables that we were expecting from OEWD as well built to last and some of the other things. So as part of that conversation and considering launching a pilot in that department it would be helpful to have some, just an update on some of the other deliverables from the that'll help me in the conversation. Also, I understand that the budget guidelines are in draft form, just about everything now is in draft form until we vote in June. And I know in the past that it's just been helpful to have a copy of it in case either to prompt questions or comments even as it's being developed that can be incorporated in the final one to save revisions, revision time with the one we're supposed to vote on in April. So that's why I raised that. Finally, I want to, he's gonna have the last word, I do wanna take this opportunity to thank my brother and my friend, Charlie Reese for not dialing it in at the end. It could have been very easy for him to throttle back these last couple of meetings but he's working as Michael Jordan and I can't believe I'm talking about Michael Jordan but he said shoot, go down shooting. You played to the last second on the clock and I just wanna thank a council member, Charlie Reese for playing out the entire clock for being fully engaged and giving us the benefit of his expertise and his passion and his acumen for so many different areas in this work. I'm gonna miss this greatly, the give and take and I wanna thank him for, while we may have had pointed questions, I may have had pointed policy questions, I never questioned his integrity. I never questioned his love for the city and I never questioned his intent and his respect for each of us. So he goes with a great love and appreciation of the city and my personal thanks to him for making it such a fun ride. It's gonna be different but I guess the best way to honor his work is to keep doing it. I keep doing it at a high level, keep doing it with passion and keep bringing our best to it each day. God bless you, my friend. I got to speak to your family. May your success embarrass your expectations. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Councilman Lee. Actually, I'm gonna hold my comments until the, or the Councilman reads until our last meeting. I just wanted to say thank you to the staff. Y'all make it look easy when it's far from it. But yeah, I think in regards to Councilman Maurice, I'm gonna miss this because he helps me understand really complicated and difficult situations. And he helps me bring this policy to life. So in the context and place of budget, I really appreciate you, Councilman Maurice and I'll hold my comments until March 7th. Councilwoman Johnson. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I also just wanted to echo all the appreciations for our staff across the city and especially our budget staff for organizing these retreats and getting us to this point. This is a epic endeavor every year. The budget process is the biggest thing that we do and our staff is always really great at leading us through the process. And just wanna appreciate y'all. John, great job and your first round out. We're excited to have you in this new role and appreciate all of your work and getting us to the finish line of these retreats. I did have one question probably for my colleagues about we also have this outstanding ARPA funding discussion and was hoping we could figure out a time to get that on the agenda as well just in thinking about what our next steps are to move forward to some decision-making. And that is all. Thank you so much everyone. It's been a busy couple of days and I feel like we've been very well informed about what we need to do next. Thank you. I believe Councilwoman Caballero is going to pull all of us together to kind of figure out that time. She'll be talking to us one at a time of course but I think that she is trying to coordinate how we will, when we will meet together. I believe that she's been doing some work in trying to categorize all of the request and trying to get us in a situation where we can kind of go through what we need to do and organize, she's trying to organize us in other words so that we can have an efficient process. So I think she'll be able to speak to that when she comes back. Great, thank you. And do you know if her plan is to have a separate meeting or to do it at a work session or a regular meeting? I think that she's planning to have a separate meeting as I was saying it but I'll ask her again. I do know that she's been putting together some things for us to kind of toss her out in the meantime in terms of how we want to kind of organize ourselves around it. So she's been working in that area and she'll have an update for us probably on Monday. I'll ask her if she can have an update for us on Monday. Okay, sounds great, thank you. Okay, I see Councilman Freeman's hand is raised and then I'll turn it back over to Mr. John. Thank you so much Mr. John. Bow down to you, great job, great job. And again, for you to turn it over to Charlie. So I'm gonna be quiet from here on out, we'll see the strong. Thank you Madam Mayor and thank you colleagues. As always, the budget retreats live up to the expectations of full on animated conversations and discussions, we all have those opinions and thoughts and it's always good to hear them. I will say that I do appreciate John, you filling in the very big shoes that Bertha left you. I think you're doing a really good job and I think your team is rising to the challenge. I think you saw a lot of new talent in this cycle, which is exciting as well, is that we're not just leaning in with who we have, but we're bringing some new folks in and I really appreciated that. I think also there are a lot of conversations that need to be had just considering where we are, acknowledging we're not at an endemic state and there's still a lot more pandemic to go. And so being prepared for the worse means being a little bit more conservative than we probably normally have been. And I just wanna make sure that we hold to that. And we'll also just say that there are a lot of resources that are available through the city that folks depend on. And I think it's important to realize like when we move one cog, another cog is interrupted. And so just be mindful to keep those conversations open and transparent and to engage folks who use the resources directly. I'm gonna keep saying that repeatedly throughout this process because I feel like we lose when we don't engage the people who do use the resources directly. Also, I wanna thank Wanda because you also have had really big shoes to fill and leading these budget retreats and our retreats in general. And I really appreciate the way that you put your personal touch on this process and guiding us through very neutrally, I'd say. I don't feel like you're trying to tell us what to do or give us a direction. You're really trying to make us figure it out. And I appreciate that. I also wanna say that the budget staff, I mean, I know how hard this team works which each and every department within the city. And I just wanna say thank you, thank you, thank you and continue to do what you're doing and raise the issues as they come. I wanna be as supportive as I can but I don't know what I don't know. So at the end of the day, it's gonna be on my colleagues and myself to figure out how will we go, how we move forward and I'm looking forward to the conversations ahead. I will say around the ARPA conversation, I will be really, truly disappointed if we are having the conversations with ourselves and not with the county in addition to ourselves. And I'm going to be circling up with Council Member Caballero to make sure that that is the direction she's heading in because I feel like that would be a miss if we don't incorporate some of what the county's trying to do as well. Other than that, I just wanna say to Council Member Reese, I will be counting the hours for Monday night and trying to do more than just the days. So I'll be doing some math this weekend and just acknowledging that your presence here has been noticed and it will not be lost on me how much you contribute to every conversation, whether we agree or disagree and I wish you all the best. And if there's any way that I can be supportive, please let me know. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm looking at squares on the box. I need just a little time to chime in on that point. We are talking with the county, I've been talking with the county as well on ARPA funds with Chair Howerton and I believe that Council Member Caballero is also at her end having those like conversations. Well, thank you everyone for those kind words and for your Council. And Council Member Reese, you have the floor. Thank you, John. Thank you Mayor Aneel, Mayor Pro Tem Middleton and my colleagues. You know, I've been shepherding my energy to raise my emotional shields for Monday night and the Mayor Pro Tem snuck in some photon torpedoes today that I was not quite prepared for. So thank you, no thank you, my friend but generally am touched by the expressions of support that I've heard over the last week and a half. But I wanna talk a little bit about this budget and this budget process. A great American who has gone on to achieve some measure of electoral success, US President Joe Biden once famously said, don't tell me what you value, show me your budget and I will tell you what you value. But just some more documents, what we've said every year, those of us have been through this process before. It's what we say every year, but no year is that more acute and no year is that perhaps more true than this year as we hopefully maybe, preferably emerge from a global pandemic which we are not out of yet as my colleague, Council Member Freeman was absolutely right to point out. But these decisions have never been more important. And one of the things I have noticed during this budget process that's been really hardening, there's almost a theme of it, of folks rising to the occasion of their new role or new position in ways that have been breathtaking, inspiring and I just want to say to folks who are just achieving, who've just received new promotion, say for example, in the budget department, folks we have received presentations for during these budget retreats that we haven't seen come before the council and have just completely knocked it out of the park like we had today. Or whether it's folks like John Allure, an old friend for those of us who've been here for many budgets who you can watch, grow and blossom before our very eyes during these sessions to assume a mantle of leadership for which he is incredibly qualified and capable. You see that in our own city manager and you also see it if I can be so bold to say it as in our newest colleagues, Council Member Williams and especially Mayor O'Neill. These sessions have showed me that no matter what happens with the leadership of our city or our employees who leaves, who leaves us to go on to new challenges that this city will always rise to the occasion. There are always amazing, wonderful people ready to step up to stand out and to move into leadership. And these budget sessions have just reinforced that for me and shown me what an amazing organization the city of Durham is and what an amazing place our city is that can raise up such incredible leaders like Council Member Williams and Mayor O'Neill and put them in the position to be our leaders in the way in a very engaged and detailed way that we've seen over the last four budget retreats. So I just want to thank each and every one of those amazing people who continue to rise to the challenge each day. Also want to say to my colleagues, the Mayor Pro Tem Middleton, Council Member Freeman, Council Member Calderbiere who's not here sadly and Council Member Johnson, you also continue to grow. Think about how this budget retreat has gone for you in your own personal experience compared to your very first budget retreat. I shared some reminiscences of that in one of our last budget retreats, how we, Council Member Johnson and I gathered in a very dim meeting room at the Museum of Life and Science. I had very little idea what the heck we were doing and look at us now. And I see the same growth and the same emerging every single day in the rest of you who have served on the Council quite a while. Don't ever stop that. It's so important. The last thing I wanted to say about this budget is this. Let's all remember that it's important as our deliberations are, as important as our perspectives are, we as a Council, this City Council, the rooms that we make our decisions in, whether they be virtual or whether they be as we come together again in person Monday night, that is not the City of Durham. We are representatives of the people of the City, but we are not the City. The City is out there in our streets and our neighborhoods where folks are living and suffering and in too many cases dying from problems that we are still trying to solve generations later. These budgets, this budget is our next great opportunity to be with folks as they celebrate what's great about Durham, to stand beside folks in comfort as they suffer from the problems that we have yet to solve. And as we work together to bind up those wounds and heal what is broken by coming together as a City and as a Council, I believe that this group of six dedicated people and the person who will love Durham as much as I do that you choose to succeed me, I believe that you are up to that task. And I just wanna thank you for undertaking for shouldering that burden on our behalf. And as I move on to the promotion to which I'm very much looking forward to of being your constituent, let me just say that while you will continue to see me burning up your email inboxes, you will not see me coming before you in any formal way as an advocate. I've had the microphone for quite enough time, but you will still be getting those emails from me, believe it. So in any of it, that's what I wanted to say. Many thanks to our staff for doing an excellent job over these four sessions. But let's remember that the city's out there and those are the folks that we need to keep working for. So that's all I had to say, thank you. You're amazing, man. Amazing, standing ovation. All right, everybody. With that, I think we're done. Thank you so much everyone for joining us for these four retreats and enjoy your afternoon and your weekend. Awesome, we'll see you guys Monday. Have a great weekend, everybody. Good day, person. Right, back in person. Yeah, absolutely. Stay safe and well. Bye, y'all. Bye, y'all soon. Have a good one.